To Labor Notes, And Beyond

The Labor Revival

In April, thousands of union activists and at least several hundred socialists gathered in Chicago for the 2024 Labor Notes conference. The conference, which was founded by socialists more than three decades ago as part of their socialist orientation to the labor movement, was a picture into the ongoing revival of the labor movement in the United States.

The conference was headlined by powerful stories from baristas organizing at Starbucks, warehouse workers organizing at Amazon, and auto workers in the middle of union drivers at Mercedes, Rivian, and Hyundai. Also featured were educators, graduate workers, and writers — fresh off of the strike lines which have been raised from Boston to Los Angeles — who relayed the transformational power of striking for their livelihoods and on their class consciousness.

Just as prominent at the conference was discussion of the fight for union reform. Newly-elected UAW president Shawn Fain shared the floor on the last day with members of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the UFCW reform movement unveiled a new lawsuit in a press conference, and several side events provided space for reformers to connect in their given sector or national union.

All together, these panels provided a tremendous insight into the state of the labor movement, and showed the growing power which working people are finding as they come together against both their bosses and the ineffective existing leadership of their unions.

Socialist Vibes – Reformist Program

At every turn the vibrancy of the socialist forces within the labor movement was on display. 

One could reasonably estimate that something like one quarter of the attendees were members of the DSA or other socialist organizations, and it is also likely that well over 50 percent of the attendees would generally consider themselves socialists. The DSA Labor event alone had more than 200 attendees. Booksellers in the lobby displayed books on Eugene Debs and Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, while Socialist Alternative, the Revolutionary Communists of America (formerly IMT), and the Spartacist League hawked newspapers on the sidewalk outside the hotel or to passersby inside the main entrance. I myself met with socialists from Ireland, Germany, Puerto Rico, and Brazil in a side-event organized by the 4th International. In the evening, the anarchists of the Black Rose Federation threw a party with an open bar, which many reported as “very vibey.” Reformists and revolutionaries, Tankies and Trotskyists, anarchists and accelerations alike featured prominently, speaking and chatting, drinking and dancing, and generally filling the Hyatt Regency with the aura of patches sewn on to denim jackets, tattoos of red flags and flaming Molotov cocktails, and the spontaneous singing of Solidarity Forever and the International.

Reformists and revolutionaries, Tankies and Trotskyists, anarchists and accelerations alike featured prominently, speaking and chatting, drinking and dancing, and generally filling the Hyatt Regency with the aura of patches sewn on to denim jackets, tattoos of red flags and flaming Molotov cocktails, and the spontaneous singing of Solidarity Forever and the International.

But in spite of the abundance of socialists there was a notable absence of socialism in the content of the formal conference program. There were no major events focused on organizing the socialist wing of the labor movement, or uniting the labor movement as a whole with the socialist electoral movement on the path to forming a new political party. Instead, the panels were almost all focused on non-socialist aspects of the labor movement, many of which could have been well at home at an AFL-CIO conference, and the main politician to address the audience was not a socialist, but not rather progressive Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson.

The one explicitly socialist event on the entire formal agenda, “Socialist At Work,” was the exception which proved the rule. In the basement of the Hyatt Regency, some 80 socialist trade unionists packed into a conference room to hear from the panelists with many years of experience in the trenches of the labor movement. The speakers discussed how socialists should work to be strong builders of their unions on bread and butter issues, thereby engaging broad layers of their coworkers in collective struggle against the boss. But when the speakers discussed transitioning this energy into larger political fights, these campaigns ultimately remained liberal, and did not rise to the level of organizing union support for a socialist political project.

The Limitations of Labor Notes

Building a progressive, fighting labor movement is a tremendous step forward. 

But the politics of the Labor Notes conference and the ‘rank-and-file’ reform movement which gathers around it ultimately remain progressive and reformist, not socialist and revolutionary. 

Within the unions, Labor Notes calls for an expansion of strikes, organizing drives, and community work, but does not point out the eventual need for revolutionary strikes and a direct struggle for power. In terms of union elections, their strategy calls for socialists to form an undifferentiated bloc (a popular front) with progressive, non-socialist elements of the labor movement, and even sometimes with ‘progressive bureaucratic’ elements. On the political field, these forces align themselves uncritically with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and avoid the need for a new political party. This can only lay the foundation for an inevitable betrayal of the working class elements within this alliance by unreliable class forces.

This limitation was marked by the notable absence of two stars from the previous conference, Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, and Amazon Workers United organizer Chris Smalls. 

At the previous conference, O’Brien had been held up as a great reformer and the hope of the rank and file movement, while Smalls was seen as the face of the upsurge in new, largely self-directed, organizing. But despite their celebrity status just two years ago, the two largely went unmentioned. Since then, O’Brien has provided working class cover to Trump and Vance at the 2024 Republican National Convention, while Smalls has been beset by a reform caucus which formed and sued his leadership team to run elections at Amazon Labor United.  A movement which lauded these figures only two years ago, before all but abandoning them today, shows an inability or unwillingness to correctly identify the contradictory tendencies within the labor movement.

We hope these leaders will live up to the mantles placed upon them better than O’Brien and Smalls. But they too will eventually show their limits.

