The following is an open letter to the World Socialist Website (wsws.org) published by the UFCLP (United Front Committee for a Labor Party) on their website on February 12th 2025. We are republishing it as a contribution on how to build the fight against Trump regime’s attempt to consolidate fascism in the US. The wsws.org (published by the ICFI) are only a small group but their website is very widely read. This is what gives this polemic wider significance at at time the Communist movement in the US has no clear plan to defend the working class against Trump’s onslaught.

In its first weeks in office, the Trump regime has moved rapidly to begin mass deportations, assert the unfettered power of the executive, install loyalists throughout the federal bureaucracy, shut down public services, and dismantle labor rights. The working class has already begun to respond, with significant protests in cities across the country. However, the trade unions, under the leadership of the labor bureaucracies, which are tied to the Democratic Party, are doing little to nothing to oppose the grave danger to union members, immigrant and non-immigrant alike. Federal employee unions have attempted to use lawsuits to block the attacks on federal workers led by Elon Musk, but have made no attempt to mobilize their members. Even as Trump works to shut down the NLRB and OSHA and is preparing further attacks on labor rights (Project 2025 calls on Congress to consider whether public sector unions should be outlawed altogether), the union bureaucrats have avoided even beginning a discussion on the clear and present danger to the labor movement, much less taken action.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has sycophantically sought to curry favor with Trump, while social democratic UAW President Shawn Fain, Trump’s erstwhile most vocal opponent in the labor bureaucracy, says he’s “ready to work with Trump” on trade. The labor bureaucracy, as usual, is no opponent of social chauvinism and trade war. For the labor bureaucrats, organizing mass meetings to discuss Project 2025, beginning a campaign of political education, preparing for strike action—in short, the steps needed to begin building a united front against deportations and attacks on labor—is out of the question. Instead, they prefer to keep their heads down, appeal to the Democrats and the courts for support and keep their own memberships on the back burner.

Trump has also shut down the AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center,” which operates in 62 countries with a budget of over $35 million, funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy. Since its formation, the AFL-CIO leadership has collaborated with US imperialist interventions throughout the world in dozens of countries, including Chile, Ukraine, Guatemala, Argentina, Mexico, and Venezuela. It also supports and collaborates with the Zionist trade union Histadrut, which supports the genocide of the Palestinians. This still remains a secret to US workers. The US trade union bureaucracy, after spending decades supporting privatization and helping to prop up company unions around the world, now finds itself the target of a similar attack on public sector workers and unions. The AFL-CIO leadership has so-far remained totally silent about the closure of the Solidarity Center.

As for the various self-described “socialist” groups and sects in the US, most have made little attempt to analyze the class character and historical nature of Trumpism, much less to organize a mass working class opposition. The DSA and PSL have opportunistically embedded themselves into the lower layers of the union bureaucracy; these groups have no interest in forming rank and file organizations in the unions as independent centers of working class power. Tailing the bureaucracy, they refuse to take any steps toward mobilizing union members and building a united front. Moreover, they do not even pretend to provide a Marxist analysis of Trump. They assume that Trump is no more than another right-wing politician and that bourgeois democracy is basically stable. By operating as though nothing has fundamentally changed, they disarm workers in the face of Trump’s drive toward dictatorship.

Among the few groups that has taken the danger seriously—at least in their public statements—is the Socialist Equality Party, which publishes the World Socialist Website (WSWS). They have extensively documented the rise not only of Trumpism but of the far-right globally and have analyzed how it has arisen from the crisis of world capitalism. They repeatedly warned of the danger of a coup attempt months before the January 6 Insurrection, and continue to provide coverage of the ongoing process of constitutional breakdown. However, as we will see, their political methods are completely incapable of confronting the danger.

The WSWS Correctly Warns of the Danger of Dictatorship

The WSWS Editorial Board outlined its view of the world situation in a January 3rd statement, “Socialism against oligarchy, fascism and war.” We agree with this statement on a number of points:

The character of the new [US] government marks a violent realignment of the state to correspond with the nature of capitalist society itself. The world’s richest individuals and corporations control resources on an unfathomable scale… Globally, the top 1 percent now possesses more wealth than the bottom 99 percent.

The concentration of wealth and power in a few hands has reached proportions unprecedented since the Gilded Age of the last century. According to the Financial Post, the so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Nvidia, and Tesla) comprise about one third of the S&P 500 index, and have driven over half of its gains over the last two years, despite falling profit margins. Tech billionaires such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Larry Ellison, who are at the center of this speculative binge, have openly embraced the far-right and are spearheading the attacks on democratic rights. Amid global economic stagnation and declining profit rates, the capitalists are driven to attack the social gains of the working class, and devour each other. All public services must be dismantled and privatized, trade unions destroyed, and workers’ wages reduced to poverty levels. This is the aim of Musk’s wrecking operation in the federal government.

