Tempest Magazine

The recent publication of reflections by former members of the International Socialists (IS) and its youth group, Red Tide, is a welcome, if overdue, recollection of the successes and failures of building a socialist presence in key industries and among high school students in the United States in the 1970s.

From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor (Haymarket Books) offers first-hand accounts of those who sought to implement a rank-and-file strategy with varying degrees of success as they sought to bring socialism from below to key sectors of the U.S. working class.

Unfortunately, the opening for turning some of the militancy of that period into a socialist base was shut midway through the decade by global conditions that proved insurmountable for the IS, as well as the mass movements of that period.1For a broad outline of the period, as well as a summary of IS labor strategy, see Joel Geier, “When Socialists Joined the Rank-and-File Upsurge.” Largely missing from the collection, though, is the perspectives debate that tried to address how these material changes undercut the IS strategy, requiring an altered approach for building a socialist base. The debate is important because it gave birth to the International Socialist Organization (ISO), whose more measured perspective allowed it to carry forward the project of socialism from below during a decades-long working-class retreat.

Strategy under stress

The IS was founded in 1969 near the peak of nearly two decades of mass social movements and deepening radicalization. By the mid-1970s the conditions that gave rise to this period had changed. By 1976 it was becoming clear to some that the general perspectives and strategy that had guided the IS since its founding no longer fit. After a four-month debate with the IS majority over its “mass work” perspective en route to a “workers’ combat organization” and a deepening commitment to strategic implantation of comrades in key industries and unions, the minority, or Left Faction (LF), was expelled in the opening session of a Special Convention held in Detroit in March 1977. After the expulsion, 52 members of the LF convened at the Veterans’ Memorial Building to establish the framework of a new organization, the International Socialist Organization (ISO). The debate leading to the expulsion focused on strategy and tactics, not the foundational principles defining socialism from below.

Although the current period does not replicate the 1970s, there are many reasons that a new generation of socialists looks to the IS experience of building independent rank-and-file organizations in key industries and unions during the 1970s. Two current organizations—Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) and Labor Notes—are rooted in the IS work of that decade. Both reform organizations were supported by the LF/ISO from their beginning. So, why did the IS expel a third of its members in 1977? The arguments over the 1976–77 IS perspectives provide lessons that the current generation of socialists might find useful in their efforts to build organizations and to construct a perspective that fits the current period and avoids some of the mistakes of the past.

Mass movements prepare the way

It is important to understand the context that led to the founding of the IS in 1969. A mass movement for Black civil rights in the United States and an international antiwar movement against the U.S. imperial war in Vietnam pulled millions into radical activity. In addition, a second wave women’s rights and liberation movement emerged, followed by a movement for gay rights and liberation. These, too, had international links. But it was the uprising of students and the largest ever workers’ general strike in France in May 1968 that captured the imagination of a new generation of radicals looking for revolutionary possibilities. Besides the May events in France that nearly toppled the government, cracks in the Eastern bloc, anti-colonial struggles in Africa, and guerilla insurgencies in Latin America reinforced revolutionary aspirations.

The year 1968 was the watershed year of this period. Beginning with the Tet offensive by the National Liberation Front in Vietnam in late January, which exposed the lie that the U.S. military was winning its war there, and ending with the election of the Republican, Richard Nixon, to the presidency with a plurality of less than one percent of the vote, 1968 screamed for fundamental change. Between Tet and Nixon’s election came President Lyndon Johnson’s near abdication, two assassinations (Dr. Martin L. King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy), mass uprisings (France, Czechoslovakia), guerrilla struggles (Latin America), and wide disaffection with the Democratic Party after it nominated the war supporter and Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey to challenge Nixon. This turbulent year exposed many of the cracks in the international system of capitalist exploitation, which could no longer impose its will on the masses unopposed.

By the end of 1968, the search for how to organize for revolutionary change was well underway. A generation of activists informed by their experiences now looked for a blueprint, or at least a model, for how to make a revolution. Many looked to the Cuban and Chinese guerilla achievements for guidance. Others looked back to 1917 and the first successful worker-led revolution in Russia. Most of the models were top-down, substituting self-appointed leaders and organizations that would make the revolution for the masses. Working-class self-emancipation (Bolshevism) in Russia had been replaced by a bureaucratic and self-appointed ruling class (Stalinism).2https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1967/xx/revlost.htm Reconnecting workers to the tradition of self-emancipation was never going to be easy, but it was worth a try in the context of mass social movements in the United States and Europe, as well as anti-colonial struggles in the South.

Following the breakup of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the summer of 1969, the International Socialist Clubs (ISC) and remnants of several SDS chapters (Seattle, Austin, Chicago, Baltimore, Ann Arbor) met over Labor Day weekend that year in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to lay the groundwork for a national organization. By the end of the year, convinced that the period of radicalization had entered a new stage, the IS was launched, setting its sights on joining the working class. What happened in the effort to build a revolutionary workers’ organization as the period of radicalization began to ebb over the next decade is a history that is both instructive and cautionary. It is the history of the International Socialists and its successor organizations, the ISO, and a third organization, Solidarity.

Revolution in the air

Before neoliberalism, globalization, or financialization entered the lexicon, workers in several sectors of the U.S. economy flexed their muscles—sometimes with their union’s blessing, more often in opposition to official leaderships. For the Left this period became known as the “rank-and-file rebellion.”3Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow, eds., Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt During the Long 1970s. (New York: Verso, 2010); Dan Labotz, Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union. (New York: Verso, 1991).In tandem with a growing restlessness and outright insubordination in the military as the war in Vietnam dragged on, an upsurge of workers challenged the status quo and the post–World War II narrative of upward mobility and middle-class status.4David Cortwright, Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005). Soldiers who were drafted into a war they only half believed in came home to a country deeply divided. Beneath the flag-waving and imperial chest-thumping a new attitude was born.

The endless war in Vietnam, along with the drive for profits at home, produced a consciousness of resistance among many frontline soldiers and workers alike. A growing attitude emerged that challenged the bosses in factories and officers in Vietnam. Soldiers increasingly refused to follow dangerous orders for a war that seemed pointless (or which they opposed on political grounds). Officers who gave reckless orders became targets for fragging (battlefield assassination).5Allthatsinteresting.com. Gina Dimuro, May 14, 2020.

In factories and warehouses resistance was often expressed individually through “work-to-rule” slowdowns rather than coordinated actions, but united unofficial strikes, often led by rank-and-file militants, were not uncommon. Wildcat strikes grew in this period, accounting for a third of work stoppages, with the 1970 postal strike being the largest (with more than 200,000 workers taking part). Miners struck several times in the decade without official notice and gave birth to Miners for Democracy to fight the corrupt Tony Boyle regime in the United Mine Workers.

Between 1968 and 1971, strikes and labor reform movements reached historic proportions. In auto plants, Black-led shop floor organizations like the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) fought the company on the factory floor and racism in the union. Even during the 1974 recession there were nearly as many strikes as in the peak year of 1970.6Brenner, Brenner, and Winslow, Rebel Rank and File, 141.

Against this background a revolutionary current emerged. Elements of this current could be found in the early sixties, but it was the watershed year of 1968 when the radicalization broke explosively into the open internationally.7Philipp Gassert and Martin Klimke, eds., On the Edge of World Revolution. (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2018); Chris Harman, The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After. (London: Bookmarks, 1988). Millions of young radicals began to draw revolutionary conclusions from their experiences. It was now time to create the organizations necessary to effectively challenge the status quo of war, hunger, and inequality. Revolution was certainly in the air and nourished a generation eager for change. The May events in France suggested that rebellion was growing in the working class—the material force capable of challenging the capitalist system.

Berkeley ISC leaves campus for the factory floor

The Independent Socialists at the University of California, Berkeley under the leadership of the Marxist scholar Hal Draper was the dominant Left organization there in the 1960s, and played a leading role in civil rights, free speech, and peace movements. Loosely affiliated with ISC groups in Chicago, New York, Ann Arbor, and Baltimore—many of whose members had been comrades in the Young People’s Socialist League and the Student Peace Union—the Berkeley ISC student leaders Joel Geier and Mike Parker determined it was time to establish a national revolutionary organization committed to the principles of workers’ self-emancipation: workers’ control of their workplaces, a government democratically elected from councils of workers, and a movement of workers tied to “neither Washington nor Moscow,” but to international socialism. This socialism-from-below orientation differentiated the ISC/IS from most of the emerging revolutionary groups that identified with the so-called actually existing socialist states of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. In the end, it was Maoism that attracted the largest following of the 1970s radicals in the United States.

With the inspiration of the French May, and cracks in the Eastern bloc coinciding with the breakup of SDS in 1969, Geier and Parker broke with Draper, who believed that a national organization was unsustainable and that the period of radicalization had peaked.8https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1971/alt/alt.htm Further, he considered their rank-and-file strategy to be effectively dual unionism and therefore divisive. Meeting over Labor Day 1969, with representatives from various student clubs (including the ISC) and SDS affiliates, the foundation for a national organization was outlined.9https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/is-us/IS-documents/69/69-09.pdf By the end of 1969 the IS had coalesced with a perspective to move off the campuses and join the industrial working class. Toward that goal, Detroit was chosen as the national headquarters and a monthly paper, Workers’ Power, would lead the way.

While it would take a series of internal arguments to cohere the organization, by 1973 the IS was on its way to carrying out its perspective of implementing the rank-and-file strategy.10Kim Moody, In Solidarity: Essays on Working-Class Organization in the United States (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), 75–148. The implementation rested on getting jobs in key industries: auto, steel, telephone, and trucking (freight and parcel) were the initial priorities, followed by postal workers in the wake of their impressive wildcat strike. The plan was to establish rank-and-file caucuses in the affiliated unions and to cohere a group of workers who would be a pole for a new kind of orientation,workers’ control of the workplace.11https://solidarity-us.org/rankandfilestrategy/ This would necessarily involve challenging the existing union leaderships that operated under the principle of business unionism—collaboration with the bosses—which had been firmly established in the post–World War II era.

In brief, the perspective of sending students into strategic industries, building opposition groups in unions, and educating a layer of worker-militants to commit to socialism was a monumental undertaking for an organization of less than 300 members. Nevertheless, with commitment high, promising objective conditions, and some early, if modest, successes in locating like-minded workers, any doubts about the strategy were marginalized.

Successes drive the perspective

One measure of success was the number of rank-and-file organizations built in the targeted industries. By 1975, there were four auto caucuses, five Teamster rank-and-file newspapers, and three caucuses in telephone and steel. In addition, teachers in New York and the Bay Area were active in opposition groups in their respective unions. With the help of a targeted pamphlet, The Struggle for Workers’ Power!, and regular Workers’ Power paper sales at main post offices, several postal workers joined the IS in this period.

A significant breakthrough came in 1976 with the Master Freight Agreement (MFA) campaign, led by Teamsters for a Decent Contract, an ad-hoc group of IS implants and fellow militants in the freight industry, as well as United Parcel Service (UPS) workers. The campaign was spread through rank-and-file newspapers and organizations to some twenty cities, and successfully established a national opposition group in the Teamsters Union that materially helped shape a contract outside official union channels.

This success led to a national rank-and-file organization, TDU, launched in September 1976. Its main orientation targeted both local and national leaderships of the Teamsters, offering a rank-and-file alternative. TDU soon established itself as the main reform group in the Teamsters Union and the organization to affiliate with if you wanted to challenge entrenched leaderships in your local.

In tandem with TDU, embedded IS women working at UPS in Cleveland launched their own organization: UPSurge. Based on their experience, they targeted the company rather than the union leadership with a newspaper, UPSurge, and built opposition groups among drivers and package loaders. Their success in the Midwest brought them in touch with a rank-and-file group in Louisville, Kentucky, that boosted UPSurge’s credibility among Teamsters. Targeting company bosses instead of union heads eventually led to friction within the IS Teamster fraction and became a sharp divide in the perspectives debate in 1976–77.

Successes mask underlying conditions

By the time of the 1976 National Convention in July, the IS could point to several successes in implementing the overall labor strategy. Not only had the freight workers been instrumental in building a successful national contract fight, but in the process they had established a viable national rank-and-file organization, TDU. That success led to a handful of key rank-and-file leaders joining the IS, though few stuck beyond the formation of TDU, especially as an economic recession took hold, leading to layoffs and a dampening of militancy. The mass civil rights movements and women’s and gay liberation movements also were forced to retreat to defend their gains.

Independent rank-and-file organizations were replicated in other targeted industries around the country: telephone workers in New York, Louisville, and Seattle, autoworkers in Detroit, California, and New Jersey, steelworkers in Gary and Pittsburgh, and UPS workers in multiple cities showed what was possible. Overall, the successes covered over the many objective and subjective difficulties that were beginning to erode nearly two decades of militancy and protest. As from a flea on the back of an elephant, the view from a limited vista did not produce a picture of the whole animal. The ride was thrilling, but the destination could not be strategically determined with the small forces at hand, despite the high-level of commitment from IS comrades. Nevertheless, the leadership of the IS was prepared to claim success for its perspective at its 1976 Convention in Dearborn, Michigan, and take the next step—mass work.

Misreading the tea leaves

While there were many implementations of the rank-and-file perspective of which the IS could be proud, they were not sufficient to declare victory. Nevertheless, at the 1976 Convention held in the ballroom of the Dearborn Hilton, the national leadership declared that the IS was ready for the “next step in our mass work perspective… In mass work on shopfloors and around economic issues, we try to give a lead to the backward, reactionary, and cowardly workers as well as to the militants.”12https://www.marxists.org/history. “Mass Work, Politics, Building the Party,” 1976 Executive Committee document.

From an orientation on the “militant minority” to a declaration that the IS was now ready to do “mass work” with a membership no larger than 342 (according to the 1976 National Secretary report), raises the question: Who was leading whom? This triumphalist assessment of the organization’s accomplishments suggested that nothing was wrong with the overall perspectives outlined in the 1975 IS pamphlet The Struggle for Workers’ Power, which boldly projected that in the 1976–77 bargaining round,

[W]e will become a workers’ combat group in the lead of a growing rank-and-file movement or be set back severely.

…By three years from now we want [the workers] to be the leadership of the IS, and a working class and black leadership, which has already started the process of constructing factory branches.

We want to double our membership by the next convention [1976]. In the next 2-3 years, we want to have the core of a party—worker cadres, factory branches, national rank and file movements, a weekly paper, a theoretical journal, a strong youth group, and a working class and black leadership.

This outline for the next period was far ahead of the concrete achievements and completely overlooked the material forces at hand. Even if the membership had doubled by 1976, it would still be well short of the numbers needed to carry out these tasks. Indeed, many at the 1976 convention felt that militancy was beginning to wane, though to voice caution without a clear alternative would have led to isolation, or worse. According to National Secretary Glenn Wolf, adherence to the “Workers Combat” perspective would become a condition of membership.13Notes from Steve Leigh, November 1976 joint meeting of Portland and Seattle IS branches.

Radical period begins to ebb

Internationally much had changed since the founding of the IS. By 1974, the Portuguese revolution was in abeyance and in Chile the socialist government had been crushed by a military coup with the help of the CIA. In 1975, the US retreated from Vietnam, thus ending the antiwar movement. The Black Power movement, which gave rise to the Black Panther Party in 1966, was under physical attack as early as 1969 from local and national law enforcement and was slowly being driven to the margins. An Indigenous movement was literally gunned down by federal agents in South Dakota in 1973. These early warnings signaled that defending and building movements would require a growth in solidarity not seen since 1968.

Even the promise of workers’ power seen in the numerous wildcat strikes and other forms of resistance to the boss’s relentless drive for profits was beginning to wane. An economic downturn in 1973–75 and corresponding layoffs had already weakened militancy in the manufacturing sector.14Monthly Labor Review, September 1983.

Domestically, the election of Democrat Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976 signaled a shift from the pro-labor Roosevelt era to a program of deregulation and a neoliberal agenda favoring profits at the expense of workers’ needs. Layoffs soon became the norm as capital looked for cheaper locations to retool, either overseas or in the non-union south. Neoliberalism replaced New Dealism as the framework for exploitation, producing a consciousness of self-preservation rather than a spirit of rebellion and solidarity in workplaces.

In retrospect, it is clear now that the IS perspective had reached its limits by 1976. The leadership’s assessment at the Convention that year exaggerated successes and projected a triumphant period ahead. While there were doubters at that convention, they were unprepared to challenge the perspective openly. They did, however, begin to lay the groundwork for a counter-narrative, which would culminate in a formal factional challenge later that fall.

Employer’s offensive

Before turning to the debate that challenged the IS leadership’s perspective, it is important to note the fundamental shift of capital that was underway by the mid-1970s. No longer was capital prepared to invest in the old manufacturing systems, especially in steel, communications, transportation, and auto. The international challenge from one-time foes Japan and Germany forced U.S. manufacturers to close old production systems and seek new locations to retool for profitability.

In the heartland of U.S. manufacturing from St. Louis to Boston, factories and mills were shuttered, giving rise to what became known as “the rust belt.” Jobs that had once given many workers a middle-class life disappeared. International competition for profits now dominated. Workers, especially in the heartland, were the victims. From the promise of a home, a couple of cars, and college for the children, manufacturing workers suddenly found themselves on the dole.

