Since the days of the British Empire, one enduring misconception is that the wealth of imperialist nations—gained by plundering poorer countries—also lifts the living standards of imperialist rulers’ own populations. Following this logic, the working class in an oppressor nation shares a material interest in their own ruling class’s global domination.

The evidence for this conclusion can seem obvious: imperialist nations are also the wealthiest nations in the world. And since the US is the world’s largest imperial power, it is easy to conclude that the US working class gains from its imperial projects. This conclusion seemed to be recently reinforced by the significant margin of working-class voters—including not only whites, but also Latino voters—who propelled Donald Trump back into office in 2024.

But Trump’s re-election was more of a rejection of the incumbent, Joe Biden, than a positive embrace of Trump—reflecting the trappings of the two-party system, when the only “choice” on offer is one of the two ruling class parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. On election day, discontent with one party can only be expressed by voting to “kick the bums out” and replacing them with the other party’s candidate—or just staying home.

Objective (class relations) v. subjective (class consciousness and struggle)

Imperialist nations have always been divided into classes, pitting workers and their capitalist rulers into an antagonistic relationship: one class can only gain at the other’s expense. This is the objective reality, which doesn’t change over time. For example, whenever workers unionize and gain a union contract, employers usually face at least a dent in their profits, while workers are in a stronger position to gain higher wages and workplace rights.

Moreover, wars abroad are normally accompanied by a “war at home” that cracks down on free speech and antiwar movements, while workers pay the taxes that fund the war—and become the soldiers sent off to fight and die for imperial interests.

The US has long been the wealthiest society in the world, but it also has the highest rate of inequality among developed economies. And the rate of inequality has been growing at a rapid pace in recent decades.

The US working class does not now and has never shared in its rulers’ wealth.

At the same time, subjective factors, such as voting behavior and the level of class struggle, do change according to changing circumstances and the resulting shifts in class consciousness. This is why, just one year after Trump’s reelection, many of his working-class voters have turned against him: He has proven to be a class enemy despite his campaign rhetoric claiming empathy for workers. And their disgust with both parties means large numbers are simply disengaging from the electoral process. As political analyst G. Elliott Morris commented recently,

[T]he groups with the biggest swings toward Trump in 2024 — here, low-income whites and low-income Hispanics — are precisely the voters that have swung most against him since taking office. It is not a coincidence that they are also the groups most sensitive to price increases — e.g., from things like labor shortages, tariffs, and wars involving major oil producers…

The data…shows that low-income whites have swung 26 points against Trump. Low-income Hispanics have swung 34.

In addition, the class struggle—which is the only effective negotiating tool workers have against their employers—has been abysmally low in the US for more than five decades now. Although there are some positive signs of resurgence in the last few years, it is probably difficult for most people not already familiar with US history to imagine that the US working class has, at times, led the world in combativity against their employers.

One such time was the 1930s—which won the right of workers to organize into unions against the viciously anti-union US corporate class.

The strike wave of the 1930s and the New Deal Era

The Great Depression was the most significant period of class struggle that has ever taken place in the United States. The sheer intensity of the struggle during that time led ever broader sections of the working class to become radicalized and to begin to generalize politically.

The legendary Flint sit-down strike, which began at the end of 1936, turned the tide most dramatically. The attention of the entire nation was riveted on the Flint auto workers, as they took matters into their own hands and stood up to the bosses, the CIO leaders, the National Guard, and even President Roosevelt—and won.

When Michigan’s Governor Frank Murphy—a Roosevelt Democrat—tried to send in the National Guard to end the occupation, the workers met and voted to hold the plants at all costs. They responded defiantly to Murphy,

We have decided to stay in the plant. We have no illusions about the sacrifices which this decision will entail. We fully expect that if a violent effort is made to oust us many of us will be killed, and we take this means of making it known to our wives, to our children, to the people of the state of Michigan and the country that if this result follows from an attempt to eject us, you [Governor Murphy] are the one who must be held responsible for our deaths.

The Governor abruptly changed his mind about sending in the National Guard.

The Flint victory had an impact nationally, raising working-class confidence. By the end of 1937, nearly a half-million workers all over the U.S. had taken part in a sit-down strike. The number of all strikes more than doubled between 1936 and 1937, from 2,172 to 4,740, involving nearly two million workers overall.

“Bought off”? Or extremely exploited?

The Great Depression struggles shifted the balance of class forces in the US for decades that followed.

The US had emerged from World War Two as the world’s largest superpower, with the Soviet Union in second place. During the post-war boom, corporate employers were willing to allow industrial workers’ wages to rise significantly because the postwar era coincided with the largest and most sustained economic boom of US capitalism in history. At that time, granting higher wages was preferable to losing profits during long-term strikes.

