Conjunctural Analysis 2025: Crises and Collective Action

What is Conjunctural Analysis?

Conjunctural analysis is a method of assessing what is known as the correlation of forces or the balance of power between social forces within a particular context (local, regional, national, etc) in the current moment. It also takes into account the relationship between these shifting social forces and the relatively permanent structures that shape society. In other words, it is a way of understanding the context in which we want to intervene politically. Conjunctural analysis is based on the following basic premises:

  • Material reality is complex but it is possible to understand it.
  • Reality is dynamic and changing, not due to the influence of supernatural or metaphysical forces, but by human intervention through various actors, which means that there are possibilities to intervene and transform it.
  • Understanding this reality allows us to strategically insert ourselves into it and build our revolutionary political project.

Conjunctural analysis is not neutral. It is designed to facilitate a more effective strategic intervention into existing conditions to shift the balance of power in favor of the dominated classes. A conjunctural analysis is fundamentally an analysis of power. Because of this, it’s important to have a shared understanding of what power is. For our purposes, we view power as a relationship, shaped by the struggle between social forces in society, particularly the dominant and dominated classes. Our task is to shift the balance of power in our favor and establish popular power.

Our Process for Developing a Conjunctural Analysis

The conjunctural analysis performed by Black Rose/Rosa Negra (BRRN) is incorporated into our organization’s program, Turning the Tide, directly informing our limited term strategy. Given that the conjuncture is constantly shifting, it is crucial for us to regularly update our analysis and thus our shared strategic and tactical orientation.

Development of our conjunctural analysis begins at the level of the local (the basic unit of the federation made up of at least three BRRN members in a city, town, or region). Using a framework shared across the federation, locals carry out and refine their analysis through collective discussion and debate. Delegates from each local then present their analysis from the floor at the federation’s annual national convention. Disjuncture and contradiction between analyses are then further discussed and debated on the convention floor. Following the national convention, a document synthesizing each analysis and incorporating debates held at convention, is put before BRRN membership via referendum.

The conjunctural analysis we present below is a product of this process.

Conjunctural Analysis 2025

Introduction

Since we published the first edition of our program, Turning the Tide, on May 1, 2023, many core conditions of the conjuncture that we analyzed have persisted. But a variety of major new events, including the ongoing genocide in Palestine, the 2024 US presidential election, and accelerating climate change have since taken center stage, creating shifts in the domestic and international balance of forces.

The Polycrisis

The current conjuncture continues to be shaped by what has increasingly been called  “the polycrisis”—a scenario in which a variety of crises converge all at once, each affecting the other. Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, intensifying climate change, and widening cracks in the US empire are only some of the more obvious examples of these compounding crises.

While some crises are universal, the impacts of most, of course, are not equally distributed. Some crises faced by ordinary people are built-in features of capitalism itself, while many crises for capital and the state could become opportunities for us. Our point is that this historical moment is characterized by a range of ‘tipping points’ in various social sectors and among different social actors. Taken together, they add up to an unstable and volatile “polycrisis”.

Despite the rosy reports in the mainstream media on job growth, inflation, and unemployment, most of us are struggling to make ends meet, with the cost of living skyrocketing—especially around housing, food, and childcare. Racked by rising prices and historic levels of household debt, the number of people working multiple jobs to stay afloat is the highest it has been since 2001. These are global issues which extend far beyond the US, as economic growth has still not returned to pre-COVID pandemic levels.

Precarious work and the crippling cost of living reflect an acute crisis of social reproduction, one of the least discussed dimensions of the polycrisis. Social reproduction refers to the wide range of everyday labor, paid and unpaid, that goes into making and remaking people—child rearing, elder care, cooking, cleaning, and more—which has been stretched to the breaking point by more than forty years of neoliberal capitalism. 

This “crisis of care” is clear wherever we look: in budget cuts to public education; in the widespread shortage of caregivers in child care, elder care, schools, homes and hospitals; in an aging population with home healthcare and assisted living increasingly out of reach; and ultimately in the fact that all of this reproductive labor continues to fall disproportionately on the shoulders of women, particularly women of color, reinforcing gendered and racialized domination.

