Introduction

In the perspectives document agreed by our National Convention in Chicago in October of last year, we outlined a series of crises facing capitalism globally and domestically in the new era of instability and imperialist conflict we have entered. But the document, drafted at the start of the summer, naturally did not reflect an enormous development that we only began to discuss at the convention – the Hamas attack of October 7 and the Israeli state’s response which then became a full-scale genocidal offensive in Gaza. This is just an example, albeit a very important one, of how fast moving developments are in this period.

As this draft is being written, there is the real possibility of a full scale war erupting between Israel and Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon; there are reports of North Korean military engineering units being sent to Ukraine as the US approves Ukrainian attacks within Russia;  mass movements have erupted in Kenya and Bangladesh; a right wing military coup was thwarted in Bolivia; and French elections pointed to the possibility of the far right entering government for the first time since World War II, though there the far right was pushed back for now. Domestically, it is possible that Trump re-enters the White House with a more clear and determined right-wing agenda, though less clearly likely than before Biden dropped out.

What underlies this instability is the breakup of the neoliberal order where US imperialism remained the global hegemon, albeit weakened, as it had been since World War II. Capitalism now faces enormous challenges on a whole series of fronts from finding a stable basis for capital accumulation (i.e. not just replacing one asset bubble with another); profound anger at extreme inequality and various forms of oppression; to longer term problems of aging populations in the advanced capitalist countries and especially the climate crisis. Long gone is the confidence in the future that many capitalist commentators expressed at the height of the era of neoliberal globalization. They recognize a profound crisis of legitimacy of their institutions which was reflected in the wave of rebellions across the world from 2019 to 2021.

The relevance of Marxism, which explains the root of capitalist crisis and points to how to resolve this crisis with a revolutionary transformation of society and a global planned economy, has never been greater. However, the organized forces of Marxism, both globally and in the US, are extremely weak.

Perspectives is precisely the attempt to delineate the key trends and underlying processes and their likely general trajectory. The science of perspectives should not be seen as a competition to find who has the better crystal ball or prediction machine. Despite what some may imply, all great Marxists and Marxist organizations have made mistakes, sometimes serious mistakes, on perspectives. It is also not reducible to a subjective question of optimism versus pessimism. We must strive to outline the main possible variants for world relations, the economy, politics, social struggle and the evolution of consciousness, understanding that at any given point there may be several really possible variants. This is especially the case in this period when contradictions are so acute. There is always a necessity for ongoing revision.

The aim of this document to be clear is to not simply point to likely developments in the next six months but over the next few years, as difficult as that is to do given all the variables. And having identified the main underlying trends and identified the possible real scenarios, we must orient to the most favorable of these while acknowledging that others exist. This is the most effective way to build our forces, because perspectives is also not an abstract exercise; it is a guide to action.

The Longer History Of Capitalism

Since the time of Marx, it has been understood that capitalism is a system of crisis with contradictions built into its foundation. But capitalism has gone through important and distinct phases in its history. At any given point the capitalist class seeks to find a stable way to accumulate capital and maintain its domination over society. This requires the interplay of numerous interconnected elements including a dominant ideological justification for its rule; the degree of state intervention in and regulation of the economy; a dominant legal framework; political forms; accepted norms of social behavior; and especially the balance of forces in the class struggle. Each of these “regimes of accumulation” have run into the limits of the capitalist system, and triggered massive economic and social crises that could not be overcome without revolution or the establishment of a new regime of accumulation. The new regime would restore the basis for stable profit making for that period, which would then again “run into the limits” of the system.

The current conjuncture/crisis of global capitalism is a result of the contradictions specific to the era of neoliberal globalization reaching their limits. The era was defined by economic policies which brought down barriers to the movement of labor, capital and goods across national borders: globalization (integration of economies across national borders), financialization (among other things, the dominance of finance capital), and bringing the working classes of the advanced industrialized countries into direct competition with those in the former colonial world.

The success of this regime of accumulation, based on a relentless class war against the gains made by the labor movement in the postwar boom and underpinned by US global hegemony, was reinforced by the counter revolutions which reestablished capitalism in both China and the former Soviet Union. China’s active role as buyer of debt and producer of cheap consumer goods for the advanced industrialized world and buyer of raw materials and provider of debt in the former colonial world was decisive to the “success” of the neoliberal era. The interaction of US imperialism with the developing Chinese capitalist class and its “executive committee” as represented by the CP’s state created the China we know today. The absence of the former Soviet Union as the rival to US capitalism was also crucial especially because of the massive throwing back of working consciousness due to the perception that there was now no alternative to capitalism.

Through the neoliberal period, the Chinese domestic economy and its role in the global economy grew to rival the US. The capitalist system is driven by competition and does not allow for a stable period in which two powerful capitalist rivals can coexist peacefully even when their cooperation would be mutually beneficial. For capitalism to continue to dominate the globe, one must defeat the other, either by winning first or losing last.

