This document was originally published on January 18, 2025.
Trump’s second victory is a stunning demonstration of just how far traditional bourgeois politics have fallen. When Trump began his first campaign in 2015, he was widely regarded as a joke with no chance of winning. Nine years later, he has cemented his place in history as one of the most vile and consequential figures of early 21st century capitalism, who in many ways embodies some of the most important political changes of this epoch. His 2024 victory also reminds us once more to not underestimate the havoc the new era will bring.
After the Democratic establishment’s dragged out replacement of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris, we said that while Harris gave the Democrats at least a chance of beating Trump, it would do nothing to solve the deeper crisis of support facing the deeply discredited party. Though Trump’s victory did not come as a surprise, as it did to many eight years ago, few including among ourselves predicted that he would win so decisively, with the Democrats not winning even one of the seven battleground states. The absurdity of this election cycle hit its peak when two of the most powerful men in the world, an average age of 80 between them, traded barely intelligible jabs about each other’s golf swings in front of 50 million viewers as part of a presidential debate.
But the victory of Trump 2.0 is the farthest possible thing from a joke. Millions now face deportation, family separation, bans on the healthcare they need to survive, cuts to vital social services, education, and more. What meager regulations exist on climate change-inducing industries will be rolled back after thousands of ordinary people’s lives in North Carolina and elsewhere were decimated by climate catastrophe in 2024. The inter-imperialist bloc conflict with China will be ratcheted up even further, and the US will back global militarism even more aggressively. Though the majority of Trump voters are not fully behind him on every issue, the most hardcore, far-right section of his base is stronger both in numbers and in confidence compared to 2016.
On the other side of the political divide, tens of millions of people in the US are utterly demoralized, terrified, and have little to no hope for the future. Socialists must be crystal clear that only mass movements and in particular working-class action can decisively turn the tide against the growing right wing. Mass struggle combined with the building of a left-wing, pro-working class political alternative to both the Republican and Democratic parties can take this process even further.
For Marxists political clarity is always primary, but especially so in a moment like this. Without a correct understanding of why Trump won, what we should expect under his presidency, and what will be necessary to stop his agenda, our organization will not pass the tests or resist the pressures imposed on us by this historic change. Political clarity for revolutionaries is not a goal in and of itself, but a foundation for action. In turn, without clear socialist answers to this new situation, the wider left will inevitably fail.
This document has three parts. Part one is an analysis of the election result and its significance, how we got here, and the underlying processes at play, part two discusses the general outlines of what we can expect for various aspects of Trump’s second term, and part three covers perspectives for struggle, the left, and the role of Marxists under Trump 2.0.
Without a crystal ball, we of course cannot say exactly how Trump will rule, but by drawing out the likely general course of development, including the various arenas in which struggle could emerge, we prepare ourselves for the tumultuous months and years ahead. In achieving a greater understanding of the processes at play, we redouble our commitment to the project of building a revolutionary party that can lead the working class in overthrowing capitalism and imperialism to eradicate exploitation, oppression, and the likes of Donald Trump forever.
Part One: Trump’s Victory and Consciousness
How We Got Here: 2008 to Today
To fully understand any event it must be looked at in the context of its wider process of development. Elections are a snapshot of consciousness at a given moment, but a still picture only reveals so much. A rounded out analysis requires digging into the processes which shape specific events.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalism decisively won the Cold War. During the neoliberal era the capitalist class went on the offensive globally, attacking gains won by the working class in the post-war period and severely driving back working-class organization, consciousness, and traditions of struggle. The ruling class was generally in control, with US capitalism and imperialism occupying the position of undisputed global hegemon and powerhouse.
Everything changed with the Great Recession of 2008, the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression eighty years earlier. After an initial stunning period, a wave of struggle broke out globally starting with the Arab Spring in late 2010, then spreading to the US with the Battle of Wisconsin and Occupy in 2011, Spain with the Indignados movement, and general strikes throughout southern Europe. In the US, Barack Obama oversaw a “recovery” in which after three years, all new net wealth generated since the crisis went to the top 7% of society while the bottom 93% remained worse off than before the crash. The Obama years were a disaster for tens of millions of ordinary people and, under the first Black president, the Black working class fared disproportionately badly.
The Tea Party, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers and marked by racism and libertarianism, dressed up as anti-establishment, was the first widespread reaction to the crisis and Obama’s response given the refusal of the mainstream left or the labor leadership to take on the Democrats. But this was the context for Occupy, the Fight for $15 which broke out in late 2012 then lasted for several years, and the original outbreak of Black Lives Matter in 2014, all of which swept the Tea Party away.
The 2016 presidential election became the next expression of the revolt against the neoliberal era in its dying years, with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump acting as opposing poles in this process. Sanders called for a “political revolution against the billionaire class” while Trump called to “Make America Great Again,” scapegoating immigrants and other oppressed groups along the way. This coincided with the same process of left-right political polarization in the electoral arena which played out in countries across the world, including Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson in the UK (Brexit was also part of this process), Jean Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen in France, Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece, Podemos and Vox in Spain, and elsewhere. The Democratic establishment, far more scared of Sanders and his movement’s threat to capitalism than of Trump’s right populism, crushed Bernie. Despite losing the popular vote by three million, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the electoral college.
We firmly and correctly argued in 2016 that Trump’s victory did not represent a generalized shift to the right in US society. Beyond Trump losing the popular vote, exit polls showed that 20% of Trump voters that year still viewed him unfavorably (compared to 9% this time). As the Washington Post commented at the time, “There is no precedent for a candidate winning the Presidency with fewer voters viewing him favorably, or looking forward to his administration, than the loser.” While rejecting the idea of a generalized shift to the right, we were very clear, though, that it represented a shift to the right in a section of society which could deepen, while another section was being radicalized to the left by wider developments — in a word, deeper polarization.
Trump’s victory came on the heels of Sanders’ insurgent campaign that won 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries and two million donors. Immediately following the election, tens of thousands took to the streets to oppose Trump and two months later the Women’s March became the largest single day of protest in US history at the time. Less than one week into Trump’s presidency, mass struggle successfully blocked Trump’s original “Muslim Ban,” leading in part to an almost immediate dip in his approval ratings. DSA grew to nearly 100,000 in the years that followed and the resurgence of socialist ideas started by Sanders’ 2016 run, albeit in a confused and largely reformist way, continued, and was also reflected in the growth of our forces to a peak of 1,200 in mid-2017. The left of the Democratic Party embodied by Bernie and the Squad, the latter of which formed in 2018, was still on the ascendancy. The teachers strike wave across “red” states that went for Trump, and mass sickouts later that year to end the government shutdown of 2018/19, ushered in a period of resurgence for the US labor movement.
So despite Trump’s presidency, the left generally had the initiative through the end of 2020. It wasn’t Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, but rather the defeats and betrayals of 2020 that ended the period of left ascendancy which dominated the post-2008 polarization of the 2010’s. This included the Obama-orchestrated coup against Bernie in the 2020 primary followed by his rapid acquiescence (unlike 2016 when he stayed in the race until summer) and the explosive rise and then defeat of 20 million-strong Black Lives Matter. Finally came the Squad’s refusal to “Force the Vote” on Medicare for All in December of that year, signaling their willingness to move toward a full-on peace with the Democratic establishment under Biden and beginning their descent into irrelevance.
On the heels of these events, broadly the US left entered into a period of general, though uneven, decline, demonstrating that betrayals and defeats have serious consequences. The failure of social struggle under reformist leadership to win meaningful victories and build a left alternative to the thoroughly pro-capitalist, anti-worker Democratic Party left the situation wide open for the right to make gains, even in spite of Trump’s resounding popular vote defeat by over 7 million votes in 2020.
Biden’s victory that year represented both a temporary defeat of Trump, but also a defeat of the left, through a strengthening, albeit temporary and shallow, of the political center. As we said at the time, counter to the analysis of the mainstream bourgeois press, the right was not at all decisively defeated and without a left alternative to Biden’s pro-corporate presidency, it would grow and strengthen, including winning over a bigger section of the disaffected working class. In September of 2020 we warned, “The corporate rule of a Biden presidency will still very much fan the flame of capitalist crisis and the growth of the far right, and pave the way for more Trumps and worse Trumps in the years to come.” The Democrats, and even some on the left, scoffed at this prospect, especially with Trump’s fall from grace and relative political isolation in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
Days after Biden’s victory we warned again, “We need to be very clear that, unless we begin to take more serious steps towards building a new political force based on the multiracial and multi-gender working class, we face serious dangers in the coming years. Donald Trump and the populist right have built a massive political base, which includes a growing far right wing. If we have a repeat of 2008–10 with working people and sections of the middle class suffering as the banks and corporations are looked after by a corporate Democratic administration, this will provide a huge opening for the far right to grow further.”
Unfortunately, but entirely unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happened. It is noteworthy that after Trump won eight years ago, millions took the streets to oppose him. After he lost four years later, the most important protest was a thousands-strong far right rally and violent invasion of the Capitol building. Despite Trump’s electoral defeat, the root cause of the right wing’s rise was left untouched.
The Democrats’ utterly useless attempts to ruin Trump’s reputation via “Russiagate” and the Mueller Investigation, two impeachment attempts, and nearly three dozen indictments, in the end served only to deepen Trump’s appeal and image as an anti-establishment figure taking on the swamp in Washington and the “deep state” out to get him and his supporters. In the 24 hours after Trump’s felony convictions in May, his campaign raised $53 million, more than in the final six months of 2023 combined. The Democrats’ legalistic “resistance” was patently useless.
The Biden administration oversaw the highest inflation in over 40 years, and as Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Democrats didn’t so much as lift a pinky to stop it. Biden presided over the botched withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which accelerated the declining image and prestige of US imperialism, and the doling out of nearly $200 billion to finance US imperialist interests in Ukraine while tens of millions suffered at home. Most recently Biden led the US in giving more money and military support to the Israeli regime in a single year than any previous for its genocidal campaign in Gaza and war against Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East. These have given Trump the ability to pose as against inflation and war, for the benefit of ordinary Americans, which is of course a lie. All of this and more is what led tens of millions of ordinary people to see Harris as the candidate of the status quo and Trump as the candidate of change in the 2024 election.
Democrats’ Base Undermined and Republican Inroads
Trump’s victory in 2024 represents a historic undermining of the modern base of the Democratic Party, which dates back to the Great Depression, and an inflection point for Republican support among the working class. Some of the biggest stories following the election were about the seismic demographic shifts that have taken place in US electoral politics over the last decade, which reflect the wider processes at play.
Perhaps the most stunning shifts were seen among young people and Latinos. The Democrats received their smallest percentage of voters ages 18–29 in over 30 years at 54%. This is down from 60% four years ago and 58% eight years ago. Trump received 43% of the vote from those under 30, up seven points from 2020 and fifteen points from 2016. Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump among this age group was nearly three times the size of Harris’s, and Clinton was no youth fan favorite by any stretch. The war on Gaza was a huge factor in this, as was the growing influence of right-wing ideas among young men in particular.
Harris won the overall Latino vote by a mere 5%, down dramatically from 33% four years ago and 38% eight years ago. Trump won a majority of Latino men’s votes at 54%, a stunning result for somebody who made anti-immigrant rhetoric such a centerpiece of his campaign. While women still disproportionately vote Democrat on the whole, this continues to be chipped away at by the Republicans, and did not turn out to be the saving grace the Democrats hoped for and mainstream media predicted it might be in the final days before the election. Trump only lost the overall women’s vote by 8%, cutting the difference by half from this margin against both Biden and Clinton.
There was much speculation in advance of the election on the Black vote, a historically key voting bloc for Democrats. The Democrats largely held onto the Black vote, with only a 3% decrease from 2016 and 1% from 2020, but when broken up by gender the results show a different story. More than one in five Black men, 21%, voted for Trump this year, up from 19% four years ago and 13% eight years ago, showing the gaining influence of right-wing ideas among a section of Black men. Many Black people, as well as Latinos, feel with good reason like they have been taken for granted by the Democratic Party and, while they may be opposed to some of what Trump says, have been impacted by right-wing ideas nonetheless and opted to give Trump a chance in part to “send a message” to the Democrats.
Crucially, there are signs of a deeper historical inflection point in the class makeup of the two parties’ bases. For decades the Democrats have been seen in wide swathes of the country as the party of working people and the Republicans that of the educated elite, but this has significantly shifted. A majority of registered voters without a college degree, a certain marker for the working class, are now registered Republicans. Voters in families with a household income lower than $100,000 voted for Biden by a margin of 13% in 2020 and Trump by a margin of 4% this year, a 17-point swing. These and many other statistics are indicative of the totally historic crisis facing the Democratic Party.