Our already frayed infrastructure for care is being overwhelmed by the accelerating impacts of climate change. Historic heat waves across the country, raging wildfires in California and elsewhere, extreme flooding in various parts of the globe, historic hurricanes, devastating droughts, and the expanding energy extraction linked to the increasing use of computing—particularly artificial intelligence—underscore the threat of climate catastrophe at the heart of the polycrisis.

In 2024, the largest sources of climate pollution continue to come from the fuel, energy, and industrial agriculture sectors. 1 2 While these industries have historically been the largest contributors to the climate crisis, the exorbitant energy requirements of new AI technologies have captured headlines this past year. Tech and energy moguls are already scrambling to find new, cheap sources of power and are suggesting the possibility of delaying US climate benchmarks to meet consumer demands. Beyond the existential issue of environmental impact, the rampant use of new AI technology has raised major concerns among labor and human rights organizations. In 2023, the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA entertainment unions launched a historic strike, partially over concerns of how AI would be used in the television and film industry. As well, the genocide in Palestine over the past year and a half has served as a laboratory for the increasing use of AI in advanced weapon systems.

The inability of traditional institutions and actors to effectively address these issues has cultivated a crisis of legitimacy for political and economic elites in general and key branches of the US state in particular. According to a recent Gallup poll, public confidence in the national government, judiciary system, and even the military has plummeted, with the US lagging behind the majority of industrialized nations in most measures of trust for the first time in two decades.

The shrinking status of the US state at home mirrors the decline of US hegemony globally. Domestically and internationally, the unraveling of the US empire is facilitated by multiple factors: the Biden administration’s naked complicity in the genocide in Gaza and how the war has exposed the hypocrisy of the “rules-based international order,” economic competition from China in particular and the BRICS in general, a diminishing number of allies and client states around the world, divisions over ongoing aid for Ukraine, and elevated domestic instability that erodes the confidence of US allies abroad.

As the credibility of the established order continues to crumble, the prolonged process of political polarization continues. While this political polarization does map onto the two major US political parties, there is also an increasing number of officially registered independents and others who are dissatisfied with both Democrats and Republicans. Significant swaths of the country are seeking out solutions from the organized left and especially the far right as part of a global pattern of mass radicalization on both ends of the political spectrum. Since the 2024 election, this trend on the organized left has only continued to increase. 

Navigating the uncertainties of the polycrisis has fuelled a growing mental health crisis. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental-health poll, adults in the US are increasingly anxious, especially related to current events (70%), and rates of depression have hit record highs.

The combined weight of these social, political, economic, and ecological crises reflect a neoliberal capitalist order in decay. But what comes next, domestically and internationally, is an open question. This moment of instability and uncertainty calls for a sober analysis of the conjuncture to place libertarian socialist politics and perspectives on a more firm footing within the various sites of struggle emerging in and outside the United States, particularly the global struggle in solidarity with Palestine.

Palestine Is a Portal

The eyes of the world are fixed on the Israeli settler colony’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in and outside of Gaza. In many ways, Palestine has become a portal through which large numbers of people are mobilizing, while providing us with a lens to clarify certain dimensions of the current struggle.

Backed by billions of dollars in aid from the Biden administration, Israel has waged an unrelenting war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, resulting in staggering levels of destruction, death, dismemberment, displacement, dispossession, famine and torture. In addition to its reign of terror on Gaza, Israel has unleashed its soldiers and settlers on the occupied West Bank in a land grab involving incredible violence, stealing more Palestinian land in 2024 than it has in the past 20 years.

In response, Palestinians in Palestine and the diaspora have been at the forefront of an unprecedented global anti-war movement. International solidarity with the Palestinian struggle has mobilized millions around the globe, taking on a variety of forms, including: mass marches in cities across the world, blocked highways and ports as well as port strikes, occupied train stations, pro-Palestine encampments and strikes on university campuses, protest resignations from government officials, and ceasefire resolutions from city councils and the United Nations.

