Labor Commission contribution to the 2025 CPUSA Peace Conference 2.0

We are here to talk about peace. But genuine peace is more than the absence of war, as Martin Luther King Jr. said. It is the presence of justice and a secure future for the entire working class. For too long, industrial workers have been told they must choose between a paycheck and their morals — that their survival depends on building weapons of war for transnational corporations.

Coupled with that, the U.S. has no industrial policy that benefits working people. Yet such a policy does exist on behalf of the war economy. Under the Trump administration, the most reactionary sections of the imperialist ruling class are accelerating the war at home and abroad through for-profit immigrant detention, escalating arms sales to fuel conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, and integrating Big Tech directly into the military-industrial complex. This is the breeding ground for the fascist threat.

We know the war economy is a racket. It’s a system that rewards corporations for waste with weapons costing more than their weight in gold. This system has hollowed out our country’s productive capacity. We are the world’s top weapons dealer, yet we cannot build our own subway cars at scale. It steals our best engineers and machinists to produce instruments of death while our bridges and railways crumble.

The concept of a Just Transition means that when we struggle, succeed, and move from a destructive industry to a productive one, the working class is protected and no worker is left behind. It prioritizes the interests of the working class to the benefit of the whole society.

Practically, a Just Transition would look like:

• A federal job guarantee. Every worker in a war plant would get a new, union job building a peaceful future in green energy, high speed rail, infrastructure, environmental restoration, mass public transit, housing, and in other needed areas.
• Working class leadership. The working class knows our skills and shops best. We, not the transnationals and billionaire-backed politicians, would decide how to retool our factories and communities.
• A real safety net. Full income support and training for workers would be fully funded by taxing the billionaires and the transnational corporations, especially the financial-military-industrial complex. Apprenticeship programs sponsored by the trade unions would be a key part of this transition.

The same workers that build destroyers, tanks, and jets can build the infrastructure we need: high-speed rail, wind turbines, and modern water systems. Study after study shows that public spending on green, civilian infrastructure creates more stable jobs than military spending. The war economy is volatile and prone to layoffs; a peace economy offers long-term, dignified work.

Why must the working class lead?

Workers ultimately hold the power to upend the capitalist economy. Some of the most key unions, such as the Steelworkers, Machinists, and UAW, are representing workers directly inside the war economy. When a Boeing worker says, “I want to build for life, not for death,” it shatters the capitalist narrative that workers only care about a paycheck.

The movement for a Just Transition has the potential to unite our class — for good union jobs, climate justice, and overall community wellbeing. Critically, a mass movement for a Just Transition directly challenges the fascist threat which relies on the war economy’s billionaire and corporate backers for its power. If successful, this movement for a Just Transition can make a decisive, objective step toward socialism by striking a blow against the capitalist-imperialist system that breeds both fascism and war.

And of course, we are faced with a massive ideological and political problem. A half-century of neoliberal attacks have placed a bull’s eye on anything with “public” in its name. It will require the public will and public money to effect the transition we need to survive as a species.

For the Communist Party and the Labor Commission, should we promote workplace concentration in these war industries and their unions? Should we develop a focus on their surrounding communities?

As we develop our electoral presence and inspire independent political action within the working class, should we make this work an integral component of our electoral platform?

We look forward to the discussion.

Image: Workers on the factory floor at Lockheed Martin assemble an F-35 by Staci Reidinger (DVIDS) / Workers construct rail by John K Thorne (public domain)