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Counter-Mobilization: A Strategy to Fight Racist & Fascist Attacks
A discussion on strategy and tactics in the fight against fascist attacks on the labor movement, drawing on the experiences of the Minneapolis Teamsters movement of the 1930s.
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First published September 1, 1999
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October 28, 2025
Farrell Dobbs is famous as a Teamster organizer throughout the Midwest in the 1930s. Later he became National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. He is the author of six books--this isn't one of them. It is an 8½ by 11 Education for Socialists Bulletin, but it is just as important as his books and is based on the same class-struggle methods he learned through his career in the labor and socialist movements. The Democratic Socialists of America think that FDR was a "democratic socialist," but Roosevelt threw Dobbs and 17 other leaders of the SWP in prison under the thought-control Smith Act, for refusing to give US imperialism its blessings for a war of world conquest.
Marxists are philosophical materialists. We don't think racism is about what people think, and it certainly isn't caused by people who are the poorest, worst educated part of the population. It was part of the justification for slavery and today it is still about money--it enables the well-educated and wealthy capitalists to pay some workers less because of their skin color, and above all else is a weapon against labor unionism. Donald Trump doesn't like Black people, but did he ever do as much harm to them as William Clinton (who gets along fine with Blacks) getting rid of most welfare without childcare, education, and jobs? Absolutely nothing? Or, again, Clinton's support for draconian prison sentences? See The Clintons' Anti-working-class Record: Why Washington Hates Working People.
There is nothing more dangerous than calling everyone you don't like a "fascist." This was pioneered by the Stalinists who aided Hitler's rise to power by calling Social Democrats "Social Fascists" instead of pressuring them to join united fronts to physically defend the headquarters of trade unions, cooperatives, and working-class political parties against fascist thug attacks. Hitler came to power "peacefully" in relation to the capitalist state, but there was nothing "peaceful" about his crushing of the working-class. Fascism grows out of the class struggle. It starts with scabs and then challenges the labor movement's right to exist. It only gets that far if a section of the ruling class supports it. There is no significant section of the capitalists today who want fascism. They are attacking the most vulnerable section of the working class--immigrants without papers--and this must be opposed. But it must also be known that the Democrats have also, at times, been the most anti-immigrant party.
The aim of the working class and its allies must be to mobilize the largest number of people possible against fascism and/or racism, not to kill a few "fascists," or get yourself and others killed. One needs to know about what Marxists call "the relationship of forces."
You have to frame everything in a defensive way, and pay attention to existing bourgeois laws, some of which are repressive, but some of which are the gains in civil liberties that the working class has fought in favor of for many years. Much of what is now "Woke" ideology is derived from concepts based on Stalinist ideology.
Donald Trump is not a fascist. He is an authoritarian, but the enlargement of the role of the executive branch, and within that of the president has been a permanent feature of capitalism since before World War I.
Dobbs wrote four books on the class-struggle methods used in turning the Teamsters from a craft union into a mass industrial union--starting with Teamster Rebellion. They are all worth reading. His two books on the early history of socialism in the US are also worth reading. And his other Education for Socialist Bulletins. Visit the Pathfinder Press website. You will find many books explaining what fascism is, like The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and Fascism and Big Business.
Marxists are philosophical materialists. We don't think racism is about what people think, and it certainly isn't caused by people who are the poorest, worst educated part of the population. It was part of the justification for slavery and today it is still about money--it enables the well-educated and wealthy capitalists to pay some workers less because of their skin color, and above all else is a weapon against labor unionism. Donald Trump doesn't like Black people, but did he ever do as much harm to them as William Clinton (who gets along fine with Blacks) getting rid of most welfare without childcare, education, and jobs? Absolutely nothing? Or, again, Clinton's support for draconian prison sentences? See The Clintons' Anti-working-class Record: Why Washington Hates Working People.
There is nothing more dangerous than calling everyone you don't like a "fascist." This was pioneered by the Stalinists who aided Hitler's rise to power by calling Social Democrats "Social Fascists" instead of pressuring them to join united fronts to physically defend the headquarters of trade unions, cooperatives, and working-class political parties against fascist thug attacks. Hitler came to power "peacefully" in relation to the capitalist state, but there was nothing "peaceful" about his crushing of the working-class. Fascism grows out of the class struggle. It starts with scabs and then challenges the labor movement's right to exist. It only gets that far if a section of the ruling class supports it. There is no significant section of the capitalists today who want fascism. They are attacking the most vulnerable section of the working class--immigrants without papers--and this must be opposed. But it must also be known that the Democrats have also, at times, been the most anti-immigrant party.
The aim of the working class and its allies must be to mobilize the largest number of people possible against fascism and/or racism, not to kill a few "fascists," or get yourself and others killed. One needs to know about what Marxists call "the relationship of forces."
You have to frame everything in a defensive way, and pay attention to existing bourgeois laws, some of which are repressive, but some of which are the gains in civil liberties that the working class has fought in favor of for many years. Much of what is now "Woke" ideology is derived from concepts based on Stalinist ideology.
Donald Trump is not a fascist. He is an authoritarian, but the enlargement of the role of the executive branch, and within that of the president has been a permanent feature of capitalism since before World War I.
Dobbs wrote four books on the class-struggle methods used in turning the Teamsters from a craft union into a mass industrial union--starting with Teamster Rebellion. They are all worth reading. His two books on the early history of socialism in the US are also worth reading. And his other Education for Socialist Bulletins. Visit the Pathfinder Press website. You will find many books explaining what fascism is, like The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and Fascism and Big Business.
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