What should the politics of the left be in the face of Trump’s electoral victory and the offensive government he is preparing in the United States?

The government of the world’s leading power has been captured by the far-right. This fact is a sign of the historical crisis of the American bourgeoisie and the decline of the United States as the dominant power. The division, desperation and belligerent character of the movements of this bourgeoisie are an expression of the need to resort to force and violence to regain a decades-old domination that is slipping away.

Beyond the decadent character of this political symptom, the historical decline of the US does not imply that it lacks firepower. It remains the leading economic, political and military power. A chauvinist, racist force has been reinforced in the government, in favor of repression and militarization of society, of religious obscurantism and with strong fascist tendencies. The danger is enormous for the working masses in the United States. But it is also a change in the international scenario, which will have repercussions in all countries. It is superfluous to explain that Trump’s emulators abound in the five continents, and that the tendency to war and very hard clashes in the class struggle opens a generalized tendency in the bourgeoisie to seek to constitute repressive and offensive governments.

Trump’s victory in the recent election was expected by most commentators. These were important indicators of the turn of a part of the bourgeoisie to be direct protagonists of his campaign, starting with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. But the social background of this triumph lies in the weariness and anger of broad sectors of the masses of workers and the exploited in the face of the growing deterioration of their wages and living conditions  (in spite of the official propaganda of the improvement of the “macroeconomy”) who, demoralized, did not vote for the Democrats or did so for Trump, because of his promises of economic recovery .   

Although Harris’ campaign overshadowed him in fundraising, the capitalist sectors supporting him were no longer just the ruined industrialists or small agricultural producers of 2016 or 2020, but a fraction of the Sillicon Valley tech bosses. Several non-endorsers even took the precaution of not coming out for the losing candidate Harris, such as the owners of the New York Times and the Washington Post, who refrained from giving their usual endorsement or electoral support.

Trump’s wave was so notorious that it even won the support of part of the AFL-CIO union bureaucracy, such as Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union. O’Brien was at the convention that proclaimed Trump as the nominee vindicating his calls for economic protectionism and “bringing jobs back” to the US. It was mainly about showing the possibility of confluence between unionized workers and the Republican Party and sharpening Trump’s reactionary trade war orientation for a working-class audience.

Not many commentators, however, expected the victory to be so resounding. Not only was there no controversial recount, but Trump won in terms of the popular vote, not just the electoral college. Trump won all 7 states that were considered contested, his preeminence was a general trend. The Republicans won a majority in both chambers, although with a narrower percentage than in the presidential election. This control is in addition to that of the Supreme Court, which he already occupied with his supporters in his previous term. He has as a starting point for his government a much more complete control of the State and of his party, as a basis to be able to launch the offensive he has long announced.

Trump’s victory did not, however, have at its core a large polarized mobilization of the population towards the election. He was able to hold on, even with a setback, as Trump lost 3 million votes from the 2020 election. Above all, he was able to take advantage of the political collapse of support for the Democratic Party, which between Biden’s victory and Harris’ defeat lost 10 million voters.

There is a profoundly progressive aspect to this Democratic disaster. A mass movement has developed that marks the genocidal and militaristic content of the imperialist apparatus, responsible for deaths every day in the Middle East. This movement for Palestine is at odds with both Republicans and Democrats, but made a special effort to disprove the hypocrisy of the Biden-Harris administration that sought to maintain the place of the progressive “lesser evil” in the election. Although it has been a period of growth of unionization, the apparatus of the union bureaucracy has not been strengthened, but rather it is in an enormous political crisis, which starts from the discredit of the party of the imperialist bourgeoisie with which 99% of the leaders are aligned. The loss of real wages, even in the unionized sectors, has been the most active factor in this rupture.

Something similar happens with the Latino and black communities. In the past they have led huge struggles, such as the May 1st immigrant strike or Black Lives Matter. While its leadership joined the Democratic Party and had a policy of demobilization, it has lost the capacity to mobilize its base electorally as it had been doing. And the offensive announced by Trump of immigration raids and police reinforcement is going to rethink the need for these movements to fight back immediately.

A far-right movement has captured the State, and is preparing a major offensive, while movements of struggle and political rupture of the masses with the State parties of significant dimensions have been deployed. This movement has no class-oriented leadership. The comrades with revolutionary proposals are disorganized and fragmented. An important part of the political evolution in the new phase depends on its capacity to organize itself and to propose a coherent and energetic political line.

