Only a Worker’s United Front Against Capitalism Can Stop Fascism
February 8, 2025—Time and again catastrophic events such as wars, ecological disasters, racism, drug overdoses, illnesses like cancer and heart attacks are blamed on “human weaknesses”—that all the evil that befalls humanity is the fault of the inferiority of the masses—and not the class-based structure of society that places the wealthy capitalist class above the poor and working class.
All of Trump’s dictatorial edicts such as annexing Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal, deporting hundreds-of-thousands of migrants, cutting funds to the Environmental Protection Agency, and his pick of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as his Health Secretary, in his first few weeks in office has certainly been outdone on February 4, 2025, with his, and Netanyahu’s plan to rid Gaza of all Palestinians, turn it into “The Riviera of the Middle East” and make it a U.S. territory.
The poor and working class are blamed for our very existence
It’s as if the economic and social structure of society has nothing to do with war—with genocide in Gaza—and the massively unequal distribution of wealth across the globe:
- It is wars between capitalists for which workers shed their blood. It is the wanton polluting and pillaging of the environment for profit that causes ecological disasters. It is capitalism’s need to pit worker against worker that causes racism and bigotry.
- It is the giant, hugely profitable, pharmaceutical industry that is to blame for opioid addictions and overdoses.
- And it’s the giant junk food, cigarette, drug and alcohol industries with high-powered advertising that not only promotes all these unhealthy things but raises prices on healthy foods. They even keep the supermarkets that sell healthy food out of the poorest communities altogether.
- The health insurance industry has made sure that healthcare is only available to those who can afford to pay—or who qualify for some kind of minimal healthcare plan—sometimes with impossibly huge deductibles.
- It is the poor and working class who fight and die in war—who are the cannon fodder for wars that benefit only the capitalists. The U.S. war industry is the most profitable industry in the world, and it is paid for with our lives and livelihoods—the capitalists collect the cash.
These crises are not the result of weakness in human nature. They are not “human-caused” at all—they are capitalist-caused human disasters on a massive scale.
When labor takes the lead, peace, liberty and justice will prevail
It seems, at the moment, we are silenced by shock. There should be millions on the streets in outrage over Trump’s onslaught of ultra right-wing edicts and billionaire cronies at his beck and call. Not only has he dismantled U.S.A.I.D., but Trump is also halting all aid to South Africa claiming mistreatment of white landowners, while the fact is, “White South Africans, who make up seven percent of the population, own farmland that covers the majority of the country’s territory.”1
While it’s indisputable that our outrage is growing, the necessary leadership to harness this outrage has not yet coalesced. But there are some lights in this long, dark tunnel.
A statement by the General Executive Board of the United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE), on January 31, 2025, renewed their call for a labor party,2 and student activists at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine have launched what is believed to be the first Palestine solidarity encampment since President Donald Trump took office.3 And thousands across the country have been protesting Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.4
Labor must take the lead
What is vitally needed is a reckoning among organized labor that it must break its allegiance to the Democratic and Republican Parties, and organize a massive, new party of the working class, completely independent of any capitalist party.
It is the only way to fight back against the ever-encroaching fascism that is the inevitable trajectory of capitalism in its final stages of destruction and decay.
Labor must take the lead in defense of all those who are being targeted by the capitalist class and its government.
Labor must organize massive protests in defense of immigrants, women and the LBGTQ community, students and children, all people of color, every unorganized and severely underpaid and oppressed worker in factories, Big-Box warehouses, farms, fields and wineries and service industries—people of all abilities—whose education opportunities and living standards have plummeted.
No matter how “liberal sounding” capitalist politicians are, they are, first and foremost, defenders of capitalism and their ownership and commanding control of the means of production whose system enslaves the working class.
It means breaking labor laws—organizing massive walkouts in defense of working people and our allies under assault by the government—including those under military assault by the U.S. across the globe.
Labor must claim our right to never cross a picket line again! To stand tall and firmly against injustice everywhere and to exercise our right to carry out the fight to end capitalism and take the ownership of the means of production in our own hands for the benefit of everyone.
The first step is for the U.S. labor movement, en masse, to sign on to the UE call for a labor party and get organized and ready to win the fight of our lives. Our very survival depends upon it.
1 “Trump halts all aid to South Africa, claiming mistreatment of white landowners.” By Michael D. Shear and John Eligon, February 7, 2025
2 UE News, January 31, 2025
3 “Bowdoin College Students Launch First Gaza Solidarity Encampment of Trump Era” Common Dreams, February 7, 2025, reprinted in this issue of Socialist Viewpoint.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/bowdoin-sjp
4 “Businesses close to support ‘Day Without Immigrants,’ amid Trump’s immigration crackdown”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/03/day-without-immigrants-businesses-close/78176470007/