This is an opinion piece written by an individual member and was not voted on by membership. Opinion pieces from members do not reflect the opinions of other members and are not chapter approved statements.

The dynamism and explosiveness of the Suntrapp Workers United (SWU) strike has been hugely activating for LGBTQ, labor, and political activists all over Salt Lake. It is rare that you see new unions in this state and in the food service industry. It’s even rarer you see those unions strike! SWU have taken a stand against their employer for their dignity and their right to control their own working conditions. They know their power lies in their labor and solidarity, and are causing a crisis for their employer in order to meet their demands. As a result, the vast majority of Salt Lake is behind the SWU strike and have been turning out in huge numbers to support it. Every night the bar looks almost completely dead; the end is in sight.

A strike is meant to put a business in crisis—that is precisely what makes it powerful. But when the business in crisis is a beloved small business, there is always opposition that feels it’s not “right” to unionize a small business. Is it ‘right’ for the workers to cause a crisis for an employer that has this kind of romantic cultural value, something that is increasingly rare and fleeting in a society where multinational corporations have almost completely erased the market for small businesses? This problem can be initially confusing for people trying to understand socialist politics, as progressive liberalism tends to prop up minority owned small businesses as agents of broader societal improvements.

In the DSA, we seek to understand this through a class analysis. Socialism is a project to change the world we live in, and so we have to understand the world objectively. Who controls society? By what mechanisms do they control society? Who is oppressed? How can we liberate the oppressed, and turn society on its head? In class society, the infrastructure and resources which we depend on to survive are controlled by a tiny minority of the population, which we call the ruling class or the capitalist class. They dominate society not just by controlling our workplaces, but also the state, the government, the police, the military, education, mass media, and cultural institutions. We seek to put workers collectively in charge, not just of their workplaces, but all these sections of society. In order to achieve this monumental task, we must build a mass movement of workers who understand the necessity of creating worker organizations to leverage the only advantage we can have over the capitalist class; our superior numbers and our indispensable role in the economy. We recognize trade unions as one form of worker organization which engages workers in the struggle against capitalism, so Salt Lake DSA supports and engages in efforts to build unions in Salt Lake City.

This unconditional support inevitably will lead to this problem we’re discussing at Suntrapp; what do we do when workers are unionizing against a small business? Do we support them, or do we condemn their struggle because it is against a small business owner? The answer should be obvious in the context of the class analysis above and the broader movement. It would not serve the mass movement or the organized socialist movement to make our support of unions conditional on the specific economic position of the business owners, picking and choosing which workplaces are “big enough” or “too small” for democracy. If the small business owner chooses to resist the union, they are resisting a part of the movement we’re building together.

However, there is a distinction to be made. In the simple class analysis above, do small business owners have the same socio-economic position as monopoly capitalists like Bezos, Buffet, and Musk? Are they equal members of that class which control all other aspects of society? Of course not. Capitalism and individual capitalists are not the same, and different capitalists have contradicting interests. Small businesses are much more precarious and must appeal to romantic notions of community, handicraft, and personalized experiences to stay afloat, since they lack access to the economies of scale which make large industry objectively more efficient. The owners may even do the most labor in their business, forced to exploit themselves due to the immense market pressures to stay profitable.

However, they are also not working class either. They control the working conditions of others, hire employees to work for less than they create just like any other business, and the only thing they risk is the possibility of losing their investment and becoming a worker. They don’t do these things because they are a “good” or “bad” person, but because the market forces them to make decisions to stay competitive. As a result, they occupy a middle, precarious position between hegemonic finance capital and the working class. They can be genuine community leaders, with close connections to workers, and contribute something meaningful to the world along the economic framework that our society functions. But it is also true that small business owners are materially motivated to oppose union efforts at their workplaces, and therefore will often choose to do so.