Contradictory Consciousness
Understanding consciousness, including its twists, turns, and contradictions, is a key task for Marxists. Without a correct assessment of consciousness and how it may evolve, revolutionaries run the risk of being caught flat footed by important developments, under or overemphasizing different aspects of our program at a given time, and falling into political disorientation and demoralization.
A section of the left, such as Workers Strike Back, is arguing against the idea that there has been any rightward shift in US society. A few factors tend to be pointed to, namely a widespread rejection of the pro-corporate Democratic Party and several victorious ballot initiatives around progressive issues in states that still went for Trump.
Tens of millions of those who voted for Trump did indeed do so primarily in opposition to Harris and, by extension, Biden and the Democratic Party. As we noted in our immediate post-election statement, “After decades of voting for Democrats as the “lesser evil” to stop the Republicans, we are now seeing signs of the opposite phenomenon: millions of ordinary people ‘holding their nose’ to vote for Trump out of a greater dislike for the corporate, out-of-touch Democrats.”
However, while still a critical piece of the overall picture, exit polls show a statistically significant shift in this arena from eight years ago. In 2016, 53% of Trump voters explained their vote as being primarily against Hillary Clinton as opposed to primarily for Trump. This year only 36% of Trump voters explained their vote as being primarily against Harris as opposed to for Trump, a 17% decrease. In 2016, a minority of 44% of Trump voters voted primarily for Trump, whereas this year a majority of 55% did so. The situation is not identical to eight years ago—old talking points and explanations are not sufficient.
The ballot initiatives give important insight into the contradictory features of consciousness at this time. As many have pointed out, the fact that four states that went to Trump also voted to protect abortion rights shows that not all Trump voters are fully consolidated in right-wing politics. In all ten states where it was on the ballot, abortion rights received a higher vote than Harris. Missouri went for Trump but passed a $15 minimum wage, more than double the federal minimum wage, which both Obama and Biden failed to raise despite Democratic majorities in Congress during both of their first two years in the White House. Many of the workers who have recently taken part in important industrial strikes against big corporations also voted for Trump, showing, again as we said in our post-election statement, “that workers can be part of a militant struggle against the boss and still be susceptible to anti-working class ideas like racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia.”
There is also no doubt that, in a distorted form, anti-establishment and even a form of anti-system consciousness are also important features within a large section of Trump’s base. There are absolutely positive aspects of this, ranging from anger at the “swamp in Washington” to a generalized feeling that “the system” in a broad sense is rigged in favor of the elites. Frustration especially at the state of the economy, recent decades-high inflation, and the Democratic Party’s constant broken promises and thinly veiled corporate rule contribute to a healthy hatred of the political establishment. What’s dangerous is that, in the absence of mass struggle and a left alternative, the right has seized on this and successfully corrupted healthy anti-establishment sentiments in millions of working people with thoroughly right-wing ideas.
There were also ballot measures that pointed in a different direction from those above, however, such as eight states passing ballot measures banning non-citizens from voting even though this is already illegal. This includes Wisconsin, where 49% voted for Harris but 71% voted for this anti-immigrant referendum, or North Carolina which went 48% for Harris but 78% supported this ballot measure. In all eight states, significantly more Harris voters voted to restrict immigrants’ [already restricted] democratic rights than Trump voters who voted for abortion rights. In famously liberal California that went 59% for Harris, a majority voted down a measure which would have overturned the law that allows prisoners to do unpaid labor, the famous racist loophole to the abolition of slavery in the Constitution’s thirteenth amendment.
Consciousness is complicated and flexible; contradictory elements can be present within one person or even a section of the working class’s collective consciousness at the same time. These different elements can be more or less dominant at different times, as well as being more or less quickly and easily reversible depending on a multitude of factors. We should remember how consciousness shifted rapidly during the George Floyd uprising, when the burning down of a Minneapolis police station became more popular than either presidential candidate at the time. But in the face of struggle retreating with few concrete victories and a ruling-class onslaught, within just over a year support for reducing police funding dropped significantly.
This sort of phenomenon isn’t new. The infamous anti-Black race riots of 1919, “Red Summer,” took place in the United States two years after the October revolution. Alongside the massive labor struggles of the 1930 and 40s was the immense impact of the ideas of Jim/Jane Crow within wide sections of the working class. Even at the height of the historic CIO organizing drive there were cases of white auto workers launching workplace actions against desegregation of the job site. There can be highly positive aspects of worker’s consciousness while negative fetters simultaneously exist that act against the immediate needs of the class as well as its historical task of eliminating capitalism.
In the coming years, divisive right wing ideas sown by the ruling class can serve to cut across class struggle, or increased struggle can positively impact consciousness and cut across divisive ideas within the working class. In all likelihood, a combination of both processes will take place in the coming years, but which more forcefully is yet to be determined. The decisive factors will be struggle and major objective events like wars and economic crises. Both Black Lives Matter and women’s struggles over the last decade have shown how movements can rapidly and drastically change consciousness, as can important strikes and organizing drives. But we’ve also seen that lack of results and exhaustion, followed by an offensive by the ruling class, can throw back consciousness.
Impact of the Ruling Class’ Rightward Shift
Following the global wave of revolts from 2019–2021, of which BLM was a part along with mass uprisings and near-revolutions in over a dozen countries, the ruling class felt they were too near the brink and had to act more decisively to repress movements and the class struggle. In the US in the wake of BLM, both parties supported a wave of laws criminalizing basic protest rights and creating harsher penalties for certain activities. Many Democrats used January 6th as an excuse to support these bills but in reality the main target was the left, sometimes obviously, like laws in Arkansas, Kansas, and Montana that created increased penalties for protesting near an oil or gas pipeline. This was accompanied by a sharp turn toward “law and order” rhetoric by both parties, seen quite notably in the 2022 midterms and other local elections since 2021. The right-wing recall effort our own organization faced in Seattle was part of this process, though our defeat of it was a rare exception due to the effectiveness of Marxist strategy, tactics, and organization.
At the same time, the ruling class encouraged the backlash to #MeToo, which served as a collective confidence boost for women in struggle on issues of sexual violence and beyond, and watched as the deeply misogynistic manosphere pulled in millions of men and boys. Even beyond the most hardcore Andrew Tate fans, the vile ideas espoused in the manosphere had a knock-on effect among a much wider section of the population. Of course the overturn of Roe v. Wade, one of the most important gains for the women’s movement in the history of the country, was part of this overall process too, as was the drastic rise of anti-trans laws in recent years.
According to Pew Research data, in 2017, 54% said a person’s gender was determined by their sex assigned at birth. By 2022, over a year into the concerted wave of anti-trans bills and laws across the country, 60% believed this. The study showed that this increase was proportional across the board, meaning for instance that while young people still tend to have more progressive views on trans issues, the shift in attitudes has affected all demographics relatively uniformly. The Democrats created space for the current backlash when it cynically co-opted the language of anti-oppression struggles without delivering substantial change. This has allowed the Republicans to attack “woke culture” as a way to energize their base and exploit splits inside the Democratic Party.
Far from limited to the US, this right-wing backlash by the ruling class in the early 2020s was a widespread international phenomenon, as we have commented much on in ISA material, and which was a key topic of debate with the recently departed minority faction who underestimated this trend, its causes, and effects.
But while reaction to the global wave of revolts at the turn of the decade was certainly an impetus and catalyst for the ruling class’ offensive and rightward shift, the most fundamental backdrop has been the need to get the working class in line as the inter-imperialist conflict begins to seriously heat up. The power struggle taking place between US and Chinese imperialism, each flanked by ever more consolidated blocs, is an unavoidable development within the logic of the global capitalist system. It is an objective process, superseding the desires and machinations of the world’s leaders, instead subordinating them to it. The new age of inter-imperialist rivalry requires the ruling class to come up with accompanying narratives that can be used to bring along the masses as they plunge the world toward senseless bloody conflict while billions needlessly suffer and the planet burns.
The ruling class is still in the process of constructing their new narrative after the loss of credibility for neoliberal ideas — part of what led to the revolts of the 2010s and early 2020s — but we know that nationalism, and by extension militarism, are at the very center of it. These are flanked by increased xenophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and a reassertion of the nuclear family. This is a key piece of the context for the growth of right populism, including fundamentally anti-working class ideas recently taking hold among a bigger section of the working class.
As the World Perspectives document adopted by the November 2024 ISA World Congress stated:
“Neoliberalism’s dominant ideas, parties, figureheads, and institutions are damaged beyond repair, and the ruling class is attempting to design a new ideological basis to justify its rule… Amid the decomposition of liberal bourgeois society, scare campaigns about war, terror, “national interests,” and “culture wars” are propagated. We see reactionaries pushing the reassertion of the reactionary pillars of the old order — nation, empire, (nuclear) family, etc.
Branding these ideas as new or radical and selling them back to working class people repackaged as “anti-establishment” is one of the ways which capitalism and imperialism will attempt to maintain its rule and fend off the threat of revolution, which while it may currently seem dim and distant, remains a part of ruling class consciousness.”
While the right wing of the ruling class is on the cutting edge of this offensive, it is not limited to them. Kamala Harris proudly proclaiming her plan to turn the US military into the “strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” is a part of the same trend. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fundamentally both a product and a further catalyst of the new period, have forced different wings of the ruling class to come together and unite around turbocharged nationalism and militarism. While differences remain about which wars to prioritize, the overall trajectory is clear. Even where there are exceptions, like Marine Le Pen in France or Georgia Meloni in Italy originally being closer to Putin, over time these figures have trended towards “getting in line.” We will comment more on this below, but if Putin refuses Trump’s “land for peace” deal, Trump too may well shift toward a more aggressive pro-Ukraine stance.
The same goes for both parties’ sharp turn toward xenophobic rhetoric and stronger border security policies, which is not at all unrelated to the ruling class’s need for heightened nationalism and patriotic pride. In the debate between Harris and Trump, Harris’s comeback to Trump’s disgusting lies about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets was to pose as even more in favor of strong anti-immigration policies. Without a strong left, social struggle, and labor movement to push back, it is inevitable that this push by both capitalist parties and their candidates, which is then echoed by the mainstream media, will have an impact on consciousness. Many people likely have anecdotes of friends or family who, in the last year or two made an offhand remark tinged with anti-immigrant, anti-China, or transphobic rhetoric, something they would not have done five years ago.
An important point is that our acknowledgement of a rightward shift in a large section of the US population, now including a bigger section of the working class than before, did not fall from the sky with Trump’s election. What we are seeing is the beginning of a deeper and longer-term process, driven by the ruling class and which has its roots in the objective needs of capitalism in the new era. As Karl Marx said, “The ruling ideas of every epoch are the ideas of the ruling class.”
The key thing to understand is that the rightward turn by the ruling class is not a reflection of a rightward shift in the working class, but rather exactly the opposite. Right-wing ideas like pro-imperialist nationalism and racism, sexism, transphobia and other divide-and-rule ideologies are fundamentally anti-working class ideas, inserted into it from the outside. But that doesn’t minimize their danger. Again as the ISA World Perspectives document stated:
“Racist, sexist and anti-immigrant poison are indeed injected into society by the ruling class and serve their interests. But they also develop a life of their own. Likewise voting for the far right once as a protest vote is problematic but it is far more dangerous if this becomes a section of working people’s ongoing affiliation. As economic and social conditions worsen, the forces with reactionary “answers” to people’s problems are now sinking deeper roots in wider sections of the working class and middle classes.”
Underestimating the dangers posed by the ruling class’s ideological offensive would be a significant mistake, resulting in us being surprised by future developments and having an improperly balanced program. In the 2010s the US left, and the various tendencies within it, was primarily defined by how it differentiated itself from the Democratic Party and pro-capitalist liberal ideas. While still of course related to this, in the coming years the question of what politics, program, and strategy are needed to defeat the right and far right, including winning back millions of workers who have fallen victim to their ideas, will come increasingly to the fore.
