The first hundred days of President Donald Trump’s return to office have doubled down on the racist policies of Joe Biden, from anti-immigrant state terrorism to the embrace of slaughter and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The brutal reality of capitalist rule under rising fascism has been laid bare. For the international working class, this moment marks a dramatic escalation of class war.
By exposing the contradictions of the profit system, Trump is pushing many workers to see that it can never serve their needs. The task of Progressive Labor Party is to lead those workers–and millions more–to smash capitalism with communist revolution. The large and militant turnout of workers and students on May Day renews our confidence that our future can be bright with a growing PLP
A system in crisis
Under capitalism, a tiny billionaire class rules over a world of misery–not because they are smarter or more deserving, but because they have state power. They control the military, the police, and the media. These exploiters ruin human and natural life for profit. Regardless of which faction is in power, they are driven by the harsh reality of their system: grow or die, no matter the cost to the workers of the world. From sweatshops in Bangladesh to the slavery of mass incarceration in the U.S., capitalism relies on coercion and violence on an everyday basis.
Fascism is capitalism in crisis, stripped of its mask of liberal democracy. Today’s global disaster is the product of slowing economic growth, rampant speculation, and exorbitant debt. from national treasuries to credit cards and college loans. When pushed to the wall, bosses sharpen their knives. To intimidate an impoverished working class and prepare to fight their imperialist competition, they’re forced to scrap their democratic charade. “Due process,” “the rule of law,” “free and fair” elections, constitutional “freedoms”--all are being kicked to the curb. This fascist trend is playing out worldwide–not just in Turkey and India and Israel, but also in the U.S. and its junior partners in Europe.
A rotting empire
Trump is the vicious creature of a rotting United States empire. Faced with a rising China that makes more than a third of the world’s goods and has a stranglehold on critical industries, Trump has crudely responded with a trade war. The tariffs aren’t likely to restore U.S. manufacturing supremacy, but they are sure to drive workers into deeper misery by inflating the cost of living.
The shock-and-awe assault of Trump’s first hundred days–and the Democrats’ passivity in enabling it–reflects the bosses’ desperation. The defunding of social welfare, the use of soldiers as border cops, the green light to poison our air and water, the anti-immigrant violence and abductions–none of this is entirely new. Trump’s Democratic predecessors, from Clinton to Obama to Biden, helped set the stage for these ruthless attacks. But Trump’s open cruelty and racism, cheered on by a significant minority of deluded workers, mark a transition to more open fascism–unless and until a communist-led mass movement stops it in its tracks.
The rulers are helpless to solve the problems of their system. Pressed to shovel money into their war machine, they can no longer afford reforms to make workers’ lives even a little better for even a little while. In this decayed phase of capitalism, they can no longer build–they can only destroy. Trump serves his wing of the ruling class with scapegoats and wrecking balls. Today the bosses are shredding what’s left of the U.S. social safety net and disappearing “legal” immigrant workers to El Salvador. Sooner than later, they’ll be forced into the mass destruction of world war, the temporary fix to what Karl Marx called the crisis of overproduction–the inability of workers to buy enough of what’s produced. But there is only one permanent solution to the contradictions of capitalism. That’s communism, a world without money or wages, a society built around serving workers’ needs.
No borders in a communist world
In a world run by the working class, there will be no borders, no “citizens” or “aliens,” no imperialist wars. From the apartheid wall in Palestine to the militarized line between the U.S. and Mexico, borders are designed to protect capitalist profits, divide workers, and super-exploit immigrants. In a communist world, the nationalist divisions that tear our class apart will be abolished. Workers will be united in their shared struggle to construct a world free of racism, sexism, and exploitation. As we’re seeing today in the bosses’ bloodsoaked atrocities in Ukraine, in Sudan, in India and Pakistan, nationalism is poison for the international working class. Communism is the cure!
Build the Party, build the future
Workers fight back. The history of class war and revolution is one of heroic resilience. From the communist-led defeat of the Nazis in World War Two to the multiracial cadre that founded PLP and picked up the red flag, we have never stopped fighting. We can see our future in the growing worldwide solidarity of workers and students who’ve joined the fight against genocide in Palestine, who demand climate action, who reject nationalism and fascism. These are not isolated fightbacks. They are the sparks of a global fire.
Again, fascism isn't merely an option for the domestic capitalists who back Trump or the finance capitalists behind the Democrats–it's a matter of necessity. Workers too have but one choice: communist revolution. We must break from the illusions of reformism and expose the liberal misleaders who betray us. We must reject all war but class war and choose life and working-class liberation. Most of all, we must build an international revolutionary party to end capitalism for all time.The future belongs to a communist-led working class–but only if we fight for it. Down with the bosses! Join PLP!