Known as “the employers’ offensive,” this period not only wreaked havoc on manufacturing workers’ lives, but reverberated throughout the working class. Restaurant workers who catered to auto workers, for example, lost their jobs. Detroit, the city built by the auto industry, lost more than 300,000 residents, or 20 percent of its population, in the 1970s. When mortgages couldn’t be paid, whole blocks of houses were abandoned and fell into disrepair, thus hollowing out the city. Weed patches replaced yards, and one-third of schools were shuttered.

Besides the damage inflicted by corporate restructuring, Carter and Congress legislated pro-capital measures to assist in this restructuring. For example, removing regulations on telephone, airlines, and trucking gave rise to cutthroat competition and lower wages. Jobs that moved to the south, where new auto plants were built, were now union free. Wages fell by more than half. Frustrated resistance often turned against foreigners (primarily Asians) for “taking American jobs,” thus replacing solidarity with xenophobia.

By 1980, with the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, the rout of labor was well underway. To drive home the point that a new era had arrived, Reagan fired striking air traffic-controllers in 1981. Organized labor’s response was to rally in Washington, DC with more than 400,000 workers eager to challenge Reagan’s anti-worker assault. Unfortunately, official union leaderships looked not to solidarity on the picket line, but rather to a march to the ballot box to elect Democrats to Congress in 1982, ignoring the fact that it was a Democrat in the White House six years earlier who had ushered in the offensive against workers. Not only was this a blow to any meaningful resistance to the employer’s offensive, but it initiated doubts in the viability of workers to bring about positive social change through their own initiative.

Warning signals begin to pile up

Yet even before Reagan and the full extent of the employer’s offensive was known, some in the IS began to see the limits of the group’s perspective, especially in its aim of building a “workers’ combat organization” through “mass work.” One clue to these limits seemed obvious to the UPSurge comrades. While UPSurge had built an impressive rank-and-file organization, especially in the Midwest, it was not strong enough to meet the Teamster leadership’s threat to help the bosses fire workers who continued their wildcat strike in 1976.

But it was more than the weakness of UPSurge that signaled the limits of the IS perspective. It was the material pressures on the industrial cadre to adapt to their work environment that exposed the limits of implantation, especially as militancy waned and U.S. manufacturing retooled. Consciousness was shifting away from militancy and solidarity toward self-preservation and adaptation to the emerging neoliberal conditions.

Not comfortable with the exaggerated assessment of the IS leadership at the 1976 convention, and with some prodding interventions from Canadian comrades in attendance, several IS cadre began to question the road ahead. At first, these were informal gatherings of a handful of comrades who mostly asked questions: Why were we only able to recruit a few militants from our rank-and-file work? Why were Workers’ Power sales declining? Are we missing struggles apart from the targeted industries that might be more receptive to our politics? In the wake of the convention several comrades were unconvinced of the strategic role of the mass work perspective and the leadership’s insistence on sticking to the strategy of implantation in strategic industries when layoffs were the order of the day.

Two leading members, Cal Winslow, the industrial organizer, and Barbara Winslow, the women’s organizer, were alarmed by the exaggerated perspective and sought guidance from comrades they had worked with in the British IS in Coventry in 1969. Early in September 1976, the Winslows headed for London, where they met with leaders of the British IS, newly named the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Here they learned that the British were also alarmed at the IS’s exaggerated industrial perspectives.

Upon returning, the Winslows approached several comrades to determine if a formal opposition should be organized to raise concerns about the mass work perspective. With fifty-eight initial endorsers, the Left Faction assembled in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in early November. Twenty-two members attended the first meeting, along with two comrades from the Canadian IS who had witnessed the debate at the Dearborn convention. A Red Tide representative also attended.

The discussions at this first meeting led to the commission of three documents: “A New Course for the IS,” “Women’s Liberation,” and “Black Liberation.” A later document addressed the Portuguese Revolution, charging the leadership with an exaggerated assessment of the Portuguese Revolutionary Party’s strategy. However, most of the discussion held in branches throughout the four months of debate that followed centered on the leadership’s insistence on doubling down on mass work and sending comrades into the targeted industries even though hiring was at a near standstill.

The Left Faction perspective

On December 8, 1976, the Left Faction submitted a counter-perspective, “The New Course for the IS.”15Marxist Internet Archive, IS Documents Archive, Special Bulletin 3, December 11, 1976. Page numbers in brackets. The twenty-two-page document opened with the following assessment: “We believe the IS is in a deep crisis. The organization’s perspectives have failed. The organization’s politics and policies are shifting to the right.”

Countering the leadership’s assessment that the IS was ready to take the next step toward “a workers’ combat organization,” the LF offered a grim appraisal of the primary areas of work. The auto fraction submitted a sobering report: “We recruited and held no one from the plants in the past nine months. In the same period, we lost a number of members” (p. 6). The telephone fraction efforts were going nowhere and “there is deep demoralization and confusion among those who carry on.” From the steel fraction: “There is dissension in the fraction” (p. 7).

Even amid the major successes—the National Master Freight Contract campaign, the founding of TDU, and the UPSurge-led wildcat strike—the leadership admitted that the IS presence had been “liquidated for a prolonged period of time.” In concrete terms this meant that Workers’ Power had ceased to be integral to the activity of building rank-and-file organizations. The “New Course” charged, “More and more the organization takes on the characteristics of a ‘sect’ in its isolated existence, its frenzied activity, its endless internal meetings, its big talk, to no listeners” (pp. 4-5).

The document went on to argue that the IS’s strategy for building a revolutionary socialist current in the U.S. working class by taking jobs in key industries and challenging do-nothing union leaders was a “substitutionist” perspective that had led to a conservatized and demoralized cadre. Further, it challenged that objective conditions were ignored, thus making any weaknesses or failures of the mass work perspective  “the fault or short comings of the members: a voluntarist load that has crushed many fine comrades” (p. 9).

Whether or not the LF’s assessment of the leadership’s perspective was exaggerated, it nevertheless was a strong indicator that a debate was in order, especially considering the unease among most members in the organization that recruitment had virtually ceased. This fact was especially disconcerting when “mass work” became the description for all IS initiatives, no matter how minor.

The LF argued that the leadership’s adherence to a mass work perspective was confusing: “The IS cannot have it all ways. It cannot, at the same time, orient to the left bureaucracy, and to the ‘cowards and reactionaries’ in the rank and file, and also to the militant minority, in particular to the special demands and struggles of the oppressed” (p. 8).

Black and women’s issues were often lost when adhering to the tenets of mass work. In practice the mass work perspective strengthened “the conservative tendencies already strong in our industrial work.” In other words, the IS was missing its audience.

The principle of “every factory must be our fortress” that “must be the key to building a successful revolutionary workers’ party” (p. 10) in the long run, was acknowledged by the LF, but, they argued, “To reduce the question to one of white-collar vs. blue-collar or workers vs. students misses opportunities in the short-term, especially when conditions have changed.” In addition, “There is no way that a group of 300 can either chart the course of the class struggle, nor can it expect to impose ‘consistency’ on history” (p. 11).

The IS was substituting itself for the lack of militancy among the workers of industries it had chosen as key to the class struggle. Both the mass work perspective and the focus on strategic economic sectors were stand-ins for the real struggles of workers, wherever they might break out. By not coming to grips with the objective conditions, argued the LF, opportunities were being missed to build the organization. Many industrialized members in the targeted sectors, let alone long-time militants, were exhausted and demoralized. “Industrialization conservatizes the individual members and leads to conservatism in the entire organization. It focuses the attention of the organization not on the working class, but on its own middle-class members,” the LF noted. In short, “industrialization is a pessimistic, conservative and a substitutionist strategy” (p. 15).

Perhaps the most serious charge leveled at the leadership’s perspective was that, despite the rhetoric of being “best fighters for Black liberation,” there was little concrete attention paid to Black struggles, nor to training the few Black people who had joined the organization. In fact, the most serious Black work was left to Red Tide, which led a campaign to free a framed Black student, Gary Tyler, from a specious shooting charge. The LF believed it was the adherence to seeking jobs in targeted industries strategy that hampered a consistent plan for Black work, or for that matter, serious women’s work.

By 1976, there was plenty of evidence that the IS perspective had run its course and was only being maintained through a “pseudo-bolshevism” and a perverted interpretation of “democratic centralism”—orders from the leadership without the political backing sufficient to convince the membership that it was on the right track.

In reality, the perspective developed over the life of the organization had ceased to either attract new recruits to the IS or inspire many of its most committed adherents in the organization. It was time to change course.

Key to the perspective advocated by the LF was Workers’ Power, arguing that the small size of the IS required it to maximize its resources with concrete propaganda. Rather than tailing “a nonexistent ‘mass’ audience, at the lowest common denominator,” the paper must be “directed to the advanced workers, those in struggle” wherever they might be—not necessarily in predetermined industries. Furthermore, the paper could prove in practice how real democratic centralism works, when “it actually carries our political ideas” and is used as “our chief interventionist tool” (p. 20).

The LF proposed an outward-looking strategy: “It must turn to the actual struggles of the working class. The IS must develop local perspectives based on the actual conditions in each city and workplace” (p. 21). As the LF pointed out, the best guide for revolutionaries, especially with small numbers, can be found in Farrell Dobbs’ books of the Minneapolis Teamster’s struggles of 1933–34. The LF saw the Communist League’s approach in the 1930s as a model for the IS.

The SWP-UK intervenes

Even before the LF was organized or produced documents, the Central Committee of the British IS/SWP raised the alarm in a six-page letter to the National Committee of the IS in September. The main thrust of its concern was the “triumphalist” assessment of the national Teamsters contract campaign, as well as other efforts in building rank-and-file organizations. They cautioned against the immodesty and exaggeration of the leadership’s perspectives. In blunt terms they also dismissed the focus on strategic industries.

To drive the point home, they offered James Cannon’s observation on the first real success of Trotskyists in the United States:

Our comrades in Minneapolis began their work in the coal yards and later extended their organizing campaign away from the general drivers and helpers. That was not a preconceived plan worked out in the general staff of our movement. The drivers of Minneapolis were not by far the most decisive section of the American proletariat. We began our real activity in the labor movement in those places where the opportunity was open to us. It is not possible to select such occasions arbitrarily according to whim or preference. One must enter a mass movement where a door is open.

In short, the letter argued that the leadership’s perspective was “grossly exaggerated” and was in danger of driving the organization “into increasingly false political positions in an attempt to conceal what will become a growing gulf between pretensions and reality.” Unfortunately, this intervention from a fraternal organization was characterized as traitorous, thus branding any opposition as hostile to the IS project even before the LF emerged.

Was a split necessary?

Was the LF’s call for a new strategy so out of bounds that the majority needed to jettison nearly a third of its membership? In retrospect the split seems indefensible, especially given the conditions of the period and the collapse of the IS less than two years after the debate.

By the end of the four-month debate, both sides were exhausted and ready to move on. In lieu of expulsion (Item 1 of the Special Convention Agenda), the LF proposed a seven-point resolution to avoid a split, including disbanding the LF and accepting the majority perspective without demanding positions on the Executive Committee, even though it represented a third of the organization. Behind the scenes, though, including an Executive Committee meeting with an IS/SWP representative, it was clear that the two sides were ready to go their separate ways and prove in practice their perspectives.

It should also be noted that a small middle faction (Workers’ Power) argued for a compromise. This group, which included the well-known Teamster rank-and-file leader Pete Camarata, left the IS a year later. Soon after, the IS ceased to exist.

Conditions determined perspectives post-split

The guiding politics of “socialism from below” as a principle for revolutionary organization was never in question by any of the contending forces, only how to implement it under unpredictable conditions.

While the IS continued into the mid-1980s (and founded Labor Notes in 1979), its paper Workers Power ceased publishing in October 1978. The ISO and its paper Socialist Worker survived for 42 years and grew to be what was, perhaps, the largest revolutionary Left organization in the United States during the period of long retreat. The ISO strategy focused on campuses, especially those with an activist core. For example, anti-apartheid in South Africa and anti-Gulf War struggles helped radicalize students post-1970s. Through this strategy the ISO was able to introduce student activists to the occasional worker struggles that emerged during the 1990s such as the Caterpillar tractor and Staley sugar strikes in central Illinois and the Hormel meatpacker’s strike in Minnesota.

Several years after the IS collapsed, some of its members, along with recently expelled members of the Socialist Workers Party (US), launched the organization Solidarity, with a perspective of regrouping sections of the Left committed to struggles from below.16The ISO was not one of Solidarity’s targets for regrouping the Left. Solidarity continues to operate as a small socialist feminist organization with a bimonthly magazine, Against the Current.

For any organization aspiring to cohere the self-activity of workers, the lessons—good and bad—from the IS’s decade of trying to build rank-and-file organizations are worth examining. However, the internal debate that concluded that period is integral to understanding the full IS story.

Conditions had significantly changed since the IS’s beginning, and the organization had neither the numbers nor the influence needed to carry its ambitious perspectives forward. In some ways, the IS was a victim of its successes, which blinded it to forces much more decisive than a handful of militant rank-and-file organizations and their socialist backers.

One lesson that stands out from the successes and failures of the IS in the 1970s is the need to temper revolutionary objectives with a measure of modesty. The accomplishments of the IS are inspiring and instructive, but overestimating those accomplishments was fatal for the organization.

Nevertheless, as From the Free Speech Movement to the Factory Floor illustrates, the comrades of the IS, who gave it their all, found the decade they joined the rank-and-file upsurge a meaningful part of their lives, rich with lessons for the current generation of socialists.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Rafaelgr; modified by Tempest.

The post The promise of workers’ power appeared first on Tempest.

The intriguing subtitle of Clara E. Mattei’s Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention suggests that the author has some fresh observation or insight to add to existing analyses of movements that have threatened capitalism’s existence. A Marxist reader of the book might expect, perhaps, that Mattei intends to complement (or correct?) the summary and analysis offered by Colin Barker in the last chapter of Revolutionary Rehearsals, in which he discusses the conditions, commonalities, and potential of the five monumental workers’ struggles covered in that volume.

Mattei, an economist currently working at the University of Tulsa, does, in fact, describe what she sees as the path towards ending capitalism, although it comes in the last ten pages of the book (more on this below). The rest of the book consists primarily of a critique of capitalism, along with a particular thesis about the role of economists and economic theory in maintaining what she calls the “capital order.” That thesis, in turn, motivates the prescription she eventually offers.

Most of the critique of capitalism Mattei presents – and even much of her discussion of mainstream economic theory – is basic to Marxism. One is tempted, therefore, to view it as a sort of primer, written for those just beginning to consider that a different economic order is necessary and possible. Here is how she herself describes her audience (p. 14):

This book is for all those who wake up in the morning with a sense of profound dissatisfaction. I intend to challenge the fatalist notion that nothing can change and the individualist notion that it is all our fault, or the fault of those weaker than us. Instead, I want to clarify that classist economic decisions are the basis of the major problems afflicting our time. I want to clarify the mechanisms that oppress us and identify the freedoms for which we must fight.

Portions of this book might work well as an introduction to anti-capitalist discourse. But her ideas (non-Marxist, as I read them) regarding economics and the primacy of economic ideas in maintaining capitalism—and certainly her concluding prescription—require separate analysis.

Mattei walks us through several basic tenets of socialist thinking: Capitalism is a historically specific system, quite new in human history; it came into being via violent processes, often supported by states, that led to complete dependency on market exchange for human survival; it is a class-based system in which political power is relatively autonomous from economic power; its “freedom”—the freedom of the marketplace—contrasts with the unfreedom of the workplace; its dynamics lead to outrageous, continually reproduced inequalities (both within nations and between “developed” and “underdeveloped” ones); and its tendency to increase productivity comes at the cost of bouts of unemployment for workers.

Her characterization of neoclassical economic theory is also quite standard: Beginning in the late nineteenth century, economists presented their science as a “natural” one based on allegedly eternal characteristics of human behavior and capable of being applied with the mathematical precision of the physical sciences. Those economists quite consciously saw their project as countering Marxist and other class-based theories of the capitalist economy, as well as providing a basis for what eventually became macroeconomic management of it. What is non-standard in Mattei’s discussion, though, is how she uses the term “political”: She applies it to the power that capitalists have to make economic decisions regarding investment and production, as well as to the more formal political power that governments and central banks have to influence the economy. It is in this sense that she presents mainstream economic theory as “depoliticized”: The theory ignores the power of capitalists to manage production and influence market prices.

Economics itself, on the other hand, is (as Mattei announces in the title of her introduction) “a political act.” She begins by discussing the world’s first international economic conference, organized by the League of Nations in the aftermath of World War I. Concerned about the militant and often revolutionary workers’ movements of that period and fearing the destabilizing consequences of mounting worldwide inflation, the assembled industrialists, financiers, politicians, and economists resolved to implement austerity measures. In order to force the entitled and morally deficient workers to “work hard, live hard, save hard” (in the words of one of the English delegates), they argued, social welfare spending should be slashed.

