The General Strike?
R. Novack
R. Novack asks: how would we get a general strike in 2028? What political character would it have?
Picture of the demonstrations held during the Iranian general strike in Azadi Square, Tehran, 1978
The prospects of a general strike in 2028 have been a topic of conversation since UAW's Shawn Fain announced a contract alignment in late 2023. It is good to see widespread excitement and forward thinking in a Left that frequently thinks in a duration of months, if not weeks. Unfortunately, this newfound farsightedness is combined with a sense of heroic volunteerism. We should examine the tasks we need to meaningfully affect a 2028 general strike to predict what our influence can be ahead of time.
If we intend to seize the moment to put forward our politics, we will need to navigate a series of organizational and political tasks to even make it to prime time:
DSA members could only meaningfully impact a general strike by being the backbone of the organizing force.
DSA has no programmatic unity to conduct systematic political agitation during a strike, so this is a key political task in order to use the platform of strike action
DSA members who are both unified around a common program and are engaged in organizing a general strike need to do the same political cohering of the rank-and-file in order to carry out a political strike.
Doing all 3 major tasks in 3 years is impossible. We may find targeted interventions in 2028, but we need to prioritize organizational and political tasks over simply supporting a strike. In order to meaningfully affect the workers' movement, we must transform our atrophied labor wing into industrial fractions to carry out coordinated work within our unions. While doing so, we must oppose labor neutralism from DSA's labor wing, moving from a reserve force of administration-loyalists and promoters of "bread and butter" economic reforms into a fraction of trade unionists able to move our fellow workers against the liberal-constitutional order that unions are sadly entangled with.
Most importantly, we must win DSA membership to MUG's democratic demands in our draft program, with the key political demand for a democratic republic, rather than chasing the spectre of a general strike in the hopes of widespread and spontaneous politicization.
Organizing the Strike
First, let's consider our role as the drivers of this strike. How would DSA members begin to meaningfully influence a 2028 general strike?
In order to transform our local organizations into a machine capable of carrying out a nationwide coordinated strike, DSA members must begin to organize themselves on a national scale. Currently, our National Labor Commission is not organized into meaningful industrial organization, stewards networks, etc. and is instead a plethora of disconnected campaigns. Unless the NLC makes a sudden recovery, any member-to-member organization will likely happen through the remains of strike solidarity organization (like 2023's "Strike Ready"), caucus organization, chapter labor groups, and informal networks. Fairly autonomous organization isn't bad on its own merits, but it makes the difficult task of nationwide strike organization – and political orientation to it – much more difficult.
Then, members must evaluate their unions readiness to strike based on their contract status.
Chances are high that if a contract is expired, a [two-to-three] year contract [from the time this project starts in earnest to May 1, 2028] will be difficult to win in larger companies already on the lookout for contract alignment. If the union decides to work without a contract until 2028, that carries its own challenges and organizing tasks. If contract alignment does not happen, then the only options are wildcat strikes, which carry their own risks. All three of these scenarios require a strong shop floor organization, a friendly local leadership assisting in strike preparation, and a firm commitment to May 1, 2028 by the vast majority of members.
Stewards, union reps, and any committees need to be fully functioning. On top of that, strike committees should be formed and strike captains elected and very supportive of the general strike. If these organizational bodies don't exist, they need to be built and tested as soon as possible.
Local leadership should be bought into this project, willing to use union resources and begin the hard work of strike preparation. If they are not, add "oust local leadership" to the list of tasks. If we need to organize around an entrenched leadership, don't expect a strike fund and anticipate sanctions from the local and international leadership on top of the pressures of a strike.
Finally, after those hurdles are cleared, the vast majority of the membership needs to generally support a political strike in May 2028. Pretending that we are organizing a solely economic strike until the moment we walk off is a recipe for disaster; we'll lose our credibility with the rank-and-file and be lumped in with other union bureaucrats and deceivers.
Orienting to the Strike
To drive a general strike, DSA members must be organized themselves – as socialists, union activists and leaders – and must ensure their union organization is organized and politicized enough to carry the strike out. This is an enormous task. Regardless of our ability to lead this strike from the grassroots, we must have an idea of how to orient towards it. Here we move from a speculative approach into our practical orientation.
