[Brandon Johnson’s mayoral victory is a first step toward
transforming the deeply unequal city. If he’s going to undertake
radical reform efforts in Chicago, Johnson needs protests and strikes
to fend off the inevitable capitalist attacks.]
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BRANDON JOHNSON WON IN CHICAGO. NOW HIS MOVEMENT WILL HAVE TO BEAT
CAPITAL STRIKES.  
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Kevin A. Young
April 12, 2023
Jacobin
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_ Brandon Johnson’s mayoral victory is a first step toward
transforming the deeply unequal city. If he’s going to undertake
radical reform efforts in Chicago, Johnson needs protests and strikes
to fend off the inevitable capitalist attacks. _

Mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson speaks during a rally at the
Chicago Teachers Union Foundation on March 18, 2023, in Chicago., John
J. Kim / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images

 

Brandon Johnson’s shocking victory in Chicago’s April 4 mayoral
election has sparked intense reactions across the spectrum. Three
months ago, few expected a black organizer from a militant union to
defeat an opponent who enjoyed the unified backing of big business and
police and a two-to-one funding advantage
[[link removed]].
While Johnson campaigned on taxing large corporations, addressing the
social roots of crime, and enacting a modicum of police
accountability, his opponent Paul Vallas pledged
[[link removed]] more
school privatization, more austerity for workers, and free rein for
police.

Johnson’s win not only offers hope for transforming a ruthlessly
unequal city, but signals what the Left could accomplish elsewhere.
For that reason, the election has elicited fear and rage from the
lords of the city and trepidation from the national business press.
Investors are issuing dire warnings of capital flight, while police
officials are predicting an explosion in street crime.

To the extent that Johnson and his allies on the city council
[[link removed]] attempt
to deliver, they will incur a phalanx of resistance. Reactionary
forces may have lost the election, but they retain enormous power to
coerce both policymakers and the general population.

Neutralizing that resistance will require learning from the history of
would-be reformers, most of whom fell short of their campaign
promises. The ultimate outcome in Chicago will depend on whether
progressive forces continue to deepen their capacity for mass
militancy outside the electoral realm, as the Chicago Teachers Union
(CTU) has been doing since 2010.

The Reactionary Recipe

The Right has a well-tested playbook in these situations. When its
candidates lose, it turns to its other levers of power
[[link removed]]. It
finds judicial and legislative choke points to obstruct reform and
wages a propaganda war in the press. Less visible but equally
important is the structural leverage that comes from controlling
employment, access to loans, and government tax revenues. Threats to
withdraw those resources — a “capital strike
[[link removed]]”
— can bring significant pressure to bear on reformers.

Some cases of such coercion are well documented. When a popular
revolution challenged US domination of Cuba, Washington imposed an
economic blockade “to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow
of government
[[link removed]],”
as a State Department official wrote in 1960. It was a capital strike
enforced by the US government, designed to inflict misery on the Cuban
people.

Threats to withdraw resources — a ‘capital strike’ — can bring
significant pressure to bear on reformers.

When Chileans elected a socialist president in 1970, US policymakers
and top corporations launched “a laboratory experiment
[[link removed]]”
to redirect investments away from Chile “in an effort to discredit
and bring down” Salvador Allende. As in Cuba, the immediate target
was the population, which would presumably then revolt against their
government. “We shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and
the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty,” the US
ambassador wrote
[[link removed]].
The same logic lies behind the numerous economic sanctions
[[link removed]] the US has imposed in
recent decades.

Salvador Allende in 1972. (Arquivo Nacional Collection / Wikimedia
Commons)

More routine than these dramatic episodes, though, are the constant
warnings about how progressive economic reform will damage “business
confidence
[[link removed]],”
meaning capitalists’ willingness to invest in particular sectors or
locales in the form of employment and loans. Capitalists are always
threatening to go on strike against policies they dislike and,
conversely, promising to open the investment valve when
government adopts
[[link removed]] “policies
that are more pro-business.”

To be sure, capitalists are known for hyperbole. Often their threats
are just hot air, and often businesses disinvest or invest for purely
economic reasons. But given their control over the resources that we
all depend on, their words carry real political weight.

Brandon Johnson is the latest target. A
postelection _Bloomberg_ report
[[link removed]] aired
industry’s threats: a tax on large employers would be a “job
killer”; his proposals for modest new taxes on airlines, hotels, and
real estate would risk “a negative spiral” of corporate
disinvestment; Chicago’s stock trading sector “would be
decimated” by his proposed levy on securities trades; failure to
“maintain fiscal discipline” could harm Chicago’s already poor
credit rating. In other words, capitalists will withhold the resources
that Chicagoans need unless Johnson falls in line.