Crisis on the left of the Democratic Party

The left of the Democratic Party deeply adapted to Biden-Harris administration. After the disaster, it is now trying to differentiate itself, to contain a tendency to break with the Democrats.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who had served as a point man when he contested the presidential nomination unsuccessfully in 2016 and 2020, enthusiastically joined first Biden’s and then Harris’ campaign. The same goes for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the main referent of the Democratic left in the House of Representatives. They participated unwaveringly in Biden’s campaign, and then Kamala’s, without criticism or reservation, right up to election day, going to official campaign events and being enthusiastic that it was close and they were going to win.

After the defeat, Sanders issued a document saying that “it is not surprising” that black and Latino voters are migrating to vote Republican because the Democratic Party abandoned the working class, “while the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And he’s right.” The letter however, is very careful not to call for a break with the Democratic Party.

The U.S. magazine Jacobin, mouthpiece of the Democratic left, was anticipating before election day that if Harris was defeated, it was because the workers were not convinced by the Democrats’ compromises with the big capitalists and their washed-up speeches. In another pre-election article, they noted that declining wages contributed to low voter turnout for Kamala among unionized workers.

After the election, Jacobin editorialists said the disaster is the responsibility of the conservative character of the Democratic elite, who dismantled some social protection that had been put in place during the pandemic and presided over a process of extreme impoverishment. They criticize that the Harris campaign refused to differentiate itself from Biden and Israel and say they should have emulated the campaigns of Morena in Mexico or the Popular Front in France, which were more left-leaning. They ask for more make-up, the better to deceive the people. Not a change of orientation. They claim the Sanders statement as a different orientation within the Democratic Party than the Harris statement that led to defeat. Another columnist asks whether “socialists can continue to use the Democratic Party ticket as an introduction to mainstream politics,” and answers that only if it corrects the orientation that has alienated the labor vote by economic regression. They seek to recreate the social democratic orientation and the relationship with democratic figures, not to break with them because of the disaster they have generated.

Alexandria Ocasio-Córtez, whom the Democratic Socialists refused to support in her re-election bid because of her congressional votes in support of the right to defend themselves from Israel and her activities in common with Zionist organizations, has been more vindictive of the Biden-Harris camp, citing as the main reason for Kamala’s defeat the “misogyny” of those who did not vote for a female candidate. He made an axis against “sectarianism” and the “search for small differences”. It is a call to close ranks with the Democratic Party, even against internal criticism of Sanders or Jacobin. It is evidence of an extreme co-optation of the Democratic Party apparatus. Other congressmen who organized the left-wing congressional “squad” with her, such as Jamaal Bowman or Cori Bush, were cleaned out by the traditional Democratic leadership in the primaries.

The Democratic Socialists of America did not call for a vote for Kamala Harris, although they did not endorse another candidate either. After the election, the declaration of its national leadership on November 8, shows a real leap in the crisis of the sector. “Donald Trump was elected president because the Democratic Party establishment failed to present a credible alternative to the right. For decades, they have bowed to billionaires, waged wars, separated millions of immigrants from their families and demonstrated a total lack of conviction to provide a better quality of life for working people. In her campaign, Kamala Harris defended her administration’s role in the Gaza genocide and cozied up to Republicans, abandoning the Arab and Muslim community and the progressive base that helped put Democrats in power. This is the result, and the international working class is paying the price.”

The central statement of the document is “We understand the work ahead: to build a new party for the working class. To incorporate new communities into the class struggle. Unite with the popular movements around a common set of demands for everything workers deserve. Find pressure points against the ruling class, such as organizing our co-workers to strike and paralyze business as usual through civil disobedience. Campaign for socialists to take office at all levels of government. Prepare a viable left-wing opposition presidential candidate for 2028.” It is still an opportunist perspective, to occupy positions within bourgeois governments by creating a “viable left”. Neither announces an immediate break with the Democrats nor that they will never again run for their ballots. However, whatever future maneuvers the DSA leadership may undertake, the tenor of the document shows that among the thousands of young people and workers of multiple tendencies nestled within it, the climate is one of open hostility to the Democratic Party.