Economic and Social Issues Cannot be Divorced
There are many statistics which show that the economy and economic hardship played an absolutely central role in this election. A widely circulated CNN exit poll broke down how people voted by how they rated the impact inflation had on their family. The results showed an extremely clear picture which fits in with the demographic shifts explained above.
|
Severe Hardship (22%) |
Moderate Hardship (53%) |
No Hardship (24%) |
|
|
Voted Harris |
25% |
47% |
78% |
|
Voted Trump |
73% |
50% |
20% |
It’s clear that billionaire Trump’s fake populist appeal to ordinary people’s financial hardship had its desired effect. In the final weeks of the campaign while the corporate media droned on about Kamala Harris’s growing list of Wall Street backers, Trump maintained an emphasis on inflation and the disastrous “Biden/Harris economy.” According to Pew, 93% of those who voted for Trump cited the economy as “very important” to their vote, but it would be wrong to view this as negating Trump’s broader right-wing program, or the fact that tens of millions of people overlooked or agreed with Trump’s overt bigotry.
Economic questions and “voting with your wallet” are not politically neutral matters; the question, as always, is who will pay and who will suffer? While Trump undoubtedly spoke to ordinary people’s pockets, he did so with right wing “solutions.” Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, spoke to ordinary people’s pockets from the left, emphasizing raising taxes on big business, that billionaires shouldn’t exist, free public college, Medicare for All, and so on. The absence of a left alternative, not just in this election but in US society more widely, with the betrayals and defeat of reformism, gives the right essentially uncontested terrain to push its false reactionary “answers.”
While Trump gave lip service to populist promises such as no taxes on tips, overtime pay, or social security, these were obviously not accompanied by proposals for how to make up that lost revenue. Instead, whatever tax reductions ordinary people would receive under Trump (if these measures are even passed), big business and the super rich will see a far bigger reduction. And it is not the Pentagon or Homeland Security which will see its budget cut, but education, Medicaid, Section 8 funding, and other pieces of the federal budget that disproportionately affect the working class and poor. This is part of what makes right populism so dangerous, that it can disguise itself as “for the people,” while convincing working people to throw immigrants and oppressed minorities under the bus as scapegoats, weakening the whole working class all for the benefit of the super-rich.
In the final month before election day, the Trump campaign spent more money on an anti-trans ad with the punchline, “Kamala is for they/them, president Trump is for you,” than any other advertisement. Earlier in the ad the narrator says, “Kamala will give criminal, illegal aliens taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries.” The overall message of the virulent fear mongering ad is that your hard-earned money is going to “they/them,” an insidious appeal to ordinary people’s economic concerns and skepticism of how the government spends their money, through vicious transphobia and xenophobia. In the same vein, in the Jim Crow south, vile racism, anti-union activity, and later on anti-communism were all completely interconnected by the capitalist class and landowning elite.
While of course being patient with ordinary people who have genuine confusion as opposed to more deeply held right-wing views, we cannot shy away one bit from exposing the true and highly dangerous nature of right populism, and right wing ideas in general. This can only be effectively done through struggle with a working class program, and opposition to all capitalist parties.
State of Left Consciousness
To say that a rightward shift has taken place within US society, including among a section of the working class, is not at all to say that everybody has become right wing; far from it. For one, to state the obvious, most people living in the US did not vote for Trump. 77 million people voted for Trump out of approximately 245 million eligible voters, and just shy of 90 million eligible voters did not cast a ballot at all, more than those who voted for either candidate. Beyond that however, there are more important indicators.
Approximately 1.5 million people took part in protests against the war on Gaza in the months following October 7, where a strong anti-Biden and anti-Democratic Party mood was pronounced. The mass wave of student encampments last Spring was the largest student protest movement since the Vietnam war. Even before this, we had written about and discussed the not insignificant layer of young people who, following the betrayals of mainstream reformism from the 2010s, have drawn broadly revolutionary or “communist” conclusions, even if these are still very confused and not fully formed. Just under 1 million people voted for either Jill Stein, Claudia De La Cruz, or Cornel West, up from 480,000 for Hawkins and Gloria La Riva in 2020 (though down from 1.5 million for Stein in 2016).
Despites attitudes on several important questions shifting to the right in response to a ruling-class ideological offensive, there clearly remain tens of millions of people, disproportionately certain demographics such as young people, LGBTQ people, and Black women, who have stayed on the left and even moved further to the left. While the gains in consciousness from movements like Black Lives Matter have been slowly chipped away at, they are very far from being fully turned back. There are millions of workers whose consciousness has been positively impacted by watching (or for some, participating in) important labor battles like the UAW strike, Boeing strike, dockworkers strike, and Striketober before that, as well organizing drives at Starbucks, Amazon, and others.
There does exist, however, a strong mood of demoralization among the millions of left-wing and left-leaning working people and youth. This largely flows from the betrayals of reformism and defeats of various recent movements, and is then in turn inseparable from the rightward shift taking place in wider society. The only thing that can stop the growth of the right is a strong left, social struggle and workers movement. Demoralization and lack of clarity about what kind of struggle can win leads to a lack of struggle, which allows the right to take steps forward largely unopposed.
There are other, smaller indicators that show these same trends. It is no coincidence, for instance, the uptick in acts of politicized and anti-establishment “individual terrorism.” It has always been the case that in the absence of mass struggle, a small layer of deeply desperate individuals will attempt to “take matters into their own hands.” While not an act of terror, the widely discussed and tragic self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell in February, 2024 fit into this. The two assassination attempts on Trump, as well as Luigi Mangione’s murder of the United Healthcare CEO, also show this. The massive outpouring on social media and sense of gleeful vengeance at the murder of the CEO of a hated corporation in a hated industry shows at the same time the millions of ordinary people who still hold righteous hatred for the billionaire class, but are also desperately searching for and failing to find a viable strategy to fight back. If mass struggle does not reassert itself, we very well may see more acts like this in the coming months around any number of issues.
The positive features of consciousness which undoubtedly exist provide the raw material for the reemergence of a higher level of struggle in the years to come. It is through the revival of struggle on a mass scale that further steps forward will be taken in consciousness.
Part Two: Characterizing Trump 2.0
Already in the weeks since Trump’s election there have been many noteworthy developments and chilling prospects that begin to paint a picture of what we might see during Trump’s second term, though of course time will fill in the details. What we can say with certainty is that if Trump’s first term could be described as a billionaire bigot administration, his second term will be even more so.
The question is not whether struggle against Trump 2.0 will develop, it is only a matter of when, around which issues first, of what scale and character, and whether it will succeed in blocking Trump’s agenda and decisively pushing back the far right. As always, socialists will have an important role to play, and these questions, connected to the specific attacks we may see from Trump 2.0, will be discussed in part three of this document.
Cabinet Picks Indicate What’s Coming
Trump’s breakneck cabinet appointments starting only a week after election night, far faster than in 2016 and more quickly than most if not any president in recent history, indicated the increased experience and assuredness with which he and his team are approaching round two. Also different from eight years ago is that the process of Trumpification within the Republican Party is now essentially complete. This means the voice of “moderation” coming from the neoliberal era Republican establishment is nowhere to be found within Trump’s inner circle, versus eight years ago when more mainstream Republicans had his ear, especially at the beginning. It is clear that this time around, a full oath of loyalty is a necessary ticket for entry. Like last time, Trump will not be afraid to fire cabinet members who show unwillingness to carry out his agenda, which can lead to a certain revolving door effect, though maybe less than his first term given the starting point of requiring a higher degree of loyalty to the Trump agenda.
Including Trump himself, his proposed administration currently holds thirteen billionaires, just under 2% of all billionaires in the US, the most billionaire-dense country in the world. As of December 10, the total net worth of the administration is $382.2 billion, equivalent to the GDP of 172 countries combined, a fitting metaphor for US imperialism. Trump 2.0 will not just be a bourgeois-friendly administration, he is literally incorporating a wing of the bourgeoisie into his cabinet, clearly demonstrating which class’ interests his regime is setting out to serve.
The mid-November New York Times headline, “Trump Defies #MeToo With Cabinet Picks Facing Accusations,” said much in few words. The uproar in the media over the five nominees accused of sexual assault, especially Matt Gaetz, shows that the #MeToo “mood” is far from completely dead. But the appointments themselves, and the fact that several of them will likely be confirmed by the Senate, without a single significant protest no less, does show just how far the women’s and #MeToo movement has been thrown back in recent years since it exploded onto the scene under Trump’s first term. Though Gaetz withdrawing his name for Attorney General was indeed a small victory, it did not come as the result of an active movement. We should be loud and clear that it’s going to take a lot more than widespread media reporting to stop the actual attacks Trump’s cabinet is going to inflict on women, trans people, immigrants, workers, and beyond — no matter which individual right-wing partisans fill the cabinet.
Tom Homan, who Trump has nominated to be his “border czar,” overseeing border policy without needing Senate confirmation like other cabinet appointees, served as director of ICE during the first year and a half of Trump’s first term and was a key architect of family separation as a deterrent for illegal immigration. Homan, who is known for egregiously racist comments about immigrants, was actually a top ICE leader in the Obama administration. In fact Obama awarded Homan the Presidential Rank Award in 2015 for his “extraordinary results” as director of the Enforcement and Removal Operations department of ICE, where he oversaw a $3 billion budget and 8,000 ICE agents who played a key role in Obama’s record-setting deportation machine. Trump and Homan have repeatedly talked about deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants, including using the military to do so.
Trump’s unwillingness so far to move on from Pete Hegseth as his choice to lead the Department of Defense despite high-profile credible sexual assault accusations and other controversies is not primarily because he is so attached to him and thinks that nobody else can do the job. Rather, after the scandal around Gaetz and his withdrawal, and then the quieter but still significant withdrawal of his pick to lead the DEA, a third withdrawal would risk making the incoming administration look weak and disorganized at a time when they need to be presenting as the opposite.
While not formally a government agency yet, Trump’s promise to create a Department of Government Efficiency (facetiously acronymed DOGE) with billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at its head is a clear indication of the coming administration’s increasingly outward embrace of some libertarian economic ideas, even if not a deep-seated ideological commitment. The first foreign leader who met with Trump after winning was Argentina president Javier Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist.” Musk has promised to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, almost a third, and talked about fully eliminating 400 federal agencies. They will not likely accomplish even close to this given Washington bureaucracy and opposition even from Republicans who don’t want to upset their constituents, not to mention the potential for struggle in opposition. However, significant cuts can absolutely be made that will have devastating impacts on certain sections of workers and the oppressed, including cuts to vital services, public education, and mass or semi-mass layoffs of federal workers.
How the Ruling Class Sees Trump
A National Committee perspectives update in February 2017 noted that “As we explained earlier, the ruling class is severely divided, with some willing to work with Trump to advance their own sectoral interests, but significant sections lining up to oppose, from their own class standpoint. The state apparatus is also clearly split.” While these are certainly still aspects of the situation, they are significantly less so than eight years ago.
While it’s clear that, especially from the point of view of needing a steady hand to lead US imperialism into the next stage of the inter-imperialist bloc conflict, much of the ruling class would prefer somebody else, they see many positives in Trump that they can work with. There is also a certain resignation to the reality that right populism is an unavoidable, and even important and useful force in this period to keep the working class divided, subservient, and to maintain their class’ rule. Eight years ago Trump was a pesky figure the ruling class thought they could put back in the box, but with Trumpism clearly here to stay, they will find more ways to work with the administration.
The respectful tone of big business leaders is also a striking contrast to 2016, let alone four years ago in the wake of January 6th. Jeff Bezos, who eight years ago was one of the most high profile CEOs opposing Trump, publicly backing various lawsuits against him including over the Muslim Ban, is talking much differently now. At the New York Times DealBook summit in December, Bezos spoke about how much Trump “has grown in the last eight years,” saying “I’m very hopeful — he seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And my point of view is, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country.” Beyond going after “entitlements” including Social Security and Medicare, this is what the ruling class is most excited about when they think about Trump 2.0: deregulation, tax cuts, and “government efficiency.” Amazon, Zuckerberg’s Meta, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman all made $1 million donations to Trump’s inauguration fund in December. Not even four years after banning Trump from Facebook (now Meta), Zuckerberg is now making a sharp anti-fact checking, anti-woke, anti-regulation turn and has just added major Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White to Meta’s board.
Big business’ profit-hungry mouth watering was reflected right away in the “Trump bump” — November 6th becoming the fourth biggest single-day point gain in the Dow Jones’s history and the sixth for the S&P 500, which had its best day in just shy of two years. Stocks for two of the largest banks, Capital One and Discover, shot up 15% and 20% respectively on the hopes that Trump’s rollback of antitrust laws would allow the two banks’ pending merger, thus far deemed highly unlikely, to actually go through. The private prison industry is elated, hoping with good reason that Trump’s plans for mass deportations will require building scores of new detention centers, which they’ll get the contracts to build. Stock for GEO Group, the multinational corporation that runs ICE processing centers, surged 42% the day after the election. We should point these out in agitational material, speeches, and conversations at work and on tables to underscore just who will benefit from a Trump presidency: the big banks, fossil fuel corporations, Silicon Valley, private prisons, the weapons industry, and the billionaire class as a whole — not working people, no matter who they voted for.