The hegemonic position of the US in world politics—alongside the world economic order it established after the Second World War—is unraveling. Finance capital, concentrated in the Western countries, and especially the US, depends upon the extraction of surplus value from the working classes of the Third World. The giant transnational corporations, which are concentrated in the US and its allies, use their monopoly position and control of advanced technologies to extract a surplus from wage labor lower on the value chain. Through its control of the imperialist financial institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, and the US dollar’s status as the international reserve currency, the US is able to finance deficit spending—including massive military expenditures—by shifting debts onto the global economy, while underdeveloped countries in the Third World are crushed under mountains of debt.

Every part of this machinery is falling apart. The Global South is rising up against the transnational corporations and the dollar’s position as world reserve currency is being undermined. At the same time, economic growth in the First World has stagnated, leading to wild financial speculation.

The WSWS rightly notes:

Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of speculative financial instruments like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, whose overall market value now stands at $3.26 trillion. A recent report in the Financial Times revealed that US credit card defaults have surged to their highest levels since 2010. Defaults on leveraged loans have also reached their highest rate in four years, signaling the growth of financial instability. Meanwhile, the national debt of the United States exceeds $36 trillion… Official unemployment rose to 7.1 million in November 2024, with another 4.5 million underemployed and 5.5 million having left the workforce.

A massive financial bubble has formed, including massive speculation in artificial intelligence, which the capitalists look to as a panacea that will help them raise productivity by cutting millions of jobs. But to the degree that the capitalists are successful in automating a significant portion of the economy, the consequence will only be to drive down the rate of profit further. As Norbert Wiener, the “father of cybernetics,” wrote in 1954:

Let us remember that the automatic machine… is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke.

AI, far from saving capitalism, can only destabilize it further. The stage has been set for a global financial panic and economic collapse greater than that of 2008, or even 1929, and the collapse of the US dollar as reserve currency.

The US, with its hollowed out industrial base, is unable to compete with China, and this has come to a head in the last decade, as China has moved up the value chain into strategic technologies such as advanced energy, robotics, electric vehicles, AI, etc. The US ruling class has no choice but to respond with trade war and attacks on its own working class as a geopolitical imperative. Imperialism has entered a deep crisis. Under these conditions, sections of the US bourgeoise, including key billionaires at the top of the tech monopolies, have swung behind Trump.

As the WSWS editorial warns:

The incoming administration is planning, from “day one,” to implement a massive assault on democratic rights, focused initially on immigrants and refugees… The targeting of immigrant workers is the spearhead for a broader attack on the democratic and social rights of the entire working class, as the government prepares to enact further tax cuts for the rich and a coordinated assault on every social program won by workers through bitter struggle.

At the same time, the world is confronting an eruption of militarism, first in Ukraine, where the US (assisted by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center) backed a coup in 2014 and provoked a proxy war in order to break up Russia, one of its main geopolitical rivals. The genocide in Gaza, the murderous attacks on Lebanon, the victory of US and Israeli proxies in Syria, the settler pogrom attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, etc. are a prelude to a war against Iran, as the US and Israel attempt to “redraw the map” of the Middle East. Above all, the US is preparing for direct military confrontation with its main rival, China. The US has ringed China with alliances and military bases in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines. Its annual military budget has reached around $1 trillion, which includes a massive nuclear modernization program. Trump’s trade war measures and attempts at reindustrialization must be understood as preparation for global war.

Once again, WSWS argues correctly:

This global eruption of militarism is inseparable from the deepening crisis of American capitalism. Trump’s emphasis on “dollar dominance” underscores the extent to which military aggression will be wielded to sustain the global supremacy of US finance capital. Tariffs, trade wars and threats against both rivals and allies—exemplified by Trump’s provocative remarks about annexing Canada as “the 51st state”—reveal the desperation of American imperialism to maintain its hegemony in the face of long-term economic decline.

They go on to quote from Foreign Affairs, which:

…recently described the new era of “total war,” in which “combatants draw on vast resources, mobilize their societies, prioritize warfare over all other state activities, attack a broad variety of targets, and reshape their economies and those of other countries.”

That is, all of society is to be subordinated to war.

