Great article well researched and encouraging to read at a time when European socialists like myself feel like writing off the American working class as a bunch of Trump supporting fascists. We face a similar situation in the UK with a Right wing government under Scab Enoch Starmer that is Labour in name only, yet is primarily funded by the working class movement that created it. Unless Starmer and his front bench, together with their reactionary policies, are removed and a GENUINE LABOUR LEADERSHIP installed, we may need to see a historic split such as that which created the Labour Party in the first place, taking much or all of its trade union base with it. Such a Party would have to be committed to sweeping public ownership (mostly without compensation) and punitive progressive taxation of the rich, thereby abolishing the free market altogether and lay the foundation for a planned economy and socialism. However, this won't be achieved by winning an election alone but will involve creating a parallel state through Councils of Action similar to those in the French General Strike of 1968 (or the Russian Revolution). Seizing state power is the only way to transform society for good and the biggest barrier to that is alienation and the gulf between class identity and class politics, in the sense that Marx understood it,
Profound comments, Roger! Your problems in the UK started with the anti-labor fascist, Margaret Thatcher almost 50 years ago, and every British Prime Minister since. Starmer is a flunky for the British Zionists and tool of the secretive House of Rothschild and definitely no friend of the working-class.
In the U.S., we had Thatcher's buddy, Raygun Ronnie Reagan, another anti-union fascist who conned the working-class to vote for him in 1980. Unionized labor has been losing ground ever since Reagan fired the PATCO workers and never recovered. To DemoRATS, JImmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, initiated the legislation to deregulate the transportation industry in 1980, which led to massive closures and so-called bankruptcies of almost all of the largest unionized trucking companies and airlines to go out of business in the 1980's. The Repulsive Party has been anti-labor for over a century but the willfully ignorant still vote for them, especially on single issues like gun rights and abortion. The last president who did anything for labor or the common people was Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930's, so yes, a new, pro-labor political party is needed for progressive change to benefit the working-class. Easier said then done!
Thank you, Les, for a good article, too! If I may suggest to your readers, go to labornotes.org, an excellent magazine which covers the trade-union movement and more.
The link in the first paragraph sentence “just because voters don’t like either major party doesn’t mean they’d be willing to support a third party” requires a login. Can you share the content publicly or at least describe it? Thanks!
My point of view comes from spending close to 30 years as a blue collar worker. I fought the Dem party unfriendly takeover by neolibs, meaning support for economics based on hatred for the New Deal and Keynesianism, not on any empirical evidence. We're just supposed to accept our own undoing. Yet we know the economic system and the uniparty political system it sponsors have been rigged for trickle up. This should be THE central issue!
In corporate accounting, devastation of human communities and destruction of environments are defined away as 'externalities.' As irrelevant. I'd bet those "Rust Belt voters" know that callousness first hand. The Ds bailed out the Wall St. vultures who caused the '08 crash. For the millions who lost jobs, pensions, homes? NOTHING! Same when the Rust Belt/Appalachia became Oxycontin scam central. And how the Dem party elite has responded to the suffering people of the region now #1 for deaths of despair. The Ivy Ds won't even use the term 'working class' or admit we're the majority. Let alone that abandoning us was both morally reprehensible and politically stupid.
I disagree with the idea of "extreme party polarization." Yes, there's angry division, but it has all the meaningful depth of a sports rivalry. Our choice is center-right v. extreme right, both neolib, and as of the last D admin, both neocon as well. Their difference like Dorothy Parker's supposed description of an actress as running the gamut of emotions from A to B. The D party elite doesn't understand not voting is a form of voting NO. And they seem to believe "independent" is some tepid, mealy middle so their strategy is to be even less distinctively Dem. This old line labor leftist, proud that my grandfather was a Wobbly, is most disgusted by the D party's desertion of the common good. I hate the Ds even more than the totally vile Rs. That the Rs are big biz and 1%er is not unusual. But the D shift rightward helped to enable the current horror; only heartfelt change, demonstrated by consistent, repeated actions would convince me to come back to the party that was once ours.