Everything indicates that in the organization, which has reached 90 thousand members, among them many who claim to be socialists and revolutionaries, important crises and discussions are taking place. The discourse they have been maintaining for the most part, which aims to reduce their coexistence with the democrats to an electoral tactic, but claiming their existence as an independent socialist organization, is completely questioned.

The crisis between the Democratic Party and the rank and file of the workers has a key chapter in the labor movement. Unionization processes and wage strikes have been spreading (the most outstanding was the automobile conflict led by the new UAW leadership headed by Shawn Fain). Internal rank and file groups have also spread, characterized by their differentiation from the bureaucratic leaderships, as well as specific groupings of sectors of the labor movement militating against the genocide in Palestine (“Labor for Palestine”, “Educators for Palestine”, etc.). More militant bureaucratic leaderships such as Fain’s in the UAW balanced between speaking out for a cease-fire, along with 7 national unions, with endorsing the pro-Zionist candidacy of Kamala Harris.

In the election, many union workers either did not vote or voted for Trump. Watch for how the upcoming attacks are processed, where Trump has said he will confront union rights with the force of the state, while the Democratic bureaucracy has been disavowed in front of its rank and file by the debacle in their party.

Palestine: a demarcation line

Those 10 million who did not go to vote for the Democrats, did not go to Trump, who also fell in their vote. Neither did they go massively to the independent candidacies, which had marginal results, such as Jill Stein of the Green Party with 0.5% or Claudia de la Cruz of the Socialism and Liberation Party with 0.1%.

There have been several initiatives of workers’ or labor parties that grouped together and competed at the local level. In Nebraska, Dan Osborn, a union leader who led a strike at the Kellogg’s plant in 2021 ran for the provincial senate on a Labor Party ticket and nearly won the Republican Party the seat.

The mass movement against genocide in Palestine has been a profound revulsive. Unlike very deep movements of struggle that have been reabsorbed into the system by the Democratic Party as a lesser evil, the starting point of this movement has been the condemnation of the role of “progressives” in genocide.

The great virtue of the PSL was to be able to link its candidacy to the movement for Palestine, with the slogan “no vote for genocide”, in a militant campaign that won over part of the pro-Palestinian activism to a political campaign, with mobilizations of hundreds in several cities, taking advantage of the elections to denounce the character of both imperialist candidacies. It is true that the “socialist movement” proposed by the PSL does not have a working-class character, but is a proposal linked to giving an “anti-imperialist” content to the bourgeoisies and bureaucracies that clash with the US, from the BRICS, to Iran, Cuba or Venezuela. It is also true that their presence in the unions does not have the character of an anti-bureaucratic movement but of coexistence with the union bureaucracy linked to the Democratic Party. But it is notorious that having played heavily on intervening in the movement for Palestine by denouncing the Democrats, rather than disguising its clash with them, this organization has grown greatly, being the most prominent force in the anti-war movement and had some level of electoral activity in 45 of the 50 states.

The Stein and Cruz campaigns have teamed up to launch a call for a national mobilization to Washington DC for January 20, Trump’s own inauguration day. Starting his mandate with a united front mobilization, which combines the rejection of imperialist war and genocide with popular demands seems a great success, which can be taken in hand by genuinely proletarian and internationalist forces. It is also a great success also to measure the commitment of the struggle of all those who intend to oppose Trump on the left on a specific ground. And it is a political act that marks a milestone, like the one made by the Partido Obrero and sectors of the political, union and piquetero left on December 20, 2023 when they marched to the government house in the first week of the Milei government to repudiate the threats of power, announcing that they are going to develop an independent political alternative, based on direct action and class struggle.

Although the mass movement of students, the Arab and Palestinian community, and anti-Zionist Jews has not maintained the same level of massiveness, it has been a process of radicalization that has opened a new perspective. Without a critique of imperialism and an understanding of the role of the US as a prison-state over the world and its diverse populations, there is no possibility of building a revolutionary alternative there.

Trump 2.0

It is clear that this new Trump term is not a repeat of the previous one. Situations close to civil war were already experienced at the time, both the rebellion after the assassination of George Floyd and Trump’s attempt to suppress it with repressive forces (and he would have wanted to use the army, but the Pentagon blocked it), as well as the failed coup with the occupation of the capitol on January 6, 2021.