These conditions are spurring significant resentment among American workers, who have increasingly gone on strike as the only solution to their declining living conditions. This has included workers at Starbucks, Amazon, Boeing, and the Writers’ Guild who, in some cases, have actually won victories of various sizes. Strikes have not been limited to the US, but have taken place across the world, including in Argentina, where workers have organized against the fascistic Milei government:

Across Asia, significant strikes erupted in key industries, including transit workers and Samsung employees in South Korea, and railway workers in Sri Lanka. Strikes by copper miners in Chile and port workers in Brazil highlighted the determination of workers in Latin America to resist the commodification of their labor for global capital. In Mexico, workers in steel and auto fought back against low pay and conditions imposed by transnational corporations.

The world’s working class is no longer quiescent in the face of the attacks by both their capitalists and the demands of the IMF and World Bank. Namibian miners, with the loss of their jobs due to Chinese capitalists, have organized against the attacks, although that struggle has not yet been successful. In the US, the mass deportation efforts and other attacks on immigrants, and the coming attacks on organized labor, public services and education, and Social Security and Medicare, will bring on mass struggles and radicalize masses of people.

The worldwide lurch to the right is due, in part, to the capitalists’ fear of the working class, which will inevitably object to the murderous conditions at home. The capitalist class is preparing preemptively for massive police repression and the suppression of the already-weakened labor movement. Countries around the world, from Sri Lanka, to Argentina, to Britain and Germany are spearheading attacks on people who protest against the genocide in Gaza, and on workers who are fighting against austerity. In the US, the Democrats have laid the basis for far greater repression under Trump, who promises to deport and jail political activists, who he calls “the enemy within” and “communist scum.” Trump and his billionaire backers will also begin to more openly support fascist bands, which will be used to attack unions, immigrants, Black, Brown, LGBTQ, and Muslim workers and drive xenophobia to new levels.

The Trump regime is closely following the Project 2025 plan to consolidate power, including with a flurry of executive orders and an effort to expand the powers of the executive and diminish those of Congress. Trump is installing loyalists throughout the government, including in the military intelligence apparatus, and legal confrontations are being deliberately provoked in order to use the reactionary Supreme Court to expand the power of the presidency further.

The time is rapidly approaching when this systematic effort to undermine the institutions of bourgeois democracy from within will spill over into an open conflict with the existing bourgeois democratic order. Trump’s agenda of social counterrevolution requires nothing less. As soon as he confronts mass opposition, he will seize on the crisis to declare martial law. It also cannot be ruled out that he will not wait for a crisis, but will create one of his own (i.e. a Reichstag Fire incident).

The SEP’s Rejection of United Front Methods

While the SEP argues that, “The only viable response to the crisis confronting mankind is the revolutionary mobilization of the working class,” in reality, they maintain an almost entirely online existence aimed at pulling workers into their own organization. The WSWS is not mobilizing workers in their workplaces, whether union or non-union, and hence is incapable of mounting an effective opposition to the mounting danger. Their idea that authority and credibility in the working class comes from proclamations in their paper rather than actually leading and winning class battles is total idealism.

The fight in the trade unions is key. The union bureaucracies are bound to the Democratic Party and unwilling to take basic steps to mobilize their members, but the pressure from the rank and file for action will mount with the scale of Trump’s attacks. The labor bureaucrats are sellouts, but the unions have real power in every major industry and, if mobilized, could shut the economy down and knock the fascists back on their heels.

Rather than taking on this fight, the SEP continues to denounce the unions as “anti-working class” organizations and counterposes them to its own aspirational “rank-and-file committees,” which it says must be built entirely independently of the unions. They justify this position by arguing that labor unions have degenerated so completely that they serve only to subordinate the working class to the capitalist state. The globalization of capitalist production has undermined the national basis on which the trade unions formerly waged their struggles, and enormously weakened their ability to force concessions from finance capital. The SEP concludes that only new, revolutionary committees (essentially Soviets) can break the working class from the domination of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy.

But then the question must be asked: how can the masses of unorganized workers and those in the reformist trade unions be brought over to the Soviets? Historically, this has always occurred in stages, through a process of “successive approximations,” as the working class was radicalized by events and learned the need for a revolutionary program. Secondly, how can the working class defend itself now, while the rank and file committees command no influence? Millions of workers are in unions, which are, at present, the only organized defense against the capitalists. In the face of the immense danger posed by the far-right, the SEP advises the workers to throw down the weapon they already have in their hands and go looking for another one.

New democratic class-struggle unions may also become organized alongside the present trade unions if these pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist unions fail to defend their members, but that does not mean we should abandon the struggle in the existing unions, including in the AFL-CIO unions. The greatest upsurge in the history of the labor movement in the United States, that of the CIO, began as a rebellion within the AFL. The Trotskyists in the UAW and the Teamsters in the 1930s and 40s fought the AFL bureaucracy within the existing labor movement, particularly and most successfully in the Teamsters Union, building militant caucuses and locals, and winning leadership of thousands of workers through their determined efforts to win the great union struggles of that period.