Mattei traces the origins of the use of economic theory to support austerity policies to this historical episode. The starkest applications of these policies are in cases where authoritarian governments assumed power in the wake of militant workers’ movements or other systemic threats to capitalism.

Benito Mussolini’s fascism is the classic—and primordial—case. Italy’s postwar “Red Biennium,” characterized by factory occupations and increasingly political workers’ councils, had to be ended. Weakening the workers’ movement by both physical violence and austerity measures—cutting social welfare spending, raising interest rates, and shifting tax burdens from capitalists to workers—was exactly what the fascist regime implemented. In Mattei’s telling, economists played a central role. Maffeo Pantaleoni, a founder of neoclassical economic theory, had become a fascist, as had his protege Alberto De Stefani, and they along with two liberal economists became a sort of brain trust to Mussolini.

The case Mattei makes linking the new “pure economics” of mathematical equations to austerity and even violently authoritarian policies is a strong one. Her first book, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way for Fascism is primarily an exploration of this point. (See David McNally’s interview with Mattei in Spectre). In Escape from Capitalism, she quotes Luigi Einaudi, one of the liberal economists who eventually advised Mussolini and who later became the first president of the post-Mussolini republic (p. 58):

When the worst happened … and the occupation of factories by armed workers and the institution of Soviets in factories seemed to point to an imminent communist revolution in Italy … [y]ouths of the middle class indignantly grouped themselves into “fasci”. … The communists are everywhere defeated … This renewed feeling of hope in the future of our country is not the least important cause of the better tone in foreign exchanges.

The glowing praise these economists afford to the National Fascist Party is matched by their reverence for the new, “objective” economic theory: “a nucleus of doctrines that are independent of opinions, as well as of ethical, political and religious predilections. Something akin to physics and mathematics.” And Mattei herself, referring to the austerity prescribed by the international conferences shortly preceding the advent of fascism, characterizes what she considers a pivotal moment in the relation between this young theory and state policy:

The experts … knew for sure … that the logic of capitalism would not recover without forceful intervention by the state, which would weaken the workers by transferring resources from the many to the few. Here lies the quintessential achievement of macroeconomics as it has long been practiced, modifying and disciplining citizens’ behavior by fiscal and monetary policy. (p. 56)

Elsewhere Mattei discusses other instances when economists have advised authoritarian regimes, for example,the “Chicago boys” sent by the U.S. State Department to work with Augusto Pinochet in Chile and the international economists who prescribed “shock therapy” for Boris Yeltsin’s post-Soviet Russian government. She also reminds us that economically prescribed austerity is not limited to such regimes. The U.S. Federal Reserve uses interest rates—sometimes in an extreme way as in the “Volcker Shock” of 1979—to tame inflation by causing unemployment and reducing workers’ purchasing power. Fed and Treasury officials (she mentions Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell) sometimes say the “quiet part” out loud by announcing that “pain” is necessary to reduce inflation.

A case can be made that austerity in some form is an essential and permanent feature of capitalism, depending on one’s definition of austerity. But I think Mattei overstates her contention that capitalism’s need for austerity is the primary driver of mainstream economic thinking. Is it right to view “transferring resources from the many to the few” as the “quintessential achievement of macroeconomics” that enables the “logic of capitalism” to recover? Redistributive policies in particular – transfers from rich to poor – (always limited in scope and time, as Mattei correctly argues) are sometimes prescribed (in order to increase demand) by the same macroeconomics profession that in other circumstances recommends austerity. And certainly the vast infusions of capital by the state that we witnessed after the 2008 crash (in this case “bailing out” financial institutions to avert catastrophic collapse) must be considered as a significant macroeconomic achievement.

Part of Mattei’s central thesis seems to be that mainstream economic theory was developed for the purpose of weakening the working class, and that economists have played a leading role in attacks by the state on labor. I think this both overstates the role of theory and presents its application in too crude a form. But she even goes further, and attributes to economists the creation of an ideological misapprehension of the world that grips everyone living under capitalism.

She is surely correct in saying that mainstream theory obscures class distinctions and mystifies the functioning of a capitalist economy. It also, as she argues, puts a veneer of objectivity and inevitability behind policy prescriptions. But her “intervention” regarding the elimination of capitalism appears to consist of the claim that academic economic theory creates an ideological barrier that impedes anticapitalist initiatives, along with suggestions for how to breach that barrier.

As with other aspects of her argument, she indicates right away in the introduction where she will be going:

I wrote this book to expose how that dominant message [of academic economics] blinds us to alternative economies. … By hiding the true nature of the economic system, they atrophy our minds, blocking any possibility of transformative action. But it is possible to escape from capitalism. (p. 11)

And a bit further on:

We must re-democratize the economy… That is a better way forward than anything capitalism has or can offer. What is the first step in this direction? It is a radical change of perspective. Only if we learn to look at the world differently can we act differently… The time is ripe to turn towards a truly modern study of economics built from the works of classical political economy. (p. 13)

In these passages Mattei appears to suggest that those looking for alternatives to capitalism need first to go through a process of rejecting mainstream economic theory. For the moment, we can put aside the question of whom she considers to be the subject, or agent, of economic change. (Who are the “we” who need to think differently: intellectuals? workers? everybody?) We can also ignore the fact that socialists have studied “the works of classical political economy” and attempted to apply them in new conditions for over 150 years, and overlook what it means to “re-democratize” an economy which has at no time since hunter-gather societies been democratic. Let us simply examine Mattei’s prescription for “escaping” capitalism in its own terms.

The route by which we can end capitalism, according to Mattei, becomes fully clear in the book’s last chapter, entitled “Democracy is Anti-Capitalism.” Most of what she has to say in that chapter regarding the limits of democracy under capitalism is, again, quite standard. One could quibble with the fact that she claims capitalism limits democracy to electoralism: She ignores liberal (or “bourgeois”) democratic rights (like freedom of speech) and legally granted rights like the right to form unions, etc., though of course those rights have definite limits.

Perhaps the last ten pages of the book, though, which contain her prescription for the escape route, should have been put into a separate chapter. Here she first reprises what she has said in the introduction:

The first step toward change is to lay bare that what counts as a social failure is not at all a failure for the logic of capital. To fight this inhumane logic that organizes our society, we must abandon the mystifying language of neoclassical economics in favor of a simple but profound explanation of our economic system, which can shake our beliefs and spur us into action…. What would happen if the majority of the people realized that in the last three years, about two-thirds of the wealth created has gone into the hands of 1 percent of the global population? (p. 107)

Is she really arguing here that it is primarily “the mystifying language of neoclassical economics” that holds back workers and others in struggling to meet their needs? Do “the majority of the people” view the world as presented in an Econ 101 textbook? The majority already believe that wealth increases most among the already wealthy! If realizing the errors of capitalist macroeconomics could itself “spur us into action,” revolutionary movements would long since have become common.

Let her continue:

I am often pressed with the question “So what do you suggest? Revolution?”. In our imagination, the term “revolution” is associated with something bloody, barbaric, and wrong. But it shouldn’t have to be…Each of us can take steps to politicize our lives. And by “politicize” I mean participate in the transformation of the material and social reality around us. The steps can be as small as connecting with your neighbors to build community. (pp. 108-109)

The Marxist notion of revolution and its centering of working-class agency don’t seem to play a role here. But Mattei does offer examples of what she means by the transformation of reality: Students can organize against their institution’s investment in corporations that profit from human rights violations; citizens can vote against and protest cuts to public welfare spending; they can also pressure politicians to raise taxes on the rich. None of these, though, create a society “that is based on different principles.” For that, people have to begin to organize production collectively.

Mattei tells us that the world is “brimming” with such organizations, and proceeds to discuss some of them. She mentions an agroecological commune outside of Sao Paolo, Brazil and its connection to Brazil’s landless workers movement (MST), whose democratic structure she emphasizes. This collective management of rural production by the direct producers is complemented by urban factory production; she cites fifty self-managed factories in Brazil and another four hundred in Argentina. “The idea that private capital is essential for production and investment is a myth. …Alternatives to private investment are real, from collective ownership by workers to public investment.”

It appears, then, that the society Mattei hopes we can escape to is one consisting of worker co-ops and state-funded infrastructure. This of course is no new model; various versions of “market socialism” have advanced similar prescriptions. All of these, though, and particularly ones that envision the achievement of full social change by means of incremental steps, fail to consider that market dependence makes the same demands (to increase productivity, undercut the competition, and attract new financial resources) that capitalism does. If it were possible to put such models into practice, they would, in short order, reproduce capitalism.

A real assault on capitalist power requires certain conditions that cannot simply be brought about by growing numbers of individuals freeing their minds from the straitjacket of neoclassical economics and taking steps towards collective action. Among the indicators that such conditions exist, to be sure, is the organization of production and distribution by workers themselves. But the existence of worker co-ops in the context of a capitalist economy is not itself an indicator of potentially revolutionary conditions.

Such conditions have in fact existed in the last century, sometimes in individual countries (France 1968, Portugal 1974, etc.) and once in an entire continent: Europe after the first world war. Earlier in the book, Mattei discusses this period, mentioning events in Germany, Hungary and Britain before going into more detail regarding Italy’s “Red Biennium.” While she points out the massive extent of the movement for “popular self-government,” and does mention Turin’s workers’ councils and their democratic structure, she spends more time on the role of politicians and socialist intellectuals. Here she highlights the role of Antonio Gramsci and his comrades writing in L’Ordine Nuovo. That publication chronicled, and reflected on, the factory councils that had begun to control and organize production democratically.

Mattei comments on the interplay between workers’ self-activity and the intellectual reflections which led to new theoretical conclusions and suggestions about what would be necessary to reconstitute society: “L’Ordine Nuovo contributed to the deep conviction that no true social revolution is possible without a revolution in the way we understand society. Gramsci named this mutually reinforcing connection between theory and collective action ‘praxis’” (p. 54).

This formulation implies, as Mattei does elsewhere, that liberatory ideas have to precede liberatory activity. But further down the same page she writes:

Gramsci and his comrades now understood that emancipatory knowledge had to emerge from collective organizing in the workplace and could thus support action from the bottom up. As “absolutely original institutions” of the proletariat, the councils functioned as nuclei of a new state.

The first sentence of this passage can be read as generally consistent with her discussion at the end of the book, apparently identifying the transition away from capitalism with the proliferation of worker cooperatives and increased state participation in the economy.

But the second sentence provides a stark contrast, especially in its reference to a new state form. In her closing discussion, Mattei refers to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s public housing initiatives and Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada’s construction of community centers as examples proving that private capital is dispensible. Clearly, she is referring here to the existing state apparatus, and indicates no need for that capitalist state to be replaced by something else.

This seems in contradiction with a discussion earlier in this final chapter, quoting Ralph Miliband’s The State in Capitalist Society, and pointing out that political parties participating in government act to uphold capitalism, even when they oppose the interests of particular capitalists. She does not seem to recognize, let alone attempt to resolve, this contradiction. One wonders whether she has considered the difference between the European workers’ councils of 1917-1922 and the contemporary South American cooperatives she has mentioned.

In the end we are left wondering whether Mattei believes that the kind of movement exemplified by the early 20th century workers’ councils is necessary to bring capitalism to an end, or whether, perhaps, they only represented the requirements of an earlier era. Indeed, from what she says in this volume, it would appear that we do not now need much investigation or analysis of social movements and their history in order to develop the ideas we need.

I do think, though, that a book covering some of the same material, perhaps equally as short and written for a newly radicalizing audience, would be useful. I’m not sure if a book of this nature about the Europe-wide workers’ movement after World War I exists – something along the lines of China Mieville’s October (about the Russian Revolution) and much shorter than Pierre Broue’s brilliant, 900-page The German Revolution, 1917-1923. Given Mattei’s argument about the usefulness of unemployment for capitalism in weakening labor, perhaps a historical survey and statistical analysis – again, for a popular audience – correlating high unemployment with a weak labor movement and low unemployment with a strong one would be another useful contribution.

Mattei’s own earlier work The Capital Order, linking economic theory with fascism, is itself such a book. Perhaps we can expect another from her.

The author would like to thank Charles Post and Sam Salour for very helpful conversations and comments on a draft of this review.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

The post Can shattering capitalist economic theory lead to revolution?  appeared first on Tempest.

On June 9, 2026 Tempest Magazine published Party Time?, the transcript of an interview with Charlie Post by David Camfield. The central question being asked was whether socialist organizations should consider themselves parties.

Charlie Post, a former member of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Solidarity and current member of Tempest, takes a stab at answering that question by outlining how all of the traditions in the U.S. failed because they followed what he calls “the micro-sect model”. While a revolutionary party is necessary, it requires that a large layer of the working class be radicalized.

Post provides a history starting in the 1860’s in Europe up to the broad Left parties of today. In addition to the basic objective problem regarding the working class, there were also subjective mistakes made by socialist organizations which included swinging from ultraleft abstentionism to adaptation. From my perspective, so far, so good.

At this point, Post begins a broad attack on the existing far Left. All groups either continue to use the micro-sect model or proclaim themselves to be parties. Those following the micro-sect model are prone to a “fetish of leadership” which played a part in those organizations ignoring or excusing oppressive behavior from leadership. This led to the demise of the ISO and other organizations.

Post then turns to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as an alternative to the micro-sect model. He says there were opportunities for engagement between 2017-2020. He cites the Jamaal Bowman debacle as an illustration of the decline of DSA into a more authoritarian and bureaucratic organization. Today, with the advent of Mamdani, Tempest is re-evaluating whether engaging with DSA is worthwhile.1

Post next turns to Solidarity. He was a member from its founding in 1986 until 2015. During much of this time, he was in the leadership. He claims that Solidarity was good at training its members until about 1993. This change, according to Post, had to do with members giving up on revolution and accepting reformism as the only thing possible. His conclusion is the most damning “What we ended up with was that the group—politically, not organizationally—liquidated itself into a more amorphous left-reformist current.” He later goes on to say that Solidarity became depoliticized and the atmosphere became toxic.

I am a member of Solidarity, serving on its National Committee, and also a member of Tempest and DSA. I joined Solidarity in 1997 so I can’t comment on the shift in training members that allegedly happened in or around 1993 but I believe our remaining founding members would be as puzzled by that comment as I was. It is also totally untrue that we have a paper membership of one hundred with an active membership of thirty.

Solidarity’s membership has been affected by the same objective factors that have fragmented the rest of the far left. The rise of DSA drew members away as well as allowed a portion of the existing membership to be comfortable in supporting progressive Democrats, a mistake in my opinion. However, this is a question on which Solidarity members are about evenly divided and one that we continue to debate.

We lost members as we grappled with gendered violence and trans rights. However, unlike other organizations, we got things right. I proudly served on the Gendered Violence Commission during this time. The loss of members was an inevitable result of this painful process.

I’ve added to the list of negative issues that have affected Solidarity in the interest of honesty and to acknowledge mistakes and shortcomings. That does not mean that the musings of a disgruntled former member are accurate or fair. We continue to call ourselves revolutionary socialists in the tradition of socialism from below. We continue to grow with youth and women as new members. We continue to seek opportunities for collaboration with other like-minded organizations and individuals.

One such collaboration is the United Left Platform (ULP) which Post does not even bother to mention and to which he has done a great disservice in his snarky attacks on Solidarity.

Which organization is immune from criticism? Tempest, of course! It’s unclear how Tempest has all the answers. This is where it gets very vague. If Solidarity is a drop in the ocean, then Tempest is a drop and a half, a fact that should engender a high degree of humility and self-criticism both of which were sorely lacking in this interview.

NB: Dual Solidarity-Tempest members Bill Balderston, Ron Lare, Ted McTaggart, Peter Solenberger and Judy Wraight concur with this article. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of Solidarity.

[1] In my opinion, Tempest made a sectarian turn away from DSA, a mistake that I and others argued against at the time in an article published in Tempest magazine (“DSA after the 2023 convention: Another view”).The size of DSA has waxed and waned with the election of Trump in 2016, the election of Biden and the re-election of Trump. There is nothing surprising about this. Currently, DSA has over 120,000 members and continues to grow.  A group with young, enthusiastic members who call themselves socialists and who have an active interest in Marx is one place we should want to be, illusions about social democracy notwithstanding.

The issue with Jamaal Bowman was a much more fundamental one than what Post identifies. DSA should not be endorsing Democrats, and if they do, they should not be surprised that there is no accountability. At most, DSA should be critically endorsing independent candidates. Revolutionary socialists should be arguing this at every step of the way, not mounting campaigns for expulsion when (surprise!) Democratic candidates, who have been endorsed by all kinds of groups and individuals, turn out not to be accountable. Post says that participation in DSA is a tactical question and I agree with that.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

The post Party Time? Setting the record straight appeared first on Tempest.

Vermont’s main hospital, the University of Vermont Medical Center, is threatening cuts in staffing and wages as well as services in contract talks with UVM Medical Center Support Staff United. The hospital’s parent company, UVM Health, has already eliminated 140 positions. A third of those were union positions.

The Green Mountain Care Board (GMCB), which oversees the state’s hospitals, has mandated that UVM Health overcome its $300 million deficit with more cuts in expenses over the next three years. The cause of this fiscal crisis is not the healthcare system’s workers and patients, but its bosses, their profligate pay, and their mismanagement of the system.