With so many House Democrats disappointingly voting not to impeach Trump today, your call today for a new worker party completely makes sense. Disillusioned, lifelong, progressive Democrats like me, my friends & family have already arrived at a similar conclusion. We’d be all in👍
“ As Bernie Sanders has recently argued, it is “highly unlikely” that the Democratic high command will “learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media, and our political life.”.
This is disappointing, but I think it can change.
I urge everyone to let those in the Congressional Progressive Caucus that you back their platform and want them to convince the DNC to move toward their thinking,
Let the DNC know that you do not appreciate President Clinton and Jim Clyburn endorsing Cuomo , another old school billionaire, against really good progressive candidates like Mamdani in the NY race. Also let them know that if they don’t support progressive candidates who are for the working class, back candidates in all races and build an organization the way the republicans have with a plan that envisions the needs of the next 7 generations, and stop catering to wealthy just because they have donated to their race that they will never have your vote, that you will support a third party
I believe we should not give up yet on the .Democratic Party until we have all written to the DNC and our representatives and let them know that if they don’t stand with the working class, promote and protect equality for all, protect our environment, back fair taxes, promote a living wage with education and housing, and stand for democracy and the Constitution that you won’t vote for them.
We the People, actually do have the power if we unite and fight with a unified common voice,
No disagreement with you. It seems to me though that the winner takes all, no matter how small the percentage vote, and the fear of wasting a vote on a spoiler are currently too formidable to overcome. Looks like NYC, among other places, might make it work and be a real possibility with Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Most workers are not upset with the job as much as they are upset with their LAND LORD.
Until Amerika comes to grip with high housing costs all the distraction about the overwhelming need for more Blue Collar workers will do nothing to increase their living standard.
Great article well researched and encouraging to read at a time when European socialists like myself feel like writing off the American working class as a bunch of Trump supporting fascists. We face a similar situation in the UK with a Right wing government under Scab Enoch Starmer that is Labour in name only, yet is primarily funded by the working class movement that created it. Unless Starmer and his front bench, together with their reactionary policies, are removed and a GENUINE LABOUR LEADERSHIP installed, we may need to see a historic split such as that which created the Labour Party in the first place, taking much or all of its trade union base with it. Such a Party would have to be committed to sweeping public ownership (mostly without compensation) and punitive progressive taxation of the rich, thereby abolishing the free market altogether and lay the foundation for a planned economy and socialism. However, this won't be achieved by winning an election alone but will involve creating a parallel state through Councils of Action similar to those in the French General Strike of 1968 (or the Russian Revolution). Seizing state power is the only way to transform society for good and the biggest barrier to that is alienation and the gulf between class identity and class politics, in the sense that Marx understood it,
Profound comments, Roger! Your problems in the UK started with the anti-labor fascist, Margaret Thatcher almost 50 years ago, and every British Prime Minister since. Starmer is a flunky for the British Zionists and tool of the secretive House of Rothschild and definitely no friend of the working-class.
In the U.S., we had Thatcher's buddy, Raygun Ronnie Reagan, another anti-union fascist who conned the working-class to vote for him in 1980. Unionized labor has been losing ground ever since Reagan fired the PATCO workers and never recovered. To DemoRATS, JImmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, initiated the legislation to deregulate the transportation industry in 1980, which led to massive closures and so-called bankruptcies of almost all of the largest unionized trucking companies and airlines to go out of business in the 1980's. The Repulsive Party has been anti-labor for over a century but the willfully ignorant still vote for them, especially on single issues like gun rights and abortion. The last president who did anything for labor or the common people was Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930's, so yes, a new, pro-labor political party is needed for progressive change to benefit the working-class. Easier said then done!
Thank you, Les, for a good article, too! If I may suggest to your readers, go to labornotes.org, an excellent magazine which covers the trade-union movement and more.
The link in the first paragraph sentence “just because voters don’t like either major party doesn’t mean they’d be willing to support a third party” requires a login. Can you share the content publicly or at least describe it? Thanks!