Resistance to the ongoing genocide in Gaza has reignited an anti-imperialist movement not seen on this scale since the struggle against the war in Iraq. Like the anti-war movement from the early 2000’s, the Palestine solidarity movement has radicalized large numbers of youth activists and revived student struggles on college campuses across the country. 

The Palestine solidarity struggle has also revived critical debates on a range of key questions for the left, such as the nature of imperialism, national liberation, internationalism, settler-colonialism, and zionism.

Solidarity with Palestine has cut across multiple sites of struggle. Student organizations, labor unions, tenant unions, and other community-based formations have taken up the banner of Palestine, a transversal issue with a clear capacity to link various struggles into a mass movement on an international scale.

However, while impressive in their scope and scale, mass protest actions in solidarity with Palestine have unfortunately had little effect on the US policy of arming and enabling Israel. Continual recourse to tactics of mass protest mobilization reflects a state of strategic paralysis within the Palestine solidarity movement, which has so far been able to mobilize a wide but shallow segment of the population in the US. Without being more deeply embedded and organized in everyday sites of struggle—workplaces, schools, neighborhoods—the movement has been unable to generate the sort of leverage needed to force substantial concessions from the state. 

Still, there are bright spots that suggest the capacity for this sort of rooted organizing is increasing. Rank-and-file workers in numerous union locals—including UAW, UE, SEIU, CFA, and others—have organized to commit their unions to endorsing a ceasefire and, in some cases, divestment. In May of 2024, 48,000 academic workers at University of California organized by UAW local 4811 launched a political strike (an exceedingly rare event in the US) demanding the university system divest its financial holdings from ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers. As well, the student movement on campuses has seen success in some cases, negotiating concessions from university administrators. Militants of Black Rose/Rosa Negra have been active in these struggles, experimenting with and emphasizing the need for this kind of “deep organizing.”

Anti-zionist Jews have also played a significant role in sustaining the Palestine solidarity struggle and discrediting zionist ideology in the US. Jewish Voice for Peace has been a leading force in organizing mass direct action for a permanent ceasefire, while media outlets like Jewish Currents have been critical for developing a Jewish left critique of the settler-colonial project of zionism.

In response to the groundswell of opposition to the US-backed genocide in Gaza, various branches of the US state, far right, and other institutional actors have carried out a wave of repression, intimidation, and criminalization against the Palestine solidarity movement across the country. This has included a wide range of tactics, from banning Pro-Palestine student groups on college campuses, to violent racist attacks targeted against Palestinians. Most recently, Congress has taken an active role in this repression with H.R. 9495. This bill empowers the US Treasury to strip the 501(c)3 status of any nonprofit they deem to be supporting “terrorist organizations.” In one case, the Treasury already deemed Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner support group, as funding terrorist organizations, leading to the arrest of one of the group’s leaders in Canada in October 2024.

Global opposition to the war, along with the devastating daily news coming out of Gaza, has done significant damage to Israel’s standing in the world. In a memo from the State Department, officials warned that Israel is facing “generational damage to their reputation not just in the region but elsewhere in the world.” The recent ruling from the International Court of Justice has been particularly damning, confirming what Palestinians have known for decades—that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land is illegal and that its laws in the occupied territories are a clear example of apartheid. Since the war began, at least eleven countries have either removed their ambassadors from Israel or severed diplomatic ties altogether.

Israel’s increasing isolation and receding reputation extends to its primary ally, the United States. The Biden administration’s unbending support for Israel has deepened the crisis of legitimacy for the US state at home and abroad. On the domestic front, Biden’s complicity in the genocide played a role in his declining popularity and ultimate withdrawal from the presidential election, while Israel’s flagrant disregard for international law has called into question the “rules-based international order” that the US established following World War II.

Before being forced into a ceasefire by the Lebanese resistance, Israel attempted to expand its aggression into a regional war. This attempt at widening regional conflict fits within a global context of rising war, including the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Civil War in Sudan, and imperialist aggression against Yemen.