All of this is not to say, however, that the ruling class is pleased with everything in Trump’s agenda, especially if he goes as far as he has threatened on things like tariffs and immigration. Trump’s threat of 60% tariffs on China, 25% on Mexico and Canada, and 10% on all other imports carries significant danger for the economy. In the most basic sense, the main danger is inflationary pressure caused by corporations passing on the increased prices of imported goods and raw materials onto consumers. And then there is the danger of retaliatory measures in response leading to a trade war that spirals out of control and brings about a much harder decoupling between the two major imperialist powers and their associated blocs than we have seen thus far.
Deutsche Bank’s chief economist Matthew Luzzetti estimates the proposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada alone would lead to 3% inflation in the US in 2025, with even bigger effects later on. The UK’s National Institute of Economic and Social Research has predicted that “Cumulatively, US real GDP could be up to 4 per cent lower than it would have been without the imposition of tariffs.” Martin Wolf, chief economic commentator of the Financial Times, considers this optimistic because of the knock-on retaliatory measures Trump’s tariffs would provoke. EU countries, which need all the trade assistance they can get right now, are very concerned.
It is unclear to what degree Trump’s tariff proposals are genuinely intended to be implemented on day one versus acting as a negotiating tactic with other governments, which we’ll discuss more later. However, many businesses aren’t waiting around to find out. Companies from retail to home furniture to steel and more are rushing to stockpile as much as they can before inauguration day, as well as accelerating plans to move their factories out of China. The president of one big retail trade conglomerate told the New York Times he is concerned about a “Whack-a-Mole trade policy” where after a company moves production out of China into another low-cost country, that country is then hit with tariffs. It is this sort of unpredictability and rashness which much of the ruling class would far prefer to do without.
On immigration, the ruling class obviously has no problem with deportations. In reality, the overall picture over the last few years is of a level of immigration possibly unseen since the late 19th century. This historic change to the country’s demographic composition is not really reversible and the bourgeois have generally benefited from increased immigration, but they won’t see a temporary slowdown as a major problem. They surely support keeping immigrants scared and subservient, and even if it means losing a certain amount of more hyper-exploitable workers, the benefit at this time of a scapegoat on which to blame crime and other social problems to help keep the working class divided outweighs the cost.
However, at a certain point, especially for some industries like service, agriculture, hospitality, construction, and tech, it can go too far. The debate that opened up in late December over H-1B visas for skilled workers in specialty occupations between Musk and other pro-Trump tech moguls on one side, and other close advisors like Stephen Bannon and the more hardcore section of the base which has been whipped up to oppose all immigration on the other, foreshadows the tensions that could deepen. While he will be forced to manage the expectations of the harder right section of his inner circle and base, and will undoubtedly make concessions to them in order to hold together his coalition, Trump’s prompt statement in support of H-1B visas definitely indicates where his true loyalties lie: corporate interests. It also sheds light on his approach of distinguishing between highly skilled immigrants, who generally also have more money, and the most vulnerable and demonized wider immigrant and migrant masses.
Deporting all 11 million undocumented immigrants will simply not be feasible (Obama’s record-setting number was approximately 3 million over 8 years). However, even a quarter of that in the span of four years could pose real problems for thousands upon thousands of restaurants and construction crews who rely on cheap undocumented labor. There is also talk in the bourgeois media of the role of immigration in “reducing wage inflation,” economist jargon for immigration keeping wages down for native-born workers. Deportations on the scale Trump is actually talking about would be opposed by a big section of the ruling class, not for any moral reason, but purely from their class standpoint for the reasons just outlined, as well as the potential for explosive struggle, which will be discussed more below.
The whole ruling class agrees on the need for a general turn to the right — toward heightened nationalism, militarism, state repression, and divide-and-conquer tactics of oppression and discrimination — by their political representatives. While many within the ruling class still don’t like how unpredictable Trump is, and his lack of respect for classical bourgeois political norms, they are far more prepared to work with him than they were eight years ago. In addition to what he can do for their profits, part of their reasoning is also to not risk encouraging the sort of mass movements that took place during Trump’s first term.
While Trump is obviously fully loyal to the rule of capital and the world domination of US imperialism, his allegiance above all is to himself. This guarantees he will make decisions which are at times out of sync with the immediate interests of the wider US and Western ruling class. How much open opposition he receives from the ruling class will depend just how far he tries to go at certain moments, the wider context at the time, and the level of struggle and from which layers in society.
The Potential for Cracks in the Trump Coalition
Recent events, from the debate over H-1B visas to the vote for Speaker of the House where Trump only barely got the Freedom Caucus holdouts in line to elect Mike Johnson, have shined a light on the pre-existing divisions that exist in the Trump coalition. The coalition contains deeply contradictory elements and differences can turn into deeper cracks at some stage. While the overall alliance between a section of the billionaire class and the MAGA right is unlikely to decisively break in the near term, this general dividing line in the Trump coalition will crop up again and again around various issues.
Fundamentally and in the long term, Trump will come down on the side of the billionaires, where his true allegiance lies, but this won’t always be how things appear on the surface. For instance, influential figures in the MAGA hard-right like Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk, have recently become publicly critical of Musk, wary of his sway over Trump, including his massive financial contributions, and invoking Musk’s ties to China through Tesla production. At some point — and this moment could indeed come sooner rather than later — Trump may throw Musk under the bus in a high-profile break up as part of a concession to the MAGA base, or make other such concessions to the hard right of the coalition, in order to keep them happy.
At moments when the cracks become more prevalent and Trump does side more decisively with the billionaire wing, it could anger a section of his base, including for semi-healthy reasons like frustration at the influence of billionaires over a politician they had perceived as being “for the people,” but of course also for reactionary reasons like if Trump doesn’t go, according to them, far enough in attacking immigrant rights or the “woke agenda.” While in the more extreme scenario this could lead to part of the base breaking from Trump, without a real left that can offer an alternative path, this layer can move even further to the right. At the same time, any weakening of the Trump coalition would objectively weaken the administration and can provide openings for struggle and the left.
Acceleration of the Authoritarian Drift
As the World Perspectives document stated, across the world, “There is now a general trend towards a stronger state and a creeping authoritarianism. This is not because of a particularly significant threat from the left (in most countries rather the opposite) but because it is seen as necessary to avoid “democratic” disruption of the agenda of the ruling class, discipline the population and prepare it for a harsher world of climate disaster, austerity and militarism.” This is true from Russia to Israel, Turkey, India, Hungary, South Korea (where recent overreach by the president led to his impeachment), Nigeria, and more. Trump 2.0 will certainly accelerate this trend to the US, though it’s been a feature on both the “left” and the right of the US political establishment in recent years. In many countries, authoritarian overreach has led to mass struggle, like Netanyahu’s attempted “judicial coup” in 2023 leading to a historic general strike, or the mass opposition to Yoon Suk Yeol’s recent declaration of martial law in South Korea.
By “authoritarian drift,” as we have characterized it recently, we don’t necessarily mean full-on dictatorships in every case. Rather what we have seen, and what will likely take place in the coming years in the US without mass struggle to cut across it, is an increasingly repressive form of bourgeois rule that concentrates more and more political power in the hands of the executive branch, while chipping away at previously existing “checks and balances.” The recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, which calls for an “energetic executive” and formally places the president above the law, is an example of this process in motion. If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to activate the military on US soil, as he has repeatedly signaled he is willing to do, it would be another step in this direction. After months of disavowing Project 2025, Trump now says it has many “very good” parts and has appointed several authors of the far-right authoritarian manifesto to prominent positions in his administration.
Trump’s encouragement of favoritism and loyalty are also part of his authoritarian agenda. In the business world, he will again use tariffs to foster a new type of capitalist competition: who can suck up to the president more to win the biggest exemptions. From July 2018 (three months after Trump’s first big round of tariffs were announced) until the end of 2020, the Commerce Department received nearly 500,000 exclusion requests for the tariffs on steel and aluminum, a process which Trump set up. The separate agency which handled exemption requests for China tariffs alone received more than 50,000. Companies were even allowed to submit objections to their competitors’ requests. One recent study shows that companies that made recent donations to Republican candidates were more likely to be awarded exemptions, while those who gave to Democrats were less likely. All of this will be even more prevalent and pronounced in Trump’s second term.
Trump’s cabinet picks are clearly designed to surround himself with loyalists who will carry out his orders, but in the process he’s also testing the waters for how far the rest of the ruling class and political establishment will let him go. Gaetz’s withdrawal, but also the hesitation around Hegseth, RFK Jr. and others, as well as the Senate majority leadership contest show that while on a very long leash, Trump doesn’t have complete free reign.
The fact that Rick Scott got only 13 votes for Senate majority leader and was eliminated in the first round, despite being endorsed by Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Vivek Ramaswamy, shows the hesitations of many of the most powerful Republican electeds. Also, especially in the Senate, the composition balance of the Republican caucus remains different to that of the party’s hardcore MAGA base (this is also true of the House, but less so). Though not endorsed by Trump himself, Scott was the clear favorite of the hard-right wing of Trump’s base, pledging in no uncertain terms to recess the Senate in order to bypass the Senate confirmation process of Trump’s appointees. Meanwhile, winner John Thune was for years the Republican whip under Mitch McConnell, who frequently clashed with Trump and tried to rein him in. While Thune — who Trump called for a primary challenge against in 2022 but to no avail — has said he is open to recess appointments, he is clearly less enthusiastic about going down that path. It’s clear that if the Senate leadership election was not a secret ballot but a public vote (which nomination votes will be), the result may very well have been different.
A key part of Trump’s strategy to concentrate more power in his hands is to bring these types of matters more out into the open, and then to turn the MAGA base on any Republican who doesn’t wholeheartedly support his every move. Beyond just their own selfish career concerns, a serious problem facing Trump-skeptical Republicans is that whenever Trump is opposed from within the party, it only further proves the Trumpists’ point that they are under attack from the establishment and need to continue “draining the swamp.”
This of course is a key difference between the way Bernie and Trump built (and in Bernie’s case betrayed) their movements. When Bernie was faced with opposition and sabotage from the Democratic establishment, he “respected their right” to do so and acquiesced time and again. When anti-Trump Republicans go after Trump, he is unrelenting in exposing them and encourages his base to furiously take them down. Neither the Democrats nor anti-Trump Republicans will succeed in peeling Trump’s base away from him — everything they do accomplishes the opposite — which is precisely why we call for mass struggle with a working-class program that offers an alternative to Trump and all pro-capitalist politicians.
Even if certain nominees are not approved (Hegseth, Patel, etc.), while somewhat of a defeat for Trump in the short-term, in the long term it will actually strengthen his grip over both the party and the base. Finding somebody else to do a similar job won’t be hard, and the “moderate” Republicans are not likely to stand in the way of nominee after nominee. Their rejection of these early figures would be primarily to send a message to Trump that they’re not willing to go full bore for Trump’s authoritarian power grab. We, of course, have no illusion that replacing specific individuals in Trump’s cabinet will stop his reactionary program from being implemented. Only mass struggle can do that.
Fascism and Bonapartism
While not underestimating whatsoever the danger that Trump poses to the working class, poor, and oppressed in this country and around the world, we also defend a scientific analysis and characterization of the coming regime. This cannot be done merely by looking at Trump himself, but by also assessing the wider balance of class forces within US capitalism. While it is correct to describe Trump as moving in an authoritarian direction, we can also be more precise. In popular media over the last eight years Trump has often been called a fascist. Trump 2.0 will not bring fascism to the US, even if there are indeed some fascistic elements present in his approach. At this time, the most precise characterization for the likely trajectory of Trump 2.0 is a regime of parliamentary Bonapartism, with the necessary clarification that such characterizations always exist on a spectrum, and can transform and be transformed. We will explain what is meant by this below, but first it is necessary to explain why Trump 2.0 will not be fascist.
A Marxist definition of fascism differs from that which is often found in the media and popular consciousness. The latter often focuses on superficial character traits of leaders, and labels a wide array of right-wing figures as fascist. Often the term has been used extremely loosely, like the trend in the early 2000’s of many liberals calling George W. Bush a fascist, only to praise him ten years later when he didn’t endorse Trump. Loose accusations like these are often used to whip up lesser evilism, which is part of why a sober and scientific assessment is needed.