Class position alone does not always predict the decisions of an individual. Workers themselves can also choose to be enemies or allies to the working class movement. Millions of working class Americans are unconvinced of a socialist future, and often actively sabotage union efforts in their workplaces by scabbing or counter-organizing, just like business owners. Socialism is not about “good guys” and “bad guys,” it’s about who chooses to build the movement, and winning the majority to that cause. Small business owners are trying to escape the same conditions all workers are, and we can appeal to them on those grounds. Rather than seeking individualized liberation from exploitation by becoming a capitalist, the only sustainable and just solution to class society is participating in a historic effort to overcome class distinctions completely. Socialism will liberate elements of the small owning classes as well, as they will no longer need to struggle so desperately to escape being a worker. With a mass movement perspective in mind, and the disproportionate strength of the small owning class in the US, we will even likely need to win a section of this layer to our cause on the strength of our ideas and
organization.

The owner of Suntrapp, and all business owners confronted with a union, should see the union for what it is—a piece of the wider movement to transcend class society. If she cannot, we need not concern ourselves too much on whether or not she will voluntarily recognize the union. We will tirelessly organize, regardless of the opposition we encounter. As a result, we must confront a final possibility. What if Suntrapp closes completely? Are the workers still correct to organize and to strike?

If the owner chooses to close their bar (to be clear, it will be her choice; the bar can absolutely continue to operate with a unionized workforce) rather than maintain complete control over their employees, we would continue to support the SWU strike as a win for the organized working class movement. Socialists are not engaged in a project to build more small businesses. We know the organized working class has the power to transform our society; a nation of small businesses does not. The workers in SWU know the stakes, and understand their struggle in the context of a broader one. Every picket I’ve attended, the workers at Suntrapp emphasize their vision of transforming the entire food service industry in Salt Lake. If an owner is too proud and short-sighted to bargain with their employees, then so be it. SWU will carry their experience and knowledge to their next workplace with an intimate knowledge of the stakes and an understanding of themselves as members of a working-class movement. The community should also learn the same lessons; that we have the ability to take a stand collectively as a class.

Unions at large businesses face the same threat of discipline through closing businesses. Capital has moved entire manufacturing bases to more oppressed nations for ‘cheaper’ labor and less regulation, and will often threaten to discipline organized labor by accelerating that process. That does not mean we oppose the movement the ruling class is trying to punish. It should be clear that we do not evaluate support of a union effort based on the reaction of any business owner, large or small. We see it as an element of an international working class movement.

The post Suntrapp Workers United and Small Business Liberalism first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

This is a special meeting of the GRDSA Chapter to consider a proposal to endorse and support several ballot initiatives.

We will have reps from each campaign to give a brief presentation and answer any questions. Then chapter members will present a proposal to endorse and circulate these petitions as a chapter.

Michigan for the Many (M4M) is an alliance between the MOP Up Michigan (Money Out of Politics) and the Invest in MI Kids (wealth tax to fund education).

Rank MI Vote (RMV) would amend the Michigan Constitution so that we would use Rank Choice Voting (instant runoff) for elections.

Join us Sunday, October 19, 4pm, on Zoom to hear how these initiatives can empower the working class of Michigan.

The post Special Chapter Meeting: Campaign Proposal Town Hall appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

The following article is the result of a visit to the People’s Republic of China to participate in celebrating China’s 80th Anniversary of its victory over Japanese fascism. Dee Knight and DSA China Working Group coordinator Anlin Wang were part of a five-person self-organized delegation of DSA members.

Beijing buzzed with excitement on September 3, as leaders of friendly countries poured into the city from around the world. They came to celebrate China’s 80^th anniversary of defeating Japanese fascism in World War II and to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) Summit meeting. It was an impressive display of “unity in multi-polarity” featuring Russian President Putin and Indian Prime Minister Modi, as well as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, among about two dozen others.

With participation of most southeast Asian members of ASEAN, as well as the “stans” of central Asia, China was literally surrounded by the representatives of countries representing well over four billion people and nearly half the world economy. Another prominent participant was President Pezeshkian of Iran, which maintains close economic and military partnerships with both Russia and China.

The New York Times called Beijing’s Victory Day parade on September 3 “a defiant warning to its rivals.” The awesome display of China’s military might at the V-Day parade lent “a menacing tone” for Western leaders and media. CNBC said Xi Jinping made “a thinly-veiled swipe at Trump’s global tariff campaign” when he said “shadows of Cold War mentality and bullying have not dissipated, with new challenges mounting.”