American workers won wages and living standards that were unmatched anywhere else in the world. It would be a mistake, however, to view the 1950s as an era of labor peace.

First, the number of strikes across all US industries in the 1950s was only slightly lower than during the strike wave which marked the second half of the 1940s.

Secondly, the corporate class enlisted Democrats and Republicans in a ruthless decade long anti-communist witch hunt, beginning in the late 1940s. Led by the paranoid Senator Joe McCarthy, thousands of people were investigated, fined thousands of dollars, fired from their jobs, sent to prison or deported—for such “crimes” as once having been a member of the Communist Party, signing a petition against fascism, or having been friendly with people who had done so.

In the process, this witch hunt drove thousands of working-class militants out of their jobs. The CIO itself expelled 11 Communist-affiliated unions by 1950, amounting to 20 percent of its membership.

The New Left that emerged from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the anti-Vietnam War movement—heavily influenced by Maoism and Stalinism—considered the highly paid US working class as “bought off”, a part of the problem instead of part of the solution to fighting US imperialism in Vietnam.

But this was an enormous mistake. Unionized workers in particular experienced dramatic improvements in their living standards, but they paid the price of a drastic rise in the rate of exploitation. Output per worker more than doubled between 1947 and 1972. And while the number of manufacturing workers grew by 28.8 percent between 1950 and 1968, manufacturing output grew by 91 percent.

So, the real beneficiaries sat on the boards of directors of the biggest US corporations.

The upsurge in class and social struggle of the late 1960s and early 1970s

The New Left’s dismissal of US workers proved politically disastrous for the future of the radical movement emerging from SDS. Economic stagnation had set in by the late 1960s. This stagnation, combined with growing frustration at factory speedups coincided with the height of the anti-war and Black Power movements as well as the wave of Black rebellions which swept across every major city at that time. The result was a massive shift in working class sentiment against the Vietnam War, and a series of working-class revolts which began as the 1960s ended. These revolts were led initially by workers, some of them Vietnam veterans, who were influenced by the movements and by the atmosphere of radicalization of the period.

The number of wildcat strikes across all industries doubled, from 1,000 to 2,000 between 1960 and 1969. The year 1970 witnessed a veritable strike wave. General Motors experienced a 67-day strike. Some 40,000 coal miners struck in three states to demand benefits for disabled miners.

New York postal workers led postal workers on strike across the country, closing down the postal service in 200 cities. When the government brought in the National Guard they expressed sympathy with the strikers. After two weeks, postal workers, who are legally prohibited from striking, won a 14 percent wage increase.

This rank-and-file upsurge showed the potential for even the highest paid US workers to struggle as part of their class against the employers.

The road downhill, and the consequences for workers

But if the 1930s and 1960s showed how massive class struggle can advance workers’ interests, the downward spiral in strikes and other class struggles since the 1980s has shown how, without struggle, workers lose their ability to negotiate for better wages and working conditions.

A lot has changed in US society since 1947, when labor’s share of GDP stood at 70 percent. At that time, more than one-third of workers belonged to unions, while taxes on the highest incomes topped 70 percent.

But by 1975, the US ruling class had reached a turning point. Having just been defeated in Vietnam and humiliated by a massive anti-war movement at home, it also faced lower profits. The postwar boom was over.

By the time Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the economy entered a new recession, providing the excuse for the corporate class to launch a one-sided class war—aimed at dramatically lowering working-class living standards. The only way to accomplish this aim was to destroy working-class organizations—i.e. unions.

Business interests set aside their differences and united as a class in order to make Reaganism work for them. The Business Roundtable, which brought together both Republicans and Democrats, including most of the top officers of the biggest US companies, was an organization dedicated to this process. Formed in the 1970s, the Business Roundtable played an activist role in overseeing the upward transfer of wealth known as “Reaganism”.

PATCO turning point

Within a few months of taking office Ronald Reagan initiated a showdown with the labor movement. When members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) —one of the few unions that had endorsed Reagan for president—went on strike in August 1981, Reagan fired them all and permanently replaced them with scab labor.

The PATCO strike represented a turning point from which the labor movement has yet to recover—giving a green light to big business to engage in union busting on a massive scale.

But labor union leaders had no intention of fighting back. Years of conservatism had made them believe they could negotiate a deal with employers and rely on their “friends of labor” in Congress. They feared the prospect of rank-and-file activism more than they feared the employers’ attacks. In the meantime, labor’s “friends” from both parties in Congress rewrote tax codes and labor laws to always favor corporations, to ensure that the balance of class forces remained decisively in favor of the ruling class.