All the while, the Biden-Harris administration’s enthusiasm for genocide eroded support for Kamala Harris, contributing to her loss in the 2024 presidential election. Simultaneously, Trump has reinforced his allegiance to Israel, in spite of the avowed anti-semitic forces among his base. 

2024 Presidential Election: Reaction on the Rise, Centrism on the Ropes

The 2024 presidential election cycle involved multiple failed assassination attempts, last minute dropouts, and threats of political “purges” that continue to capture media headlines even after the final votes have been certified. With Donald Trump now declared the winner over last-minute Democratic stand-in Kamala Harris, the imminent threat of a far more prepared MAGA administration armed with schemes out of the Project 2025 playbook threaten to deepen all aspects of the polycrisis.

In many ways, the matchup between Trump and Harris repeats a current pattern seen around the globe: the forces of reaction on the rise and centrism on the ropes. Despite recent losses in France and the UK, far-right parties are on the march in much of Europe, capturing a significant number of seats in recent elections for the European Parliament and setting the terms of electoral contests for established parties both within and outside of the region.

In the US, Trump has succeeded in consolidating near total control over the Republican Party, harnessing the widespread dissatisfaction many feel towards the status quo and career politicians. Rising far-right figureheads such as JD Vance, Peter Thiel, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Elon Musk, have pushed a mix of populist, libertarian, and ultra-conservative political and religious rhetoric, especially on immigration, alienating and sidelining relatively “moderate” sections of the Party.

In response, the Harris campaign sought to paint the Democrats as preserving the center, mobilizing the slogan “Not Going Back,” even as their own “tough on immigration” and “Law and Order” rhetoric drifted further to the right. Indeed, rightward shifts in rhetoric made clear the Democrats’ were all-in on a strategy of deliberately appealing to the previously mentioned disaffected “moderate” Republican voters in the suburbs. Harris’s promise to preserve the status quo delivered her a defeat in both the popular vote and electoral college. However, as is shown by ballot measures in several Republican controlled swing-states, most voters still largely favored initiatives that could be considered moderately progressive. In Missouri the vote went both for Trump as well as for a bevy of ballot measures that raised the minimum wage, increased sick leave for workers, and expanded abortion access. While the Democratic Party has historically paid lip service to the concerns of the working-class, women, and people of color, this election has shown that the majority of US voters want progressive reforms but no longer trust the Democrats to deliver them.

The incoming Trump administration is now a vehicle for the US far right to strengthen and accelerate an ongoing backlash against the recent gains of social movements. This backlash includes hundreds of anti-trans bills across the country, dismantling Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, overturning Roe v. Wade, systematic attacks on public education, and fierce repression of the Palestine solidarity struggle. Having captured the Supreme Court and Congress, the far right is hoping to take advantage of the Trump victory by ramming through as many planks as possible from the infamous Project 2025, a wish-list of reactionary policies outlined by the Heritage Foundation.

Particularly alarming is Trump’s intensifying rhetoric around mass deportations. While bellicose anti-immigrant sentiment has long served as a central feature of Trump’s politics, during his first term he had neither a decisive policy nor a deep bench of top and mid-level bureaucrats to put such a plan into action. Now, armed with both, Trump’s anointed “border czar” Tom Homan has pledged to “take the handcuffs off of ICE,” dramatically expanding the scale of the agency. Certainly, the most chilling escalation so far has been Trump’s repeated promise to mobilize the National Guard in service of his mass deportation plans.

Trump’s erratic behavior makes it especially difficult to predict what kind of policy upheavals he will focus on in his first days back in office. The best initial glimpse we have of his current priorities may be reflected in his nominees for top cabinet positions. Many analysts have been caught off guard by Trump’s choice of close allies who have no relevant experience. Some particularly pause-worthy examples include Elon Musk, Matt Gaetz (now having dropped out), Dr. Mehmet Oz, and Robert Kennedy Jr. Whether these are serious picks, or just an attempt to make his actual subsequent nominations more palatable, will depend on how quickly the GOP led Congress lines up behind Trump.