Capitalists are known for hyperbole. But given their control over the
resources that we all depend on, their words carry real political
weight.

Police are making parallel threats. One of Paul Vallas’s biggest
boosters, John Catanzara of the Fraternal Order of Police, said last
month there would be “blood in the streets
[[link removed]]”
if Johnson won because police would quit the force en masse. (In other
public statements, Catanzara has casually advocated genocide against
Muslims
[[link removed]].)
Police can also wield financial leverage insofar as municipalities
depend on arrests and citations for revenue. For a few weeks in
2014–15, the NYPD went on an unannounced strike
[[link removed]] in
response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mild criticism of police
violence. Cops elsewhere have done
[[link removed]] the
same [[link removed]] in recent
decades.

These scare tactics can erode reformers’ base of support while also
emboldening liberal leaders’ anti-left antipathy. During the mayoral
election, there was no shortage of pro-Vallas liberal elites with loud
megaphones, from party big wigs
[[link removed]] to pastors
[[link removed]] to former
Black Panthers
[[link removed]].
Liberal defections and rising public ambivalence toward the reformers
can prepare the ground for an ouster, whether it’s a coup, a recall
[[link removed]],
or a defeat in the next election.

What Reformers Face

In this context the most common response of reformers is to jettison
progressive ambitions and pursue partnerships with capitalists —
including big corporations — and state institutions like the police.
The pragmatic logic behind this approach can be appealing: since
we’re not strong enough to defeat them, let’s try to appease them
so they’ll acquiesce to at least some of our program.

This is what happened with the wave of black mayors elected across the
US in the 1970s and ’80s, most of them on social democratic
platforms. Chicago was a prime example. In 1983 Harold Washington
became the city’s first black mayor after running on a program
similar to Brandon Johnson’s. He promised to expand public services
and job creation programs, tax the rich, and confront the city’s
racist policing and segregation. Like Johnson, Washington won a slim
victory over a business-backed candidate who had vastly outspent him
and who had the support of many Democratic elites.

Harold Washington, circa 1982. (US Congress / Wikimedia Commons)

Washington’s tenure was not without accomplishments. He weakened the
stranglehold of the city’s corrupt and racist Democratic machine. He
helped expand the Independent Political Organizations
[[link removed]] (IPOs)
as alternatives to traditional Democratic politics and made important
efforts to open city government
[[link removed]] to
black and Latino residents. And he did so in the face of vicious
resistance from Democratic power holders, including the reactionary
white majority that controlled city council
[[link removed]] from 1983 to 1986.

But most of his intended reforms never materialized, and city council
stonewalling was not the sole reason. A crucial impediment was the
structural power of capitalists and the lack of a militant,
nonelectoral mass movement that could force concessions from them and
thereby open space for government reforms.

The ruling-class response to Washington’s election was
predictable. _BusinessWeek_’s coverage of the 1983 election quoted
corporate moguls who insisted that taxing the rich would jeopardize
business confidence. “Chicago must compete with other cities as a
place for businesses to locate and stay,” said one. “If Washington
won’t listen to the business establishment, this effort will fall
apart at the seams,” said another. Without more effort at “wooing
businessmen,” Washington would scare away investors. One CEO
predicted that “he’ll come around because business and government
must work together.”

A crucial impediment was the structural power of capitalists and the
lack of a militant, nonelectoral mass movement that could force
concessions from them.

Washington was not overthrown or recalled; he died of a heart attack
after being reelected in 1987. But he did “come around” to many of
business’s demands. His Economic Development Task Force was
dominated by corporate executives (albeit a multiracial group of
them), reflecting the assumption that economic development was only
possible if Chicago did more to “woo businessmen.” Part of that
wooing included anti-labor policies, such as trying to ban strikes by
municipal workers and failing to support unions in key labor
conflicts. Given the elite’s success in blocking progressive tax
reform, Washington found that the only way to achieve “a more stable
fiscal footing for the city” was to raise taxes on the general
population, as _Newsweek_ reported after his death.

Washington’s fate paralleled that of other black mayors
[[link removed]]:
Coleman Young in Detroit, Kenneth Gibson in Newark, and Maynard
Jackson in Atlanta, to name a few. Variations aside, their basic
approach was the same: shore up “business confidence” by paring
down progressive campaign pledges, hoping that the resulting
investment would generate decent working-class jobs and a stable tax
base.

It didn’t. Their cities continued to hemorrhage jobs and tax
revenue. “Unfortunately,” as Robert Brenner wrote
[[link removed]] in
a classic 1985 article, “no Black mayor has succeeded in slowing
down even slightly the downward curve of economic development for
Black workers and the poor throughout the 70s and early 80s.”