CNN offered a more measured tone, quoting Xi: “I look forward to working with all countries for a more just and equitable global governance system… We should continue to dismantle walls, not erect them; seek integration, not decoupling.” CNN added that “Xi’s vision pushes back against the foundations of a US-led world order, opposing alliances like NATO.”

Russian President Putin commented to Russian media after the summit that “The SCO is not designed to confront anyone. We do not set ourselves such a task. And… during the discussions and bilateral meetings, there has never been anything that could be described as a confrontational beginning during these four days.”

In kicking off the SCO Summit, Xi said “We should advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world, and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, and make the global governance system more just and equitable.”

How defiant is that? (Strange that advocating “universally beneficial and inclusive economic organization” can actually be considered a death threat for the US-led “rules-based” system.)

The massive military display at Beijing’s V-Day celebration left little doubt that China would never allow itself to be bullied again. More than 35 million Chinese were killed in Imperial Japan’s invasion and occupation of their country from the early 1930s to the end of World War II in August 1945. That’s even greater than the USSR’s loss of 27 million from the German Nazi onslaught. Together those numbers prompted Trump to say “Many Americans died in China’s quest for victory and glory. I hope they are rightfully honored…” 

Through the summit, we can see the past and future in contention for a world that’s striving to break away from overwhelming U.S. domination and unipolar rule. 

The “American Century”

The US lost about 420,000 soldiers in World War 2, according to the National WW2 Museum. But it assumed the role of overall victor, launching “the American Century” along with a global war against communism. It has maintained occupation troops in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Guam and other Pacific islands – all of which are deployed today against China, just as NATO (and its “defensive alliance” against the Soviet Union) continues to threaten Russia. Which side is threatening and destabilizing? It depends largely on your point of view.

During the Korean War, from 1950 to 53, the US slaughtered millions of Koreans, and flattened all buildings of more than one story, in a massive bombing campaign. Its threats to extend the war into China were repelled by the mobilization of half a million Chinese to fight alongside the North Koreans. The US war against Vietnam began shortly after the French colonizers were routed in 1954 and lasted until the US too was finally defeated in 1975, at a cost of additional millions of Vietnamese victims and tens of thousands of US troops. Some estimates put the total number of Vietnamese dying from the U.S. war there at over 3 million, a staggering amount of human loss. Both wars were also aimed at China, and China provided troops and weapons to support their allies in both, staving off further ruin and destabilization within their own territory.

The war zones of today, in Eastern Europe, West Asia and the Far East, are continuations of eighty years of US unipolar domination, both militarily and economically. But the way the US is protecting its interests in all three areas has exposed a blunt reality: the constant official refrain that “America is protecting democracy and human rights” is nothing but war propaganda and mythology. For most of the world’s population, America’s leadership has only meant invasion, coups and more death. 

The US: Sponsor and Protector of Fascists

While China and the USSR achieved major defeats against fascism, the US sheltered and rehabilitated Imperial Japan’s fascist rulers, helping them form and maintain the country’s far-right Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled virtually non-stop for 80 years. (The US CIA did the same for the fascists of Ukraine, and have since sponsored them against Russia.) Japan’s rulers have been obstinate in acknowledging their role in the horrors their empire had perpetrated across Asia, refusing  to apologize for slaughtering millions in their invasion and occupation of China. Ditto for Japan’s 35-year colonial hold on Korea, from 1910 to 1945. In both countries the Japanese imperialists were notorious for setting up systems of “comfort women” – sex slaves for Japan’s occupation forces (not very different from the hospitality enjoyed by US occupation forces across Asia today, but a significant contrast to the status of women in China today).

In South Korea, a country formed by Korean collaborators with the Japanese empire,  the U.S. has sponsored a series of military dictatorships in South Korea, until democracy finally broke through in the 1990s. Such dictatorships were aimed at threatening China, most notably in the so-called Korean War, that resulted in an armistice in 1953 but never officially ended, which has kept Korea split in two and maintained a kleptocratic U.S. client state in power in the south for generations to come. In fact, through the armistice deal, the US working with its anticommunist counterparts in South Korea, awarded itself a forever military presence there, guaranteeing “operational control” of the massive Korean military in case of war against the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea (DPRK), China, or both. Such belligerence underscores the significance of DPRK leader Kim standing next to Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi at the V-Day event. It would seem that America’s network of alliances is now being faced with a counter-alliance of groups and nations no longer willing to accept its rule. 

