by pdfernhout | 2025-04-25 01:51:10+00:00
In theory, a general strike is always one more check on political power: "What would a general strike in the US actually look like?" https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/04/what-would-general-str... "Calls for a general strike in the US are growing. It's important to understand how to organize one, given their key role in overcoming tyrants around the world."

Also from there: "Calls for mass disruptive action are coming from unlikely places, like Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, an organization normally associated with legal action through the courts. When Romero was asked in a recent interview what would happen if the Trump administration systematically defied court orders, he replied, “Then we’ve got to take to the streets in a different way. We’ve got to shut down this country.”"

For a science-fiction version of a general strike and related resistance, see James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear" novel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear "The story was republished in other Eastern European countries where its depiction of nonviolent resistance against authority proved popular. In 1989, Hogan attended a convention in Kraków before travelling to Warsaw to meet the publishers of the magazine serial and draw out the money he had been paid. However, inflation following the collapse of the communist regime had reduced the value of the money in the account to just $8.43. Hogan concluded: "So after the U.S. had spent trillions on its B-52s, Trident submarines, NSA, CIA, and the rest, that was my tab for toppling the Soviet empire. There's always an easy way if you just look.""

Of course, opinions across the political spectrum still widely differ on whether what is going on is good or bad (including opinions and priorities related to "identity politics"). Will those sentiments change as political things continue to play out (for good or bad) and get to the point where there becomes a broad sentiment for a general strike? Frankly, I don't know. For example, a lot of people think it would be a good thing to reshore manufacturing in the USA which hopefully also might eventually lower prices for manufactured goods (at least relative to wages). But whether current political actions will accomplish any of that is up for debate, as is whether reshoring manufacturing will bring back lots of good paying jobs to the USA or whether reshoring instead will just bring more automation and more wealth concentration. Some people may be willing to wait and see, while other people may have a specific opinion and may want to act politically on it.

As G. William Domhoff wrote decades ago in "Who Rules America": https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/change/science_freshstart.h... "Based on these findings, it seems likely that everyday people don't opt for social change in good part because they don't see any plausible way to accomplish their goals, and haven't heard any plans from anyone else that make sense to them. But why don't they just say "the hell with it" and head to the barricades? Why aren't they "fed up?" The answer is not in their false consciousness or a mere resigned acquiescence, as many leftists seem to believe, but in a very different set of factors. On the one hand, for all the injustices average Americans experience and perceive, there are many positive aspects to everyday life that make a regular day-to-day existence more attractive than a general strike or a commitment to building a revolutionary party. They have loved ones they like to be with, they have hobbies and sports they enjoy, and they have forms of entertainment they like to watch. In fact, many of them also report in surveys that they enjoy their jobs even though the jobs don't pay enough or have decent benefits. (And as of late 2005, 93% of individuals earning over $50,000 a year describe themselves as "doing well.") They also understand that they have some hard-won democratic rights and freedoms inherited from the past that are much more than people in many other countries have. They don't want to see those positive aspects messed up. On a less positive note, many ordinary white workers have priorities that they put ahead of economic issues. As all voting and field studies show, a large number of average white Americans do many things based on their skin color. They often vote Republican, for example, especially in the South. They protest against affirmative action programs. They live in segregated neighborhoods. White Americans also often vote their religion -- that is, the fundamentalist Protestants and conservative Catholics who vote Republican are members of non-college-educated blue-collar and white-collar families. In terms of their economic situation, and their need for unions, they should be for the Democrats, but many of them aren't."

So, whatever one's economic opinions, the "identity politics" of it all is a separate issue (as above).

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_politics "Identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, denomination, gender, sexual orientation, social background, political affiliation, caste, age, education, disability, intelligence, and social class. The term encompasses various often-populist political phenomena and rhetoric, such as governmental migration policies that regulate mobility and opportunity based on identities, left-wing agendas involving intersectional politics or class reductionism, and right-wing nationalist agendas of exclusion of national or ethnic "others.""

Some parts from that long article I found especially interesting:

"Criticism of identity politics often comes from either the center-right or the far-left on the political spectrum. Many socialists, anarchists and Marxists have criticized identity politics for its divisive nature, claiming that it forms identities that can undermine their goals of proletariat unity and class struggle. On the other hand, many conservative think tanks and media outlets have criticized identity politics for other reasons, such as that it is inherently collectivist and prejudicial. Center-right critics of identity politics have seen it as particularist, in contrast to the universalism espoused by many liberal politics, or argue that it detracts attention from non-identity based structures of oppression and exploitation."

"Sociologist Charles Derber asserts that the American left is "largely an identity-politics party" and that it "offers no broad critique of the political economy of capitalism. It focuses on reforms for blacks and women and so forth. But it doesn't offer a contextual analysis within capitalism." Both he and David North of the Socialist Equality Party posit that these fragmented and isolated identity movements which permeate the left have allowed for a far-right resurgence. Cornel West asserted that discourse on racial, gender and sexual orientation identity was "crucial" and "indispensable", but emphasized that it "must be connected to a moral integrity and deep political solidarity that hones in on a financialized form of predatory capitalism. A capitalism that is killing the planet, poor people, working people here and abroad." Historian Gary Gerstle writes that identity politics and multiculturalism thrived in the neoliberal era precisely because these movements did not threaten capital accumulation, and over the same period "pressure on capitalist elites and their supporters to compromise with the working class was vanishing." The ideological space to oppose capitalism shrank with the fall of communism, forcing the left to "redefine their radicalism in alternative terms"."

Identity politics is a complex topic, and how it is playing out specifically in the USA is a complex topic -- as is how it seems to relate to recent changes at the NSF including grant terminations.

For the USA to heal as a nation, we need to figure out a way to transcend divisions -- including divisions related to identity politics.

Disclaimer: A NSF grant that was terminated last week has directly affected my family.