Workers tried to fight back, but the decks were stacked against them, and one strike after another in the 1980s and 1990s ended in bitter defeat. Workers who went on strike were immediately fired and then replaced with nonunion labor. So, the class struggle subsided not because workers were content, but because the labor movement had been crushed.

As journalist Harold Myerson observed recently,

During the years of postwar prosperity, strikes were a routine part of the economic landscape, and a major reason why worker pay constituted a decent share of the national income. After PATCO, they nearly disappeared. The number of major strikes plummeted from 286 a year in the 1960s and 1970s, to 83 a year in the 1980s, to 35 a year in the 1990s, to 20 a year in the 2000s. In recent years, the strike has enjoyed a modest revival—autoworkers and teaching assistants have won higher wages by walking picket lines—but unions have shrunk to the point that the fruits of such victories have limited ripple effects…

These are among the factors that explain why the rate of American worker unionization has declined from one-third in the middle of the 20th century to just under 10 percent today, and a bare 6 percent in the private sector.

Trump’s first year back in office has only made things much, much worse. His so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” that sailed through Congress last year was the single biggest federal transfer of wealth in US history.

By January of this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. workers’ share of the national income (GDP) is now lower than at any point since the government began keeping track of it in 1947. Workers’ wages and benefits today amount to only 53.8 percent, while the rest went to corporate profits and investment income.

The Minneapolis general strike points the way forward

As described above, Trump’s 2024 voting base has crumbled during his first year back in office.

As Myerson also pointed out,

Americans increasingly understand that our current economy isn’t meeting their interests and that it’s rigged to favor the wealthy. A sizable public will welcome candidates who [favor progressive] economic reforms such as those suggested here, just as there were sizable publics that backed the reforms laid out by Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani in their campaigns. Indeed, a national YouGov poll taken one week after Mamdani’s election showed that every one of his platform planks commanded majority support from the American people, including 69 percent support for raising taxes on corporations and millionaires, 66 percent support for free child care for children from six months to five years, and even 57 percent support for government-owned grocery stores.

But as history shows, only a rise in class struggle can make these reforms a reality.

During Trump’s first year back in office, his presidency transformed into an autocracy, with no end in sight. Until now, that is—because, thanks to the courage of the Minneapolis working class, there is a genuine sliver of hope that the growing resistance to Trump can succeed at least in slowing him down.

As is often the case, class struggles can come seemingly out of the blue. Such a case occurred in Minneapolis after Trump sent thousands of his heavily armed stormtroopers—at least some who are proven white supremacists—to round up, brutalize, detain and deport migrants in December.

The general strike in Minneapolis, called for January 23, didn’t actually come out of the blue. Over a period of months, and in some cases years, community and immigrants’ rights groups had already trained over 30,000 local people to use their smartphones to video the brutality of federal agents—which are then used as evidence to counter the lies of the DHS propaganda machine. Neighborhood by neighborhood, working-class people of all races have been organizing to rapid response networks to protect each other, which has evolved into an extraordinary sense of solidarity.

On January 7, Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mom was on her way home after dropping her child off at school when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot her in the face four times. So, the January 23 general strike adopted the slogan “ICE Out for Good!”

On the day, between 75,000 and 100,000 Minnesotans marched and rallied through Minneapolis. More than 700 local businesses shut down for the day, while the strike drew the support of all major labor unions, including the Minnesota AFL-CIO.

While the massive numbers of protesters demonstrated the power of numbers in the streets, Minnesotans were also prepared to physically defend themselves from ICE—which thousands have already been doing since DHS goons began occupying their city in December.

The day after the general strike, ICE agents threw Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, to the ground and shot him nine times in the back while he lay face down.

On the one hand, it is true that the fact that Good and Pretti were the first white US citizens killed by ICE generated national outrage. On the other hand, their deaths showed how white Minneapolis activists were risking their own lives in solidarity with their migrant neighbors.

The sense of solidarity in Minneapolis spread across the country like wildfire since the deaths of Good and Pretti—with protests and student walkouts that numbered from the dozens to the thousands in cities, large and small.

The execution of Good and Pretti demonstrate that the targets of Trump’s mass deportation campaign extend beyond immigrants but also to expand his authoritarian rule over the entire U.S. population—including its citizens.

Natasha Lennard called the general strike “the most extraordinary day of mass resistance to Trumpian fascism to date” in The Intercept. She added, “It is only a future with mass social strikes, or general strikes, involving large-scale disruption on the immediate horizon that has the chance of stopping Trump’s forces.”

A version of this article will also appear at Red Flag.