Fascism is a mass social movement, encouraged and utilized by the ruling class after failed attempts at, or to avert preemptively, revolution by the working class, whose goal is to completely smash the labor movement and workers’ organizations in order to ensure the survival of capitalism. Fascist regimes are universally led by hardline dictators and a strong state to the utmost degree. In 1932, in warning of the rising fascist threat in Germany and issuing a damning criticism of the Stalinists’ criminal ultra-left dismissal of those dangers, Trotsky explained:
“Fascism is not merely a system of reprisals, of brutal force, and of police terror. Fascism is a particular governmental system based on the uprooting of all elements of proletarian democracy within bourgeois society. The task of fascism lies not only in destroying the Communist vanguard but in holding the entire class in a state of forced disunity. To this end the physical annihilation of the most revolutionary section of the workers does not suffice. It is also necessary to smash all independent and voluntary organisations, to demolish all the defensive bulwarks of the proletariat, and to uproot whatever has been achieved during three-quarters of a century by the Social Democracy and the trade unions… Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.”
Fascism is not the preferred path of the ruling class, but rather a last resort to save their system. As Trotsky said, “The big bourgeoisie likes fascism as little as a man with aching molars likes to have his teeth pulled.” Later, in the same 1932 piece mentioned above, he explained the context in which the ruling class turns toward fascism: “At the moment that the ‘normal’ police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium — the turn of the fascist regime arrives.”
This is not the situation in the US today. From the point of view of the ruling class and maintaining their rule, the existing state apparatus undoubtedly needs strengthening. And while a section of the ruling class is indeed willing to abandon some long-held norms of American “democracy,” the underlying processes in the conflict between the classes are not as developed as Trotsky described above. Project 2025, for instance, is not a plan for building a mass fascist movement to temporarily supplement, or even suspend, many of the ordinary functions of the bourgeois state so as to later secure it more firmly and dictatorially under bourgeois rule. It calls for a strengthening of the repressive apparatuses of the state, a centralization of bourgeois rule in the hands of a strong elected executive, and both legislative and judicial attacks on unions and oppressed groups. This is certainly nothing to balk at, but it does not immediately threaten a fascist takeover. Trump and his ilk would certainly like to smash the unions more decisively, but they understand this is not actually necessary for capitalism’s survival at this juncture, nor would it be possible without provoking a truly massive social explosion.
To the extent that Trump and the big capitalists will attack the workers’ movement in the coming years, and they certainly will, this will be done overwhelmingly through legal means — horrible contracts, court rulings, expansion of anti-union laws like right to work, laws criminalizing the right to protest, harsher police and judicial repression of strikes — not the utilization on a mass scale of armed thugs who are independent of the state machinery. We are not seeing union meetings in which workers are expected to vote “no” on concessionary contracts being violently broken up by fascist gangs.
The same is true with regard to the coming crackdown on immigration. It’s been reported that several far right and fascist militias have contacted Trump’s transition team offering their assistance in patrolling the border and detaining immigrants, but Trump’s focus is instead clearly on beefing up the state: ICE, Homeland Security, and mobilizing the US military and local law enforcement. Nonetheless, far-right and outright fascist organizations, militias, and vigilantes are absolutely emboldened by Trump’s victory. In many instances, Trump and a section of the ruling class will turn a blind eye, if not openly encourage them, however this is different from full scale and ongoing, outright collaboration with these forces.
It is certainly not the case that the ruling class will never turn toward fascism in the US (they very much would if it was deemed necessary, and it would come about not by a “chipping away” of checks and balances but much swifter change) but merely that it is not posed right now. This is also not to say that there aren’t fascistic elements within Trump’s approach, and that those elements cannot be strengthened if the class struggle escalates in a major way. For instance, Trump’s role in January 6th represented an encouragement of genuinely fascist organizations and individuals to attempt to circumvent the state (though not everybody who participated in January 6th was a fascist). Not to mention the fact that his coming pardoning of the January 6th protesters amounts to releasing fascist leaders back into society as “heroes” to many, to build their organizations, which will definitely see further growth under Trump 2.0. Trump and those around him know these forces — still quite small historically speaking, for instance compared to the Nazis’ two million members in the early 1930s or the Ku Klux Klan’s three to six million members in the mid-1920s — can be useful or even critical at some stage. However, mobilizing them on a mass scale is not seen to be necessary at this time.
Historically Marxists have defined Bonapartism as dictatorial governments which arise above the classes, so to speak, and act as a temporary arbiter between the struggling camps, but always ultimately with the purpose of protecting the rule of one class or the other. There are many instances of bourgeois Bonapartist regimes since the original Bonaparte in Napoleon after the French Revolution, while Trotsky explained that Stalinism represented a proletarian Bonapartism. Compared to a democratic republic in “ordinary” times, Bonapartism relies more directly on a strong leader, the military, and the police — to the detriment of parliament — in order to maintain bourgeois rule and order. This is in distinction to fascism, which arises when the “‘normal’ police and military resources,” to re-quote Trotsky, are no longer reliable defenders of capitalism so a mass fascist movement must be mobilized.
There is no firm black and white dividing line between Bonapartism and fascism, but the differences are important. The former has often been used by the ruling class as “preventive Bonapartism” as Trotsky articulated, but it can also transform into fascism if the preventive measures don’t work. When characterizing bourgeois regimes we are, again from Trotsky, “dealing not with inflexible logical categories but with living social formations which represent extremely pronounced peculiarities in different countries and at different stages.”
With reference to France in the late 1920s, Trotsky explained that Bonapartism often “appears at first glance to govern with the assent of parliament. But it is a parliament which has abdicated, a parliament which knows that in case of resistance the government would dispense with it.” This is also not the situation in the US today, even if Trump at his most honest wishes it was. For instance, despite the threats, it is highly unlikely that Trump will actually pursue trying to imprison the members of the special Congressional committee that investigated his role in the January 6 attack. If he does, he would face enormous opposition from the ruling class and be extremely unlikely to succeed. While more tolerant and in some ways more welcoming of Trump than eight years ago, the ruling class is not at all prepared to go that far down the road with him at this time (though Biden reportedly considering preemptively pardoning the committee members does show the fear is real among an important section of the establishment).
What we see with Trump then is more akin to what Trotsky and the CWI (renamed ISA in 2020) have referred to as parliamentary Bonapartism where parliament still functions, but its power is reduced and acts largely as a facade for the real, and increasing, power of the individual Bonaparte. In 1992, describing the capitalist regimes which followed the collapse of Stalinism in Russia and Eastern Europe as “semi-parliamentary bonapartist,” the CWI explained that “behind the trappings of parliamentary democracy, increasing power is concentrated in the hands of the ‘leader’, who balances between the contending class forces in society.” In 1984, the Militant argued that “Thatcher’s methods indicate a tendency towards parliamentary Bonapartism where behind the forms of parliamentary democracy the premier, using her control of the state apparatus, exercises increasingly autocratic control.” It is not the case that immediately on January 20, the US will be ruled by a fully formed Bonapartist regime, but one in which elements of Bonapartism coexist with parliamentary (a term which never fully applied to American “democracy” in the first place) democracy.
At the same time, it can’t be excluded that if Trump and those around him feel his agenda is being blocked or moving too slowly and a major showdown develops, that he will seek to rule by decree and move in a more clearly dictatorial direction. The Republicans’ slim majority in the House, the smallest in history, could definitely facilitate this sort of situation. Between parliamentary Bonapartism and fascism there are many variations of right-wing authoritarian rule which are not fascist but also more repressive than what we will see initially from Trump 2.0, as demonstrated across the world from Russia to Saudi Arabia or Brazil under Bolsonaro.
Of course Trump will also work hard to purge the state apparatus and insert his loyalists. At the end of Trump’s first term, he issued an executive order creating a new classification for federal workers, Schedule F, whereby those workers would be stripped of their job protections, allowing the president to fire Schedule F employees for any reason. The Office of Management and Budget, a particularly important agency for Trump’s agenda, reported that 68% of their employees would be eligible for Schedule F reclassification. Reinstituting Schedule F is at the core of Project 2025 and Trump’s plans for his second term. The president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal government workers union, estimates that Schedule F would apply to 500,000 federal employees. While a mass firing of half a million federal workers is not in the cards, a smaller but still extremely significant amount certainly could be, which would then provide Trump with the opportunity of appointing thousands of loyalist right-wing ideologues to genuinely important positions in the government bureaucracy.
This is part of what differentiates Bonapartism from other forms of authoritarianism. Even if Harris had won, she too would have taken part in the global trend of a drift toward authoritarianism in order to, again as the World Perspectives document stated, “avoid ‘democratic’ disruption of the agenda of the ruling class, discipline the population and prepare it for a harsher world of climate disaster, austerity and militarism.” But Harris, while undoubtedly strengthening the power of the state apparatus, would not have attempted to elevate her administration above the rest of the state or promoted such individual loyalty and power in the way that Trump is clearly set on doing. The forces behind Trump are more open to cleaning house to expand their influence, and have no interest in compromising for the sake of maintaining the “sanctity” of “American democracy.”
To varying degrees depending on the specific context and form, Bonapartism represents elements of retreat by the ruling class from the bourgeois democratic-republic, which Lenin called “the best possible political shell for capitalism.” The shift today towards authoritarianism and Bonapartism by the ruling class in many countries indicates not the strength of the system, but its crisis-ridden weakness and decline.
Trump and the Inter-Imperialist Bloc Conflict
Behind Trump’s false posturing as anti-war and the accompanying media narrative, his real foreign policy is not “isolationist.” His recent comments about wanting to annex Greenland, retake control of the Panama Canal, and make Canada the 51st state show this quite clearly, though none are actually likely to come to fruition in the near term, or the latter in general. While we shouldn’t overstate the level of coherence in Trump’s approach to geopolitics, he will absolutely not change the overall direction of the inter-imperialist bloc conflict, and is essentially for a more aggressive projection of US imperialism’s power and hegemony, both within the Western bloc and against its enemies in the opposing bloc led by China. While the ruling class talks about “deterring war by projecting strength and ensuring economic and domestic resilience” (Commission on the National Defense Strategy Report), in the real world of the 2020s it is very easy for that to have the opposite effect.
We have talked about three main “theaters” of the inter-imperialist bloc conflict — Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific — with the first two being hot and the last still largely cold. In the Middle East, Trump will not make a fundamental shift from the fully pro-Israel Biden administration, but he will be even more brazen. There will be no more crocodile tears for Gaza, less symbolic criticism of Netanyahu, and perhaps even increased US funding for the Israeli war machine. While Trump has said the US should not get involved in Syria and that it’s “not our fight,” at the same time, US imperialism smells blood in the water when it comes to Iran. Trump is notoriously hawkish on Iran and, after suffering serious political and military setbacks and defeats in virtually every arena (Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and even at home), he will undoubtedly work to assert the interests of US imperialism in the wider region.
Trump’s promise to end the war in Ukraine his first day in office was one of his most high profile on the campaign trail. Reality, however, is going to be much more complicated than Trump’s fake anti-war populist posturing. The Trump team is reportedly considering various “peace plan” proposals which were leaked to the press, all of which center around some sort of “land for peace” deal with Russia, and NATO membership for Ukraine in the short term being off the table. Zelensky has been pressing hard for immediate NATO membership as a condition for a ceasefire, but he has signaled he is prepared to accept a deal without it if there are other guarantees. For instance some of the proposals Trump’s team is discussing raises the idea of the US sending increased weapons shipments after the fighting stops as a security guarantee for the future. Trump’s willingness to negotiate a deal of this sort is less because he has such a unique view among Western leaders, but more about being on the cutting edge of the West’s acceptance that they are essentially losing this phase of the conflict and would benefit from a pause. Part of why Western media and governments have adopted such a goading tone in relation to Assad’s fall in Syria is to distract from the much shakier situation they’re presiding over in Ukraine.
There is a far bigger question mark, however, over whether Russia would accept such a deal. Putin likely feels, with some validity, that he is slowly winning the war, and that with the Ukrainian military struggling in terms of manpower, weapons, and morale, why pull back now. It would also be handing Trump, an imperialist rival despite previously friendly relations on the surface, a huge diplomatic victory early in his term. Additionally Putin has just suffered a colossal blow with the overthrow of Assad in Syria, which may make him want to “make up ground” in Ukraine. If Putin rejects whatever Trump and Zelensky are willing to offer, it is very possible that Trump will make a 180 degree turn and become even more hawkish with regard to US support and funding for Ukraine than the Biden administration.