The former Chair of GMCB, Owen Foster, underlined this fact during a board meeting last September. He stated, “It’s essentially an expensive and ineffective layer of overpriced and unnecessary corporate bureaucracy that has proven itself both physically and spiritually distant and unconnected from the mission of our flagship academic medical center and the needs of Vermonters.”

In the midst of this crisis, entirely caused by management, UVMMC Staff United is drawing a line in the sand. The workers are fighting for a fair contract that would put workers and patients first. Their struggle may result in a strike.

The stakes are high. The union is holding the line against the proposed cuts and demanding that the Medical Center ensure safe patient-staff ratios that would improve everyone’s healthcare. They’re also insisting that it sign on to Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program, which protects farm workers’ rights and ensures them better wages, working conditions, and housing.

This panel (video here), organized by Vermont May Day Strong, featured union leaders from impacted healthcare and education unions in Vermont as well as Plattsburgh, New York. The speakers included Melissa Lavalle and Teagan Cook (UVM Medical Center Support Staff United), Jessica Jacobs (Vermont Federation of Nurses and Healthcare Practitioners), Chris Swiesz (New York State Nurses Association), Lou Rochford (Community Health United), Deirdre Manion-Fischer (UVM Staff United) and Matt Gile (Winooski Education Association). This transcript of their speeches has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Vermont health care union members address the urgency of their struggle. Photo Credit: Vermont May Day Strong

Melissa Lavalle: For forty hours a week, I’m the financial and administrative assistant for the psychiatry and mental health departments. I’ve been doing this job for eight years. When we started, it was just for UVM Medical Center, where I work. As of this week, my work has expanded to include Plattsburgh and Elizabethtown, New York, as well as other hospitals in Central Vermont.

I am secretary of Support Staff United as well as vice president of Healthcare for AFT Vermont. When we started talking about bargaining, we realized that both staff and technical workers’ contracts were expiring at the same time. We all know that when we bargain together, we are stronger together.

So, we made sure that we were all on the same page ideologically. We sent out our bargaining survey in both units and our members’ responses showed that folks wanted the same thing, and that the primary thing that they wanted was safe staffing.
We know this is an incredibly hard economic time all around. Our folks are not immune from that in any way, shape, or form. But hospital workers aren’t hospital workers just because they want a fat paycheck. They care about the community and care about providing quality healthcare to the community that we’re all part of, that our families are part of, and that our friends are part of.

After deciding that staff and tech workers bargaining together was going to be the way forward, we combined our economic demands with some common good articles. We believe that we have the opportunity now to start a wave of social justice unionism.

We are asking the hospital to be a part of Milk with Dignity. Our hospital serves a lot of milk. We would like to know it’s coming from farms that treat their workers properly. This is personal for me. I grew up on a farm and know how hard the work is. My parents’ biggest and most effective threat to me was that if I did not behave, I was going to have to work on the farm.

We’re also asking that the hospital not use their very expensive lobbyists and publicity department to fight us in our struggle for universal healthcare for Vermonters. The hospital’s tight on money, so if they agree to not waste it on opposing us in the legislature, we can save them a lot on lobbyists and consultants.

We wrote up these common good proposals and brought them to our 3,300 members. We got a supermajority to sign on to them. Our people are behind us. They want us to use our union power to improve our working conditions, make sure we are running a safely staffed hospital that can properly care for its patients, and improve the community that we are all a part of.

Our people are behind us. They want us to use our union power to improve our working conditions, make sure we are running a safely staffed hospital that can properly care for its patients, and improve the community that we are all a part of.

I think we can all see that for-profit healthcare is not working for any of us. It’s not working for healthcare workers. It’s not working for our patients. It’s time to end the delusion that for-profit healthcare can ever work.

We know there are alternatives. I’ve been to Holland. I’ve been to England. They are not shitholes. People are not dying in the streets. We deserve the opportunity to have healthcare as a human right and that’s what we’re fighting for.

Teagan Cook: I am the operations support specialist at UVMMC. I know that doesn’t mean anything to anyone because they have very obfuscating titles there. What that means is that I am the lead chemotherapy scheduler for outpatient cancer patients.

We have about 54 providers who can prescribe this kind of treatment in our outpatient section of UVMMC. We have seven schedulers. And that is frankly a pretty high scheduler-to-provider ratio compared to some other places in the hospital.

But we have a unique level of complexity that has caused our understaffing to become critical to the point where I think that we are on the verge of a sentinel event in our clinic any day. If you’re not aware of what a sentinel event is, it is severe patient harm or death due to some kind of mistake by the hospital. That mistake is staffing.

If you get diagnosed with cancer here, you’re going to be sent to the outpatient hematology oncology clinic. What’s going to happen is you’ll have an initial visit with your provider. They’re going to decide what kind of treatment is necessary, and whether surgery is necessary.

They might send you over to surgical oncology for a consult there. Then you’ll come back over to medical oncology, and you’ll get prescribed treatment. And that sounds like a pretty simple thing to schedule.

Unfortunately, a lot of these medications are extremely difficult on the body. For example, a lot of these medications are really hard on your veins, which means that in order to give a patient some of these medications, they have to have a PICC line placed, which is a little tube that goes directly into your heart, or a port placed, which is a plastic device with a tube that goes directly into your heart.

That way, we’re not doinking your veins every time we give you medication. We have, I think, three providers in interventional radiology who can place those ports. We have to get that coordinated with getting an echocardiogram of the patient’s heart to make sure that they are physically fit enough to receive this medication without massive side effects.

We have to coordinate with our specialty pharmacy to give any oral meds that the patient might need. We have to coordinate with our on-site pharmacist to talk to these patients about the treatment that they are receiving because there are a lot of really weird side effects and a lot of really weird no-nos.

For example, there’s one medication that we give where you can’t drink anything cold or your nerves stop working. So, it’s really important that we have all of these things figured out and put together.

That is the kind of thing that we would have to get scheduled out for one visit for one patient, and we haven’t even talked about actually getting the juice in them yet. It’s an incredible amount of coordination for each scheduler, for each different provider that they’re scheduled for. The medications are different depending on the diagnosis, depending on the provider, depending on whether or not the provider does research studies.

We are also operating with an extraordinarily limited amount of chair space, and those chairs are physical chairs where people have to sit and be under the supervision of a nurse to receive their medications. I am not aware of a single person on my team who has not had some kind of stress-related health issue in the past several months.

I was asked by my boss to leave work early on Friday because I was having a stage two hypertension episode. People are getting migraines. I have people on my staff who cannot have conversations about what we are going to do when one of our staff members leaves because they get panic attacks immediately.

We are not in a position to be able to care for our patients anymore. All of us are terrified all the time that we are one mistake away from getting someone killed, that we don’t have enough oversight available. My team has not had a practice supervisor for months now. We’re struggling desperately, and we are trying so desperately to get management to listen to us.

We are not in a position to be able to care for our patients anymore. All of us are terrified all the time that we are one mistake away from getting someone killed, that we don’t have enough oversight available.

I’m on step three in a grievance process to get us more staffing. The solutions that have been presented to us so far are things such as, “You could try working faster.” We can’t get overtime. We can’t get more staff. It takes us about three months to train someone due to the level of acuity in our work. And again, we are not the worst-staffed clinic.

The reason why I’m here is because a rising tide lifts all boats. If we can win a good contract with common good demands met like Milk with Dignity, it will do amazing things for all of us. But if we don’t get safe staffing, if that one load-bearing aspect of our contract is not fulfilled, people are going to die.

It is going to be people who you see every day. It’s going to be people who work at the hospital. It’s going to be people who work for other healthcare organizations. It’s going to be people who work here in City Hall. And that’s simply the fact of the matter.

We do not have the adequate staffing to sustain human life in our hospital anymore, and that has to change. That’s why I’m here and that’s why a large number of our members are fighting so hard for this contract, because we are afraid for you. We are afraid for ourselves. This is not a simple matter of just it’d be nice to get another five dollars an hour. It’s a matter of life and death.

Jessica Jacobs: I work in the sleep center. I have worked there for about 16 years, 15 of which I’ve worked the night shift. This year I transitioned to a second shift position due to health issues caused by working nights. I’ve been there a long time. Along the way, I’ve seen a lot of changes.

We are definitely experiencing safe staff issues. We have shortages and a high turnover rate, especially on the night shift. It’s difficult to recruit new staff. Wages are just not high enough for the cost of living. We get people who apply from out of state and once they see how much it costs to live in Vermont, they don’t come.

We’ve also had to hire staff who we know are going to stay for a short time because it’s just a stepping stone for them before applying to medical school. But the training time is very extensive. It’s about six months to get you at the baseline. Even after that, you’re learning for many years and you still need the assistance of senior staff, which we have very few of. We have two senior staff on nights and three relatively new people, two very new.

When I started at Sleep, we had anywhere between eight and ten night techs. We would occasionally hire a traveler, but not for very long. We currently have two travelers and a third who will be joining us in August. It’s the most we’ve had ever.

The issue with recruiting and keeping new staff is that the work is just too hard. The patients are sicker, and we’re being asked to do too much. It’s too stressful. For our senior techs, it’s a little easier. But it was even challenging for me towards the end of my stint on nights. So, for new staff, there’s just no reason for them to stay.

When we are short-staffed with our night staff, it prolongs the wait for patients to be seen for their sleep studies. So, right now for our in-lab sleep studies, we are booking out to January for adult patients and into February for pediatric patients. The pediatric patients often need to be in a one-to-one ratio, so it pushes them out a little further in the calendar.

With a lot of our adult patients, they have what we call a two-to-one ratio—two patients for each tech worker over the night. But now, because the patients are sicker, those two patients you’re working with take more care and attention. So, it’s very challenging.

The hospital has not kept up with this reality. They have not changed those ratios to reflect the patient population we’re seeing. That’s a big reason why it’s so challenging for our newer techs.

And it’s worse for the patients. If they have their sleep studies delayed, they’re getting their treatment delayed. That puts them at higher risk for heart disease, heart attack, and stroke. Those conditions put them at higher risk to be admitted into the hospital on our inpatient floors. So, our understaffing contributes to overwhelming the whole system, which is understaffed overall.

The other challenge with our traveling techs is a lot of them are not equipped to deal with what we’re experiencing in our lab. They can kind of get by. We can get studies run, but we’re not providing the same quality of work.

The hospital has simply not invested enough money in the sleep program for a long time. We operate out of a hotel, which we’ve been doing since I started. The majority of our sleep studies are in a hotel. It is nice because it’s a little more comfortable, but it’s not the best solution.

Where we work at the hospital, the building’s very old. It’s not really set up well for us. Our equipment is old. It’s failing. And they’re not investing in new equipment. That forces the tech to take time away from care to troubleshoot the equipment and do things like change out old sensors for new ones. It disrupts the patient’s test. It disrupts the patient’s sleep.

All this delays treatment and compromises its quality. If anyone has experienced a sleep condition or knows someone who has, you know that what I’m describing is detrimental to people’s health and their ability to function in life. We’re fighting to change this situation for all our benefit.

Chris Swiesz: I’m a registered nurse at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital (CVPH) in Plattsburgh. I’ve been there for twenty-five years, and I’m a member of our union’s executive committee as the grievance co-chair. We’re here today to send a clear message to the management of UVM Health that members at CVPH are in solidarity with the AFT members at UVMMC.

This is a fight for our communities and for good union jobs. We all need to fight together to save our essential healthcare services. We are all tired of being asked to do more with less. We are sick of having to pay for management shortsightedness and poor planning. Instead of cutting executive pay, administrative overhead costs, UVM Health is cutting frontline staff and services.

This is a fight for our communities and for good union jobs. We all need to fight together to save our essential healthcare services.

They are cutting the workers who make our healthcare facilities run. That is not right, and that is totally unacceptable. Our contract at CVPH expired December 31. We are nearly nine hundred nurses and healthcare professionals strong. We are demanding safe staffing, fair pay, and staff retention.

As of now, we are taking measures to escalate our efforts if management continues to play games at the table and does not engage in issues that matter most to all of our members. Just as we will not stop fighting for our community, we know that AFT members are just as passionate in the fight for quality healthcare.

I know that you are not done fighting. Know that we are with you. Know that we are with you in solidarity. When the UVM workers stand united, we will never be defeated. We are with you, and we’re in this fight with you.

Lou Rochford: We at Community Health United (CHU) are grateful to join this panel. I’m the treasurer of our union and one of the employees impacted by the recent layoffs in the Community Health Centers’ Health Information Management Department, also known as the medical records department, if you don’t know hospital jargon.

I’ll be transferring into a new position that I took as an alternative to being laid off. For those who may not be familiar with what’s been happening, CHU has spent the past two weeks responding to job cuts that followed Community Health Centers’ decision to contract with the third-party billing company, Medusind, in May 2025.

This is the third round of layoffs we’ve had in less than twelve months. Management recently clarified that they only count this as the second round in 2026. They recently clarified this because they only count this as two rounds because the first round was per diem employees.

But, if you’ve ever worked per diem, you know you have a job, but you’re not guaranteed to keep that job because it’s day by day. Nevertheless, it’s still a job, and if you’re laid off, you’re laid off. So, we’ve had three rounds of layoffs.

CHU is still a young union for support staff. Our first contract took effect in 2023, and until now we really haven’t made a lot of noise. What has been inspiring is watching our members come together in this difficult time. The billing department, which has borne the brunt of these layoffs, gathered more than 120 signatures on a petition in just forty-eight hours of the layoff announcement.

For a young union, that’s remarkable. It tells me our members aren’t just fighting for themselves. We’re fighting for each other, for their patients, and for the community health centers.

We met management because we believe layoffs should be the last option, not the first, and we ask for transparency around the organization’s finances, meaningful collaboration to find alternatives to layoffs, an end to spending millions on outsourcing, transparency around the Medusind contract, a CHU-appointed seat on the board of directors, and a commitment to advocate alongside us for union voices healthcare in the next legislative session.

Management has shown themselves to be incompetent. Our Chief Financial Officer, Patty Bratton, made two mistakes in one day. She acknowledged that signing the Medusind contract had been a mistake. Second, after we requested the contract because even our CFO couldn’t tell us what it cost monthly, we discovered that it contains a clause allowing Community Health Centers to end the agreement after management told us that they cannot end it.

But management still kept information from us. They redacted copy of the contract we received. All the financial information was blacked out. We were told if a select few union reps wanted to see the unredacted version, we’d have to agree not to share the financial details.

You can decide for yourselves what to call that. I can only describe that as a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). We cannot agree to an NDA about information that affects our livelihood. Transparency shouldn’t come with a condition of silence. We told them that. But we haven’t received a response.

Before our recent press conference, we reached out to the interim CEO, Dr. Harry Chen, and invited him to sit down with us. His response was simple: “Thanks for reaching out. After consideration of your request, I’m going to respectfully decline.”

As someone who works in healthcare, reading that felt a little like seeing that pop-up that says, “This action may take a few moments.” Healthcare workers know that when you see that, we sigh and wonder what fresh chaos is about to unfold.

Management later defended these actions as strengthening the organization’s financial stability. We know that’s wrong and it will come at our expense. One of my coworkers was denied a replacement prosthetic from our new self-insured health plan after theirs broke. I spent about a month trying to resolve a billing issue for my own preventative care for diabetes care.

Our fight isn’t just against layoffs. It’s about what kind of healthcare system we want—one built on transparency instead of secrecy, collaboration instead of exclusion, investment in people instead of outsourcing. Because when workers lose, patients eventually will too.

Healthcare doesn’t become stronger because a spreadsheet balances. Healthcare becomes stronger when we support the people who answer phones, fight with insurance companies, process medical records, schedule appointments, and help patients navigate a system that is already confusing.

So, our fight isn’t just against layoffs. It’s about what kind of healthcare system we want—one built on transparency instead of secrecy, collaboration instead of exclusion, investment in people instead of outsourcing. Because when workers lose, patients eventually will too.

That’s why we’re asking this community to stand with CHU, not just for our jobs, but for the future of the Community Health Centers, especially in Burlington. These centers are being closed all over our nation. We must stop that from happening here.

Deirdre Manion-Fischer: It’s a great honor to speak on behalf of UVM Staff United, which is the staff union at University of Vermont. I’m part of our leadership team and am a co-lead steward.

I work in the cancer center. I support opening clinical trials. I’m a regulatory specialist. I make Institutional Review Board (IRB) submissions and edit consent forms. I tell patients all the risks of the trials, and each unique trial has different care, different needs, and different requirements. That’s my day job.

I work closely with a lot of medical center staff. They’re the clinical coordinators. They’re the ones who see patients. They’re the ones who make sure all the data gets collected. We have data coordinators who enter all the data so that our patients can get the cutting-edge of care and get the newest trials and also get the data that we need to be able to have these drugs available on the market.

I’m also very active in UVM Staff United. I started here about three years ago. I became an area steward during my probation without knowing what it was. I just want to say that our unions need to stand together.

We’re not in the same place. But each gain we make sets a precedent for each other to fight for. And we’re all in the same medical system. We’re all patients. We’re participants on clinical trials. And our work affects each other. My coworkers are yours.

