Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement, Part 9: Antifascist
Fascism represents an all out war against the proletariat. Revolutionary unionists must unite with antifascist struggles of all types if we hope to outlast the repression we will inevitably face.
This is part nine of an essay series on revolutionary unionism. If you have not read the previous entries, you can start at part one here:
Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement, Part One: Introduction
The rapid rise fascism over the last twenty years poses one of the most serious dangers the working class must confront as we reorganize to overthrow capitalism. For those of us working in education dealing with the menace of school shootings and facing mob attacks just for teaching the truth, that should be relatively obvious. There has already been one coup attempt: January 6, 2021. And the re-election of Donald Trump has opened a Pandora’s Box that no one can slam shut. Our situation is dire. It is nothing short of an emergency. There has been—and will continue to be—serious escalation in violent physical attacks on sections of the working class.
We have a right to self-defense. Our lives, and the lives of our loved ones, are on the line. The ruling class response to the Occupy Movement, the Ferguson Uprising, the George Floyd Uprising, the Palestine Solidarity Movement, and a multitude of others around the world should leave us with no illusions. Police brutality was a major instigator of the Catalonia General Strike of 2017, with the outpouring of the workers and their supporters onto the streets effectively halting all police operations across the entire region. Cops aren’t workers, they are the enemies of the workers, they are the lapdogs of the employing class and should be treated as such. A more local example comes from the Vermont AFL-CIO, which socialist workers in the UNITED! Slate democratically transformed into a state-wide workers’ council during the late 2010s.1 In 2020 the Vermont AFL-CIO approved a resolution authorizing a general strike across the state in the case of Trump stealing the election, as well as calling on other AFL-CIO affiliates to do the same.
The CNT-FAI served as a hub for several million Spanish workers and peasants to turn a fascist coup into a social revolution across much of the nation—especially in Catalonia, Andalusia, and Aragon. Countless workplaces and estates were taken over and run by the people themselves, leading to significant increases in production even amidst the Spanish Civil War.2 Militias used the revolutionary union movement to organize themselves and defend the new world they were building behind the lines.
Unfortunately, the Spanish Republic was internationally isolated—with only the USSR providing aid and weapons—while the fascists received substantial military and economic aid from Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. At the same time, the Spanish Republic and USSR were not exactly friendly to the aims of the mostly anarchist-influenced revolutionaries.3 Using its aid as leverage, the USSR could manipulate the Spanish Republic, largely taking over its security services and opening up a civil war within the civil war between the Spanish Communist Party and the anarchists.4 These so-called communists busted up rural communes and urban collective factories, collapsing the economy of the remaining Spanish Republic so badly that many had to be reconstituted just to keep production going. Spain’s Republican government also demonstrated hostility to the CNT-FAI and its supporters. They refused to provide the revolutionaries with any of the weapons they urgently needed, and exploited Soviet communist offensives against the CNT-FAI to co-opt its militias.5 This history emphasizes the need for a revolutionary union movement to be radically independent.
Returning to recent events, the UK’s National Union of Rail, Maritime, and Transport Workers (RMT), while not a revolutionary union, took an antifascist stand against fascist pogroms that we should learn from. As fascist dupes attacked immigrants and anyone they labeled as Muslim, the RMT leadership sent a message to all its locals: “We are therefore asking Branches where possible to be in contact with their local mosques, refugee centres and solidarity groups to offer our union’s solidarity and support on the ground at a time when they face severe threats and intimidation.” The RMT is already one of the UK’s most militant, progressive, and democratic trade unions. We should take this approach a step further, thoroughly rooting ourselves within our communities. That means building a visible and powerful presence on the shop floors of the workplaces wherever we are.
Within the IWW, there have been several effective interventions in the struggle against fascism domestically. One of the only other unions in the UK and Ireland to respond with strength to the pogroms was the IWW. Every local branch across the UK and Ireland called its members into the streets against the fascist threat. There is also the General Defence Committee. A long existing but dormant committee, antifascist IWW labor organizers such as those from the Pan-African Caucus of the Twin Cities Branch took it up as a tool to wage worker centered struggle against the fascist forces unleashed in the wake of Trump’s 2016 election victory. Through its efforts, the IWW gained a new relevancy with working people it hadn’t possessed in many decades. Another example from the IWW was the 2020 University of Santa Cruz Wildcat Strike. While the UC system is organized with the UAW, IWW militants were highly influential at UCSC and UC Davis. When their employer loosed the police on the strikers, it provoked a backlash that popularized the “cops off campus” demand—unifying workplace and antifascist struggles.
Anti-fascism is core to a revolutionary union’s philosophy. An injury to one is an injury to all! While our unions are anti-sectarian and welcome workers of most political affiliations, we demand all members affirm and accept the identity of all of their fellow workers. The working class encompasses people of all faiths, ages, ethnicities, genders, body types, and a million more variations. Nazis, or any type of fascists, are not welcome. Abusers are not welcome.
Revolutionary unions concretely support radical community organizing projects such as Stop Cop City—a movement whose strategic and tactical innovations are a model for all of us. Policing is a fundamentally fascist institution, a type of power that always demands more. And since policing was invented to defeat proletarian resistance—both enslaved and free—we have no choice but to combat and defeat them by any means necessary. Members of revolutionary unions must be on the ground at movement rallies, blockades, and occupations. Organizationally, our unions can simultaneously organize secondary strikes and boycotts against any company involved in the construction of any cop city. Stop Cop City is just one example, the exact same logic can be applied to indigenous-led Land Back movements, anti-war struggles, and every other radical social struggle. At every turn, we can find opportunities to connect these struggles to those in our workplaces.
The IWW already has an effort underway to accomplish this connection through its Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC). It is currently the union’s most revolutionary project of its modern history. Organized by and for prisoners, IWOC has launched multiple prison strikes, including the largest prison strike in US history in 2016. Working in coalition with groups like the Free Alabama Movement, over 24,000 incarcerated workers across 24 states went on strike to end prison slavery.
IWOC is unambiguous about connecting the struggles of the imprisoned with those of the entire working class. This year, IWOC has thrown its weight behind supporting the organization of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak’s 2024 SHUT ‘EM DOWN Demonstrations. We encourage all readers to find a way to participate in relevant local actions during the Week of Solidarity from December 6-13. A revolutionary union movement must organize in the prisons. Prisoners are our fellow workers, caught up in capitalism’s most brutal, inhumane workplaces. There is no excuse for writing off their fight for liberation as unrelated or tangential to workplace union organizing. Slavery built the modern capitalist system, and prisons represent the continuation of that enslavement to the present day. They are fascist institutions rooted in genocidal colonialism.
That’s all for part nine. Next week, check back for part ten, which details the need for revolutionary unions in North America to organize along industrial lines.
Van Deusen, David. 2024. Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017–2023. Working Class History. PM Press. https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1581.
To see this simultaneously inspiring and heartbreaking history brought to life, we recommend the 1995 movie “Land and Freedom”, which you can watch for free on youtube.
Hochschild, Adam. 2017. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. First. New York: Mariner Books. Pages 46-47, 49.
Ibid. Pages 181-195.
Hochschild, Adam. 2017. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War. First. New York: Mariner Books. Pages 56-57.
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