This could bring about a complicated situation for Trump in Congress, where after years of opposing aid to Ukraine with Trump’s support, hard right congressional Republicans would now be asked to ramp it up. It would be a test for how much authority Trump has over this section of the party, and if the hard right will be willing to stick to their guns, even if it means opposing Trump. Trump making a hawkish turn on Ukraine would risk turning off a section of his base, but likely the more dominant effect would be to take an even bigger piece of the base who, up until now have had a healthy skepticism of US funding for Ukraine, and ratchet up their pro-war attitude. Those who would be disillusioned with a hawkish turn by Trump could potentially be won to the left, but without a strong anti-war left alternative to the equally hawkish Democrats, including the former progressive wing, many could be pushed toward even farther right ideas.
It is highly unlikely that Trump actually leads the US out of NATO, despite his threats over recent years in that direction. Marine Le Pen and the National Rally in France have dropped that call, and Georgia Meloni in Italy did the same after taking power. In fact, far from weakening NATO, his harsh criticism and threats toward other member states is actually designed to strengthen the imperialist alliance. Trump’s threat to withdraw US security guarantees to NATO members who aren’t “carrying their weight” can have its desired effect, as seen in the recent discussion among several EU countries about launching a $500 billion joint fund for common defense projects and weapons procurement across Europe. Again, behind the smoke, Trump does not represent a retreat from the US’s role at the center of the inter-imperialist bloc conflict, but the opposite, just with a more aggressive and less “conventional” strategy.
Of course in the backdrop of the above is the primary rivalry in the global imperialist power struggle, that between US and Chinese imperialism. Part of Trump’s desire to end the war in Ukraine is to turn the US’s focus to China, Taiwan, and the Western Pacific, a “theater” which is not yet hot but which both powers are preparing for the possibility of. Trump’s call for 60% tariffs on China is intended to show Xi Jinping just how serious he is. If Trump actually follows through on implementing tariffs as high as this on day one, he would face serious blowback from the vast majority of capitalists. While it’s possible he does this — which would be a remarkable escalation — more likely it is a threat he will use in negotiations with Xi Jinping, and will end up increasing the tariffs on Chinese imports from the existing 20% but less than previously promised. Even this though would likely spur retaliatory tariffs and it is not hard to see how the trade war could easily get out of hand which would have serious economic consequences. Either way, Trump’s message to US corporations out of the gate is clear: take your business out of China. The process of decoupling will continue to accelerate.
Alongside all of this it will be necessary for Trump to wage a concerted effort to ramp up American nationalism and patriotism. A recent report from the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy calls for a “renewed sense of engagement and patriotism among the American people” and references a poll showing that 38% of Americans today feel that patriotism is very important to them, down from 70% in 1998. A Wall Street Journal op-ed about the report lamented, “Not since the 1930s have Americans been this profoundly indifferent as a great war assembles in the world outside, and not since Paul Revere traversed the dark country lanes of Massachusetts have Americans more urgently needed to rouse themselves from sleep.” While nauseously dramatic and propagandistically framed, in essence this is genuinely how a section of the ruling class feels.
Trump will take every opportunity to whip up nationalist sentiment within the working class through his populist rhetoric and cynical talk about a return to “the good old days.” For example, his promise to organize the “most spectacular birthday party” for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is guaranteed to be a sickening display of nationalism, if the “entire year of festivities” comes to fruition. His call for a free, publicly-funded national online college funded by taxes on the elite private universities to stop higher education from “turning our students into communists and terrorists and sympathizers of many, many different dimensions” is part of this same push. Although we certainly don’t disagree with taxing the elite private universities or a publicly-funded national college, we are completely opposed to the right-wing school Trump is attempting to set up. While these plans may or may not come together, we should not underestimate the toxic, far-right, nationalist offensive the Trump regime will push as part of preparing for the coming period of more imperialist war.
Part Three: Perspectives for Struggle
Trump’s victory is not being met with the same explosion of protest and struggle that his first election was. It is worth quoting at length a document from the Socialist Alternative National Committee from February 2017 titled “Our Strategy and Tactics in the Anti-Trump Resistance” to illustrate just how different the terrain is now from eight years ago.
The grassroots energy on the left is probably the largest since the Vietnam War era. There is a veritable ocean of resistance. We have already seen: some of the largest protests in US history, in the form of the women’s marches on January 21; a continuous wave of anti-Trump protests, meetings, and activism; large scale direct actions around #OccupyAirports; and now a significant national discussion about the need for strike action.
Underneath this developing mass movement is an extremely widespread politicization of society. There is a deep polarization within the country. It is important to recognize that Trump’s base is still intact, but what stands out at this stage is the scale of opposition to Trump. Trump not only lost the popular vote in the November 2016 election, but shattered previous records by reaching a majority disapproval rating within 8 days of taking office.
This mass anti-Trump sentiment is of course not homogenous. A substantial section is still “soft” and passive in its opposition to Trump and can be moved toward or away from Trump depending on events. But what is absolutely decisive for us is the large section of the anti-Trump populace, though still a minority of the country overall, that intensely and actively opposes Trump. They do not see Trump as having any legitimacy and believe he represents an existential threat. There is a feeling that the “existing order” is intolerable, and an all out struggle against him is needed.
This amounts to a mood of rebellion within significant sections of US society. There are large elements of a 1968-like situation developing, though starting from a much lower consciousness and with a far weaker left and labor movement. This represents the biggest opportunity for the radical left in the US since the Vietnam War era.
Key factors fueling this anti-Trump movement are: a) the popular anger at Trump’s right-wing agenda, which is a significant overreach given the underlying balance of forces and public opinion in US society; b) the radicalization and struggle that has been developing since 2011 and reached a high point during the Sanders campaign in early 2016; c) Trump’s widely perceived lack of legitimacy to govern, which flows from his losing the popular vote as well as his vulgar and obnoxious conduct; d) strong opposition to Trump from large sections of the ruling class.
Beyond the overall starkly different picture in general this excerpt paints from what we have now, the last paragraph quoted is especially instructive. While some limited aspects of the four factors outlined are certainly present today, none of them exist nearly to the degree they did when that document was written.
Today we have different factors which instead lead to a lack of struggle, including demoralization flowing from the betrayals and defeats of the last decade, setbacks in consciousness resulting from the ruling class’ right-wing ideological offensive of recent years, a widespread feeling that “protesting doesn’t work,” severe weakness of the organized left and far left, and the lack of a lead being provided by the labor leadership.
Despite this, however, and what is extremely important for us to understand, is that while the exact scale, timing, and around what issues it takes place remains to be seen, we can be fully confident there will be struggle under Trump 2.0, and quite possibly on a mass scale. This will begin with a small layer in the streets over inauguration weekend. Even so, it is critical we are out there, energetically talking with the most fighting elements, and putting forward the program and strategy we see as needed to fight Trump’s agenda and capitalism. Unlike 2016–17, the protests after election night and around inauguration day aren’t likely to set the mood for struggle under the new administration. Key struggles will develop out of the experience of severe attacks.
While struggles of an offensive character can continue to take place under Trump 2.0, especially in the labor movement, broadly we are likely to see defensive struggles: fighting back against cuts and federal layoffs, stopping mass deportations or other attacks like on trans rights, resisting an escalation of war, opposing mobilization or hate crimes by an emboldened far right, and fighting back against state repression. Marxists call this the “whip of reaction:” when reaction spurs a fightback.
Whatever section of society moves into struggle first, it can have the effect of inspiring others to take action, even on seemingly different issues. Federal workers waging a militant fightback against cuts and layoffs can make immigrants less afraid to organize against deportations. A reignition of mass anti-war protests can act as a boost for struggles to defend trans rights. What’s important is that people begin to fight back. Without struggle, attacks become normalized, and normalization leads to demoralization. If this lasts for a shorter time, it can be more easily broken. But like concrete, once demoralization hardens, it will take jackhammer-level events to break it.
Trump’s election is a setback for the working class and oppressed, but the decisive battles are yet to come. When Reagan — who like Trump was a vicious reactionary whose regime targeted the historic gains made by the labor movement, Black people, women and queer people — won in 1980, there were still huge numbers of leftist youth, union militants, and left-wing labor leaders. In order to decisively defeat them, Reagan had to pick an epoch-defining battle and win. Firing 11,000 unionized striking air traffic controllers in 1981, a union that had only a year earlier endorsed him, was just that fight. But even then it was a risk, and defeat for the labor movement and left wasn’t inevitable. Will Trump try to provoke big era-defining battles like that? It is certainly possible, and a section of the ruling class wants him to, but how this plays out is far from preordained. It’s crucial that we discuss the potential arenas in which struggle could take place in order to politically prepare ourselves to intervene. The sections below do not cover every detail, but paint a general picture to kick off discussion on what we can expect.
Immigration
Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and promises have become a defining feature of his image and movement. The right wing has had a fair bit of success linking immigration to crowded schools, hospitals, and not enough homes in the minds of tens of millions of ordinary people, effectively directing blame away from the system. Trump has promised to seal the border and carry out the largest mass deportation program in the country’s history starting on day one, including use of the military to do so.
Illegal border crossings at the US-Mexico border have significantly slowed in recent months, a trend which is likely to continue in the first few months of Trump’s term. Trump may try to take credit for this, while also using shock and awe tactics to intimidate migrants who want to cross the border, as well as undocumented workers currently in the US. Deporting one million immigrants in a year is reported to cost approximately $100 billion dollars, and Trump wants to far exceed that. Talk of ending family separation among Trump’s inner circle, far from a morals-based retreat from this disgusting policy, would actually mean the deportation of children who are legal residents and even citizens along with their undocumented parents.
Far right figure Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest and most influential advisors eight years ago and a key defender of family separation, will be back for round two as deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security advisor. He has talked about federalizing state National Guard troops and sending those from Republican-governed states into nearby states run by Democrats who refuse to participate in his plan (some Democrats, like Eric Adams in New York City, have signalled openness to participating, unlike eight years ago when this was basically unheard of). Trump will resume the workplace raids of his first term, which were paused by Biden, but on what scale is not yet clear.
While not likely the starting point, it is entirely possible that the administration goes even further, with US troops patrolling city streets and trying to enter schools and hospitals to round up immigrants. This would be a truly shocking development for tens of millions of people, even a layer of Trump supporters, and would likely lead to significant protests. It is also not ruled out that some states could pass “bounty laws” for reporting undocumented immigrants, like those that already exist around abortion and are now being proposed in Texas around bathroom use by trans people. If this happens without mass struggle in response, it would be a significant setback.
However, it is extremely unlikely that Trump can fully implement his plan for mass deportations on the scale he’s proposing. It would be enormously expensive to deport 11 million immigrants, or even half of that over four years. It would also be deeply destabilizing to the economy, as explained in part two of this document. And most importantly for us, not only would a section of capitalists — who rely greatly on cheap immigrant labor — come out against it, but so would ordinary people. However, while small or even medium-sized protests can act as a starting point, stopping Trump’s deportation machine will take going beyond even the Muslim Ban protests, with struggle more on the scale of the 2006 “Day Without an Immigrant” where one million immigrant workers went on strike together on May 1st to defeat the viciously anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner Bill.
Increased xenophobic sentiment among the working class, as a result of a push in this direction by both wings of the political establishment, definitely poses a challenge for any immigrant rights movement today. However, mass struggle would have a hugely positive impact on wider consciousness, including millions of Trump voters, and begin to chip away at recent gains in consciousness by the right. We should also be clear, however, that increased repression doesn’t automatically result in wider struggle, especially given widespread fear among immigrants and demoralization generally.
We should call on the unions, especially in immigrant-heavy industries as well as education and healthcare which ICE officers may specifically target, to lead from the front in mobilizing against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, which harm the whole working class. Labor leaders like Teamster president Sean O’Brien, who nearly every time he said the word “worker” during his RNC speech preceded it with “American,” will be tested, and many will fail. As in Trump’s first term, from the Muslim Ban protests to the wave of Abolish ICE protests the following year and school walkouts to save DACA the year after that, immigration will be a flashpoint during Trump 2.0.
Trans Rights
As discussed in part one of this document, we have seen a sharp rise in transphobic rhetoric and legislative attacks in the last few years. Without significant struggle to fight back, this has also led to a setback in consciousness around this issue among a section of the working class. However, it is absolutely the case that tens of millions of people still stand firmly on the side of trans rights in the workplace, schools, healthcare, and society at large, and are disgusted by the right’s attacks.
