The decision of the Roberts’ Court striking down a voting map in Louisiana that allowed Black people a smidgen of political representation in Congress — similar challenges are going on in other Southern States — should be an obvious and instructive example of how the struggle for Black equality, political and otherwise, should be a political imperative of the larger working class and democratic movement if those movements hope to restrain and ultimately decisively defeat Trump and the entire MAGA movement and move to higher ground.

And yet that isn’t always the case. For some on the left it is considered enough to speak the language of class, working class, and class struggle in their commentary at the present conjuncture. The special role of Black workers, Black people, and the struggle for Black equality in the present moment, not to mention at every stage of class and democratic struggle up to and including the struggle for socialism, too often goes unmentioned. And that is a moral, strategic, and ultimately self defeating mistake.

In his role as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts evinces a personna that he is above partisan politics, an independent arbiter of the law, nothing more. But he is anything but. A close look at his voting record on the most impactful and anti-democratic decisions of the Court reveals an extreme right wing disposition and a most dangerous cast of mind.

The weakening of the left (and the Communist Party in particular) in the auto industry and the UAW was a factor in the making of “The Treaty of Detroit,” in 1950, but not the main one. As I see it, that honor goes to the favorable and non-repeatable conditions for capital accumulation in the auto industry and U.S. economy in the immediate post WWII period.

That period, however, came to an end in the early 1970s as conditions in the auto industry (and the U.S. economy as a whole) deteriorated markedly. So much so that UAW President Doug Fraser under immense pressure from Chrysler and the Carter Administration did what former UAW President Walter Reuther would have done had he been alive: agreed to major concessions in jobs, benefits, and productive capacity. What bothered Fraser wasn’t so much Chrysler’s insistence on concessions, but the extent and depth of them.

In other words, concessions per se were not out of the question for Fraser given the cyclical and structural troubles of the auto industry at that moment, but they should be, in his social democratic calculus, reasonable and shared. Not suprisingly, the auto companies (and the ruling class) would have none of it. They were governed by a different calculus. For them the restoration of their profits and dominance in what was an increasingly global auto market was paramount. In their mind the restructuring of the industry at the expense of labor was absolutely necessary and had only begun.

These concessions then were but the opening salvo of a general corporate offensive in the auto industry and beyond. More were to come. The halcyon days of the postwar period in the auto industry (and economy as a whole) were over. The class struggle was back in full swing! Postwar Keynesianism and the “Golden Age” of capitalism were departing the scene and the wrecking ball of neoliberalism was announcing its arrival.

The UAW leadership, however, failed to adjust to these new conditions and thus a long period of contract concessions followed. It was only recently that a new leadership struck a new fighting posture. And that should be welcomed.

If anybody asked me — and I doubt if anybody will — I would suggest that August 28, the anniversay of the 1963 Freedom March, be turned into a day when all the streams of the working class and people’s movement descend on the nation’s capital where the stage would be set for a massive mobillization this fall and an even more massive turnout on Election Day.

A section of the left is wedded to a view of the Democratic Party – and it goes back more than a half century – that resists any adjustments in its thinking and practice no matter the alignment of class and social forces, no matter the election’s stakes, no matter the shifts in thinking in a progressive direction among Congressional Democrats. I suspect that we will see this dynamic in full play once again this fall. On the other hand, millions of people, including people on the left, don’t subscribe to this mode of thinking. And that’s a good thing!