UVM Staff United have heard the same demands from management that you’re hearing, over and over in our bargaining. UVM’s goal is to reduce costs by rationing care. So, they offer us alternate healthcare plans that have a high deductible. As a result, people don’t seek care. Faced with that we’re saying no.

They call people who use our healthcare “frequent flyers” as if our care is a luxury that’s used. We’ve heard this over and over in these committees. And then during bargaining last time, it took us nearly a year to get a contract. If we had the right to strike, it would have been shorter.

But we still have a law on the books in Vermont that says we don’t have the right to strike. This is a Bernie Sanders state. Why do we have a law that says public employees do not have the right to strike? That has to be struck down. We need that bill in the statehouse to be passed that gives us the right to strike.

We’re all here because we care about patients and their experience. We care about research. We’re not here just to make a good paycheck. We’re here because we believe in the work.

And we’re your neighbors. We’re in solidarity with you. We share the belief in a fighting democratic union. That’s where our power comes from. Only by exerting that power can we get what we need.

We’re not going to get that by asking nicely. I train our shop stewards. I argue grievances. We don’t win them by being right or making the best arguments. We win them by flexing our power.

We know you understand that and are doing it now. So, when you guys win a better contract, we can look at it and say, “Hey, us too.” We all get more together. We all deserve what we need. We are in solidarity with your struggle. It’s ours too!

Matt Gile: I’m a librarian for the Winooski School District. I get to read stories with preschoolers all the way to twelfth graders. I’m also the former president of the Winooski Education Association. Currently, I’m the chair of our political action committee.

Education workers and healthcare workers are facing the same attacks to impose austerity on our schools and our healthcare facilities. Our bosses are using the real affordability crisis as an excuse without actually addressing the underlying cause of that crisis. And that’s our for-profit healthcare system, our for-profit housing system, and our for-profit system as a whole; these are extracting value from working people.

But education workers and healthcare workers also share similar strength. Our work is caring for those in our community. And that connection is so powerful. And so, we say educators’ working conditions are our student learning conditions, and safe staffing saves lives.

That is why it is so important that we’re together in solidarity on this panel right now. I’m really excited to talk about this new burgeoning Healthcare is a Human Right campaign that Vermont NEA and AFT Vermont has just launched. Also, and this is hot off the press from yesterday’s convention, the Vermont AFL-CIO has also committed to join this campaign.

This is all based on the unprecedented, astonishing work that the Workers Center had done in passing Act 48 in 2011. If we’re going to implement that act, we need a movement rooted in the power of working people. Already, the Vermont NEA and AFT Vermont’s healthcare as a human rights campaign is essential. This panel is helping to build that synergy.

Our strengths can overcome each other’s weaknesses. Most of the AFT Vermont’s members are all in Chittenden County, whereas Vermont NEA has committed members who are trusted in their community in every single legislative district in this state.

We need a movement rooted in the power of working people. Already, the Vermont NEA and AFT Vermont’s healthcare as a human rights campaign is essential. This panel is helping to build that synergy.

Education workers aren’t always authorities on healthcare, while AFT represents people with earned and lived experience that can really speak with authority on our healthcare crisis. That’s why we’re always going to be stronger together.

The Vermont NEA really has committed to really work to get our members engaged in this movement. I think one of the struggles that Vermont NEA has is that educators have actually been pretty insulated from this healthcare crisis. Our healthcare is bargained statewide. So, our individual bargaining teams don’t necessarily grasp the issue and its impact on them.

But it’s having an enormous impact. It’s the largest cost that’s driving up our school budgets. To deal with that, our employers try to suppress our wages. So, education workers are starting to see the need for this campaign. It’s our task to make sure that they’re committed and engaged in this fight for healthcare as a human right.

And we have to see it in all its dimensions. It doesn’t matter how good our health insurance is, if your local clinics close or if your birthing centers close. This crisis is going to escalate with cuts to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) cuts and Medicaid. Those will mean that people are not getting the type of care, the preventative primary care that actually addresses and supports people’s health.

Without that care, people’s health will worsen and the cost of their treatment will increase. So, we’re headed for increased overall healthcare spending, which is going to send us very predictably and foreseeably off of a fiscal cliff.

But Vermont NEA is showing that it’s committed to the campaign. We have pledge cards that we’re going to be rolling out to members at the beginning of the school year. School boards are beginning to realize the nature of the crisis. So, we’re aiming to pass school board resolutions in support of the campaign.

And we’re getting involved in taking on solidarity actions to support healthcare workers. I got to have the opportunity to speak next to Lou at the press conference for the Community Health United earlier this week. It’s going to take this kind of solidarity and unity to build a powerful movement to win.

We can’t just elect a new state representative who will say, “Hey, has anybody ever thought of universal healthcare?” That’s not going to cut it. We need a coordinated movement to sustain pressure across our state over the long term to make sure that we can carry this campaign to victory.

This Healthcare is a Human Right campaign is the fruit of the May Day Strong Coalition, which has been holding May Day rallies, where we march on ICE detention facilities in solidarity with Migrant Justice. We’ve held Labor Day rallies. We’ve held a People’s Summit and solidarity schools, building connections of solidarity across unions.

That’s how we’re going to build a movement that is able to demand the things that working people need. The fight for affordable housing, the fight for universal healthcare, the fight to protect our public schools, the fight for migrant justice, all these are not separate fights. These are fights of working people fighting for what they need. Remember, an injury to one is an injury to all. And when we fight, we win!

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US immigration policy has evolved with the labor needs of capital for the past 150 years. The US revolutionary left has evolved our critique accordingly: at every stage, we have shown how this policy served labor exploitation.  But in the 21st century, a global ethnonationalist reaction to mass migration—caused by climate change, war, and economic shifts—has reared its head. Second-term Trump immigration policy thus marks a new departure, one that requires a left re-think.

Throughout the industrial age in the U.S., immigration policy facilitated profits. Effectively open borders funneled millions of East Europeans to build up industry on the East Coast and Midwest after the Civil War. Settler colonialism continued to expand the frontier westward at the expense of indigenous peoples, opening up new population centers for agriculture, mining, and trade. Modern corporations developed amidst feverish growth in national and international markets. Unions posed a sporadic threat but had little permanent presence. In this context, large employers could nurture working-class distrust across several language groups, as well as the black-white divide. Labor groups even enthusiastically took the lead in the brutal Chinese exclusion on the West Coast. Immigration policy served rapid expansion and helped control our class.

In 1924, Congress enacted the Immigration Act, creating the Border Patrol. The Act’s country-by-country immigration quotas were based on white supremacist racial hierarchy, codifying it into law and further encouraging division in the workforce on that basis. But with westward expansion complete, and waves of unionization and even revolutionary organization cresting higher, capitalism needed new means of control. Employers used the Border Patrol to break up worker organizing through deportation in the Southwest. Large regular labor flows continued both ways across the Southern border, but unlike the old Ellis Island system, this created an immigrant workforce of technically “illegal alien” status.

Growing populations along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border through the 20th and 21st centuries grew agricultural, construction, and other industries, depending heavily on immigrant labor. From the 1980s onward, Mexican and Latin American immigration became a persistent political football. 1993 saw the simultaneous enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Border Patrol’s Operation Gatekeeper. NAFTA’s elimination of Mexican but not US farm subsidies ruined masses of farmers, spiking northward migration as predicted by Clinton-era Border Patrol chief Doris Meissner. Gatekeeper permanently surged Border Patrol personnel, pushing migrants out of easy-to-cross areas and into remote desert and mountain terrain. Hundreds began dying annually. Traditional cross and return patterns became too dangerous, and a permanent “illegal” population of 11 million or so were forced to live in the shadow of deportation.

This was the perfection of capital’s immigration policy. As the Left pointed out regularly, the point was not to prevent mass immigration nor to expel the “illegals,” but to ensure a compliant workforce wary of organizing. These workers’ wages and working conditions could then be forced down, weakening the overall labor market and creating downward pressure on the wages of “legal” workers as well. This was especially timely as capital responded to the labor movement’s turn from nativism to solidarity. Immigrant workers became a key growth sector for several unions following the 1986 amnesty, and the AFL-CIO as a whole reversed its historic anti-immigration position in 2000.

The Democratic Party’s heart was never in its perennial calls for “comprehensive immigration reform.” The endlessly delayed “pathway to citizenship” never materialized, including during Obama’s first two years, when he enjoyed filibuster-proof Congressional majorities over both Houses. At that time, Obama claimed, “If the American people don’t feel like you can secure the borders, then it’s hard to strike a deal that would get people out of the shadows.” Therefore, he pushed for a massive increase in border enforcement to $27 billion. The “deal that would get people out of the shadows” never came. Bush, Obama, Trump 1, and Biden all relentlessly increased border militarization, ICE budgets, and wall building. Biden and Obama even set deportation records.

Trump II: This time it’s different

In building independent working-class immigrant solidarity, the left has for decades had to expose the hollowness of the Democrats’ claim to stand for immigrant rights. We were and still are right to lift the veil of media misframing to show that they squarely represent the interests of capital in the immigration pseudo-debate.

The flip side of this was, again rightly, to interrogate vote-scaring narratives about how much worse the Republicans supposedly would, in practice, be for immigrants.

But while the left has rallied impressively to militant defense of immigrants in Trump’s second term, our analyses have not kept up with changing reality in the last two years.

Trump’s immigration policy is not driven by the interests of capital. The goal is no longer labor force management to create ideal conditions for profitability. The goal is three-fold: (1) maintain a white majority by both preventing new immigration and ethnically cleansing current non-white immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, (2) make those immigrants who cannot be chased out, without disastrous labor shortages, into a permanent underclass of ethnic/racial others, (3) build up immigration enforcement as armed national guardians of the new/old white supremacist social order commanded directly by the authoritarian Presidency.

Others have noted that Trump’s drive toward a new autocratic political regime is possible because of the “Bonapartist” nature of his rule. Trump has achieved a new level of presidential autonomy (that’s what Bonapartism means). From what? From the formal and informal systems of checks and balances that have for centuries worked to keep capitalist democracy functionally stewarding the reproduction of stable conditions for profit-making. This new autonomy began when Trump took on and conquered the Republican Party, which previously worked to ensure the predictable victory of establishment political professionals. Capital thus lost its leading tool to shoehorn mass politics and elections into its preferred channels. Trump then went on to conquer conservative media, key think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, and partially purge Federal bureaucracies, including the military. These collective ruling class tools for deliberation and discipline failed.

This new centralized personal power is carrying out a change of regime before our eyes. If consolidated, the U.S. will be an electoral autocracy. Will it rule against the interests of capital? Not in general. But this system will be (already is) worse for employers dependent on immigrant labor, just as it is worse for those hurt by irrational wars, erratic trade policy, and social instability fueled by fascistic provocation coming from the top. The state is ideologically even more pro-capitalist than ever, but it is dismantling a historically evolved system of capitalist rule unrivaled in its subtlety and stability. Capital will adapt and maintain its privileged position, but these changes are not in its interests.

But it gets worse. Trump is not, as is often assumed, a pure opportunist like the original Louis Bonaparte. Along with the wildly erratic and purely narcissistic traits of his rule, “Make America Great Again” contains some remarkably consistent political principles.

Purely opportunistic aspiring autocrats have no reason to take the kind of unpopular stances that Trump has taken, specifically to advance ethnonationalism. He has consistently spewed Nazi-style narratives, calling immigrants “rapists,” slandering Black-majority nations as “shithole countries,” and claiming that Haitians “are eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.” He endorses material from neo-Nazi sites. He said, “Islam hates us.”

This cannot be dismissed as unfiltered ranting. When asked about whether he rejected the support of neo-Nazi David Duke, Trump implausibly claimed not to know who he was. After the Charlottesville riot, he claimed there were “many good people on both sides.” He famously refused to repudiate the Proud Boys when pushed to do so, telling them winkingly to “stand back and stand by.”  The point is that, in moments where he has chosen his words with obvious care, he has always scrupulously shielded these people. It is not necessary to assume Trump is a secret Nazi. It’s enough that they share his ethnonationalism.

So we have a “principled” ethnonationalist commanding the capitalist state, possessing Bonapartist autonomy, driving toward a change of regime from capitalist democracy to electoral autocracy. Ethnonationalist restoration is the new state ideology.

It is too easy to equate Obama and Biden’s deportation records with Trump’s immigration policy. Obama and Biden achieved their numbers through expedited removals of border crossers. ICE today of course continues doing this. But it is also attempting interior enforcement against long-settled immigrant populations. Its officials make unrealistic claims about being able to replace undocumented farm labor with US citizens because they are not rooted in rational capitalist deliberation on how to manage labor supply, as all previous Presidents have been. Two million workers have “self-deported” since 2025.

ICE… officials make unrealistic claims about being able to replace undocumented farm labor with US citizens because they are not rooted in rational capitalist deliberation on how to manage labor supply, as all previous Presidents have been. Two million workers have “self-deported” since 2025.

Trump’s autonomy, as an aspiring capitalist autocrat, from the capitalist class’s traditional means of collective discipline, does not make him autonomous from the direct pressures of the capitalist economy. The Trump-Miller attempt at radical demographic social engineering through immigration enforcement still runs into pressure from farmers unable to harvest. The threat of ICE occupying San Francisco was called off after tech billionaires, afraid of social instability as seen in Los Angeles a year ago, successfully lobbied the President.

But the scale of ethnic cleansing already achieved is far beyond what has been done before. The still-active scaling up of ICE means this bruising social battle will continue.

All of this means working class solidarity with immigrants must become more all-sided, and definitely not less radical. We are facing first and foremost not labor market manipulation in the interests of capital (though labor supply management is still attempted secondarily), but the building of an ethnonationalist order.

For many years our job was unmasking the labor exploitation at the heart of bipartisan immigration policy. Now we must counter the divisive ethnonationalist hate being sold to the native born working class. Immigrant solidarity no longer means addressing a single political issue. It means resisting the central plank of the new state ideology of white ethnonationalism. For this reason, advancing a class conscious politics of immigrant solidarity, aimed beyond the ranks of the existing working class left, must be the keystone of a new class consciousness. The twisted evil of ethnonationalism, which is growing today despite the ups and downs of Trump’s regime, beckons to our class with a comprehensive and emotionally salient worldview. Only a new mass working class consciousness can compete with this civilization-threatening development in the long term. Solidarity with immigrants is the necessary starting point of that consciousness wherever on Earth ethnonationalism now threatens.

Featured Image credit: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”

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I was originally told to speak on the theme of “reform vs. revolution” for this conference. So my talk will be based on this topic, which I hope also provides a structure for understanding how critical theory can meaningfully inform one’s own activism. When I heard the theme, my instinct was to return to a text I first read as a newly radicalized undergraduate here: Rosa Luxemburg’s classic text, Reform or Revolution. I want to kick us off today with a few lines from Luxemburg responding to this theme. She writes:

It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a long-drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content … people who pronounce themselves in favor of the method of legislative reform in place and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer, and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society, they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society.

Luxemburg had quite a clear vision of what this new society would be: a socialist system, where society is democratically and collectively managed, realizable only through the seizure of political power by the working classes.

This is a positive and comprehensive vision of politics. By positive, I don’t simply mean good vibes, and by comprehensive, I don’t simply mean aspiring to have the blueprints for solving all of the world’s problems. I mean understanding how you define and give content to the alternative system you are fighting for, and how to get there. This concrete political horizon allows Luxembourg to distinguish revolution from reform. According to Luxemburg, the difference between revolution and reform isn’t merely a quantitative one—as if there were a universal yardstick to determine which reform is revolutionary or not, or as if winning a certain number of reforms determined how revolutionary you are. Instead, Luxemburg tells us, it’s a qualitative difference: revolutionary politics will include struggles for reforms of some kind, but those reforms will always be part of a larger strategy to replace the capitalist system with a concrete political alternative in the form of socialist governance, rather than simply winning reforms without a larger end goal in mind.

In school, we learn many different ways to tear things down, to critique, to dismantle. This is the bread and butter of critical theory, and this method allows us to begin making sense of the world. This is an essential starting point for any radical politics. But what actually is the content of the political alternative we want, and how do we fight for it? Those of you with experience navigating the challenges of forming and running any new organizational space, whether it’s figuring out a decision-making process for a Palestine solidarity encampment or setting ground rules for a union’s core committee, may begin to grasp the difficulty. These questions are all the more urgent now as we consider what world we want beyond one consumed by authoritarianism and empire. They are also all the more urgent because many of you are confronted with the question of life after college, and have to make some concrete decisions about what to do now. Luxemburg’s ideas of revolution, socialism, and class conflict may seem too grandiose and abstract to be immediately relevant to the question of what to do after college. But I want to argue today not only that these ideas are relevant, but also that Luxemburg’s Marxism is one example of how a critical framework and method can cohere the different threads of life.

