On The Anniversary Of Jan 6 Insurrection, A United Front Is Key!
The CWG-US endorses the anti-fascist united front mobilizations on January 6th, 2022 initiated by the UFCLP and endorsed by various workers organizations. We advocate for all workers and oppressed people to begin building anti-fascist workers united fronts to mobilize against the fascist threat.
We do have the following criticisms of the united front call. The historic method of the United Front is summed up as “Strike Together, March Separately” which means that each organization in a United Front maintains its right to critique the method and statements of the United Front and its participants and advocate for their own program. In consideration of the statement issued by the UFCLP we are compelled to offer the following comments in the struggle to hone the workers movement’s understanding of the tasks we face in our common defense of our rights and persons.
If matters are as urgent as depicted in the categorical statement that Trump is returning with another coup attempt then “defense guards” are not just another item in a list of “things to do”.
When the US version of the ‘Brown Shirts’ are marching down the streets then we need workers defense guards organized out of every union hall and assembly of oppressed people. We are far from “single issue” politicians, but the real obtaining situation is not cause for indifference as to what organizational form militants’ action should take! We find the statement determinist in terms of what Trump’s present powers and possibilities are, and even slightly exaggerated. The Republican Party is being ripped apart, in fact. The Trumpists think the defections caused by real fascists will not matter if they can control the organization of the local polls and counting of ballots.This is very different than insurrectional violence, but is more akin to the reactionary parliamentary legalism of eastern European racist regimes. A Workers’/Labor Party would contest political power with the bourgeoisie, the backers of the “two” party fiction.There was no coup, rather it was a putsch/tantrum, more like an insurrectionary lynch mob with a fever dream plan. Even so, what are called for without question are LABOR-BLACK-BROWN workers’ defense guards, exactly because the fascists have shown their willingness to act on their intentions and threats of violence. January 6, 2021 was only the most publicized outrage.
We also take issue with the lack of the call for a workers party to provide the necessary working class leadership for struggles to defeat the despairing social reaction of capitalism in terminal decay. A class struggle Workers/Labor Party is vitally necessary to coordinate labor union actions along with mobilizing and organizing the unorganized workers and the oppressed to crush the fascists in the streets and through general strike actions..
This is the CWG’s analysis of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection for reference as far as our full political position.
A Socialist Response to Fascist Mobilizations – Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA) (cwgusa.org)
Below is the UFCLP United Front Call that the CWG-USA endorses with our above criticism:
On The Anniversary Of Jan 6 Insurrection, A United Front Is Key! A Call For Action
The victory of Biden and the Democrats in the 2020 election did not stop nor could it stop the rise of fascism. The only group in society that has the force to stop the fascists is the working class.
Trump’s systematic efforts to transform the Republican Party into a facist outfit, will lay the basis for an overturn of the election in 2024. Trump’s conspiracy theories are being used as a litmus test to purge anyone in the Republican Party who is not loyal to the Trump cabal thus moving the political landscape further to the extreme right with the inevitable result of moving in the direction of a fascist takeover.
The rise of fascism is not just an existential threat , but is a real threat with dire consequences for the working class and oppressed in the US and internationally. If Trump and his accomplices are allowed to take power, they will attempt to shut down democratic norms and make use of state agencies allied with fascist organizations to destroy any organized resistance and will set up fascist rule in the United States.
The right to strike, protest, picket, and organize politically would be immediately threatened with direct attacks by police, fascist groups, and the use of the military. The effort by Trump to call out the military to crush Black Lives Matter protests would become the norm in suppressing dissent.
The Democrats are unable and unwilling to stop the slide toward fascism. The Biden Administration refused to press charges against any of the leading conspirators who led the attempt to overturn the 2020 election since he is more aligned with their politics than he is with the politics of an independent working class movement. Moreover, he has continued to push the financial costs of the pandemic onto working people forcing us to pay for the crisis that the capitalists have created.
Both capitalist parties are dedicated to the enrichment of the financial elite at all costs. Both parties have responded to the decline of US imperialism with an escalation of militarism and police repression and attacks on democratic rights and press freedoms, including the imprisonment and torture of journalist Julian Assange. The military budget is now $768 bn a year; certainly this money could have gone to pay for housing and for unemployment insurance so that workers would not need to go to work, keeping the working class safe by limiting the spread of the disease, which is now an out of control epidemic.
The impoverishment and de-industrialization of the US has allowed the capitalists to garner greater profits abroad, and has encouraged the war on labor at home. It has allowed for the collapse of the public health system, and the deaths of over 800,000 in the US and millions more around the world exposing the failure of American capitalism. Biden’s handling of the pandemic has delegitimized his administration in the eyes of millions of people and exposed again the bankruptcy of the Democratic party.
Only the mass organization of millions of working people fighting in defense of their democratic rights can stop the rise of fascism and defeat Trump’s would-be fascist dictatorship once and for all.
The widening class divide and workers’ growing anger at oppressive conditions has led to a growing strike wave of workers at Columbia University, Volvo, Kellogg, the UMWA Warrior Met, Kaiser IUOE engineers, and healthcare workers around the country.
The call for a general strike by the Vermont AFL-CIO before the election warning about the threat of an attempted coup and insurrection, was urgent then and is even more so today. Their call for a general strike was the correct answer to the attempted coup. The fascist threat has not abated especially since there have been no consequences.
The unions, workers, and workers’ organizations must work now to organize and form national and international united front movements against fascism.
We need an international working class movement to defend workers in every country to link up our struggles globally.
This means global days of actions to defend workers around the world fighting multinationals and global capitalists. It means opposing US militarism and supporting and organizing with workers fighting for their rights around the world.
As the capitalist crisis deepens, facist forces and their supporters use racism and militarism to whip up divisions in the working class. Workers and their organizations must fight the spread of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Workers must stop the attacks on immigrants, and oppose the war-mongering propaganda aimed at China and Russia by both Democrats and Republicans. We call on working people to organize widely, in factories, schools, and other places of work, to build organizations which can defend their rights and oppose another fascist coup. The organization of general strikes, housing occupations, rent strikes, defense guards, and the formation of mass working-class organizations are critical to stop a fascist coup.
Endorsed by: United Front Committee For A Labor Party, Class Conscious, Workers Revolutionary Party (Namibia), Freedom Socialist Party, Liaison Committee for the Fourth International and its national groups: Consistent Democrats (Great Britain) Liga Comunista (Brazil) Tendencia Militant Bolchevique (Argentine) Socialist Workers League (United States), Ian Donovan
Rally On January 6 at Federal Building To Warn About The Rise Of Fascism & Support The Fight For A United Front.
The United Front Committee For A Labor Party has initiated a call for actions on January 6 in San Francisco and around the country to warn of the threat of another fascist coup.
Rally at 12 PM PST at the Federal Building 90 7th St. San Francisco
https://www.facebook.com/masslaborpartyusa
We call on other organizations in the US and internationally that are concerned about the growth of fascism and who understand the critical need for a united front of workers, unions, and working class organizations to join us and organize similar actions in other cities around the US.