The right wing sees going after trans people as an “easy victory.” Approximately 1% of the population identifies as trans, and the nature of trans oppression is still largely not understood by huge swathes of the population. While much of Trump’s agenda will take a longer time to implement, pushing through attacks on trans people early on can help him solidify his image as somebody who “gets things done,” no matter how vile those things are.
The Supreme Court has already heard the arguments for United States vs. Skrmetti, the case on whether the Tennessee law banning puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries for transgender minors is constitutional. It is all but guaranteed that the current 6–3 conservative Supreme Court will rule in favor of upholding the ban, even if one of the conservative justices flips. The ruling comes out in June, Pride month. We are crystal clear that there is no path to reversing the attacks on trans people without struggle on a mass scale.
There will be protests around this case, which we should energetically seek to build, intervene in, and organize our own when and where it makes sense. The December bathroom sit-in organized by Gender Liberation Collective and Chelsea Manning in the Capitol building outside of speaker Mike Johnson’s office sets an example for what kind of action is needed, but of course on an exponentially larger scale. TERFism (Trans Exclusive Radical Feminism, essentially transphobia disguised as feminism) has not been a significant feature in women’s struggle of recent years in the US, as opposed to several other countries where these ideas have been more pronounced like in much of Latin America. These insidious ideas will likely gain more of a following in the US, and will need to be actively combatted.
After the overturn of Roe, several Republican-led states were still forced to enshrine some form of abortion rights into their state constitutions due to referendums. This will be far less likely around trans rights, which don’t enjoy the same level of support that abortion rights do, though if it did develop it would be very important. If the Tennessee ban is upheld without significant struggle, this will have a devastating effect on tens of thousands of trans youth and their families, and can also be profoundly demoralizing politically.
Beyond attacks nationally, there will continue to be many levied at the state level especially in Republican-led states, which could spur protests. Right-wing counter protests in support of attacks on trans rights could be a feature as well, which would necessitate even wider mobilization by the left and labor movement. It is also possible that violent hate crimes could spark protests that can be built on, like the relatively small but significant wave of protests following the brutal murder of Brianna Ghey, a trans teenager in the UK killed by her classmates.
The right wing’s war on LGBTQ people and the “woke agenda” will also be used as a trojan horse to slash education spending. Trump has already threatened funding cuts for schools or programs that feature “critical race theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content.” Educators’ unions in particular will have a crucial role to play in fighting to defend trans and other marginalized students, and make it clear that these attacks are also used as pretenses for attacks on the wider working class. This will be quite a literal case of an injury to one being an injury to all.
Labor
Regardless of whether Trump or Harris won, the slow but steady uptick in labor militancy was going to continue. High-profile struggles to organize the unorganized, like at Starbucks, Amazon, and the auto industry in the South, have all faced setbacks, but in the context of overall steps forward. While starting from a historically low level, the increase in strikes has been very important, especially in heavy industry. Trump is a notorious union buster and has always been viciously anti-union. He is forced to moderate this somewhat in the public eye — for instance his nominee for secretary of labor being presented as pro-union and even Sean O’Brien’s top choice — to maintain his pro-worker facade, but this will be heavily uneven and will not fundamentally alter his dominant approach which will be decidedly anti-union.
He is likely to feign more sympathy with private sector industrial unions, which he correctly sees as having more overlap with his base and will be more hesitant to go after. This will mainly take the form of largely symbolic statements, like the supportive comments Trump made on Truth Social in mid-December about the East and Gulf Coast ILA dockworkers’ fight against automation, but when push comes to shove he will undoubtedly overall come down on the side of the bosses. On the other hand, there will be no such supportive symbolic gestures given to the public sector unions like the teachers and federal workers. A core part of Project 2025 is breaking the teachers unions as a step toward privatizing public education, and Musk and Ramaswamy are foaming at the mouth to use DOGE to gut the Department of Education. Musk and Ramaswamy have also talked about mass layoffs of federal workers, a disproportionate 20% of whom are Black and live in Democrat-controlled cities, which only serves to sweeten the deal for this racist administration.
We should remember that the #RedForEd teachers’ strike wave, which was the beginning of the labor upsurge, began under Trump’s first term. The strikes began in “red state” teachers’ unions, often led by rank-and-file educators rising up against both the state government and their own union leaders. If the Trump administration goes after federal workers with major cuts and layoffs, a similar dynamic would likely need to play out in these unions, which are by and large extremely weak and hollowed out. If this happens, it can have a catalyzing and inspiring effect on other struggles, both inside and outside the labor movement, as did #RedForEd. Federal workers are banned from going on strike so, like teachers have done in many states since 2018, they will need to break the law en masse to stop Trump’s attacks—another thing pointing to the likelihood of needing to go beyond the existing union leaders.
With Trump looking to Javier Milei for inspiration, public sector workers in the US should look to Argentinian workers for theirs. A 1.5 million-strong general strike followed by massive protests at the beginning of 2024 defeated Milei’s first major austerity omnibus bill shortly after he took power. Without continued mobilization, significant portions ended up being passed later, but since then the ATE, the country’s largest public sector union, has staged several large strikes against layoffs and for higher wages in the face of inflation. If UAW president Shawn Fain’s call for a 2028 general strike comes to fruition, it will take place in the final year of Trump’s presidency. While much will happen between now and then, this could certainly be an important flashpoint.
The right-wing attacks on LGBTQ people, immigrants, and other oppressed groups in the coming months and years will also pose a serious test for the labor movement. If any section of the working class is left undefended, the right wing will viciously exploit this weakness in the labor movement to score victories against the entire class. Failure to meet the coming attacks with united working-class action will critically undermine the foundation of solidarity that will be necessary to win victories in the coming period, much less continue the effort of rebuilding a militant labor movement to reverse decades of retreat.
International Developments and War
There are currently 56 military conflicts taking place worldwide, the most since World War II. Over the next four years it is very likely this number climbs further as capitalist crises intensify and the main imperialist powers increasingly seek to use every conflict, big and small, to take steps forward in the wider inter-imperialist bloc power struggle and set back the opposing bloc.
The millions-strong international protest movement against the genocidal war in Gaza was the largest international mass movement in years, and shows the potential for high-profile and brutal wars to bring ordinary people into the streets. Through this conflict, and very much accelerated as a result of the mass protest movement, the deeply reactionary nature of US imperialist foreign policy was further clarified in the minds of tens of millions of ordinary people. Even though the protests have subsided for now, this gain in consciousness has not receded and can contribute to further struggle around this and other conflicts.
A new flaring up especially of Israel’s offensive in the Middle East (which, despite the recent ceasefire agreement, is still entirely possible), but also an escalation in Ukraine, as well as horrific conflict in any number of arenas could spark a reemergence of anti-war protests in the US. How the labor movement orients to, on the one hand the coming tidal wave of nationalist propaganda, and on the other the developing anti-war movement, will be an increasingly important and debated question which Marxists have a key role to play in.
US officials have repeatedly warned of a Chinese invasion in Taiwan by 2027. While that specific action is unlikely within this timeframe, escalations in the Western Pacific over the next few years are inevitable. Trump will pick up where he left off in the final year of his first term, when he used the coronavirus to whip up anti-Chinese racism which led to a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, to stoke further such divisions which at a certain point could also spur protests.
Anti-Black Racism
The wave of mass texts sent to Black people all over the country in the days following the election calling them slaves and telling them to report to the plantation is a nasty taste of what an emboldened far right means. Children as young as middle schoolers received these texts, and some even included the name of their school, revealing the depth of the data breach. As we commented in our 2023 National Convention US Perspectives document, due to its unique historical legacy and centrality to US capitalism, “The fight for Black freedom is the most explosive issue of oppression in US society.” Though active struggle against institutional racism has been largely absent since the defeat of BLM almost five years ago, it can certainly come back under Trump.
Racist police brutality, right-wing vigilante hate crimes whether violent or nonviolent like the mass texts, labor struggle (especially in the public sector unions), or other issues could all spark a reemergence of the Black freedom struggle. The Trump regime will have a propensity to crack down hard including, if struggle is widespread and militant enough, activating the military, which would only serve to pour gasoline on the fire. Anti-racist struggle carried out on a strong class basis could also help to win back a section of, in particular, Black men who have become supporters of Trump and fallen victim to various right-wing ideas.
Feminist, Youth, Climate and Other Arenas of Struggle
Women have played a disproportionate role in many struggles of the last decade, both in the US and internationally. The overturn of Roe v. Wade, without a significant fight, was a historic and demoralizing defeat for tens of millions of women and the working class, and has set back feminist struggle in the US. Conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation are pushing for Trump to revive the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that banned the mailing of drugs used for abortion, which would bring the country much closer to a total national abortion ban. Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, has already initiated a lawsuit that will test the “shield laws” which have allowed medical providers in Democratic-controlled states to prescribe and mail abortion pills to women in states with abortion bans. If this case rules against the providers, or if Trump shows serious signs of reviving the Comstock Act, would very likely spark protests. While it’s unlikely Trump himself will pursue serious further attacks on abortion rights given pro-choice attitudes among a sizable section of his base, Mifepristone could still be targeted again in the courts and nothing should be fully ruled out.
In addition to further attacks on abortion rights, anger at the reactionary manosphere could reach a boiling point and also lead to protests at some stage. This would draw out young women and LGBTQ people in particular who often bear the brunt of the growing influence of misogynistic ideas among young men and boys. If more serious struggle breaks out against Trump around any number of issues, young people will almost certainly be at the forefront, but polarization and the gender divide will remain a real feature. Other arenas for struggle could be around gun violence, which will continue to be a gruesome feature of US society and was a flashpoint for struggle for a brief period under Trump’s first term.
Trump 2.0 is going to declare war on anti-climate change measures, pushing for an “all of the above” energy policy, an approach that nominally accepts renewable energy but places a clear emphasis on oil and natural gas. Trump’s nickname for oil, “liquid gold,” says it all and his “drill, drill, drill” policy will accelerate human-caused climate change. Natural disasters will continue to occur with more frequency and more devastating consequences, and at some point this is going to lead to a more collective outpouring of anger and desperation. The redevelopment of the climate movement would be an extremely important development, and would provide socialists with an especially big opening given how obvious it is to millions of people that capitalism is the problem.
It’s impossible to list every possible attack or issue around which struggle could break out, and while the above are those which may be more likely, this section is by no means an exhaustive list. As always, we will need to anticipate events as best we can, while staying on our toes, ready to intervene in any struggle which breaks out.
Democratic Party and Objective Space for a New Party
After Trump’s victory in 2016, the Democrats intervened swiftly and decisively to co-opt the anti-Trump mood and movement with their #Resistance. Across the country, Democratic elected officials were headline speakers at the Women’s Marches, which were originally a thoroughly grassroots initiative, and a week later thoroughly corporate Democrats took part in airport occupations against the Muslim Ban. Boston’s corporate Democrat Mayor Marty Walsh even offered up City Hall as a sanctuary shelter for immigrants facing deportation. Under pressure from their base and the rising Berniecrat wing of their own party, they pretended to back the mass movement, biding time until protests died down at which point they could channel the anger into safer channels like the midterm elections.
The Democrats today do not face the same pressure from below, and Bernie and the Squad don’t represent an actual threat forcing them to feign left. Not to mention the fact that the Democratic Party is genuinely less opposed to significant portions of Trump’s agenda than they were eight years ago. Therefore we will largely not see the same type of response. In fact, rather than tacking left, the dominant takeaway from this election among the tops of the Democratic Party is that they need to move even further right, especially on issues like immigration and trans rights. The Democratic Party’s complete lack of response to Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace’s anti-trans bathroom bill has already put this on full display.
In much of the 2000s our call for a new party was essentially entirely propagandistic, in the sense that there was no even potentially viable path to a new party in the near term. Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2015/16 changed that. With the rise of Sanders, the Squad, and DSA, the question of a new left or working-class party became a concrete, here-and-now question in the minds of several million people. With the capitulation and collapse of these forces, however, alongside the moving to the right of important figures in the labor movement like AFA president Sara Nelson, there is again no clearly illuminated path to a new party right now. The move to the right by US reformism since 2020 has been relatively uniform, with no leading elements standing out with a more differentiated, combative position which we can reliably make appeals to and place demands on (with the possible and occasional exception of Shawn Fain).
Therefore, our call for a new party today is back to being largely more clearly propagandistic. This does not whatsoever diminish the importance of this part of our program, but rather clarifies that it will not be seen as actually viable in the short term by nearly as many people as in the latter half of the last decade. Sanders’ initial post-election statement, while still resonating with many people, was more the dying breath of yesterday than the beginning of a reemergence, and is unlikely to go anywhere.