Instead of O’Brien and Smalls, the celebrities of this year’s conference were UAW president Shawn Fain and the organizers of Starbucks Workers United. Fain is a genuine improvement over O’Brien. Fain comes directly from the reform movement, and has already shifted the UAW in a significantly new direction, using strikes to spread class consciousness, investing in new organizing, and boldly calling on unions to coordinate a 2028 general strike. SBWU also seems to be an improvement over AWU, with far more member participation and less egotistical leadership.

We hope these leaders will live up to the mantles placed upon them better than O’Brien and Smalls. But they too will eventually show their limits. Fain has already “proudly” endorsed Joe Biden, and then Harris, calling Harris “one of us” and a “fighter for the working class” at the Democratic National Convention this summer. Meanwhile, SBWU remains a campaign which is ultimately controlled by SEIU, widely seen as one of the most bureaucratic unions.

The movement for progressive, militant reform within the union movement will not evolve in a linear manner into a socialist labor movement. It will develop through internal contradiction. Some elements of the progressive wing, which at first mark great advance for the movement, eventually become a break on its advance. This does not mean it is not appropriate to work with them in a united front, but let us not be surprised when they betray us.

Ultimately, the ideas which are officially expressed at Labor Notes are reformist. They call for the reform of unions, the revival of trade union militancy, and the embrace of progressive stances on issues like racism, sexism, immigration, and climate change. But Labor Notes does not call for the formation of a new socialist party or for the overthrow of capitalism, nor point out the limitations of reformism. 

Socialism Is Needed

Either the reformist politics of Labor Notes are sufficient to deliver working people from the exploitation and oppression of capitalism, or they are insufficient and it is necessary for socialists to fight for a more revolutionary politics in the labor movement, inside of and outside of the Labor Notes orbit.

Marxists believe that reformism will not be enough to deliver lasting change for the working class of the United States. Rather, only a socialist transformation of society can deliver the change we need, and this transformation must be carried out by the working class. The labor movement cannot be confined to only fight for wages and working conditions, and to back progressive policies and politicians. The unions must be drawn into the socialist camp if socialism is to have any chance at victory.

It is not possible to accidentally build a socialist wing of the labor movement powerful enough to assume leadership of the movement as a whole. Instead, it is necessary to build the socialist wing consciously, and where possible, openly. To build a conscious movement collectively, it is necessary for socialists in the labor movement to discuss how they can develop their participation in union work into the larger project of building socialism. And they must openly share their aspirations with the progressive layer of the labor movement if they are to convince ever more union members to join its socialist wing.

Labor Notes does not offer space on its official agenda or in its publications to discuss these larger topics, such as the need to organize for a new labor party.

In addition to reformist politics, the Labor Notes conference offers little space in which to argue for a change in direction. Despite the values of Labor Notes — organizing, democratic participation, and collective action — there is actually very little space in Labor Notes for democratic decision making. The meeting is a conference, not a congress, so the leadership of the organization which is supposed to be helping facilitate the left wing of the labor movement is not actually elected by the members of this movement; Labor Notes is not a membership organization at all. So ironically, this conference focused on building up the rank and file is run in a surprising top-down way.

This lack of democratic decision making became quite evident on the street outside of the Hyatt Regency at the rally in support of Palestine. The police were attempting to clear a lane to allow hotel employees to exit in their vehicles, but the crowd was blocking the street, not by plan but just by lack of direction. Upon police instruction, all but one protestor moved out of the way. There was no collective discussion, or even instructions from the numerous marshals, whether to hold the street or allow the cars to pass. There was simply no organization, and so when the single protester did not move, they were arrested, and in the uproar which followed two other protestors were also taken into custody.

Inability to organize together shows the passive state of the crowd,  that they hadn’t really been using their democratic organizing skills during the weekend, simply passively attending panels.

Beyond Labor Notes

Socialist politics and an organized socialist wing, increasingly united with the advanced sections of the unions, is necessary to deliver lasting reforms for working people. 

Despite its limitations, the forces which gather under the Labor Notes banner are precisely the key forces necessary for socialists to organize the labor movement in support of a workers’ revolution. These forces include both the left-wing socialist worker-intellectuals who will serve as the leaders of this movement, as well as the ‘salt of the earth’ rank and file workers who will help to connect these socialists to the broader layers within the unions and in the wider working class. 

If armed with a clear political program for organizing for support of the socialist movement within the trade unions, these forces can make incredible progress over the next several years. 

However, the right ideas are not enough; we need organizations which help us spread these ideas in a comprehensive, consistent, and collective fashion. 

It would be ideal if Labor Notes could be reformed into an actual membership organization with an elected leadership, and also if the various rank and file caucuses would directly affiliate to Labor Notes, rather than maintaining a close but undefined relationship with the organization. If both of these changes were accomplished, the labor left would have the space it needed to collectively and democratically debate and decide the tasks facing it today. This would be far closer to the democratic structure of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), which I have previously argued is a strong model for DSA’s labor work.

Since the politics and organizational model of Labor Notes are not accidental but rather intentional, it is unlikely its leadership would allow for the democratization of Labor Notes in this way. The semi-socialist nature of Labor Notes actually complicates our tasks and confuses our forces. If Labor Notes was not socialist at all, we would participate in it productively, while openly advocating for socialism. But in this case, it is actually other socialists who advocate for the lowering of our wing of the movement from socialism to reformism.

To fight against this confusion, DSA Labor must hold a conference of its own where socialist politics are taken up explicitly, and the various socialists working within the labor movement are able to debate and decide on the tasks before our movement.