Tag: Leon Trotsky

Why Biden supports the unionization of the Amazon workforce

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Why Biden supports the unionization of the Amazon workforce

First, the ruling class confronts an unprecedented crisis, which has been enormously intensified by the pandemic. As a result of the refusal of the ruling class to take the necessary measures to save lives, nearly 530,000 people have died from COVID-19 over the past year. The impact of mass death, combined with the disastrous social and economic situation, is having a profoundly radicalizing impact on the consciousness of workers and youth.

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Second, the international situation is no less concerning to the ruling class, which is determined to maintain its global hegemonic position through the use of military force. The Biden administration is carrying out an increasingly confrontational policy toward Russia and, in particular, China. The logic of this policy leads to war. In the event of a major “great power conflict,” the pro-capitalist unions will be critical in promoting national chauvinism and suppressing the class struggle. War abroad requires a disciplined “labor movement” at home.

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The strategy Biden is pursuing is known as corporatism—that is, the integration of the government with the corporations and the unions on the basis of a defense of the capitalist system. In 1938, Trotsky drew attention to this tendency when he wrote, in the founding document of the Fourth International, “In periods of acute class struggle, the leading bodies of the trade unions aim to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless… In time of war or revolution, when the bourgeoisie is plunged into exceptional difficulties, trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers.”

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At its most fundamental level, the promotion of the unions by the ruling class is aimed at quarantining workers from socialism. The overriding fear of the ruling class is that the objective radicalization of the working class, intensified by the pandemic, will acquire a socialist leadership and political program. It is this fear that is behind Biden’s extraordinary intervention at Amazon.

The Semantics of “Socialism” in a Changing World

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Semantics of “Socialism” in a Changing World

Around the world, the terms “Socialism” and “Communism” suddenly took on new meanings, once again. Socialism referred to patriotic, anti-Soviet political organizations that sought to get elected, and gradually transition toward a more egalitarian society, one step at a time. Communism referred to the parties aligned with the Soviet Union that adopted Marxism-Leninism as their ideology and ultimately sought to seize power in a revolutionary situation. However, the Communist Parties were also always critical of “ultra-leftism” and calls for violence, and the Soviet Union urged them to not be parties of extremism, isolated from the masses of people.