Historically we’ve said that Democrats being in power is the most favorable terrain for openness to a new party. When they’re in power, blaming all of society’s problems on the Republicans and playing the lesser evil card becomes a lot harder for the Democrats. But old truisms don’t always remain true. The Democrats are going to be an utterly spineless opposition to Trump 2.0, and despite the setbacks in consciousness that have taken place, it is possible that deeper frustration could develop around this, especially depending on the scale, type, and severity of Trump’s attacks. This could lead to a bigger openness to the idea of a new party under Trump than under Biden, flowing from the need to mount an actually effective opposition to Trump and the right. However, this is far from an automatic process.
But while this could potentially lead to an increased mood for a new party on the left among a wider advanced layer, the question of leadership would still need to be resolved. It is possible that struggle provoked by Trump’s attacks can lead to the development of new organizations and leaders who see the need to build a working-class, left alternative to both parties. It’s also possible for international developments to have a positive influence, for example if Corbyn in Britain and those around him in the Independent Alliance actually take steps to form a new left party, or if Melenchon and La France Insoumise’s momentum escalates. While far from guaranteed, developments like this can have a positive effect on figures like Shawn Fain, and also give rise to new figures and forces inspired to play a similar role here.
Class Unity, Not Concessions to the Right
Under pressure from the ruling class’s rightward shift and ideological offensive which is having success among a section of the working class, a very dangerous trend is growing on the left internationally: left individuals or forces incorporating right-wing ideas and talking points under the guise of populism. It is a thoroughly opportunistic and unprincipled, though in some cases also unconscious, response to the ruling class’ right-wing offensive and its effects on the working class.
Internationally this has been exemplified by figures like Sahra Wagenknecht in Germany, a former leader of Die Linke (the Left Party) who led a split in 2023 to form a new party that emphasizes economic populism and is against German militarism, but is also for a more restrictive immigration policy and criticizes the left for obsessing over “bizarre minorities.” Wagenknecht’s party got 6.2% in the recent European election compared to Die Linke’s (the Left Party) 2.7%. In the UK the trend is embodied by George Galloway and his Workers’ Party of Britain, centering in his campaign opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza but also being outwardly anti-trans and anti-migrant. The Socialist Party of England and Wales (CWI section) supported him. In the US, this trend was first exemplified in recent times by Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore, the latter of whom helped to organize the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally against the war in Ukraine in 2022 alongside Ron Paul and other right-wing figures, calling explicitly for a “left-right alliance” against the war.
The support for Dan Osborne, a longtime union mechanic and BCTGM local president during the Kellogg’s Striketober strike, for his independent Senate run in Nebraska from sections of the left in DSA and figures like Bhaskar Sunkara, is another example. Osborne’s platform was a mix of vague populist demands, some of which could certainly be described as left but others calling for a more secure border, increased funding for cops, and to stop those “seeking to drive an ideological agenda through the schools,” a vague but obvious reference to being against LGBTQ rights.
In a TV ad toward the end of his campaign, responding to attacks from his Republican opponent for being secretly a Democrat, Osborne says “People are tired of a corrupt Washington controlled by corporations and billionaires” and then 10 seconds later, “I’m where President Trump is on corruption, China, and the border. If Trump needs help building the wall, well, I’m pretty handy.” After the election, Bernie Sanders told The Nation Osborne ran an “extraordinary campaign” and that “what Dan Osborn did should be looked at as a model for the future.” Sunkara and a Teamsters staffer wrote a joint op-ed for The Guardian saying essentially the same.
Since narrowly losing, Osborne has set up a PAC called the Working Class Heroes Fund to help “working class candidates” (Democrats, Republicans, or independents) run in elections, and which would presumably push the false approach outlined in his campaign. It is not ruled out that this effort could pick up some momentum in the leadup to the 2026 midterms, which will further confuse consciousness. Flowing directly from the demoralization and desperation that exists among millions of left-leaning workers and youth, these ideas can gain more of an echo in the coming period and become an important subject of debate among the left, which we would need to take part in.
This trend can also manifest in a less blatant form than the above, not as left forces and figures explicitly taking up right-wing talking points themselves, but opportunistically downplaying or deemphasizing their opposition to the right and right-wing ideas out of a desire to not alienate workers who have illusions in them. In particular, this is beginning to affect a section of labor leaders, led in fact by those whom we have characterized as being part of the left bureaucracy. Sean O’Brien’s speech at the RNC is the most obvious example, but Shawn Fain is also falling victim to these pressures as well. Direct criticism of Trump and his agenda is glaringly absent from Fain’s post-election statement. He says the UAW’s mission remains the same as it was before the election, as do the threats its members face: corporate greed. While of course in some ways true, it is also completely out of touch to say that women, immigrants, trans people, the environment, and indeed the working class as a whole do not face unique threats under Trump 2.0. With O’Brien’s opportunistic tack to the right and toward Trump, he should no longer be considered part of the left labor bureaucracy, and it remains to be seen how other figures in the left bureaucracy develop under Trump 2.0.
Both the Teamsters’ non-endorsement in the election and Fain’s post-election statement hide behind broadly correct, but totally vague criticisms of “both parties,” in order to avoid making direct criticism of Trump. While we are sympathetic to the anti-politics and anti-party mood that can exist among many working-class people, we should not hold back criticisms of union leaders who attempt to posture as “anti-politician” in order to keep their options open for backroom deals, like O’Brien has clearly been doing. Some on the left — we see this for instance with Workers Strike Back — are so fixated on attacking the Democrats that they are hesitant to focus too much ire on Trump and the Republicans for fear of being conflated with the Democrats. This is a major and dangerous ultra-left mistake. As we constantly argue, opposing Trump and the Republicans does not mean you have to support the Democrats, and in fact to actually oppose the right effectively means actively breaking with the Democratic Party. The key is connecting the two.
In essence, this trend amounts to a new form of opportunism fit for the new era. Its pressures will be exerted on and can impact our own organization and members too, and this needs to be consciously discussed and resisted. We firmly reject any idea that the left can take a single step forward by incorporating right-wing ideas.
At the same time, we reject with equal fervor the idea that everybody who possesses right-wing ideas at any given moment is permanently lost to the workers’ movement and the left, and we ardently defend the use of struggle and a united working-class program to win them away from the right. This will be particularly important in our work in the labor movement. Liberal talking points that paint entire sections of the population of Republican-led states as irremediable or stupid need to be strongly opposed. Marxists are unique in our unyielding confidence in the working class to struggle and in the ability of struggle to cut across division and backward ideas, and lead to leaps forward in consciousness. One of the most central tasks for the left in this period will be to chart a path forward for an independent, working class position and political force that effectively fights the right without giving an ounce of cover to bourgeois or petty-bourgeois liberalism.
Conclusion: A Marxist Program for Fighting Trump
The US left, within the labor movement, social struggle, and electoral arena, and from reformist forces to the plethora of self-styled revolutionary organizations, is extremely weak. This cannot be separated from the international context of a left which globally has by and large failed to live up to the tasks demanded by this period. In addition to a crisis of leadership, the workers movement faces its own polycrisis of consciousness, organization, and traditions of struggle. As the World Perspectives document states, “It is only on the basis of a clear understanding of perspectives and the development of the necessary programme, that a foundation for overcoming this crisis of the left can be laid. This is our most central task.”
The weaknesses of the left and the wider workers movement can only be overcome through the experience of struggle over time and strengthened, particularly at key moments, with the conscious political intervention of Marxists. As we have said, while the exact timing, scale and around which issues it takes place first cannot be predetermined, struggle is inevitable under Trump’s second term, and socialists will have an important role to play. Flowing from our general perspectives outlined above, it is necessary to spell out the broad outlines of our program for fighting Trump and the right. There are many significantly more detailed and specific components that could be added to a longer text, but below are the key elements for initial discussion and which should be further developed over time and through experience.
An Injury to One is an Injury to All
We firmly oppose all attacks on the working class, poor people, and oppressed groups in society — from anti-immigrant and anti-trans attacks, to racism, sexism, cuts to vital services, layoffs, and attacks on unions. The left should make no concessions to right-wing attacks in the interest of “common ground” with right populism. All issues in society should be polarized along class lines, and any attempt to pit one section of the working class against another, no matter how small in size, must be opposed in the interest of achieving the widest possible unity of the working class against Trump, the ruling class, and capitalism. Though in a less acute way than when it was originally written, the Holocaust-era poem, First They Came, bears real relevance to the need for the widest possible solidarity against right-wing attacks today.
A Mass Movement and Working Class Action Is Needed
While small protests can be an important jumping off point, a mass movement will be needed to really challenge Trump, and working class action on a mass scale will be needed to decisively defeat him. Waiting for the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential election is not a solution, nor are isolated direct actions that are disconnected from mobilizing a wider movement, or individual acts of violence which only serve to strengthen the repressive apparatuses of the state and encourage proxy consciousness among the masses.
Mass protests are key, but it will also be necessary to go beyond big demonstrations alone. Business as usual needs to be disrupted and shut down, which can come in the form of tactics such as student walkouts, mass occupations, sit-down protests to block deportations, and most importantly workplace actions like slowdowns, sickouts, walkouts, and strikes. As the most organized section of the working class, the unions must play a leading role, not just with regard to their specific contracts but in all fights that affect the wider working class and especially oppressed groups. Any attack stopped or victory achieved needs to be built on to further escalate the struggle. Mass struggle against any singular attack or aspect of Trump’s agenda must always be linked to a wider program against Trump, the right, both corporate parties, and the capitalist system as a whole.
Opposition to All Imperialism
In this new era defined by the increasing dominance of the inter-imperialist bloc conflict in all global and national relations, the needs of US imperialism in the world arena will be inseparable from the policies of Trump 2.0 at home. We are opposed to the meddling of US imperialism in conflicts abroad, the existence of NATO as an imperialist alliance, and all imperialist war and conflict wherever it takes place, as it is never in the interest of working people of any country. There is no “lesser evil” of imperialism globally, and the capitalist and imperialist China-led bloc offers no alternative solution to the problems faced by ordinary people worldwide. The US military budget should be drastically slashed and reallocated to fund socially useful programs like education, universal free healthcare, affordable housing, and social services. In the modern era you cannot have capitalism without imperialism, so fighting against imperialist wars means fighting the global capitalist system itself.
The Democrats Can’t Stop Trumpism: Build a New Party and Split Trump’s Base
The Democrats have shown time and time again that they are incapable of stopping the rise of Trumpism. Even when they have managed to defeat Trump and his ilk in one-off elections, the Democrats in power are unwilling and incapable of removing the root conditions that allow for the growth of right populism and the far right: primarily discontent with the status quo by ordinary people. This is fundamentally because the Democrats are a capitalist party through and through and are therefore incapable of meeting the needs of working people. The best recruiter to right populism over the last decade has been the fake progressivism and broken promises of corporate Democrats. When the left offers no alternative, the right has free reign to make gains and grow.
Unions, labor leaders, and left-wing organizations need to break from both capitalist parties and begin the project of forming a new, anti-war working class party. This should start with the unions running independent candidates against both parties in the coming years with wide-ranging working class programs that clearly differentiate from both the Democrats and Republicans, and that fights for the rights of every oppressed group on a principled basis. Only through the building of a left alternative with such a program that is unequivocally on the side of all working people, as opposed to the billionaires, will it be possible to decisively split Trump’s base and peel away a large section of the tens of millions of ordinary people who are not yet fully hardened in right-wing politics. A new party should have democratic structures, clear mechanisms for accountability of leaders, and take no corporate cash. It should not just limit itself to the electoral arena, but also serve as a jumping off point for organizing and building movements in the streets and workplace struggle. Ultimately, such a party would need to adopt a socialist program to decisively end capitalism which is necessary to defeat the right and far right forever.
No More Trumps: End Capitalism with Socialist Revolution
Trump is the embodiment of every vile component of capitalism’s nature; he is a racist, sexist, pro-war, greedy, exploitative union-busting billionaire. But no matter how much the liberal establishment fixates on Trump’s personality — undoubtedly vile as it is — the rise of Trumpism is a systemic problem and therefore demands a systemic solution. Defeating Trump without ending the system which spawned him will only lead to different and even worse individuals fulfilling the same role down the road. We are for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism internationally by the working class of all countries, and the transformation of society along socialist lines, organized based on the needs of ordinary people, not corporations. This is why, while doing everything we can to build the wider anti-Trump movement, we also simultaneously build the revolutionary socialist movement and Socialist Alternative.
