As socialists, we see the united front method as essential to building lasting, sustainable movements. The recent illegal bombing of Iran by the U.S., Israel’s attacks on Iran, Lebanon and Yemen and its genocide in Gaza, the grinding bloody Russia-Ukraine war and the rise of militarism around the world show we desperately need to begin to build a strong and broad based anti-war movement here in Canada.
The war on Iran
On June 13, Israel launched an illegal war on Iran by dropping over a hundred bombs on military and civilian targets across twelve provinces, from Tehran to Tabriz. Donald Trump didn’t just give a green light—he called for escalation. Soon after, the G7 nations, including Canada, stood behind Israel, repeating that Israel has the right to defend itself—without calling for a ceasefire or investigation.This attack comes on the heels of over 20 months of genocide in Gaza with no accountability for ongoing war crimes. With over 60,000 killed by the IDF, Israel is now extending the same logic of collective punishment to Tehran.
It’s beyond irony that two nuclear states are invoking the threat of nuclear war from Iran as the basis for the attacks. Neither Israel nor the United States acknowledges that Israel has nuclear weapons and developed them in secret. It is nothing but hypocritical for the United States, the only country to use nuclear weapons during a war, and Israel, a country which has never signed onto the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to lecture the world about the threat of nuclear weapons. According to the U.S.’s own intelligence assessments Iran not only doesn’t have a nuclear weapon, but it is not intending to develop one. However, Israel and the U.S.’s attacks make it much more likely that Iran could come to the conclusion that developing a nuclear weapon is its only defence against the U.S. and Israel.
There is no military solution here. Iran cannot surrender to impossible demands – giving up its nuclear power program altogether – at the barrel of a gun. It has already expressed willingness to accept uranium monitoring—but diplomacy must be mutual. Iran cannot surrender its sovereignty under bombs. Foreign bombs will not liberate Iran.
While there is currently a fragile ceasefire in place, it is clear that the threat of a wider regional war has increased dramatically. For the U.S. regime change in Iran is not off the table and there is every indication that the Canadian government would back such a war.
The united front method
Our method, as revolutionary socialists and members of Spring, is to build mass, working-class movements with real social weight. We aim to do this because we believe that to advance the socialist cause means winning over the masses to socialist ideas and that can only be done through struggle. People’s consciousness does not come to socialist ideas all at once or fully formed; they are transformed through successive approximations of social struggle.
Mass movements, as Trotsky noted, are the process by which the masses can arrive at more radical political conclusions:
“(T)he greater is the mass drawn into the movement, the higher its self-confidence rises, all the more self-confident will that mass movement be and all the more resolutely will it be capable of marching forward, however modest may be the initial slogans of struggle. And this means that the growth of the mass aspects of the movement tends to radicalize it, and creates much more favourable conditions for the slogans, methods of struggle, and, in general, the leading role of the Communist Party.”
Our starting point in the project of building a mass movement is an understanding that we have power—in our workplaces, in our unions, and in our streets. We must use it.
This rank-and-file approach means understanding and wielding the structural power we hold as workers. The bosses rely on our labour to produce value—and our refusal to make that value has shaken empires. But to use that power effectively, we need strategy and organization. Workers are strongest when they are united.
That doesn’t mean we all have to agree on everything—but we do need to unite around specific, concrete demands. That’s the united front method: a limited political agreement for joint action, not a total program of political unity. In the process, socialists can play a key role in building leadership and capacity among fellow workers to organize around anti-war demands, while expanding the scope to include an end to all wars, occupation, and more.
The united front helps demystify the range of positions among groups and within the working class regarding Iran’s government or its future. One thing is clear: While there is debate about the regime in Iran, the people of Iran deserve the right to define their own future, free from bombs, fear, and foreign coercion. We can disagree about Iran’s political future while uniting around clear, shared demands to move the complicit Canadian state: stop the war on Iran, sanction Israel and impose a two-way arms embargo, end the genocide in Gaza, and fund public services—not militarism.
The role of socialists
In this moment, when a genocide is unfolding in Gaza and the use of nuclear weapons is being openly debated our role as socialists is to work with others to change the world. As Spring members, we call this socialism from below. Workers and the oppressed must be at the centre of responding to the crisis of capitalism and reshaping the world in our own image.
Our role isn’t to be the most radical or the furthest left with the “right” ideas or perfect plan—it’s to be in the trenches with our comrades, as companions in struggle, to connect our ideas with the struggle at hand. There is no substitute for the power of an active, aware, and engaged working class. We need to commit to long, patient organizing from the ground up, with the goal of building a confident, combative layer of activists who can act independently and help others find the confidence to act too.
We are not separate from the movements we’re part of. We want to both learn from and contribute to these movements by bringing our socialist politics to help advance the struggle.
Building unity and mass movements
Our power depends on something deeper than slogans—relationships. These bonds, formed even among strangers, become the foundation of solidarity and strength. Relationships build organizations. Organizations put pressure on employers, corporations, and the capitalist state. That’s the unity of struggle.
Linking workplace demands with broader social demands—anti-war, a free Palestine, immigrant justice, trans rights—is how we unlock our full class power. It’s slow and patient work, but moments of mass mobilization, like what we’ve seen in response to the Iraq war, and in the last 20 months to end the genocide in Gaza has jolted hundreds of thousands into action. We need to give that mobilization expression through real, organized struggle to build a mass and united anti-war movement that ends all wars and the genocide in Gaza.
We’ve stopped wars before. We will need to be prepared to do it again.
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