Ironically, leaders undercut their own ability to deliver reforms, for
it was mass disruption that had given reformers the leverage to shape
policy.

Certainly, the reformers were victims of bad timing. By the late
1970s, employers and finance capitalists had launched an all-out war
on labor rights and social welfare. That war has continued, with only
minor abatements, down to the present.

However, the failure was partly within the Left’s power to control.
In the 1970s many progressive organizations shifted away from
the boycotts, sit-ins, and other tactics
[[link removed]] that
had won real reforms in the ’60s. Middle-class black leaders and
labor officials reasserted their control over the rank and
file, sermonizing
[[link removed]] about
how “the militancy of the old days is passé” and conspiring
against rank-and-file militancy
[[link removed]] when
it did break out. Ironically, those leaders undercut their own ability
to deliver reforms, for it was mass disruption that had given
reformers the leverage to shape policy.

Instead, electoral campaigns and lobbying became the order of the day.
By the time people like Harold Washington and Jesse Jackson ran for
office, most elected reformers had neither the inclination nor ability
to counter the capitalist onslaught.

Harold Washington Didn’t Have a CTU

Many on Chicago’s left understand all of this. In fact, since CTU
reformers first won power in 2010, they have prioritized real
organizing and collective direct action, including several major
strikes
[[link removed]] since
2012. They’ve done electoral campaigning too, but on the foundation
of a well-organized, combative, multiracial movement that has operated
mostly outside the electoral sphere. Brandon Johnson’s victory would
be unthinkable otherwise.

CTU militancy, and the fact that Johnson comes from the ranks, marks a
big difference from Harold Washington’s era. Washington himself
lacked Johnson’s organic connection to mass organizing, and once in
office made little effort to encourage grassroots militancy outside of
election campaigns.

The Johnson administration’s fate will depend on how Johnson and his
base each respond to the inevitable reactionary offensive. For the
base, success will require maintaining the CTU-style emphasis on
organizing people to take direct action in pursuit of their interests,
and expanding that fighting model to more of Chicago’s workers,
students, parents, consumers, and renters. The Johnson administration,
meanwhile, can fortify their efforts by constantly championing that
principle.

The Johnson administration’s fate will depend on how Johnson and his
base each respond to the inevitable reactionary offensive.

At the level of economic policy, the administration must persuade the
public that economic development does not require lavishing subsidies
on major corporations, and that corporations in any case are fickle
and traitorous partners
[[link removed]].
It must split small capital from big capital. Johnson’s tax
proposals reflect an awareness that, at least in the short term, no
reformer can confront a unified business class.

The administration should also foster the growth of
counter-institutions like worker and consumer cooperatives. With
legal, moral, and material support from local government, such
institutions of popular power can assume a greater role in the
economy [[link removed]], even
taking control of abandoned shops and factories.

Much of the funding for those projects could come from a public bank
established at the city level. Because profit-oriented lenders
systematically exploit small-time debtors and invest in businesses
that maximize profits rather than social welfare, the idea of public
banking
[[link removed]] has
gained momentum of late. A public bank could simultaneously combat
predatory lending and channel investments toward public housing,
cooperatives, job programs, and other unprofitable but socially useful
ventures. There’s no reason (no economic reason, at least)
why Chicago
[[link removed]] or other
municipalities
[[link removed]] can’t
do it.

Changing Chicago will be hard. Given limited resources, progressives
will be tempted to focus exclusively on electoral mobilization. The
administration will feel tremendous pressure to accommodate the
city’s capitalists, particularly as federal COVID funds dry up,
budget deficits persist, and a possible recession looms. If crime
remains at high levels, Johnson will also be tempted to revert to a
traditional tough-on-crime approach.

Whether or not we live in Chicago, we must be ready to stand with
Chicago’s workers during the coming confrontations — for example,
by donating to union strike funds. Solidarity also means learning from
their example and applying the lessons where we are.

Entrenched elites can be forced to accept meaningful reforms. Those
wins can then become springboards to bigger victories. If Chicagoans
succeed, their example will reverberate far beyond the city.

_KEVIN A. YOUNG teaches history at the University of Massachusetts
Amherst. He is coauthor of Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What
the 99% Can Do About It (Verso, 2020) and author of the
forthcoming Abolishing Fossil Fuels: Lessons From Movements That
Won (PM Press, 2024)._

_Subscribe to JACOBIN today, get four beautiful editions a year, and
help us build a real, socialist alternative to billionaire media._

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* Chicago Teachers Union
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* Brandon Johnson
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* Politics
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* elections
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