We need to organize toward a general strike against Trump’s attacks on democratic rights. General strikes are an historic tool of the working class in defending itself against repression and the crimes of capitalism and imperialism. A mass general strike against the threat of a mass deportation by the Trump regime would be a powerful tool in confronting not just the brutal attacks on immigrants but Trump’s whole fascistic agenda. WSWS does not even mention a general strike in its call to action. It has abandoned this tactic because it has abandoned the fight in the unions. It completely ignores the lessons of the three great strikes of 1934: the Minneapolis general strike led by the Teamsters, the San Francisco general strike, and the Toledo Auto-Lite strike. These successful mass strikes showed that workers can organize and fight back successfully against the bureaucrats and the capitalists. As Art Preis writes, these strikes taught the workers that:

…the struggle of one group of workers is the battle of all workers, in which all labor must cooperate if victory is to be assured.

The WSWS has announced a so-called “International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees” (IWA-RFC), a grand name for a Potemkin alliance. According to the WSWS, “Central to the work of the ICFI and its sections in 2025 is the building of the IWA-RFC as the coordinating nerve center for global opposition to the dictates of the capitalist oligarchy.” And what are the politics of this central nerve center? Has this organization ever held a public meeting, actions, or rally of workers anywhere in the United States since its formation? A nerve center will never grow if it cannot have any organized actions.

Cells of militant rank-and-file workers must be built inside the unions and developed into powerful centers of organizing that can oppose the labor bureaucracies. The SEP refuses to participate in building rank and file cells and caucuses that are not subordinated to itself. They demand that workers accept their program and their political authority, all or nothing, as a prerequisite for participating in their rank-and-file committees. To insist on setting up pure revolutionary committees of this type, sectioned off from the existing mass working class organizations, is to renounce the fight against the trade union bureaucracy.

The WSWS says it defends the legacy of Trotsky, but Trotsky left little doubt what he would have thought of a group like the “IWA-RFC”:

 Sectarian attempts to build or preserve small “revolutionary” unions, as a second edition of the party, signify in actuality the renouncing of the struggle for leadership of the working class. It is necessary to establish this firm rule: self-isolation of the capitulationist variety from mass trade unions, which is tantamount to a betrayal of the revolution, is incompatible with membership in the Fourth International.

The SEP’s politics are hopelessly contradictory. On the one hand, the SEP labels the unions “anti-working class” organizations and claims that “the trade unions cannot be reformed.” They tell workers to abandon the unions, even calling for workers to vote “no” in unionization campaigns. Yet on the other hand, they utilized a UAW presidential election to spread revolutionary slogans and recruit to their group. They pitched this campaign as an opposition to the bureaucratic apparatus, but if they were consistent, their campaign slogan would have read: “Elect our presidential candidate in order to… dissolve the union!” If the SEP had bothered to build up rank and file cells and caucuses, there could have been a solid basis for their campaign, but instead it was run as a one-off that was not taken seriously by most of the rank and file. Recently, without acknowledging a change in their position, they have subtly shifted their language: “Only to the extent that power is wrested from the hands of the bureaucracy and transferred to workers on the shop floor can the unions be revived as instruments of the class struggle.” So which is it? Can the unions be revived as instruments of class struggle or can’t they?

The SEP also ignores the advice Trotsky gave during the rise of fascism in Germany, where he called for a united front between the social democrats and the communists. He did not instruct the German proletariat to summon Soviets out of mid-air as the solution to the fascist danger, but insisted that communists must fight for the unity of the working class. The SEP rejects united front tactics across the board as an attempt to subordinate the working class to the labor bureaucracy and capitalist parties. But the united front was aimed precisely at tearing the masses of workers in the social democratic parties and reformist trade unions away from these organizations. This is only possible by demonstrating a resolutely revolutionary program in practice. The working class organizations must be mobilized through the pressure of the rank and file. To the extent that the labor bureaucracy refuses to mobilize, or betrays the struggle, the revolutionary forces point to their treachery, and win over the masses of workers step by step.

The united front does not entail subordination to the labor bureaucracy or capitalist parties, or that revolutionaries give up their program or right to criticism. The “Theses On The United Front,” adopted by the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in 1922, state this very clearly:

Whilst supporting the slogan of maximum unity of all workers’ organisations in every practical action against the capitalist front, communists cannot in any circumstances refrain from putting forward their views, which are the only consistent expression of the interests of the working class as a whole.