Just as Milei is a radicalized spin on the Macri administration in Argentina, the second Trump is a more distilled version of his first administration. Part of a greater control of the Republican Party, and of the state apparatus. He has decided to dispense with career politicians linked to Bush, Reagan and Cheney, all of whom turned their backs on him. He is promoting a group of fanatics with no political experience whatsoever to the main offices of the State, with the common factor of being outsiders who owe their presence to him. They all replicate Trump’s approaches of separate agreements with Putin to concentrate clashes against China, of hostility with the European Union, as well as violent pro-Zionism. Several are veterans of the army or national guard. He goes to a pure cabinet of his fascistoid MAGA movement.

Mike Pompeo, who headed the CIA and the Pentagon in Trump’s previous term, was excluded as lukewarm and traditional. Neither was Nikki Haley, his former UN envoy who criticized and confronted him in the primaries. Among Trump’s chosen stalwarts is Tulsi Gabbard, who surprised in an intelligence coordination role, being a former Democratic presidential pre-candidate who has frequent lines of dialogue and praise for Putin and Syria’s Al-Assad. Pete Hegseth, chosen to be at the helm of the defense secretary, is a veteran with no command experience who has been a Fox News host and has neo-Nazi tattoos. Hesgeth says that the Pentagon is controlled by the “woke” identity and gender ideology, and identifies the US geopolitical decline there. Matt Gaetz, an extreme right-wing congressman with sex trafficking allegations, was left in charge of the justice department.

Elon Musk will help lead a new agency, called the Department of Government Efficiency, with the goal of “dismantling government bureaucracy.” His influence goes much further, and he participates in cabinet selections and interviews with foreign presidents. Anti-vaccine conspiracist and former independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was rewarded for withdrawing his candidacy in favor of Trump with the top job in the healthcare system. Marco Rubio, the worm confirmed as head of the State Department, is an obsessive anti-communist.

As preparations for the takeover are being discussed, Trump’s campaign announcement to organize mass deportations of immigrants and even detention camps has been confirmed by his transition team. This promises to be a real flashpoint, in a country where millions of foreigners live and even very significant sectors of the economy depend on their labor to function. The City of Los Angeles, the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and California farmers, for example, have called for allowing their undocumented workers to continue to work to avoid economic disaster.

The famous Project 2025, of massive layoffs in the state to replace by personnel indoctrinated by the ultra-right, part of the very clique of Trump’s circle and the cabinet they are forming.

United front and political alternative

Trump is a severe danger, and his repressive and personalistic government may threaten to try to install a fascist regime, especially as a picture of world war progresses. To do so, it must first defeat the existing movements of struggle and opposition. The U.S. can only propose to break through in a general war if it can unlock the military mobilization of a much larger part of the population, a possibility that was ruled out in the U.S. after its defeat in the Vietnam War.

The way to confront it is not the front with the same Democrats who have led to social and economic deterioration, as well as an international massacre, which has broken any possibility of them presenting themselves as “the lesser evil”.

What is needed is to extend the organization of the working class and the oppressed, mutual defense against repression or any attack by right-wing gangs, joint mobilization, direct action and strike measures. The workers’ united front is the way to act in the face of every threat, deportation or intervention of a union. This does not work alone, but must be organized and promoted. Propagandism and self-construction are not methods that can contribute to the fight ahead.

The strategic debate of the moment is how to organize a political alternative of the workers. The revolutionary left is marginal and fragmentary. The political alternative will probably not be able to emerge from the evolution of any of these existing nuclei taken individually. But there are thousands of fighters who claim to be socialists and even communists. There are important organizations that claim to promote the construction of “a working-class party” or “a socialist movement”. These are very positive goals, which must be taken seriously, and as an immediate task, which cannot be relegated to the distant future. A working-class party is not an electoral apparatus, nor a collection of individuals and tendencies without common discipline. A working-class party starts from a unified intervention in the class struggle, mobilizing all its resources and militants in the strategic fights of the moment. A socialist movement must start by defending the political independence of the working class and fight to recover the unions as tools for the class struggle, on the basis of expelling the union bureaucracy.

Opposition to the U.S. imperialist role abroad, as well as the defense of all democratic rights of oppressed racial and gender groups and workers at home, are the elementary condition for structuring a revolutionary organization. From Partido Obrero we contribute our understanding of the relevance of Lenin and Trotsky in this period of capitalist crisis, wars, and revolutions as a programmatic basis to open the debate on the program and practice necessary to form that political alternative of the working class.