Considering life after college, let alone pursuing social justice work, can be daunting. Most of you will have to balance your ideals with pressing practical matters, namely, finding a job and paying your bills. Those of you who are baristas for the school cafe,  RAs, tutors, office assistants, or prospective student tour guides are already getting a taste of this balancing act. Unless you go on to work for some social justice organization, like a union or nonprofit, you won’t have the time to do all the political and organizing work that has animated you in these few years. And even if you work for a social justice organization, the chances are your organizing will inevitably be narrower, more constrained by the interests of external entities that fund you (through grants and foundations), and likely filtered through the more limited terrain of electoralism. Many of these organizations are tied to the very state you want to confront. There is the added pressure of organizing being tied to your source of income. An old Polish Marxist, Isaac Deutscher, once told a room full of college students during the sixties that it is quite easy to be radical at school. He said school is like a bus. You hop on for a few years and get off. You are unattached, like kites in the sky, he says, “without any ropes tying [you] to the earth. Very soon you will feel the rope.” Student movements have played a monumental role in history in pushing for social change, but Deutscher argued that student activism ultimately has an unstable role in politics because it’s not fully “anchored in the realities of social life.”

For Luxemburg, life under capitalism in general is also unstable. It is a system constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, one that sacrifices people to the bonfire of profit before repeating the cycle to re-stabilize itself.

For Luxemburg, life under capitalism in general is also unstable. It is a system constantly teetering on the edge of collapse, one that sacrifices people to the bonfire of profit before repeating the cycle to re-stabilize itself. Whether we like it or not, we keep this system running when we work. And we have to do this because we, as the working class, must participate in it to survive, and our livelihoods and working conditions are mostly subject to the whims of our employers. Luxemburg’s good news is that this wretched system has also laid the foundation for a better world. Capitalism, by thrusting most of us into some shared conditions of exploitation, whether you work for a nonprofit, a cafe, a school, a factory, or remotely for a corporate office, gives us the experience of collectively running something together. From that experience, we can practice exercising collective power to change our conditions through unions and other movements. This can become the basis for running a society together, collectively and democratically.

After graduation, most of you will join the ranks of this working class. According to Luxemburg, because of this class position, you can be part of a greater struggle for a different way of organizing society. The daily discontent and routines you will register at work, which will occupy most of your waking hours, can become the very seeds of a revolutionary politics grounded in the reality of social life, not a distraction from it. Whether you consciously work to organize this class toward Luxemburg’s vision of revolution, this class will continue to play a pivotal role in the development of history, helping to determine the state of capitalism, whether in influencing systemic cycles of stability and crisis or in ending these cycles.

Luxemburg’s endorsement of revolutionary politics builds on this specific theory of historical development. History is characterized by the contest for political power between different classes, and revolutions have always been how this contest has played out. Revolutions are simply a fact of history. Any kind of legislative reform, she argues, is limited by the political framework of the regime we live under, whose constitution itself is a product of some kind of revolution. Her theory of revolution rests on the perspective that the system we live in is riddled with contradictions that constantly threaten it, and that these cannot be resolved simply by the gradual accumulation of legislative reforms. But at the same time, fighting for reforms has an important place in social movements, as it provides us with avenues to gather and count our forces, and build our confidence through the practical experience of collective struggle.

And so, revolution is not opposed to reform. It is opposed to reformism, which, at its core, is an aimless collection of reforms that requires no political alternative to the current order that revolution demands. Reformism is organizing for its own sake, with the ultimate goal of simply making things less bad than they are. Instead, Luxemburg directs us to situate our activism in a larger political project and strategy. This vision and strategy will nearly always include fighting for some kind of reform, whether it’s fighting for a wage increase or pushing the city council to change a policy, in the context of a larger political strategy and project, rooted in the perspective that the system is fundamentally unstable and unreformable. Reforms can be opportunities for movements to practice confronting power directly. But the trap of reformism is the illusion that reforms can ultimately offset the system’s underlying instabilities. History teaches us two truths that we must reckon with. On the one hand, any accumulation of reforms will eventually trigger some violent reaction by the state against movements. On the other hand, there are few, if any, revolutionary movements that have ever won power without engaging in the slow grind and spadework of building their forces by fighting for certain reforms. We need a critical method that can orient us toward a political strategy that synthesizes these two contradictory truths. Luxemburg’s outlook doesn’t offer a one-size-fits-all answer for what to do next, but it provides a critical framework for asking the right questions.

Luxemburg’s Marxist perspective yields evergreen questions that are salient at every stage of our political life. What is the state of capitalism at any given moment? Is the capitalist system finding a way to stabilize itself once again, or is it in another era of crisis and stagnation? In any case, be it stability or crisis, how does that limit and open certain political possibilities? What is the state of the working class and other communities marginalized by capitalism, which must be sufficiently organized in order to fight capitalism? How are specific conditions—the strength or weakness of capitalism, or of the working class—a product of a whole host of historical reasons? Are working-class movements waging offensive struggles and building power against capital, or are they mostly fighting defensive battles, struggling to protect existing rights under threat? Most relevant, what is the best role for you at any given moment to effectively change social conditions around you as they exist? How does your analysis of world conditions inform how you situate your organizing work in the broader fight against the system?

What is the best role for you at any given moment to effectively change social conditions around you as they exist? How does your analysis of world conditions inform how you situate your organizing work in the broader fight against the system?

I’ve been speaking quite abstractly up to this point, so I’ll use my own experience as one example of what this journey can look like. When I was a student here, I was overwhelmed by everything I read in and out of class. I read and wrote papers on all kinds of random topics, just as I became radicalized to the left as Trump won his first electoral campaign. But there was little direction connecting these two aspects, my reading and organizing. I just read anything that interested me, and organized where I felt I had the most use. I joined a socialist group because I considered myself a socialist. I became active in immigrant justice spaces because I am an immigrant. Later, I became active in tenant organizing in Chinatown, because I spoke Cantonese, and that ability was useful there. I engaged in international solidarity work when mass protests erupted in Hong Kong, because that’s where I’m from.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with doing any of this then. But one day, a political mentor of mine asked me, how do you determine where and what you spend time and resources on in your political life? I said: I don’t know, just wherever I can be useful, whatever I’m interested in? He reminded me that engaging in politics as a Marxist is not just about my skills or interests. It’s also about how I recognize the objective conditions of the world at any given moment, and, from that analysis, figure out the most pressing political questions and tasks that need to be worked on. Then, consider how my skills and interests can contribute to these. This doesn’t mean just aimlessly hopping from one popular movement to another, but rather analyzing how different events and movements relate to one another, and how they reveal an internal logic in how the system functions as a whole. This is not a mere academic exercise, but a way to seriously make sense of our material conditions in order to change them.

For example, I understand the capitalist system today as being in a state of crisis. This is related to the capitalist class struggling to maintain the same rate of profit, unlike, say, the 1990s when neoliberalism appeared stable. On a global level, this manifests as competition and violent rivalry among imperialist and capitalist powers, which have also renewed wars of national oppression, like the US and Israel’s neocolonial wars against Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. This free rein of imperialist powers is only possible because of the scaling back of social reforms won by working-class movements decades ago and the overall decline of their power. Indeed, working people are resisting these forms of violence—Palestinians’ defensive war against Israeli settler-colonialism, everyday Americans forming rapid response groups to defend against ICE, or workers forming unions to defend their workplace rights. But this resistance is still too weak and/or isolated to mount a united, offensive fight against the system as a whole. The working class is not yet a clearly articulated force in these movements.

There are historical reasons for this. We can explain why many of us feel powerless in stopping our government’s imperialist militarism. It relates to the decades of neoliberalism that have crushed working-class institutions and movements everywhere that had once fought against capital and empire with decisive power. It relates to how the state has insulated foreign policy, corporate power, among other spheres of politics, from democratic oversight, a reactionary process that also took years.

This analysis informs my life choices. It helps me determine what to read (or reread), what organizing spaces to be in, and how to divide my time between work, politics, and leisure. I’m active in my union because I believe that building collective power at work is foundational to the larger task of rebuilding working-class power to effectively fight capitalism. I continue to organize tenants in Chinatown because I believe the tenant movement is key to strengthening the LA Left. It is also one of the few sites today where I believe the Left can begin to rebuild some presence in the immigrant Chinese working class. To better understand the state of global capitalism and geopolitical flashpoints, I read about political economy, finance, and the histories of other countries. Last and most importantly, my socialist politics ties all of these threads together. This means I believe that social movements, which are, by definition, politically eclectic and limited in scope, are not sufficient to help us win a better world. To win a socialist system, we need socialist organization that can organize the best revolutionaries from these movements toward a definite political program. We must contest power on the basis of this program to win the world we want. I hope to play a part in continuing the work of people like Luxemburg in fighting for a socialist system, so I remain in a socialist organization.

To win a socialist system, we need socialist organization that can organize the best revolutionaries from these movements toward a definite political program.

My key question for everyone today is what would it look like for you to situate your social justice work within a larger critical structure and method, to articulate a positive vision of a political alternative to replace what we have today? Yours may be different from mine. But what I want to leave you all with is a definition of revolution that is about not just imagining, but also fleshing out, developing, and fighting for a positive vision of politics. This is not just a matter of subjective will, as in simply the desire and drive to make revolution. Elsewhere in her book, Luxemburg faults those who neatly separate pursuing reforms as “action of intelligence” from pursuing revolution as “action of feeling.” Revolutionary politics is the union of intelligence and feeling. It is grounded in a bold alternative to existing politics and guided by a rational strategy for achieving that alternative and realizing its ultimate goals. It helps us bridge critical theory with social justice by framing our theory and activism within the larger drama of history. It allows us to locate ourselves in a long historical lineage of class struggle that precedes and will succeed us, with other revolutionaries struggling for the same world.

Featured Image credit: Plakat; modified by Tempest

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Since the beginning of the year, demonstrations and strikes have continued across Syria. Demands range from increased political participation and democratic rights1One example is the two sit-ins organized by the “April 17 Gathering” in Damascus in April and June, under the banner “Rights and Dignity.” Their demands included: a commitment from the transitional authorities to fulfill their duties and exercise their powers in conducting the transition process; working towards a genuine political transition based on an inclusive national dialogue leading to elections; activating the transitional justice process and bringing perpetrators of crimes to justice; rejecting the perpetuation of the Assad regime and the rehabilitation of its figures; broadening political participation through free elections to local councils and trade unions; strengthening the role of political parties and rejecting the monopolization of power by any one entity or faction; establishing good governance based on competence, integrity, and transparency; ending the chaos surrounding appointments and the distribution of power; combating corruption; criminalizing sectarian speech; and guaranteeing an independent, transparent, and fair judicial system.to condemnation of the actions and violations committed by Israeli occupation forces in the Quneitra region, and the right to education in Suwayda.2A campaign was launched in May 2026 in the Suwayda Governorate to guarantee the right of thousands of students to take their secondary school leaving exams in the governorate, in a safe and stable environment. The authorities in Damascus have so far opposed this, demanding that students travel to Damascus to take their exams.

Journalist Zeina Shahla documented nearly eighty demonstrations across the country between February and April, most of them motivated by social and economic grievances.3From Zeina Shahla’s article: “Over the past three months, we have documented nearly 80 vigils of protest, averaging one per day, in Damascus and its surrounding countryside, as well as in Aleppo, Deir ez-Zor, Raqqa, Idlib, Latakia, Hasakah, Quneitra, Daraa, Hama, and Homs. These vigils were organized by students, taxi drivers, organ transplant recipients, families of missing persons, street vendors, residents of devastated areas awaiting reconstruction, lawyers, teachers, and traders from certain markets. Furthermore, some vigils brought together different segments of society around common demands: the cancellation of the electricity price hike, improved living conditions, respect for the rule of law, the resolution of security issues, the fight against corruption, and the commemoration of key moments in the Syrian revolution and war.” Furthermore, the governorate of Suwayda, in particular, has been the scene of frequent vigils following the massacres of last July, with demands such as the right to self-determination, the return of displaced persons, and the revelation of the fate of the disappeared. The newspaper Kassioun subsequently recorded 34 rallies and demonstrations in 21 locations across several Syrian governorates, cities, towns, and universities between May 18 and 24, 2026. Protests are still ongoing at the time of writing.

Since the beginning of 2026, discontent with socio-economic problems has intensified. Polling in different areas of Syria has been showing growing dissatisfaction regarding socio-economic issues. According to the website Syria in Transition:

Yet by April the mood had changed (towards the ruling authorities). The most serious deterioration was in attitudes toward the economy and the state’s capacity to manage it. Only 13 percent of respondents now believed the government was doing enough to tackle soaring energy and food prices, while 66 percent said its efforts were insufficient.

This has been reflected as well with rising labor strikes and protests denouncing worsening working and living conditions.

Syrian ruling authorities have deepened a political-economic orientation favoring a commercial model focused on short-term profit, to the detriment of Syria’s productive sectors. This economic orientation was already at play during the former Assad’s regime. The majority of the investment projects offered by Damascus to foreign investors demonstrate this pattern, and so does the nature of the investment promises made to Syria since December 2024 into tourism, real estate, and financial services. Most of these promises, however, still await their implementation.

Meanwhile, no protection has been provided to national production, particularly manufacturing industry and agriculture, against foreign competitive products. Quite the opposite. Accelerated trade liberalization is threatening their existence even more. In late January 2025, Damascus reduced customs duties on more than 260 Turkish products. Syria’s trade deficit with Turkey reached an all-time high of $3.26 billion in 2025, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute. This represents an 86.5 percent rise in comparison to 2024, when the deficit stood at $1.74 billion.

No protection has been provided to national production, particularly manufacturing industry and agriculture, against foreign competitive products. Quite the opposite.

At the same time, Syrian officials announced on several occasions since their arrival to power their willingness to start the process of privatization of state assets, or at least to encourage a public-private partnership model to manage them. This includes essential services such as education and health. More recently, rumors of potential privatizations of state-owned banks have also emerged.

The Syrian ministry of finance has also drafted a new tax system that should come into force at the beginning of 2027, which will probably diminish the state’s financial capacities and revenues even further. Indeed, with a unified and non-categorical tax structure, and a similar corporate tax applied equally across all business entities, regardless of their size, this weakens the ability to expand the revenue base and is fundamentally unequal.4There will be no tax to pay for agriculture, bank deposit returns, and stock trading. A 2 percent rate will apply to supplies and services by non-residents. There will be a 10 percent rate in the health, technology, education, and industrial sectors, while other sectors—including trade and services—will pay 15 percent. Income tax will only kick in after the first Syrian pound (SYP) 60mn—around $5,310. Thereafter, there will be a 6 percent rate for the first SYP 5mn ($442.5) and 8 percent over SYP 5mn ($442.5). Exemptions are envisaged on transfers of company shares, revaluation of fixed assets, returns and interest on bank deposits, local exports of goods and services, the agricultural sector and its associations, children’s medical expenses, education, rent, and interest on housing loans. For corporate donations to good causes, there will be a special tax deduction. At the same time, a sales tax has been introduced, which could serve as a precursor to a VAT, at a 5 percent rate on essential goods. Similarly, the new investment law enacted by presidential decree in June 2026 provides large concessions to investors, such as permanent exemption from income taxes for agricultural and educational projects, reductions of up to 80 percent of income taxes in export-oriented and priority industrial sectors, and wide customs exemptions. In addition, full ownership rights are allowed for foreign investors, as well as renewable residence permits, and unrestricted profit repatriation.

Syria’s new tax system and investment law reflect the ruling authorities’ prioritization of investment from large foreign companies and high-net-worth individuals, as well as promoting dynamic consumption, rather than strengthening the country’s productive capacities.

This dynamic is also reflected in the reliance on foreign capital and assistance, as well as local businessmen, to promote Syrian reconstruction and economic recovery through foreign donations or donation campaigns, such as the Syrian Development Fund and other initiatives for specific regions and cities.

Accompanying these policies favoring economic liberalization and interests of big capital, the ruling authorities have promulgated a series of decisions and measures boosting dynamics of concentration of power in the Syrian economy.

Strikes and popular protests

The protests have mobilized various segments of society, including transport workers, laborers, farmers, teachers, students, lawyers, and bakers, reflecting growing discontent across the country with the continued erosion of purchasing power and the deterioration of public services. They also targeted corruption, nepotism, and a lack of transparency and participation in decision-making processes.

The protests erupted in mid-May, initially in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and Daraa, and then spread to other parts of the country, after the Syrian Ministry of Economy and Industry set the price of a ton of wheat for the 2026 harvest at 4,600,000 Syrian pounds (approximately $333.30 at the unofficial exchange rate of May 27). This decision sparked widespread discontent among farmers, as the cost of producing a ton of wheat currently fluctuates between $340 and over $530. Following these protests, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa issued Legislative Decree No. 120 of 2026, granting a subsidy of 900,000 Syrian pounds (SYP) per ton of wheat delivered by farmers to the Syrian Grain Company. Thanks to this increase, the price of a ton of wheat reached approximately (SYP) 5,500,000, a price still lower than the protesters’ demands.

Other demonstrations took place during the same period, notably in the Hasakah Governorate against the reduction of diesel fuel allowances for agricultural projects, and in the Tarhin region, a rural area near Aleppo, where owners and employees of oil refineries protested the decision to permanently close them. The demonstrators also demanded fair compensation to guarantee a minimum standard of living, emphasizing that thousands of families depend on this sector as their primary source of income.