It is also worth noting the extremely muted popular response to this election outcome. While the days following the 2016 election saw the spontaneous and sometimes sustained outbreak of anti-Trump demonstrations, the same cannot be said this time around. Owing both to exhaustion from more than a year of mobilizations in solidarity with Palestine and a “seen this before” blunting of the shock and uncertainty that Trump’s first win elicited, the segments of the US left that typically power street protests have been largely mum since November 5th. Whether the current malaise reflects a long-term resignation by liberals and the left to what Trump 2.0 has in store is still to be seen.

Labor on the Move

The potential impact of the 2024 presidential election on the National Labor Relations Board could shape the future fortunes of the labor movement, which continues to show signs of strength and militancy, highlighting its historic potential for shifting the balance of forces. 

According to the 2023 Labor Action Tracker Report, “The total number of work stoppages, approximate number of workers involved in stoppages, and strike days have increased each year over the past three years.” In the past year alone, the number of workers involved in work stoppages increased 141%, largely due to high-profile strikes such as the SAG-AFTRA strike, the UAW Stand-Up Strike, the strike against Kaiser Permanente—the largest healthcare worker strike in US history—and the educators strike in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

During many of these high-profile strikes, the vast majority of the public sided with labor over capital, including 75% standing with UAW workers against the Big 3 auto corporations, one of many measures of growing public support for unions overall.

The majority of these marquee work stoppages took place on the West coast, but labor in the US South—where workers face the lowest wages, worst working conditions, lowest union density, and most  restrictive labor laws—is picking up steam. 

The recent landslide victory of the UAW at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has drawn needed attention to the South, a region that remains a strategic necessity not only for the labor movement, but for challenging the system of white supremacy more broadly.  

Southern workers are on the march in both the private and public sector. Education workers at Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia voted to unionize in June, creating one of the largest K–12 unions on the East Coast, with a wall-to-wall bargaining unit of 27,500 educators, bus drivers, teaching assistants, and more. Also in K–12 public education, the Durham Association of Educators in Durham, North Carolina, won a historic budget fight through mass mobilizations and sick outs in a campaign that transformed their union from minority to majority status. In the service sector, the recently formed Union of Southern Service Workers (USSW) is organizing low-wage workers across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, with a focus on militant direct action and solidarity in fast-food restaurants, dollar stores, and the care industry. These are only some of the many examples of southern worker organizing that point toward significant potential in the region. 

One of the driving forces behind the soaring strength and influence of labor is a growing militant minority—that small but mighty segment of the working class with the experience, dedication, and vision that has often been at the center of previous periods of labor insurgency. This growth can be seen in the record-setting turnout of 4,700 people at the 2024 Labor Notes Conference—one of the most prominent gathering points for the militant minority in the United States—and in the increasing number of rank-and-file reform caucuses that have cropped up over the years, in the UAW, UFCW, and IATSE to name a few.

Another indicator of a budding labor upsurge is the recent formation of independent unions, especially in the service industry. These include Trader Joe’s United, Blue Bottle Independent Union, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), several chapters of the Food & Beverage Workers United in North Carolina, and until recently, the Amazon Labor Union, which ultimately affiliated with the Teamsters.

One of the more significant shifts in the labor movement has been its growing solidarity with Palestine. Since the assault on Gaza began on October 7th hundreds of labor unions have been organizing to demand a ceasefire to the genocide. These efforts quickly coalesced into the National Network for Ceasefire, which now represents 9 million workers with membership in UAW, APWU, AFA-CWA, IUPAT, NNU, and NEA among others. These efforts have also included facilitating regular conversations with Palestinian labor unions, showing a recommitment to internationalism within the US labor movement.