Preparation for any concerted strike action is very much a short-term project; however, it's still unclear what exactly our goals in a 2028 General Strike are:
Maximum density to include the most possible workers in strike action?
Maximum disruption to attempt to win political and economic demands?
Maximum coordination to organize cross-industry and nationwide?
Maximum visibility of the strikes to push political demands into the public consciousness?
Maximum visibility of our organization to recruit strikers and supporters alike into a political party?
Pick one. Each requires its own set of priorities, goals, and tactics. Then, how do we evaluate the results if strikes do break out? Do we celebrate uncritically, denounce if they do not meet our standard, or find some more nuanced position? More importantly, how does our evaluation fall into a larger medium- and long-term strategy within the workers' movement?
A comrade organizing within Amazon recently described how the Teamster-decreed December "strikes" played out. It's pretty well documented – even in Labor Notes! – that this was a very small minority action. In my view, the most significant and promising developments were: the consolidation of scattered independent organizing groups, the coordinated action of Teamsters locals (through picketing on a national extension of the picket line), and mainstream attention on Amazon organizing and concerted activity. These are all part of the obvious long-term strategy of organizing a critical mass of Amazon through generating leads for new organizing and bringing newly-consolidated groups and generally autonomous locals under a common banner. The risks of such a visible and low turnout action, however, means that there need to be visible gains by next year in order to maintain the tempo at the national scale. If no gains are made, the Teamsters-consolidated effort will appear to be a militant, but impotent, minority. The loss of (unaffiliated) CAUSE Amazon election in North Carolina does not help this appearance.
For a general strike in 2028, these concerns are multiplied. If we are too eager to jump into the fold blind and unprepared, we will lose our standing with the broader workers movement. If we do not have a compelling but realistic analysis, just tailing whatever exciting strike happens, we will lose the advanced segments of the workers movement. Like the Teamsters in Amazon, and others before them, we must have a real medium- and long-term plan for what to do after 2028.
These are the organizational tasks.
Our Political Tasks
The political tasks are altogether different.
Our most important task is winning the majority DSA to a min-max program leading with democratic demands. A corollary task is the development of propaganda around our democratic demands, especially regarding the democratic republic. This will enable DSA to act with programmatic unity, instead of paper unity around yet another ignored program. Especially relevant for 2028 is developing propaganda ("convey[ing] many ideas to a single person or to a few people") that can be transformed into agitation ("only one or a few ideas, but convey[ed] to a whole mass of people") by DSA cadre in their trade unions and strike support networks.
Trade unions are economic organizations of the working class and generally seek to benefit their members with economic gains such as wages and benefits and dignified working conditions. They do not fight for the class as a whole; unions seek victory for their members and, indirectly, their families with rare solidaristic coordination for aggregate membership. When workers go on strike, it raises their trade union consciousness – successfully fighting against the employer directly affecting the economic gains is proof. The strike against the employer leads workers to trade union consciousness for the economic struggles of the proletariat; the general strike generalizes this to a strike against the capitalist class by organized workers acting as a class.
In order to promote the political general strike, it is necessary to promote the general interests of the class as a class. Above we described the general strike as a generalization of economic action against the capitalist class. Naturally, this all-around stoppage of production in a nation, region, or city develops the self-awareness of the proletariat fighting a common enemy who has a commanding stake in the economy.. But how can the proletariat promote its economic interests absent a general strike in perpetuity? We do this through moving from the economic sphere to the political. The current state, dominated by monied interests, is unwilling to enact essential reforms that precipitate such strike action. This is because the class in control of the state is the bourgeoisie, a class more than willing to disenfranchise and repress the working class to preserve their minoritarian rule. Therefore, the only way to liberate the international proletariat is to uproot the existing economic order through a truly democratic state form.Recognizing the general political condition of the working class is directly related to their economic condition means exposing the bourgeois class domination of society, as expressed in the current liberal-constitutional state form, is essential to developing political consciousness.
To bring forward political demands in a general strike, we need general political demands from DSA. First, we must explicitly say that the state is undemocratic and insufficient to satisfy the real needs of the working class. Second, we must have a program that sets out the minimum conditions to change that and politically transform society – the minimum section of the Marxist minimum-maximum program.