In June, strikes broke out at the privately owned Zanobia Ceramics company5Zanobia is a private company specializing in the manufacture of ceramics, granite and construction materials. It owns two industrial complexes: one in Al-Kisweh, a southern suburb of Damascus which houses many factories, and the other in the industrial zone of Adra, on the outskirts of Damascus.and at the Madar Detergent Company’s facilities and factories in the Kisweh region, near Damascus, employing 4,000 and 4,500 people respectively. The demonstrators demanded higher wages and better working conditions. After a week-long strike, the workers of the Zanobia company obtained satisfaction on several of their main demands, including an increase in their wages (which includes a rise of SYP 500,000, in addition to SYP 200,000 of cost-of-living allowance, for a total of SYP 700,000 (equivalent to $51.20 at the end of June)) and guarantees in terms of health coverage, including health insurance, the presence of a doctor in the factory, the provision of an ambulance and safety equipment at work.

Workers at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing in northern Idlib protested in late June against the administration’s imposition of a 24-hour shift system and unfair working conditions. Despite the administration’s threats of mass layoffs and replacements to break the strike, the workers—some with 14 years of service—maintained their demands for a more flexible work schedule. According to the website Al-Hal Net, the administration has already hired new employees, but about 90 percent of them resigned immediately, unable to continue due to the grueling working conditions and endless hours.

The city of Qamishli also witnessed several days of protests in late June, denouncing rising prices and poor living conditions, as well as power outages caused by fuel shortages. For example, protesters staged a sit-in to demonstrate against the rising price of diesel, demanding the reversal of this decision and an improvement in their living conditions, as the region experiences soaring prices for goods and services, along with increased transportation and production costs. Dozens of retirees held a sit-in outside the city’s Social Security office, at the invitation of the Retirees’ Group, to demand the expedited payment of their monthly pensions and an end to the delays and postponements affecting their entitlements. Following these mobilizations by retirees, the Retirees’ Group was officially announced at the end of June, with the aim of defending retirees’ rights to a decent standard of living, particularly by resolving issues related to their salaries and payment delays.

These sit-ins and demonstrations are taking place against a backdrop of runaway inflation plaguing the Syrian Jazira region (northeast Syria), with rising transportation and agricultural production costs, alongside a rise in commodity prices—as well as persistent complaints about deteriorating services and frequent power outages. For example, in mid-June, social unrest erupted in the Raqqa Governorate due to wage delays and their continued status as “irregular” workers—lacking legal protections and job security. These protests led to further strikes that affected the sanitation sector in several areas of the governorate.

Unfair dismissals and persistent austerity measures

Meanwhile, dismissals continued in several ministries throughout 2026, sparking further protests. In mid-June, laid-off workers from the General Cotton Yard Company in Idlib staged a sit-in to demand justice and their reinstatement.

The Syrian government has still not established clear, legal, and precise standards and procedures for dismissals or suspensions, fueling accusations of arbitrary dismissals. The human rights organization “Syrians for Truth and Justice” has expressed that it is deeply concerned about the compliance of these procedures with the legal safeguards stipulated in the Unified Fundamental Law for Workers No. 50 of 2004 (Articles 132 to 139). Furthermore, in June 2026, the organization published a report describing cases of arbitrary dismissals and forced transfers based on “sectarian, political, or gender backgrounds, or to criteria related to the individual’s stance on the Syrian uprising (in 2011), or regional and social affiliation” raising serious concerns about the use of the state restructuring process as a tool for exclusion and the reshaping of the public sector on unprofessional grounds.

Damascus authorities have continued to reduce the number of subsidized loaves of bread they distribute.

More recently, the government also increased salaries for specific jobs, generally in the higher strata of the administration or in positions considered as more “prestigious,” while the overwhelming majority of employees did not benefit from similar measures. Furthermore, salary disparities persist within the same ministries for similar jobs, with employees, often previously affiliated with the group Hay’at Tahrir Sham6This is the new name of Jabhat al-Nusra, which was founded as an al-Qaeda affiliate in 2012. The group took its current name when it dis-affiliated from al-Qaeda in 2017. Its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, became Syria’s president after leading a coalition of rebel forces to bring down the Assad regime in late 2024. or allied with it, appointed by the new authorities receiving higher salaries (often in US dollars).

Damascus authorities have continued to reduce the number of subsidized loaves of bread they distribute, from ten to eight per household daily, while maintaining the price at SYP 4,000. The ministry set the weight of a loaf of bread at 1,000 grams, down from 1,050 grams previously. As a reminder, in December 2024, the price of subsidized bread was SYP 400 (for 1,100 grams). These measures have exacerbated food insecurity among the most vulnerable populations.

Opposition to luxury real estate projects and population displacement

At the same time, several protests have erupted against real estate projects that have led to the displacement of local populations and the loss or erosion of their property rights. In Homs, inhabitants of the Qarabis neighborhood successfully pressured the Kuwait-based al-Omran Real Estate Development Company to cancel the element of its “Boulevard of Victory” plan affecting the neighbourhood, which would have threatened their properties and displaced them from their homes. In the beginning of May 2026, a protest was held in Damascus by the residents affected by Decree 66 of 2012 from the Mezzeh, Kfar Souseh, and Basateen al-Razi neighborhoods. This reflects the ongoing social and legal tensions surrounding major urban development projects, most notably the Marota City project. At the same time, in the Aleppo countryside, the inhabitants of Jabal Aqil demonstrated against the seizure of their land by the Turkish military base.

That same month, a demonstration took place in northern Raqqa to protest the local authorities’ plan to demolish housing north of the railway line, under the pretext of “reconstruction and investment.” This situation is all the more concerning given the rumors circulating about Saudi investment and the construction of housing by a Chinese company on the land. Official statements claim that the land is “state property,” a claim disputed by residents, who assert they possess official deeds of transfer and other legal documentation. During the demonstration, protesters chanted slogans demanding the resignation of the governor, who has refused to cancel the reconstruction plan affecting approximately 3,000 families, most of whom are low-income and living in poverty. They reaffirmed their determination to find a just solution that guarantees their housing rights and puts an end to the evictions and demolitions.

The country continues to suffer a deep housing and infrastructure shortfall … which frustrate[s] … the prospects for both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to return.

Overall, these real estate projects often aim to serve an elite class able to afford new and expensive housing projects and accumulate capital, rather than building housing schemes and infrastructures seeking to fulfill the interests of large segments of the population—who now suffer worsening living conditions and low purchasing power in the face of very high rents and expensive property prices. For example, one of the most emblematic real estate projects is “Yaafour 963,” launched by Overseas Investment Group, owned by Syrian-Emirati businessman Muwaffaq al-Qaddah, where apartments are offered starting at $300,000. Similarly, the “Abyat Hills” project, launched by the Saudi Abyat Real Estate Investment and Development Company in the Damascus suburbs of Qudsi and al-Bajaa, is estimated at over $2 billion and plans to build 22,000 homes in secure residences with modern amenities.

Moreover, the country continues to suffer a deep housing and infrastructure shortfall that threatens the processes of stabilization and recovery—which frustrate the  expectations for safe and dignified living conditions and the prospects for both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees to return. According to the 2025 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP), “one-third of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, while critical infrastructure, including roads, water networks, electricity, and sanitation systems, remains largely non-functional.”

The cost of living continues to rise

The growing anger of the population reflects the disastrous economic situation in the country.

The poverty rate in Syria fluctuates between 80 and 90 percent, and 16 million people are in need of emergency aid to survive. This is in a country of about 26 million. More than 7 million people face severe food insecurity. Furthermore, due to a significant funding shortfall, the United Nations World Food Program announced in mid-May 2026 that it would scale back its operations in Syria by halving its emergency food assistance, from 1.3 million to 650,000 people, and ending its national bread subsidy program, which supported millions of people daily.

This is a context of a labor market very much disrupted, and high unemployment, particularly among the youth in a context of a lack of economic opportunities. While there are no clear rates for the size of unemployment in Syria, estimates ranges from 14 percent at the World Bank in 2025 to 60 percent according to the Syrian Minister of Economy and Industry, Nidal al-Shaar. In addition, 83 percent of the Syrian labor market is reported to be informal, meaning a lack of social security and legal protection, leaving millions of workers vulnerable to exploitation or sudden income loss. The returns of Syrians, both refugees and IDPs to their original regions, have also further strained the labor market, which lacks the capacity to absorb them. The International Organisation of Migration in May 2025 also underlined that the “lack of economic opportunities and essential services pose the greatest challenge for Syrians returning to their communities.”

What the Syrian people lack is not just job opportunities, but jobs that allow them to live with dignity and meet their daily needs.

The rise in prices of key commodities and services has also contributed to increasing inflation, pushing the cost of living higher still for Syrians. While the authorities raised public-sector salaries and pensions by 200 percent in July 2025, and by a further 50 percent in March 2026—bringing the minimum wage to SYP 1,256,000 per month (approximately $96.6 at the end of June according to the black exchange rate of SYP 13,000)—this remains far from enough to guarantee dignified living conditions. According to the Syrian Center for Policy Research, “the abject poverty line for a household reached 3.34 million per month in April 2026 (approximately $252 according to the black exchange rate of SYP 13,250 at the end of April), while the lower poverty line reached SYP 5.26 million ($397), and the upper poverty line reached SYP 7.26 million (548$).” Large segments of society rely on remittances from relatives abroad amounting to around $4 billion annually, according to estimates from earlier this year.

From this perspective, what the Syrian people lack is not just job opportunities, but jobs that allow them to live with dignity and meet their daily needs. In this context, reducing subsidies and increasing the prices of basic necessities will only worsen the situation and negate the effect of wage increases.

Limitations of protest movements

The protest movements and attempts at worker self-organization are positive developments, especially after years of war and dictatorship. For example, workers at the Zanobia factory established a strike committee, composed of four members elected by the strikers to negotiate on their behalf.

Despite the positive aspects of these demonstrations, their impact remains limited. First, these protests remain geographically confined, lacking coordination between regions, with the partial exception of demonstrations related to wheat prices. There is no close cooperation between workers in the same sector—for example, between public school teachers demonstrating in different governorates. This allows the authorities in Damascus to manage each movement separately and limit its influence on the political landscape.

Second, the protest movements lack political channels and means of expression, primarily due to the absence of political parties or mass political networks capable of relaying their demands and calls to action. Furthermore, with the exception of a few left-wing parties that observe these demonstrations without playing an influential role, political actors and civil society actors are not giving them the attention they deserve.

It is essential to build and rebuild grassroots organizations—from trade unions to feminist and women’s rights organizations, including local associations, progressive political parties, and national structures.

In this context, it is important to emphasize that worker self-organization and the struggle for democratic, independent, and mass unions—in order to foster coordination between workers and unions autonomous from the government—are essential for improving the living and working conditions of the population and, more broadly, for defending democratic rights.

Furthermore, it is essential to build and rebuild grassroots organizations—from trade unions to feminist and women’s rights organizations, including local associations, progressive political parties, and national structures—in order to unify them.

The collective and democratic organization of the working and popular classes is also the best way to confront and oppose the sectarian and ethnic tensions that continue to impact society. These tensions are often encouraged or fueled, or at least not radically addressed, by the central government and/or its political allies to divert attention from the social, economic, and political problems affecting the population. For example, recent demonstrations demanding justice for Assad-era crimes in Syria coincided with an escalation of attacks by civilian groups and incitement to sectarian hatred between June 13 and 17, 2026. Syrian authorities have so far failed to establish a mechanism to promote a comprehensive transitional justice process that would bring to justice all individuals and groups involved in war crimes. Such an approach could have played a crucial role in curbing reprisals and mitigating the escalation of sectarian and ethnic tensions.

Conclusion

Whatever political force came to power after Assad’s fall, it inherited a multitude of political, social, and economic challenges. However, the policies of the current Syrian authorities have exacerbated these difficulties instead of resolving them. Economically, the approach of the new ruling class has failed to improve the living conditions of a large segment of the population and has negatively impacted the recovery of the economy’s productive sectors.

The increasing number of demonstrations since the beginning of the year, fueled by deteriorating living and working conditions as well as socio-economic problems, demonstrates the shortcomings of current economic policies and could serve as a warning to Damascus.

Any successful economic recovery and reconstruction process must be based on a comprehensive and democratic political transition that empowers the various sectors of society—political parties, social actors such as trade unions, professional associations, the Farmers’ Union, human rights and feminist organizations, local associations, and so on. – the means to participate in decision-making processes, including in the economic sphere. This would create the necessary conditions for integrating their collective interests and establishing the political stability essential for the sustainability of these policies. Therefore, free and transparent elections must be organized within trade unions, professional associations, and agricultural federations so that these sectors can choose their representatives and defend the interests of their members.

Finally, the processes of capital accumulation and distribution, as well as economic policies, should be the subject of collective debate within society, and not the prerogative of a small elite in power.

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The ICE murders of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, Texas, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, have reignited public rage against the ongoing state violence against the most vulnerable in the U.S. and the global working class. Both Araujo and Guerrero were shot dead by ICE agents on the streets where they lived. Street protests against their killings have been the largest since the Minneapolis uprising against the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. These protests have renewed calls for “ICE OUT” of U.S. cities and communities.

The shootings and protests are a reflection of the deep unpopularity of the Trump regime and its policies — Trump continues to poll at under 40 percent. They are also a reminder about broader public outrage at MAGA administration attacks on U.S. workers: the spiraling war against Iran, which has driven up fuel prices and the cost of food and daily goods; the ongoing deportations of people in the U.S. and intimidation of immigrant communities; the assault on LGBTQI+ rights; and the repression of political dissidents, from the conviction and outrageous sentencing of the Prairieland protesters in Texas, to the trial of the “Minnesota 15” in Minneapolis, to federal charges brought against Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan.

State repression and its opposition are all signs of an ongoing crisis in U.S. politics and a shaky capitalist economy. The Trump administration seeks to stitch up its weakening legitimacy through brute force, the weaponization of the legal system, and ever-increasing efforts to undermine further democratic rights. These attacks, including on our fundamental rights to organize and protest, require urgent, broad, and coordinated defense.

Trump’s single-minded focus on weakening voting rights and his administration’s assailing of democratic process proceed apace with new efforts to intimidate and discredit election processes (as in Georgia). Rumors of ICE agents at polling places in November are well within the ideological and tactical bandwidth of the current administration. While no one can predict the outcome of the next round of U.S. elections, it is a certainty they will take place in an atmosphere of increased intimidation, especially for the most vulnerable in U.S. society. The efforts to weaken the already limited democracy in the U.S. should be of supreme concern for all working people, already embattled oppressed communities, and therefore the Left as a whole.

These conditions speak to the urgency of mass organizing. The Minneapolis rebellion last January, when more than 100,000 marched and thousands stayed home from work, showed us that mass resistance can serve as a brake on the worst tendencies of the capitalist system. They expressed the power of working-class organizing and the capacity of ordinary people to defend themselves against these forces of repression mobilized against them.

The United Left Platform, an alliance of six revolutionary socialist groups in the United States (International Marxist Humanist Organization, Socialist Horizon, Solidarity, Speak Out Socialists, Tempest Collective, and Workers Voice) calls on people of conscience everywhere to join the wide protests against the current regime. We also call on people to join a political organization committed to ending human immiseration. None of us can afford to stand on the sidelines as MAGA continues its deadly assault on the lives of workers, immigrants, the oppressed, and the most vulnerable. Our capacity to defeat Trump and to build an alternative to deeper crisis and further misery lies only in solidarity and collective struggle.

The United Left Platform will be holding public speakouts and meetings at the Socialism 2026 conference in Chicago September 4-7th. Learn more about our work at www.unitedleftplatform.net/.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: Ronaldo Salgado, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero; modified by Tempest.

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The politics of struggles in which the people of Ukraine and Iran are engaged have been hotly debated by people who consider themselves to be socialists and/or anti-imperialists. This brief paper discusses the histories of imperialism and nationalism in terms of the diffusion of capitalism across the world and the struggles against it. In the process, it explains why socialists and anti-imperialists should support the struggles of the Iranian and Ukrainian peoples against imperial attacks by the United States and Russia and against attacks by their own governments and ruling classes.

As a preface: I have spent many years as an AIDS researcher and activist. In that connection, I have conducted research with Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian researchers and activists. I have very good friends in both Russia and Ukraine. All of the people I worked with in Iran have had to leave the country. Two of them were incarcerated for some years before they could leave.

Much of the discussion around the Ukrainian and Iranian struggles revolves around questions of national existence and the rights of nations to self-determination. So to begin with, I will present a VERY brief discussion of nationalism and nations.

Nations have been described as “imagined communities” to capture a key aspect of nationalism—that the people in a nation feel themselves to be “one people” in some sense and to share many values and histories with other members of their nation. Thus, many people without a nation-state of their own—such as many Kurds or Chechens today, or Jews before the creation of Israel, conceive of themselves as one people and often frame this as a form of nationalism.

Nation-states, on the other hand, are countries that have governments of some sort and have dominant belief systems that see some or all of their inhabitants as part of “one people,” their nation. In reality, as we will discuss, many nations now and in the past, have included oppressed groups of people (who may or may not feel themselves to be members of that or another nation). Clear examples include African Americans in pre-Civil War America, Ukrainians in Czarist Russia, Kurds in modern Turkey or Iran, and Palestinians in modern Israel.

