For decades now the federal government has, to a certain extent, mediated relations between the classes through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the National Mediation Board (NMB), the Department of Labor (DOL), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), etc. The Labor Bureaucracy has been fine with that because it kind of keeps them in power, they don’t have to rock the boat. There’s a certain steadiness to this arrangement. Things got a little out of hand with Reagan but overall the labor bureaucrats are doing just fine, they have big salaries and millions in their treasuries. With Trump, that all changes. That whole layer of government mediation is eliminated and the classes clash directly with one another. They’re right up against one another. In fact, the federal government will be aiding the bosses much more openly.
In 1934 with the Teamsters strikes in Minneapolis, the Auto-Lite Strike in Toledo, Ohio, and the San Francisco General Strike, there wasn’t a whole lot of mediation, except by the bayonets of the National Guard or the clubs of the local police. Nor was there during the formation of the Auto Workers or of the Steel Workers. It was class force against class force. By relying on the mobilization of thousands of workers, workers in those industries were able to overcome boss violence and government repression. The present labor bureaucracy is completely and utterly unprepared to deal with no more mediation. They may try legal avenues, but those avenues will likely be a waste of time for workers. The courts will undoubtedly side with the employers. The bosses will just say F you, I’m not recognizing your union or I am breaking up your picket line. This is how unions got recognized in the past: walkouts, mass action, and looking for solidarity from other workers and working class communities. It’s how they won strikes.
Imagine, if you will, what will happen if the Department of Education is hollowed out, if being an educator becomes a dangerous job to have? Will the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) or National Educators Association (NEA) ask their memberships to conduct a political strike? Not likely. Imagine if the NLRB or OSHA are gutted. Will the large national unions call a strike? Not likely. Imagine if Trump starts his mass deportation program with millions of workers (who go to work everyday and produce billions of dollars of wealth annually) under constant threat. Will the AFL-CIO call for mass protests? Not likely. What is likely? Openings for class struggle fighters to increasingly step into leadership alongside their coworkers and lead with all the weapons that unions actually have at their disposal. When we propose common sense ways to fight back, we will increasingly get a hearing, all while labor bureaucrats are paralyzed.
And the same thing applies to things like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There has been a certain mediation of environmental protections between the ruling class on the one hand and everybody else on the other. All that mediation is going away. And the corporations will be completely empowered to do whatever the hell they want. The only thing standing in their way will be the ability of working class people and their communities to build mass movements to stop Trump and the corporations dead in their tracks.
One thing is abundantly clear. Working class people need their own political party, a vehicle that expresses their will and desires, and not that of the billionaire class. Liberals, the nonprofits, the Democratic party, etc. have no plan, no ability to stop any of what is coming because they’ve relied so long on the mediation of these relationships by government agencies, they don’t know what else to do. They have no idea how to put up an all out fight around something, anything. Moving masses of people into action? No idea. Don’t really wanna do it. Let’s file another lawsuit. Let’s get another impotent Democrat elected to office.
The nonprofit industrial complex has no answers. They are so used to bending to the will of their funders (and therefore to the will of the liberal establishment) that they have no plan. They are used to a staff driven model that uses working people as chess pieces to be moved around the board, rather than seeing working class people as the motor of historic change. They have no strategy because their strategy has been that of the left-liberal ruling class, a strategy that has now been found out to be bankrupt. This election may be looked back on as one of the final death knells of liberalism.
The big question is going to be, can working class people, activists, resistors, etc., get their act together quickly enough to push Trump back enough to stop what he’s planning to do? Looking at the face of this new immigration czar appointed by Trump, you could see the face of an ethnic cleanser. You could see it written all over his face and hear it in his words. Immigrants? Central American, Mexican Immigrants? Not human. Don’t care. Ship em off. Some are American citizens? Don’t care. Good bye.
If we look back to 1933 in Germany many Germans said, “Let’s wait and see what happens.” Hitler did not wait. He moved with great rapidity to create the kind of state that could smash all opposition and smash the working class. Within months dissenters, socialists, communists, and Catholic objectors began filling jails and then two new concentration camps. The rest is history. Let’s not allow history to repeat itself.
By Kip H