Of course, having this program isn't an end in itself. Once we clarify our political demands, we must tie them to the pressing issues of the day. These issues can be anything from international crises to local police terror, or the mass movements in opposition to actions of the ruling order. A general strike in 2028 would fit neatly into this category of mass movements and, like all mass movements, would have an unwritten program of its own. It is our task to transform the unwritten program of reformist economism into the revolutionary minimum-maximum program step by step. We do this through political agitation.
We need to develop our own ability to make good political agitation that is comprehensible, compelling and timely. DSA is historically bad at intervening in high politics and historically bad at general agitation. Even during the 2025 State of the Union, our messaging was, at best, weak, unclear, and tailing Democrats and their allies. Instead of challenging the legitimacy of the state in an unprecedented address, DSA thought a “broligarchy” jab was better messaging. This was during a relatively low tide organizing moment – what will happen when our mass strike machinery is also turning?
As 2028 is also a significant presidential election year, we should be cognizant of the twists and turns of high politics and direct our agitation towards that as well. Based on the last five years, we can predict that DSA will be split on tactics around the presidential election. When Trump or his successor runs again, we will need a clear position on how we frame our opposition. How will our agitation change if the Democrats favor a "moderate" (like Slotkin or Shapiro) or an opportunist (like AOC)? If DSA runs a candidate, how will this affect our agitation? The unions will likely back any Democrat, and there will be genuine popular anti-autocratic sentiment to boost a progressive or even "left establishment" Democrat. There likely won't be energy around socialists, independents or "third parties" unless a strong platform is immediately built.
It's likely that some union locals will act on the 2028 general strike themselves, which puts us in the hardest position to meaningfully promote our politics. Instead, locals will likely be hostile to political demands against the liberal-constitutional order, instead preferring to promote the Democratic opposition uncritically. We must either organize separately or win over leadership to political demands, along with pushing them against the international union pressure. These situations require even more political unity within DSA's industrial fractions, since a split in approach for the 2028 general election will cripple any potential concerted intervention.
Politicizing the Strike
If we intend to make this a political strike to some extent, we must win over a majority of union members, DSA members, and the broad left to the key points of agitation. Without a politicized rank-and-file, even the most militant trade unionists will find it difficult to balance real economic gains with the political tasks of coordinated strike action.
An instructive example happened in Philadelphia, November 2024. Three major unions—AFSCME DC33, Transit Workers Union 234, and SMART 1594—were in the process of contract negotiations and had authorized strikes. The unions publicly announced a threat of coordinated strike action which would effectively shut down city services and public transit in the region. This strike did not happen; AFSCME DC33 accepted a one year extension and TWU accepted wage increases and increased security. This happened during a particularly politicized time (the immediate aftermath of the general election) and location (a "blue" city in a "purple-to-red" state, and target of 2020 and 2024 election interference operations) but there was no political content to this potential strike. Instead, fairly small economic gains were offered and accepted. Our hard work could face the same results if contract alignment as economic pressure is the focal point in 2028, and without a national political direction this seems like a possibility to expect.
We should have a sober analysis here: we will not be presenting the dominant narrative in a 2028 general strike. We do not currently have national leadership in the unions or prominent labor figures. Elected officials, even ones we endorse, will likely not openly agitate against the liberal-constutional order. Chances are we will not have a critical mass of striking rank-and-file or local leadership to promote our political message nationally. Most likely, we'll be putting agitation forward "from the sidelines" in a supporting role and this will be unevenly spread across chapters, with possibly a few chapters finding themselves at the center of a small coordinated strike. There is nothing wrong with this, but this reality must inform our strategy.
Regardless of the outcome, we will be left with the labor movement in decline for over half a century. A decade of more energized campaigns have forced a breath of life back into labor. On the verge of a new upsurge, a general strike may give the boost that labor desperately needs; however, a resuscitation does not cure labor of its sickness. As we elaborate in our Tasks and Perspectives (65-80), we must contend with mega-merged general unions run by bloated bureaucracies, building trades who've capitulated to high-finance project managers under dictatorship of business agents, and public sector unions gutted by disinvestment and state rollbacks on union protections. The core organizational functions like stewards networks and robust organizing programs are completely hollowed out. A fighting spirit, if it exists at the grassroots, is often overshadowed by a legislative campaigning model run by staffers. It is our job to thread the needle, to be capable and organized trade unionists and political partisans for the class as a whole.
