How to Fight the Boss and Authoritarianism
In preparing to strike, United Teachers Los Angeles learned how to build broad backing for common-good goals and prepare for nonviolent action to achieve them — lessons that can be used in the fight against rising authoritarianism.
LAUSD teachers join school aides in their fight for better wages at LA State Historic Park in Downtown Los Angeles during the SEIU/UTLA strike on Thursday, March 23, 2023. (Sarah Reingewirtz / MediaNews Group / Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
We’re in a critical moment for the labor movement to build resistance against authoritarianism. For the medium term, three foundations can guide our work: building as broad a front as possible against authoritarianism; organizing a leading sector within that front that advances a proactive vision for multiracial democracy while explicitly opposing neoliberalism; and engaging millions with whom we do not usually interact.
The second foundation deserves more detail. Between the 1970s and the 2008 economic crash, the political-economic structure was dominated by a bipartisan consensus around neoliberalism, driven by an ideology supporting free markets, deregulation, privatization, individualism, competition, and austerity. Both major US political parties attacked welfare, expanded prisons, militarized the border, attacked union jobs, and reinforced racism and xenophobia. Clearly right-wing authoritarianism today is uniquely chilling in its overtly fascist features. But it exploits the damage done by these neoliberal policies that created a constituency for right-wing populism. We will not defeat authoritarianism without defeating neoliberalism.
As labor builds the foundations for its antiauthoritarian work, six tactical strands deserve attention:
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