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LABOR’S “BARBAROSSA” MOMENT  
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Bill Fletcher Jr.
December 17, 2024
Liberation Road Notes
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_ An edited and expanded version of remarks by Bill Fletcher, Jr.
offered at “A Strategy for Labor, A CUNY Panel Discussion of Honor
of Merle Ratner,” December 12, 2024 _

, John Albok, "May Day (Fight Fascism)," 1937, vintage gelatin silver
print

 

Greetings! My appreciation for this invitation and this opportunity to
honor our dear late friend, Merle Ratner. Her unexpected loss haunts
us all. Merle was a committed leftist and socialist. She was also an
internationalist in her DNA, with a particular focus on solidarity
with the people of Vietnam. There were many things striking about
Merle, not the least being her insistence on the essential need for
organization. Merle recognized that without organization, the
oppressed have nothing. And something that Merle always wanted to
address was the future of organized labor and the role of the Left in
advancing a revitalization process. It is with this in mind that the
following is offered.

On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa commenced with a blaze of
artillery, accompanied by aircraft bombardment and massive troop
advances. The German invasion of the USSR was treated by many people
at the time, and later, as a surprise attack. After all, Nazi Germany
and the USSR had signed a nonaggression pact in 1939. In fact, up to
the minute of the invasion the USSR was still shipping raw materials
to Germany in accordance with the agreement.

But the attack was no surprise. For months preceding the invasion,
Soviet intelligence, and at a key moment the so-called “Lucy ring”
(based in Switzerland), had been sending warnings to Moscow about a
pending invasion. The warnings were ignored. Stalin and his inner
circle would not take the warnings seriously, claiming that these were
efforts by Britain to distract the USSR from the real nature of the
war, i.e., the ludicrous Stalinian argument that this was simply an
inter-imperialist war, no different from World War I.

When the invasion started, the Soviet leadership was dumbfounded.
Stalin disappeared for one week; no one could find him. Thousands of
Soviet soldiers and civilians perished due to the absolute failure of
the Stalin leadership to recognize all the signs. The German advance
was ultimately stopped outside Moscow due to a combination of factors
including the onset of an early Russian winter—for which the Germans
were entirely unprepared—and stiff Soviet resistance. As a side
note, Operation Barbarossa was supposed to have started earlier, but
Germany delayed it in order to invade Yugoslavia and Greece, saving
fascist Italy’s troops from disaster. That delay may have saved the
world.

We are facing our own “Operation Barbarossa,” a point to which I
shall return.

[1941 Russia invasion map]
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German invasion of Russia as depicted in the 1943 American propaganda
film _“Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia”_

The US trade union movement has been seeking its bearings for decades.
It has been rocked by Cold War purges and repression, vicious
anti-communism destroying entire unions, collaboration with US foreign
policy in a series of international horrors, changing demographics in
the working class, rising insurgencies within the working class and
the trade union movement, economic reorganization, and the rise of
neoliberal globalization. Yet even after all this, the US trade union
movement has remained trapped in the paradigm set for it by American
Federation of Labor founder, Samuel Gompers, a paradigm that focused
the unions on wages, hours, working conditions, with no independent
political action, and with active support for US imperialism
internationally. Rather than make a full break with this paradigm,
though increasingly aware of the crisis of US trade unionism, the
movement’s leadership largely engaged in a sort of tactical
hopscotch attempting to find the right space to land upon, failing to
recognize that our opponents were playing a very different game:
chess.

The absence of a clear strategic vision on the part of the leadership
of organized labor has been linked to its failure to appreciate the
“moment” in which we are operating. So, let’s discuss the
“moment.”

Since 2009, labor—both organized labor and alt-labor—as well as
much of the progressive movement have failed to identify and recognize
the significance of the rise and transformation of a right-wing
populist movement, a movement that morphed into the MAGA fascist
movement. Labor and too many progressives ignored all the signals. In
fact, one should really go back to the 1980s and the emergence largely
in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest of various armed fascist groups
that played within the swamp of right-wing populism, hunting Jews and
people of color. There was the rise of the (white) Christian
nationalists, moving to the center of the Republican Party. There was
the 1994 Newt Gingrich-led “Contract with America” and the change
in tone—literally—of partisan exchanges. And there was the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing/massacre and the revelation of the proliferation
of right-wing militia groups around the US. While a few organizations,
such as Political Research Associates, sounded the alarm, they were
the equivalent of the “Lucy ring” sending information on the
pending Operation Barbarossa, only to be largely ignored.

In 2009 we witnessed the Tea Party movement, later appended by the
“birthers.” Yet, in the face of this mass movement, little
discussion took place within labor and the movement was dismissed as
an alleged “astroturf” movement‚ that is, a movement that was a
fake, with no social base. When Trump and others promoted birtherism,
again, it was ignored as the ravings of an unanchored lunatic that
would have little impact…until it did.