Historically, I think it is accurate to claim that in 1200 A.D., there were no nations on Earth. There were kingdoms, empires, tribes, and other formations, but no nations. Many of the places we think of as nations were at most loose confederations of contending smaller entities with many different languages; in some cases, one of these smaller entities was nominally dominant. The United Kingdom (Britain) for example had Anglo Saxons, Normans, Welsh, Scots, and Irish, each with their own language or languages. France was similarly divided, as was Germany. Germany remained that way into the 1860s. Although Spain was ostensibly unified in the late 1400s, linguistic differences remained present for centuries, and indeed groups like the Basques and Catalonians continue to express non-Spanish national identities and seek to withdraw from Spain on various occasions. Similarly, India, China, and Iran were mixes of empires and smaller jurisdictions, and multi-lingual. Africa was a mix of empires and tribes, as were the Americas.

The development of capitalism sparked the creation of nationalisms, and of nations, when emerging capitalists began to see the advantages of unified territories with a single language and no tariffs between sub-units like dukedoms or counties. To some extent, these ideas emerged from the lawyers, religious schools, literary figures, and other intellectuals who were part of the development of mercantile trade and capitalism. The prior existence of printing presses and other modes of one-to-many communication over long distances facilitated this.

One typical aspect of this nationalism has been the formation of national myths that claim that the nation has a history that can be traced back centuries or millennia. Vladimir Putin and other Russian nationalists hark back to a mythical Russian people in Kyiv in the 900s; Zionists claim that Biblical Israel was the birthplace of a Jewish nation; the Nazis traced the roots of the German people back centuries to the age of mythical heroes.

Nationalism led to nation-states through a variety of pathways. Some nations came together as a relatively straightforward effect of capitalism and its culture leading to national feelings. This is what happened with England and France, for example, although in each case the process involved a lot of warfare and social struggle. Other areas, such as Italy and Germany, developed elite groupings within them who saw commonalities of language and culture, and wanted the advantages that being a unified nation-state would bring them and, they believed, other members of the nation. In these cases, a combination of conquest by one of the competing sub-units (such as Prussia) and insurgency led to the formation of a nation-state. A third pathway has been for oppressed people within an empire or other formation to rebel and win their freedom to establish their own nation-state. As we shall see, this is what happened with Ukraine, and it is also what happened with the anti-colonial formation of nations in Africa and Asia in the 20th Century. A related pathway has been nationalism created as the people of a geographical area fend off attempts by imperialism to conquer them. Examples include Chinese nationalism in the face of defeats and impositions by Britain in the Opium Wars and then by other European forces, and finally in the 1930s against a Japanese invasion; and Palestinian nationalism emerging in the early part of the 20th Century.

Colonialism and imperialism grew up with capitalism and the emergence of nations. This happened in Western Europe when several European states became kingdoms and organized navies and armies and private armed forces (e.g., the Dutch and English East India Companies) to conquer other lands and force their people into mining and agriculture on behalf of their national ruling class. First, Spain and Portugal conquered parts of Africa and Latin America. They used these as sources of forced labor by the people whom they had conquered, and gold, silver and farm products became the basis of royal fortunes and mercenary armies. Dutch, French, and British imperialism followed, and seized new lands and people in the southern cape of Africa, Indonesia, and elsewhere, as well as taking some territories away from each other and from the Spanish and Portuguese. The British and French profited enormously from the enslavement of kidnapped Africans. Sugar grown by slave labor was for many decades the mainstay of international trade, and the island of Haiti (under French rule) the most profitable place on Earth. The United States formed as a nation through rebellion against the British government. This meant they were free to continue to trade in slaves, to employ slave labor, and to conquer lands held by American Indians (often with genocidal intent and/or consequences). (British governments had been considering restricting slavery, and had enacted prohibitions against American colonists moving into the Northwest Territories of Ohio and west.)

Far less known in the United States and many other countries is the growth of the Russian empire. Starting in the 1600s, the areas around Moscow organized as Russia under the Czars and started a campaign of territorial expansion that mixed conquest and subjugation of some areas (such as much of what is now Poland, Ukraine and Belarus) with outright genocidal settler colonialism in other areas such as much of Northern and Central Asia in which Yakuts, Buryats, and many other groups of people suffered massive population declines. In areas like Ukraine and Belarus, it tried to suppress the local religions and languages and other elements of culture.

In the 1800s and ever since, both the Russian and British Empires established economic dominance and at times military take-overs of Iran. In World War II, they divided Iran between them before reluctantly withdrawing later in the 1940s and leaving the old Shah’s son in control of a constitutional monarchy. (Iran itself is somewhat imperial and dominates and exploits several subordinate peoples, including Kurds, Baloch, Azeris, Arabs, and Turkmens).

Beginning in the 1800s, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements and ideas began to develop and spread more widely. As mentioned earlier, this took the form of “re-unification” in Germany and Italy. In much of the rest of the world, it took the form of rebellion against colonial overlords.

Many social democrats in imperial countries opposed the anti-colonial nationalism in the Global South. It is notable that Marx shared some of these views when young, but by the 1850s was clearly becoming anti-imperialist. Books by Kevin Anderson provide wonderful analysis of this. 7Kevin B. Anderson, Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (University of Chicago Press, 2015); Kevin B. Anderson, The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025).

Key figures of the next generation of socialists, including Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, James Connolly, and Trotsky, were fierce opponents of colonialism, although they disagreed about the political implications of this for European socialist movements.

World War II broke the power of all of the major imperial powers except the United States and Russia (USSR). Both the U.S. and Russia supported anti-colonial movements in the former colonies of Britain, France, the Netherlands and Belgium. Russia and the United States vied for influence in the newly-emerging countries, which is one reason these new nations became neocolonial corporate capitalist or state capitalist developmental regimes dependent upon the U.S. or Russia for investment and trade—and in many cases autocratic. Frantz Fanon wrote about this reality from within the movements for independence and freedom as the depressing reality of neocolonial independence was becoming visible. Neither Russia nor the United States tolerated anti-colonial movements within their empires. (They were extremely repressive against such movements in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Hungary, and Poland, for example.)

So what does this mean for Ukraine and Iran?

Ukraine developed a powerful nationalist movement in the 1800s. Ukrainian socialists were often leading nationalists as well. In the Revolution in the Russian Empire of 1917, this led at times to cooperation and at other times fighting between revolutionary socialists who were allied with the Russian Soviets and revolutionary socialists (some of whom called themselves Bolsheviks) who wanted Ukraine to be a separate nation. Both fought Ukrainian and Russian pro-capitalist forces. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, was torn between:

1. This general support of the right of nations—particularly including Ukraine—to self-determination (including his hatred of Great Russian Chauvinism, his term for that form of racism).
2. The specifics of the struggle in Ukraine, including the fact that many Bolsheviks in his party opposed Ukrainian nationalism.

In any case, the strength of the national movement in Ukraine and some other parts of the Russian Empire is why the end of the civil war led to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR, as a union of independent nation-states (including Russia and Ukraine) with the right of secession from the Union (albeit only on paper). To begin with, this led to considerable Ukrainian cultural and other freedom, but as the Stalinist counter-revolution proceeded and Russia became an autocratic form of State Capitalism, Russia increasingly suppressed Ukrainian language, religion, and most of its culture. By the 1930s, when the USSR faced a severe economic crisis that it dealt with by exporting food that its inhabitants needed, Ukraine was singled out for the harshest police tactics and starvations. This took the form of the Holodomor genocide, in which 4 million or more Ukrainians starved to death or were murdered by the police or army. Ukrainian politics is still shaped by the memory of this.

In World War II, the German invasion inflected hardship and mass murders on millions of Ukrainians, including Jewish Ukrainians. Ukrainians suffered the worst (more than the Russians or Belarusians, for example) and made major contributions to defeating the Germans. Russia tries to portray the defeat of the Nazis as a Russian victory and to disregard the contributions of Ukrainians and its other oppressed nations.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, Ukraine, Russia, and other countries seceded and formed separate countries. The next five or ten years were unbearable in all of them. The economy collapsed. Productive assets were sold off by the governments (run by their top bureaucrats) to coteries of allied top bureaucrats and top leaders of the criminal underground. Joblessness, alcoholism, and tuberculosis became epidemic. Use of opioids became relatively widespread among the young, as did trading sex for money or goods—and, as a result, HIV/AIDS, particularly among people who began injecting drugs. Oligarchs contended for wealth and power, at times violently, or by using government police power to attack their rivals.

Coming out of the 1990s, both the Russian and Ukrainian governments were dominated by viciously contending oligarchs who ran corrupt autocratic nominally-democratic regimes that held periodic elections to determine which group of oligarchs would rule and benefit most from the corruption. Starting with the Orange Revolution against a stolen election in 2004, their paths diverged, with Russia becoming more autocratic but Ukraine seeing the power of the oligarchs challenged by popular rebellions. The Maidan Revolution of 2013-2014 showed again that oligarchic regimes could be overthrown, and made inroads upon police corruption and, to some degree, corruption by other officials. This did NOT happen in Russia, but Putin and other Russian oligarchs feared it could spread. Thus, in 2014 Russia seized Crimea and tried to seize the Donbas (Donets Coal Basin) and Odessa as a way to make sure the Maidan Revolution did not turn left and, even more importantly, to delegitimize efforts to overthrow his own oligarchic regime. 2Hanna Perekhoda, “How to Understand Russia’s Imperialist Attitude Toward Ukraine,” New Politics, Winter 2024, ; Ilya Matveev, “Political imperialism, Putin’s Russia, and the need for a global left alternative,” Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, September 28, 2024,; Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev, Russia’s New Imperialism: Capital and Ideology (Stanford University Press, 2026).

The Left was an important component of the Maidan Revolution, though far less visible than the extreme right. Most of the movement, and its dominant beliefs, was a pro-European vaguely social democratic yearning for clean government and European living standards. Nonetheless, there was a socialist and anarchist Left, it acquitted itself well during the Maidan struggles across Ukraine, and it continues as a (relatively weak, but respected) force in Ukraine today. 3Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches from Kiev (Harvill Press, 2015); Marci Shore, The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2018); Emily Channell-Justice, Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine (University of Toronto Press, 2022); Sam Friedman, “What Happened in Ukraine in 2013– 2014? Maidan and After,” New Politics, May 13, 2023, ; Sophia Willson, Maidan: Ukraine’s Democratic Revolution (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026).

Later, after the near-revolution in Belarus that started in late 2020, Russia’s leaders decided to take over Ukraine and to erase Ukrainian culture and political freedoms. They were motivated both by the desire to eradicate the Russian peoples’ hope for freedom and by their own desires to restore what they see as the glories of the Russian empire. It tried this in early 2022 and has so far failed spectacularly due to a people’s movement in Ukraine. In my opinion, socialists in the U.S. should support this movement without reservations.

However, it should be clear—this current people’s movement in Ukraine is not socialist, though it has socialist threads within it. 4Commons: Journal of Social Criticism; Sotsialnyi Rukh (Social Movement), democratic socialist organization; Solidarity Collectives, anti-authoritarian network supporting the resistance to the Russian invasion; Green Party of Ukraine; Social Democratic Platform; Pryama Diya (Direct Action), leftwing student trade union; Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU); Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU); Razom We Stand, campaign for fossil fuel sanctions on Russia and rebuilding Ukraine around renewables, ; Rozviy, feminist youth campaign for fossil fuel sanctions on Russia and rebuilding Ukraine around renewables. Moreover, under the neoliberal demands of West European and US capital and their support by the Zelensky government, the Ukrainian government has adopted a lot of anti-working class and anti-union policies and has gone into massive debt to Western capital to pay the costs of the war. If the war ended tomorrow, the existing debt that capital has imposed on Ukraine means that both Ukrainian and Western capital (and governments) will wage war on Ukraine’s workers to pay it back. One job of US socialists is to oppose this and to support the Ukrainian working class in its current and future struggles to survive and, hopefully, to overthrow capital.

Iran

In an election in 1953 (after the new Shah took office when Britain and Russia occupation troops left Iran following the end of World War II), Mossadegh became Prime Minister and took steps to curb British control over Iran’s oil production. He was overthrown by a coup backed by US oil interests and the CIA, including those Iranians who benefited from the private oil industry.

The Shah then set up a dictatorship friendly to U.S. capital. This dictatorship was friendly to using its oil revenues to “modernize” Iranian society to resemble secular corporate America to a degree, including making jobs and other aspects of Western life available to women. He set up a vicious and powerful secret police to suppress all opposition brutally and often fatally.
By 1978, the Iranian people had had enough, and revolted. In 1979, the revolution succeeded in driving the Shah and his regime out. This revolution had important socialist and worker components, and it was the oil workers’ actions that were decisive in ousting the Shah. Hard-line Islamists, quite anti-American, also had massive support, and won out in the ensuing struggles over the direction of the revolution. They were backed in this by the pro-Russian Iranian Communist Party which saw the Revolution as an anti-imperialist one that should stop short at putting the bourgeoisie into power.

With U.S. backing, Iraq then started a war with Iran, which raged through the 1980s. This was a long and vicious war, with huge loss of life. One of my friends tells me it led to a lot of drug use by soldiers, and eventually to a lot of AIDS.

The Iranian people have mounted a number of mass movements in the years since the Millionaire Mullahs came to power. The 2009 Green Movement protested massive fraud in presidential elections; the 2019 uprising opposed rising gasoline prices and included a variety of efforts by workers to improve their lives; the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement of 2022-23, which was viciously repressed, involved Kurds and other oppressed minorities as well as Persians, and men as well as women; and the recent uprising of 2026 based around economic and environmental collapse that was suppressed after tens of thousands of people were killed.

U.S. and Israel decided to attack Iran at the end of February 2026. As of this writing, this attack seems to be an utter failure, and has left the Iranian government in a much stronger position against its own people as well as against Israel and the United States than it had before the war.

What about socialists and anti-imperialists in the United States and much of the world?

People in the United States and elsewhere who call themselves socialists and/or anti-imperialists are divided into two sharply divided groups. One group are called “campists” because they see the world geopolitically as divided into Western imperialism, as one camp, and nations that oppose Western imperialism, as the other camp—which they then support.

Campists support the Iranian government as anti-imperialist and usually see the peoples’ movements as “objectively pro-imperialist” or even as U.S.-Israeli instigated counter-revolutionaries. They support Putin and the Russian invasion of Ukraine because they see Ukraine as a part of the Western, imperialist, camp. Many of them believe Russian claims that it invaded Ukraine because the Maidan revolution was an imperialist coup and that it threatened to attack Russia. Many of them also support Russian claims that Ukraine is run by, and is a hotbed of, Nazis and other fascists. (As someone who has spent a lot of time in Ukraine both before and after the Maidans, and as someone who understands that there are serious fascist forces helping to direct both Russia and the United States, I will attest to the fact that these claims are utter rot.)

Historically, many campist leaders have had ties to the former state capitalist Russia or other state capitalist regimes, or accepted the worldviews of their leaders who saw the world as divided into an anti-imperialist camp (which they, but not the people of Eastern Europe, Taiwan, or Tibet, among others, considered themselves to be). Fundamental to campist views is a disbelief in the power of working class or other movements of “the people” to take power and build a new society that is better than the one we live in. As a result, they see States as the only important actors in the world, and they choose to side with one camp within those states.

The other group, who are sometimes called internationalists (and I am one), support the working class and other oppressed people in their struggles against both their country’s ruling class and State and also against imperialist countries who threaten their national independence. One of our slogans which forms part of the title of this essay, is “solidarity without exception.” When imperial invaders attack a people, we support that people to the best of our ability. When governments or employers attack workers’ lives and conditions and freedoms, we support the workers. And we urge the movements of oppressed peoples and of workers in every country to support each other in a solidarity without exception.

When the United States or its allies attack or oppress a nation such as Palestine or Venezuela, campists and internationalists can sometimes work together, although even then campists tend to offer uncritical support for their governments or other top-down leadership bodies like Hamas whereas internationalists support the people against both their attackers and governments like that of Maduro or leaders like Hamas. Another frequent area of tension-within-cooperation is that campists support top-down and often secretive leadership bodies within solidarity movements (as happened in many of the campus encampments that supported Palestine in 2024) whereas internationalists support open discussion and democratic control by the participants in the movement.

Finally, there are many other nations that are being attacked or oppressed. Campists decide on whether of not to support the Kurds, Rohingyas, Uyghurs and others based on whether they judge the attackers or oppressors as allies of U.S. imperialism or part of their imagined “axes of resistance,” whereas we internationalists offer solidarity without exception.

We see this as the only way to live and build a socialism from below in which workers and other have democratic power to build a sustainable world of peace, friendship, self-fulfillment and fun. And we view it as humanity’s best hope of surviving the environmental crisis, and specifically the climate crisis, and eventually thriving once this is done.

Opinions expressed in signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of the editors or the Tempest Collective. For more information, see “About Tempest Collective.”
Featured Image credit: ARTIST NAME; modified by Tempest.

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