Above photo: Freedom Socialist Party.
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Jeremy Brecher’s newest report, co-published by the Labor Network for Sustainability and ZNetwork.org, argues that the US is facing an increased authoritarian threat under Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, characterized by executive overreach, suppression of dissent, and the use of state and vigilante violence. In response, Brecher asserts that the country must look beyond conventional means and consider social strikes–large-scale, nonviolent withdrawal of cooperation, which has brought down authoritarian regimes around the world. He defines social strikes as mass actions that make society ungovernable by disrupting not just workplaces, but all political and social structures that enable tyranny. By citing international and US examples, the report outlines how such strikes have been organized, what tactics they use, and how they might serve as a last line of defense if democratic institutions are further eroded. While success is never guaranteed, Brecher emphasizes that understanding these methods is essential to resisting a potential MAGA dictatorship.
Foreword: Mass Non-Cooperation
Jeremy Brecher’s report on social strikes is a timely contribution to the urgent conversations we must be having in the movement regarding the probability that, to defeat MAGA authoritarianism, we will need these kinds of mass actions that exert power through withdrawing cooperation and creating major disruptions. Brecher draws from international experience and US history, and helpfully discusses laying groundwork, goals, tactics, organization, timelines, and endgames of such mass actions.
There is no doubt that, as MAGA’s authoritarianism and military invasions accelerate, we need a strategy to push back. We face a context in which Trump’s team will continue to threaten to undermine our elections, warmonger, cause a recession, and attempt to federalize the national guard and enact martial law. There is a high probability that one, if not all, of these things will happen. We must combine continued organizing at the electoral and judicial levels with strikes, boycotts, sick outs, and mass non-violent direct action and non-cooperation. This mass non-cooperation should target MAGA-aligned entities, build to majority and super-majority participation, fight for an affordability agenda that helps the many not the few and, in the South African tradition, make society “ungovernable.”
Labor must be key to this. We have been part of transforming our locals, in which we have made strikes, structured super-majority organizing, bargaining for the common good, coalitions with community, synthesis with electoral work, and broader state-wide and national coordination the norm. We need to support more locals in developing these habits to push our county federations of labor and state/national unions in the same direction.
At the same time, given conditions, it is urgent that all of our unions, with community allies, take leaps, throwing ourselves into broad networks like May Day Strong. It is networks like these that give us a container within which to learn about and drive towards the kinds of social strikes that Brecher discusses and we may need, drawing upon lessons from US history, South Africa, the Philippines, South America, and more. We must experiment with fusing the best of structure-based organizing with the best of momentum-based strategy, remaining society-facing and super-majority-focused, organizing with union and non-union workers and community organizations, and with as much coordination of contract and political demands as possible. The broad networks we build must have the capacity for strategic deliberation and the ability to sustain through repressive counter-attacks, again raising the importance of having unions as part of its core. This core must drive a politics that can meet the moment in fighting for regime change, but that is not satisfied with simply deposing an autocrat, also bringing concrete demands, in the South Korean tradition of “Beyond Yoon,” to shape a non-neoliberal future.
Donald Trump and his accomplices are conducting an attack not only on democracy but on society. This is manifested in their executive usurpation, aka creeping coup, which is seizing all the powers of the government and concentrating them in the personal will of the President. It involves the elimination of all bases of opposition, not only in the agencies of government but in civil society, including universities, trade unions, and media. It is revealed in storm trooper violence, with unidentified armed masked men invading communities and workplaces and seizing people with no legal justification. And it is seen in government actions that punish opponents and provide billions of dollars of benefits to supporters.
A movement-based opposition to the MAGA assault on society is growing. It is developing in the electoral system, as illustrated by the rise of Zohran Mamdani. It is developing in the streets, for example the massive nonviolent direct action to protect immigrant neighborhoods from ICE attacks and the seven million people who turned out for No Kings Day. This opposition, if it continues to grow, may undermine MAGA power and ultimately remove Trump and his associates from office.
But what about a worst-case scenario where neither electoral nor non-electoral opposition forestalls a MAGA tyranny? Where democratic procedures and the right to vote have been so denied that it is impossible to defeat MAGA at the polls? Where both official and vigilante violence are unrestrained by law? Where a substantial part of the population has been bamboozled by lies and distraction? Where all dissent has been effectively branded as treason? Where those who don’t go along with the program are subject to harassment, beating, jailing, and death? And where much of the population has been driven by fear into silence and acquiescence? How is it possible to resist the MAGA juggernaut under such conditions?
Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and many other places have been brought down by “people power” — large-scale nonviolent direct action that made society ungovernable and led to regime change. While the U.S. has a tradition of social and labor movements using mass action and local general strikes, it does not have a tradition of using people power for the defense of democracy. However, in other countries where democratic institutions have been so weakened or eliminated that they are unable to halt tyranny, such methods have emerged and been used effectively. They go by such names as nonviolent uprisings, people power, general strikes, political strikes, and, as I will call them here, social strikes. Social strike is a broad term that encompasses a wide range of activities that use the withdrawal of cooperation and mass disruption to affect governments and social structures. In many countries, where democratic institutions have been so weakened or eliminated that they are unable to disempower tyranny, such methods have been used effectively.
I use the term “social strikes” to describe mass actions that exercise power by withdrawing cooperation from and disrupting the operation of society. The goal of a social strike is to affect not just the immediate employer, but a political regime or social structure. Such forms of mass direct action provide a possible alternative when institutional means of action prove ineffective. In all their varied forms they are based on Gandhi’s fundamental perception that “even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.” Social strikes represent the withdrawal of cooperation and acquiescence by a whole society, manifested for example in general strikes and mass popular “people power” uprisings.
This Report draws on the history of social strikes in the US and around the world to illuminate the problems and possibilities of using social strikes as a way to overcome the emerging MAGA tyranny. It is based on the premise that the power of the powerful ultimately depends on the acquiescence and cooperation of those they rule. Social strikes have been one way that people have developed the power to withdraw that acquiescence and cooperation.
A social strike to make the US a democracy will depend on the courage, wisdom, and vision of millions of people. The purpose of this report is to provide knowledge of how people have used social strikes in the past and inspiration from that knowledge about self-liberation from tyranny in the future.
Chapter 1, “How People Power Has Defeated Authoritarian Regimes Around the World,” presents examples of social strikes that have defeated dictators or coups in other countries. Chapter 2, “Social Strikes in American History,” recounts the story of mass strikes, social strikes, and political strikes in the US. Chapter 3, “Social Strikes vs. MAGA Tyranny,” describes how social strikes might serve as a means for removing Trump from office and establishing government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Chapter 4, “Laying the Groundwork for Social Strikes,” tells what we can start doing right now to make social strikes against authoritarian rule more likely and more likely to succeed. Chapter 5, “Timelines,” describes how social strikes are likely to unfold. Chapter 6, “Organization,” describes various ways that social strikes have been organized. Chapter 7, “Goals,” explores the process by which social strikes develop common objectives. Chapter 8, “Tactics,” reviews the ways social strikes select and use their means of action. Chapter 9, “Endgames,” explores what is necessary to bring a social strike to a successful conclusion.
There are no guarantees about either the occurrence or the success of future social strikes. But they are more likely to happen – and to succeed– if they are informed by reflection on the history of social strikes in the past.
