One of the most ambitious and combative labor struggles in decades, the UAW strike reflects the growing power of the U.S. working class in a period of increasing political crisis.

The autoworkers’ strike is the most important of its kind in decades. Striking at all of the Big Three is historic in and of itself, but it goes deeper than that. The strike is defined by how it has put the working class center stage, with significant implications for the bipartisan regime and class struggle in the coming period. To fully understand this strike, we must understand its political context.

A Crisis of the American Regime

As we have discussed elsewhere, the United States faces an “organic crisis,” one that is tied to the economic crash of 2008. For Gramsci, an organic crisis may arise out of the failure of a significant political initiative of the ruling class. The 2008 crisis signified a greater crisis of neoliberalism itself. To get out of the Great Recession, the Obama administration bailed out large corporations and banks; meanwhile, working-class people lost their homes and were forced to pay for the crisis. The Obama administration attacked unions, privatized public entities, and gave handouts to big corporations. While the economy did not tumble into a depression, the foundations were set for a crisis of hegemony, as well as for further economic crises.

Different sectors of the population responded to the crisis in different ways and with different rhythms. The birther movement, Occupy Wall Street, and the Tea Party were part of the first responses to that crisis. In 2014, in response to the brutal murder of Michael Brown, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Ferguson, Missouri, to demand justice for Brown. The massive anger expressed in the uprising in Ferguson made clear that the politics of the Obama administration did not meet their aspirations.

The primaries for the 2016 presidential election opened an intense period in U.S. politics. Trump bulldozed through the GOP primaries, destroying his opponents and overcoming the low expectations of his campaign. Trump’s popularity was and still is an expression of the crisis that the system of neoliberalism faces; he speaks directly to the anger produced by the worsened living conditions of the middle and working classes, blaming immigrants as well as the political establishment.

At the same time, Bernie Sanders sparked enthusiasm by denouncing the “billionaire class” and defending Medicare Care for All, in addition to promising to take steps to end student debt and make public universities free. The enthusiasm surrounding his campaign was so intense and widespread, that when it was coupled with frustration with “politics as usual” embodied in neoliberal enthusiast Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party had to move its great machinery to guarantee Clinton’s victory in the primaries. Clinton lost to Trump by a slim margin in Rust Belt states. Michigan, the heart of this UAW strike, was among them. Though it seemed surreal just a couple of years before the election, Trump became president. Trump upended the GOP by appealing directly to those who were frustrated with several decades of neoliberalism and the deindustrialization that occurred as a result. Trumpism played into the prejudices of sectors of the working class, the middle class, and the bourgeoisie in order to blame oppressed sectors for the crisis of neoliberalism, defending finance capital and forming a close relationship with right-wing militias. All these processes revealed, in one way or another, the deep challenges that U.S. imperialism and the bipartisan regime have faced since the 2008 crash.

As the United States struggled to maintain its hegemony in the world order, new challengers emerged. The crisis of neoliberalism catapulted China to the position of being the main threat to U.S. imperialism. China had extraordinary growth for decades before 2008, but the crash showed a snapshot of an unstable West: important banks went under in the heart of capitalism as Chinese GDP continued to grow at 7-8 percent each year. China was not severely hit by the 2008 crash, which allowed it to develop more ambitious politics toward African and Latin American countries and to establish competitive advantages in important industries, such as in manufacturing microchips and lithium batteries—a vital component of electric vehicles.

In the years since the 2008 crash, a bipartisan consensus has developed on the question of strategic competition with China and a more hawkish approach to foreign policy toward it. The Biden administration, however, is at the forefront of the green transition and reindustrialization in the United States as part of this strategic competition with China. Trump, on the other hand, is centering his campaign on expanding fossil fuels, blaming green energy for the poor working conditions of Big Three workers.

This strike takes place in a challenging industrial transition to so-called green energy, which poses a crossroads for the working class: it can adapt to the practices of the likes of Elon Musk, who justifies brutal working conditions as a challenge to China; it can also fight for a seat at the table in this transition, negotiating better terms with a permanent defensive strategy. But there’s also a third possible way: the working class can take the means of production in its own hands and orchestrate a transition to green energy that truly benefits the planet, the working class, and all of the exploited and oppressed.

January 6 revealed the weakness of the bipartisan regime. After the invasion of the Capitol, 147 Republican congresspeople did not certify Biden as president. A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released six days after the election revealed that about half of Republican voters believed that Biden had stolen the election. At the same time, the response of the bipartisan regime, from AOC to Mike Pence, was to close ranks in a “defense of democracy.” The Democratic Party and the bipartisan regime were able to stabilize national politics for a few months, but at the cost of deepening further crises in the medium term. The “Bonapartization” of the judiciary is a strong example. The judiciary, always an institution of the bourgeoisie, now has a much more explicitly partisan role, siding either with the Democrats or with the GOP. It even tests the waters of rising above either party, carving a space for its own initiative in the bipartisan regime.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Deng Panyi

From:https://www.leftvoice.org/the-uaw-strike-is-the-most-important-strike-in-decades/（2023-10-2）