Dig In, Don’t Give Up!

It looks like a dystopian movie, only this is real life. Masked ICE gunmen are terrorizing our cities and a large layer of the working class. The federal government is shut down, and thousands of workers, disproportionately black, are to lose their jobs altogether while social services are cut. Racist purges launched in the name of ending DEI programs are the spear tip of government union-busting, beginning with the mass firing of air traffic workers earlier this year. Following Trump’s lead, Boeing is moving to permanently replace more than 3,000 striking Machinists in the St. Louis area. Coal miners in Appalachia are succumbing to black lung as safety standards are torn up and healthcare is stripped away. Adding to the chaos and uncertainty, threatened tariff wars are whipsawing an economy that is tumbling toward recession.

The shredding of democratic rights has put trade unionists who object to government policy in the crosshairs, like the UAW local president fired for participating in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. Journalists, vaccine scientists, government statisticians, museum directors and even comedians are ordered to tell their ruler what he wants to hear or else they’re out of a job. Now, the Feds are preparing a massive spying operation on social media to ferret out dissent. The purpose of all this is to intimidate the working class into total submission.

The picture is bleak, and only going to get bleaker. Trump has a mandate from his fellow billionaires to reshape society to better suit their strategic objective of continued world domination, and so he moves with the force of twelve titans. A significant section of the working class endorses Trumpism because the liberals in years past crushed workers economically while spitting “woke” insults in their faces from the halls of power. The liberal politicians taught workers to equate defense of the oppressed with financial ruin, and now Trump has many workers breathing fire against immigrants, black people and other oppressed minorities. These divisions are toxic to class solidarity—i.e., to the recognition of the shared interest in banding together to make the strongest possible defensive stand against the onslaught.

While many workers are in the MAGA camp, most of the rest are either fatigued or fearful—not wanting to step out into the open, where they could easily get sucked into the madness. This sense of helplessness is greatly compounded by the betrayals of the union leaders, who are rolling over before the Trump juggernaut. They tell their ranks: Just work hard, pray hard and wait for the midterm elections and courts to bring deliverance. They might as well have just advised workers to lay down on the tracks and wait for the train. The union tops are totally constrained by their support to the U.S. rulers’ mission of remaining the top power on the world stage. Thus, the dwindling number of strikes they are forced to lead remain isolated and highly vulnerable to defeat. They completely demoralize those workers whose impulse is to fight.

The hurricane winds are battering advanced workers too. These workers have been striking matches hoping to spark class struggle, but nothing is igniting. They stand between two pitfalls: demoralized paralysis and reckless acts that will only result in their victimization. For black and Latino vanguard fighters, the ever-present pressures of existence in this brutal racist society are also acutely felt and an additional drag on the maintenance of a political life. The realities of segregation and the state terrorizing their families can be overwhelming.

What are communist workers to do? In short, they must dig in for the long haul. The objective situation will not always be as bleak as it is right now. It is necessary to prepare the ground and position themselves to have maximum impact when workers are again ready to fight for their interests.

To begin, advanced workers cannot substitute for the class. Their numbers are far too small. But all hope is not lost—vanguard fighters in the class must reach into the toolbox of scientific socialism, which can provide an understanding of developments and the best means to defend the immediate interests of the working class. The reason for the power of these tools is simple: They are precision-forged to advance the working class from being flat on its back right now all the way to the point where it is running industry and society.

There is a way for workers to withstand the attacks raining down on them: collective defense of all the oppressed, even though nothing of the sort is happening right now. The moral appeals of liberalism are less than useless to turn this around. They certainly are not going to convince workers who were drawn to the right out of disgust with the liberals to break from Trump. And they are not going to guilt-trip into action workers who are biding their time out of a deep sense of self-preservation. No, the only thing that has a chance of setting either group of workers in motion is appeals to their self-interest. Understanding what is going on is the first step to begin chipping away at the problems before us.

This recognition gives union militants the potential to speak to what workers need and exert influence far beyond their actual numbers. But that hardly settles the question. This country’s proletariat is up against the planet’s most powerful and organized ruling class. The media, schools and churches at the capitalists’ command, and their loyal servants in the union bureaucracy, keep workers’ minds trapped in a spiderweb of confusion and passivity. The rightward shift in society and heightened racial and other polarizations exert their own strong pulls that are not so easy to counter. Advanced workers cannot and should not be looking to work miracles under these circumstances.

Patience is a must. One has to be there in order to painstakingly explain what needs to be done and why without expecting immediate results. Building authority takes time, consistency and persistence and requires stepping up when the occasion warrants. It is important to push back against workers who are retreating into individualism—cutting themselves off from other workers on the basis of race, immigration status, gender, craft and so on. Such dividing lines are barriers to solid collective defense and equally harmful to the worker in retreat and others at the workplace.

To start to transform the unions into bulwarks of defense, militants in their ranks must seek openings, however small, to unite workers across race, craft and partisan (Democrat vs. Republican) lines in collective action. Even a partial victory against the bosses is a blow against the dog-eat-dog mentality at the workplace and preparation for bigger struggles in the future. One such case is the campaign to reinstate two L.A. Metro bus drivers disciplined for speaking out about defense of immigrant riders. Small wins open workers’ minds to hear militants’ views on the two capitalist parties and the need to oppose all divisions in the working class.

To make such wins possible, it is necessary to maintain an awareness of what is happening on the job and in the industry as well as the country and world. No workplace is immune from larger trends outside its walls, but every workplace is unique. It is not possible to intervene effectively if one is not plugged in.

This country appears to be fast approaching a turning point. As things get even tougher and problems mount, giving up politics might seem like a way to get some breathing space. But problems, especially political problems, do not go away by cutting oneself off from active participation in politics. Instead, doing so only leaves an advanced worker without their strongest shield against the capitalist storm: the revolutionary vanguard. If anything, the all-sided dangers of this treacherous time are reason to draw closer with a like-minded cadre organization that has at its fingertips the hard-learned lessons of many decades of working-class struggle and is looking to apply those lessons to the present day, to the advantage of the class and all the oppressed.

As a result of collaboration with these cadres, union militants not only gain an anchor to stabilize themselves in tumultuous waters and a true compass for navigation, but also enrich the revolutionary organization itself through their intersection with social reality and efforts to shape it—creating a positive feedback loop to counter the negative. One example was the recent Spartacist League/U.S.-sponsored workers conference, which sought to orient advanced workers in this difficult period (see “Labor Under Trump: What Union Militants Should Do,” WV No. 1186, August 2025).

Holding on to the lifeline provided by an organization of vanguard fighters can make all the difference when it comes to keeping one’s head above water and being able to emerge stronger when the masses move again. Working together with others who direct all their efforts toward the same goal is the surest way to make sense of the chaos, identify opportunities to push back and sharpen one’s tools to avoid tunnel vision, national narrowness and collapse. The vanguard organization also has a wealth of knowledge of the classic Marxist works to direct and deepen the study of past struggles that is so vital for grounding right now. Communist workers, in combination with the nucleus of a revolutionary party, are active factors in holding the line for the working class. That sense of purpose is invaluable as America becomes dystopian.