Even the internal politics of South Korea has been scrambled over the last few months. Its new president, Lee Jae Myung, came to power last June, following six months of intense popular struggle to oust the US puppet President Yoon, who was impeached and jailed after declaring martial law, and trying to provoke a war with US backing. When President Lee visited Trump in August, he resisted US pressure for him to join US escalation against China, which is South Korea’s number one trading partner.

The friendly leaders from around the world who joined both the SCO summit and the Beijing V-Day celebration showed that US efforts to surround and threaten China are failing. Most of the southeast Asian countries that make up ASEAN, notably Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, attended after recent visits to their countries by Chinese President Xi. The significant exception was the Philippines, where the US maintains a military alliance aimed at China. But like in South Korea, the popular movement against US domination is strong, with serious efforts to force the US bases out, and to help US soldiers refuse to engage in a hopeless war that can only lead to needless suffering and death.

The American century, part two, is in a phase of serious reckoning, as China does what the U.S. has never done, which is build alliances rather than simply imposing its will on other nations. 

Remembering When the US Helped China Against Fascism

The week before China’s national V-Day celebrations, there was a special event in the southwestern province of Guizhou, honoring doctors and nurses from the US and European countries who formed an International Medical Rescue Corps. As this Xinhua article reports, “Dozens of foreign medical workers worked alongside thousands of their Chinese counterparts from the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps to save lives and provide medical training under harsh conditions. Today, these foreign medical workers are collectively remembered as the International Medical Relief Corps (IMRC).”

On August 26, a delegation of the descendants of these volunteers attended a commemoration in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, “to pay tribute to their forebears and mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War,” the Xinhua report said.

“As descendants of the International Medical Relief Corps, we are incredibly grateful to you for keeping our ancestors’ memory alive,” said Peter Soyogyi, whose father served in the IMRC. “For them, as international anti-fascists, this was not just China’s war; it was their own. It is essential for future generations to understand the fight against fascism and the struggle for freedom,” he added.

Following the commemoration ceremony, the descendants’ delegation and a group of solidarity activists from the US traveled along the famous “24-Zig Road” – also known as the Stilwell Road – which served as a supply line from Burma (now Myanmar) and India for medical supplies to the US-supported Chinese resistance to Imperial Japanese aggression. The road was a joint project of US and Chinese forces, and a symbol of their united efforts against Japanese fascist forces at the time.

US commanding General Joseph Stilwell had many conflicts with Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who called for his ouster. Stilwell argued for unified efforts of the KMT and Red Army forces, which led to his replacement.

The descendants’ delegation, and the solidarity group from the US, got a close-up view of the challenges faced by US troops, as well as US and European medical workers, in helping the Chinese resistance to fascism during World War II.

Official US support during World War II for Chinese resistance to fascism was a major factor in defeating global fascism. But the switch to supporting fascism after the war, including up to the present day, poses a challenge to the world’s progressive forces. The existence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization constitutes a giant bulwark in that fight. But the struggle continues, as challenging as ever, as can be seen in the US-backed genocidal assault on Palestine. Just as the world’s progressive forces united to stop fascism in the 1940s, history calls on us to unite even more strongly today. Victory against fascism today may spell the end of imperialism and capitalism, and usher in the common prosperity and shared future the world needs now. China, clearly, in its honoring of U.S. medical teams from the past, and in its willingness to bridge divides between itself and other countries, some who have been less than sympathetic to China such as India, should be taken seriously by those of us studying world events and the trajectory of history. So far, a new world order appears to be possibly forming right before our eyes, a world order promising far more diplomacy than explicit warmaking, a world order led by China and countries emboldened to try a different route than what had been the norm under U.S. unipolarity for generations. The recent summit exemplifies this new possible path that China and other countries are now willing to risk against the terrorism of the West. 

Photo: General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong Un, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and President of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto at China’s Victory Day military parade in Beijing. Courtesy of the government of Indonesia.