And even after Trump 45 was defeated in 2020, there remained those who
continued to deny that something of_ strategic significance_ had
unfolded in the US. In the aftermath of January 6, 2021, there were
two astounding comments coming from labor. One, that maybe this meant
that progressives were pushing too hard and that we should slow down.
Two, that US political institutions had displayed their ability to
withstand a hurricane and reset themselves. For this latter group, the
part two was that now the time had arrived to return to fighting
centrist Democrats rather than isolating and crushing the far right.

Therefore, in addressing the question of labor’s revitalization,
_OUR STARTING POINT MUST BE THAT LABOR BECOMES AN_ _ANTIFASCIST
MOVEMENT OR IT HAS NO FUTURE._

In his masterful work, _Fascism and Dictatorship, _the iconic
Greek/French Marxist theorist Nicos Poulantzas noted that, in the
years immediately preceding the victory of fascism in Italy and Nazism
in Germany, the trade union movements in their respective countries
had waged militant economic struggles. But in neither case were those
trade union movements fully antifascist movements. They seemed to
believe, as many of our friends do today, that a progressive, militant
economic message will undercut the base of the fascists.

It did not work out quite that way.

Why? Because the fascist movements are not based on one grievance
alone. Drawing on racism, sexism, selective anti-elitism, economic
grievance, and most importantly, revanchism, fascist movements—when
they are out of power—can be militantly anti-corporate elite, though
this anti-corporate elite is regularly tinged with antisemitism and/or
racism.

Transforming and renewing trade unionism today necessitates
prioritizing the antifascist fight. This antifascist fight must have
both a defensive and offensive character. Taking on
neoliberalism—one of the key foundations for the rise of the far
right—and carrying on visionary organizing efforts is certainly part
of the answer insofar as this work helps to unite and galvanize the
working class. But it is not enough.

Antifascism also involves providing answers and solutions to why the
world is in chaos and why the US is in a state of a “cold civil
war.” It involves a vigilant defense of democratic rights and an
equally vigilant fight to expand democracy. In this sense we are not
involved in so-called cultural wars, but we are involved in a fight
over whether democracy loses or whether it is expanded and becomes
_consistent democracy._ A social justice unionist framework can help
us evolve the trade union movement into an antifascist force, a
movement that truly recognizes that workers are 24-hour beings with
multiple interests and concerns.

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Jeanne Menjoulet, “FRONT POPULAIRE, TOUS ANTIFASCISTES
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(JUNE 15 2024) CC BY 2.0
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With all that in mind, here are a few suggestions on what needs to be
done:

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Renew the education of workers on capitalism, the far right, and how
to fight them both.

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Link labor—both organized and alt-labor—with other progressive
forces. We need our own version of the French “New Popular Front
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that is, an alignment of forces that are not only fighting the
fascists, but also articulating a positive program for the future, one
that many people have summarized as the “Third Reconstruction.”

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Organize “democracy brigades” within all labor organizations to
combat the far right, i.e., committees of workers who will offer voter
protection, defense of abortion clinics, opposition to book-banners,
defense of migrants, and who will stand up when the fascists tell us
to sit down.

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Identify the key sources of power in contemporary society and develop
strategies to undermine them, i.e., know our enemies and seek out
their weaknesses so that we can defeat them (whether those enemies are
small fascist groups, fascist movements, or oligarchs).

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Unite labor with the environmental and environmental justice movements
to counter the environmental catastrophe while fighting for structural
reforms to rebuild, strengthen, and advance the social safety net,
essential for people to survive planetary environmental crisis.

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Push labor to fully embrace geographic and industrial strategies aimed
at building economic and political power for workers, another step on
the road to the Third Reconstruction.

To do this, we need organization. I have had the honor of helping to
found standing4democracy.org [[link removed]], an
antifascist, worker-focused organization, committed to uniting with
others in opposition to the far right and toward revitalizing and
transforming the labor movement, transforming it into an antifascist
movement. I encourage you to join with us or to join with some other
formation that is equally committed to advancing democracy.

The “artillery” will start firing at our positions the afternoon
of January 20, 2025. The “tanks” will cross the border on January
21st. MAGA is seeking to paralyze all progressive forces through the
speed of their advance and the devastation they intend to inflict. To
defeat MAGA we must fully understand them, but also understand that
our struggle will, for the foreseeable future, be asymmetric. We will
need to be creative in response, and equally determined. Victory is
far from certain, but in that light, defeat is not an option.

Thank you.

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Thanks for reading Liberation Road Notes !

 

* Antifascism; Democracy; Operation Barbarossa; US Labor Movement;
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