The movement for Palestinian liberation has also revitalized the US student movement in the form of campus encampments and occupations across the country. In an exciting show of cross-sectoral organizing labor unions have come out in strong support of these student protests, including releasing solidarity statements, showing up to student actions, holding workplace solidarity actions, and raising money to support occupying students or those students facing legal penalties for the protests.1 2 3 4

Despite this surge of solidarity, energy, and participation, the US labor movement is still far from the militancy seen during the last upsurge of the 1970s. While it has slowed, union membership is still on the decline. In addition, many unions lack any meaningful internal democracy and are deeply entwined with the Democratic Party, wasting precious resources on electoral politics that might be spent organizing and educating rank-and-file members.

Balance of Forces

Since the end of the Trump presidency in 2020, his brand of far-right populism has consolidated its power within the Republican Party. Democratic lawmakers have responded to this threat by trying to delegitimize Trump personally through various criminal and civil legal battles. Unsurprisingly, these tactics have only strengthened Trump’s appeal among his base, as he continues to craft an image of himself as the outsider fighting the political establishment. This underdog depiction of Trump has been further solidified since the assassination attempt at a political rally in July 2024. Democrats have responded to this trend as they always do, by moving farther to the right and mirroring much of the “law and order” and “border crisis” rhetoric used by conservatives.

The fear spurring the growth of Trumpism has been fueled by false claims of “violent immigrants invading the US from the outside,” as well as perceived threats of violence from domestic political opponents. The rise of far-right populism, based on xenophobia, economic precarity, and inflated fears of oppressed groups threatening traditional social privileges, has been mirrored in elections across the Western world. This can be seen most recently in national elections in France, Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and the Czech Republic, as well as this year’s EU parliamentary elections which saw an increased number of seats for rightwing continental and national political parties (AfD in Germany, for example.) Even in elections where the far right did not win, they did have historic turnouts in their favor.

In other words, despite both legal and electoral setbacks, the far right is on the rise at home and abroad.

Tragically, this so-called “New Right” has captured much of the popular discontent over neoliberalism’s diminishing returns, channeling people’s fears, anger, and anxiety into reactionary forms of politics. However, much of the energy produced by the rising far right has remained within the bounds of institutions and traditional politics. Unlike the leadup to the first Trump presidency, there is presently very little to speak of when it comes to a visible far-right street movement. The variety of far-right and explicitly fascist movement organizations which marked the 2016-2018 period with violent street clashes have by now largely faded into obscurity, broken up under prosecution by the state, and/or suffered exposure and routing by anti-fascists. Similarly, key elements of the more populist far right which fomented the January 6th, 2021 storming of the Capitol have faced prosecution and imprisonment, resulting in broader demobilization.

Meanwhile, forces on the center-left, from the Democratic Party to liberal NGO’s, have mounted a feeble struggle against “hate” in the name of defending “democracy” and other abstract values aimed at preserving the same status quo that gave birth to the far-right and fascist forces. This inability to provide a coherent narrative and systematic critique of a decaying neoliberal order, declining US hegemony, increasing global violence, and worsening climate crisis has produced a profound crisis of legitimacy for the institutional US center-left—exemplified in the defeat of Kamala Harris. This erosion of legitimacy is likely to continue, along the way ceding ground to the institutional far right, while also presenting potential opportunities for the anti-capitalist left to offer a coherent alternative analysis.

The organized left—in the form of anti-capitalist political organizations—remains fragmented and frail. Still, it has shown itself capable of punching above its weight class in certain circumstances. The Democratic Socialists of America, which remains the largest political organization on the US left, is facing a financial and political crisis, but their membership appears to be rebounding in the wake of Trump regaining the White House. Other “hard left” political organizations in the Marxist-Leninist mold have grown in the midst of the movement for Palestinian liberation, where the organized left as a whole has played a significant role. The resurgence of struggle in solidarity with Palestine and the budding militancy of the labor movement have shown where the revolutionary left (including organized anarchists) has the potential to be most effective—where there is a unifying mass struggle and the opportunity to develop deep rooted organizing. There is much foundation-building work to do in this current moment if we want to maintain and build upon the momentum that has grown up around the current national and international crises.