My point of view comes from spending close to 30 years as a blue collar worker. I fought the Dem party unfriendly takeover by neolibs, meaning support for economics based on hatred for the New Deal and Keynesianism, not on any empirical evidence. We're just supposed to accept our own undoing. Yet we know the economic system and the uniparty political system it sponsors have been rigged for trickle up. This should be THE central issue!
In corporate accounting, devastation of human communities and destruction of environments are defined away as 'externalities.' As irrelevant. I'd bet those "Rust Belt voters" know that callousness first hand. The Ds bailed out the Wall St. vultures who caused the '08 crash. For the millions who lost jobs, pensions, homes? NOTHING! Same when the Rust Belt/Appalachia became Oxycontin scam central. And how the Dem party elite has responded to the suffering people of the region now #1 for deaths of despair. The Ivy Ds won't even use the term 'working class' or admit we're the majority. Let alone that abandoning us was both morally reprehensible and politically stupid.
I disagree with the idea of "extreme party polarization." Yes, there's angry division, but it has all the meaningful depth of a sports rivalry. Our choice is center-right v. extreme right, both neolib, and as of the last D admin, both neocon as well. Their difference like Dorothy Parker's supposed description of an actress as running the gamut of emotions from A to B. The D party elite doesn't understand not voting is a form of voting NO. And they seem to believe "independent" is some tepid, mealy middle so their strategy is to be even less distinctively Dem. This old line labor leftist, proud that my grandfather was a Wobbly, is most disgusted by the D party's desertion of the common good. I hate the Ds even more than the totally vile Rs. That the Rs are big biz and 1%er is not unusual. But the D shift rightward helped to enable the current horror; only heartfelt change, demonstrated by consistent, repeated actions would convince me to come back to the party that was once ours.
With so many House Democrats disappointingly voting not to impeach Trump today, your call today for a new worker party completely makes sense. Disillusioned, lifelong, progressive Democrats like me, my friends & family have already arrived at a similar conclusion. We’d be all in👍
“ As Bernie Sanders has recently argued, it is “highly unlikely” that the Democratic high command will “learn the lessons of their defeat and create a party that stands with the working class and is prepared to take on the enormously powerful special interests that dominate our economy, our media, and our political life.”.
This is disappointing, but I think it can change.
I urge everyone to let those in the Congressional Progressive Caucus that you back their platform and want them to convince the DNC to move toward their thinking,
https://progressives.house.gov/caucus-members
Contact David Hogg’s leaders we deserve https://leaderswedeserve.com/
Subscribe to Jess Piper’s substack from rural Missouri and see just how left out people feel when they have no other candidate to vote for
Subscribe to Robert Reich’s substack for more history, great ideas, and hope
Checkout https://www.theframelab.org/author/gilbert/. For more ideas for action,
Let the DNC know that you do not appreciate President Clinton and Jim Clyburn endorsing Cuomo , another old school billionaire, against really good progressive candidates like Mamdani in the NY race. Also let them know that if they don’t support progressive candidates who are for the working class, back candidates in all races and build an organization the way the republicans have with a plan that envisions the needs of the next 7 generations, and stop catering to wealthy just because they have donated to their race that they will never have your vote, that you will support a third party
I believe we should not give up yet on the .Democratic Party until we have all written to the DNC and our representatives and let them know that if they don’t stand with the working class, promote and protect equality for all, protect our environment, back fair taxes, promote a living wage with education and housing, and stand for democracy and the Constitution that you won’t vote for them.
We the People, actually do have the power if we unite and fight with a unified common voice,
No disagreement with you. It seems to me though that the winner takes all, no matter how small the percentage vote, and the fear of wasting a vote on a spoiler are currently too formidable to overcome. Looks like NYC, among other places, might make it work and be a real possibility with Ranked Choice Voting (RCV).
Most workers are not upset with the job as much as they are upset with their LAND LORD.
Until Amerika comes to grip with high housing costs all the distraction about the overwhelming need for more Blue Collar workers will do nothing to increase their living standard.
We need to form something new, authentic and infused with solidarity rather than betrayal.