A united front can and must bring workers together to fight for specific class demands. Militants in the trade unions need to call for joint meetings of unions and community organizations across the country, and unite working class organizations against attacks on labor and immigrants. This can win a wide audience, especially in the numerous unions that have large immigrant memberships. The idea that one organization, whether it is IWA-RFC or any other exclusive group, can confront this existential crisis for the working class and humanity has nothing to do with the reality of the situation and the tasks ahead. A mass working class united front will show people that we can successfully organize, and will raise the political consciousness of millions of workers.

In 1938, Trotsky called for building a labor party in the US to fight against the politics of both bourgeois parties and so that workers could make a clear statement against the lies of the capitalist politicians. He recognized that the emerging struggles of the CIO would take on an increasingly political form, and that the working class needed a political alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. At a conference of ten UAW locals in 1939, Trotskyists in the UAW called for a labor party. While they did not give up their own organization or revolutionary program, they attempted to appeal to the wider membership to build a political party that would speak for the workers.

Now, more than ever, as masses of workers have come to despise the Democratic Party, we have an opportunity to fight for an independent party of the workers. The SEP declares “We are that party!” and imply that a labor party would only bind the workers to the capitalists. In other words, there is no possibility for a struggle in the labor unions or a labor party, because the outcome (reformism) is a foregone conclusion. Compare this to Trotsky’s approach:

…the unification of the unions on a political plan is a progressive step. There is a danger that it will fall into the the hands of our enemies. I therefore propose two measures: 1) That we have only workers and farmers as our representatives; that we do not depend on so-called parliamentary friends; 2) That our representatives follow out our program…

I will not say that the labor party is a revolutionary party, but that we will do everything to make it possible. At every meeting I will say: I am a representative of the SWP. I consider it the only revolutionary party. But I am not a sectarian. You are trying now to create a big workers’ party. I will help you but I propose that you consider a program for this party. I make such and such propositions. I begin with this. Under these conditions it would be a big step forward…

Revolutionaries in the trade unions today should make similar demands: break all ties with the false “friends of the workers” in the Democratic Party; only workers should represent us. Rank and file cells and caucuses should say publicly that the unions should come together into a united coalition, call mass meetings, and organize a common plan of action to defend immigrants and unions. People do not need to agree on an entire program in order to call for the defense of immigrants and confront the all-out assault on workers, which are class issues and the basis of a united front in action. The labor bureaucrats will, of course, continue to stall, avoid calling mass meetings, and rely on the courts and the Democratic Party, but as their members press for more action, they will have no choice but to try to get out in front of the mass movement. If they call protest actions, or agree to enter into a coalition with other unions, we should support these steps, but argue that such a coalition be based on mass meetings open to the membership, not backroom dealing. These developments could be used to fight for a complete break from the Democrats, open meetings, mobilizing the members and creating defense committees, preparing for strike action, and a program of concrete transitional demands.

The SEP cries that any critique of its politics on the basis of the lessons of the historical communist movement is “ripping history out of context.” Thus, to the SEP, the trade unions are outmoded as an arena of the class struggle; the united front is not relevant, because there are no mass social democratic or communist parties; the labor party is an anachronism and all workers must enter the revolutionary party directly; and the mass strike can be discussed later, since what is needed now is recruitment to the SEP. It is one thing to revise our methods and program to suit the changing world situation, but to throw away all the lessons and methods of historical communism is to abandon Marxism.

A united front is not a substitute for a revolutionary program, nor should it be counterposed to one, as the SEP does. At the same time that we fight for the greatest possible unity of the working class, we must also develop our own revolutionary organization and fight for its program. At stake is not just a tactic, but the need to fight for the leadership of the revolutionary party by engaging in the struggles of the whole class.

The working class is woefully unorganized and unprepared for the capitalist-fascist offensive. The present disorganization of the working class does not decrease the relevance of the united front but rather increases it, as a life and death question for the labor movement. Without a mass labor party, large numbers of workers could easily be diverted behind racist and reactionary scapegoating. The treacherous bureaucrats that stand at the head of the trade unions must be swept away and replaced with a revolutionary leadership ready to fight for our class. Great struggles lay ahead, and with them, the chance to rebuild mass working class organizations guided by a revolutionary program and methods that will lead the masses to victory.

United Front Committee for a Labor Party.org

The United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP) seeks to unite workers, unions and working class organizations in building united fronts against fascism, mass deportations and other class issues. We also support a united front to break the unions from the Democrats and build a mass democratic working class party. We previously challenged David North and the Socialist Equality Party to defend their abstentionist political practice and abandonment of the Transitional Program, and North stated that he was willing to do so. We again invite them to publicly debate this question.