The US ruling class has decisively abandoned the approach of “engagement” with China which dominated during the neoliberal period and has begun to prepare for direct clash with a powerful enemy class in the fight to be the global hegemon. The great power rivalry forces geopolitical considerations to supersede the near term profits of an individual capitalist or even any national bourgeoisie of any bloc member state. The fight for dominance of the blocs over the world capitalist system takes precedence. The armory which houses the arsenal for this battle is the nation state, whose death was so loudly and prematurely predicted in the neoliberal era.

The Effects Of The End Of Era Of Neoliberal Globalization

As the ISA has argued in various material, capitalism has definitively entered a new era. Neoliberal globalization was on life support after the 2008-9 economic crisis but was definitively swept away during the wave of uprisings beginning in 2019 and the economic collapse caused by the pandemic in 2020. The conflict between US imperialism and its challenger, Chinese imperialism, has become the defining feature of world relations. Since the beginning of the Ukraine war, we have witnessed the consolidation of two blocs around the two key imperialist powers.

The neoliberal mode of accumulation was only possible in a unipolar world, where US hegemony could restrain competition from other capitalist countries (including advanced ones like Germany and Japan). The US ruling class could offshore and outsource production without worrying about empowering competitors. This assumption was undercut when Chinese state capitalism, which had never been under US hegemony, entered into advanced manufacturing in direct competition with the US.

Every expansion of Chinese imperialism will likely step on the toes of US, or US-allied, investments. Financialization in the late 80s funded the Western ruling classes on a buying spree of other countries’ factories, lands, banks, and other assets in the richest parts of the US, Europe and Asia, as well as the neocolonial world. The mutual ownership of the world by the US and its junior partners ties the camp together and leaves only scraps for Chinese imperialism today. This sets the two powers on a collision course even if their economies do not directly clash, no matter how many diplomatic ententes happen.

The definitive end of the dominant position of the US in world capitalism stretching back to World War II is a seismic shift. Now the fight for global hegemony with economic, political and military dimensions will continue, with various phases, until there is a clear outcome. This could be the defeat or collapse of one of the rivals or both or the ending of the conflict through social revolution. In general, the enormous ideological, economic and military effort that will be required to wage this conflict will tend to exacerbate the profound social contradictions in both the US and China. We had an anticipation of this in 2020 with the mass BLM movement which led to the state forces briefly losing control of the situation in many areas.

We already see how the Ukraine War is both subsumed to and a key driver of this wider conflict; this will also happen in the Middle East if the war escalates into a full-scale regional conflict. In the future, a much more dangerous military conflict could break out in the Western Pacific with the potential of assuming the features of a world war.

Deglobalization has replaced globalization as the key feature of the world economy. This is a trend which means the end of “market fundamentalism” and the trend towards removing barriers to the free flow of capital which characterized the previous era. It does not mean that the global economy will completely unravel. Far from it.

Deglobalization is expressed in the partial decoupling of the US and Chinese economies, a massive slowdown in global trade growth and increased restrictions on trade. In 2023, trade in goods worldwide declined by 2%, unprecedented in this century except for recessions. As pointed out in previous material, there were 3,000 trade restrictions imposed in 2023, five times the level of 2015. The US and Chinese economies will not totally decouple. The US ruling class is not threatened by cheap Chinese toys and clothes; in fact, a lower cost of living means the bosses can pay workers less. Likewise the Chinese ruling class wants to keep selling to the world’s richest market. But in advanced manufacturing, the primary arena of competition, decoupling has already happened or is well underway. Examples include Biden’s AI chip embargo on China and 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. This further stokes nationalism on either side, which can take a life of its own and push decoupling beyond strategic necessity and into excessive economic damage.

The Biden administration, after recently completing its review of the Trump era tariffs on Chinese goods (which they criticized during the 2020 campaign) has decided to keep them all and then added more. This includes a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and big tariffs on solar panels.

Trump then turned around and said that he would raise tariffs on EVs to 200% and impose a 10% tariff on all goods from any country. To find something comparable you have to go back to the Great Depression when Congress passed the Smoot Hawley Act in 1930 which raised tariffs on imports by about 20% and led to retaliatory tariffs in a host of other countries. The state is promoting re-industrialization, but capitalism is not a planned economy and there’s no “director” that could force US multinationals to reshore their own foreign assets or contracts. The CHIPS Act bagged $450 billion of chip investments because capitalists will build factories if you pay them – but keeping those factories open is another story. The founder of TSMC called making chips in the US “a very expensive exercise in futility.” Major chipmaker Intel has seen its stocks fall 60% this year because it lost $7 billion making chips. This is because the fundamental conditions (lack of infrastructure, skilled labor, chips glut) that had kept away the chip industry in the past, have not changed. While the chip industry has runway to succeed, the most “guaranteed” re-industrialization will be in sectors that sell to the state, which would be defense. The most certain thing about re-industrialization is rearmament.

Another part of deglobalization is the breakdown of the global financial structure which was created over decades by US imperialism. While the dollar still dominates in international transactions, many states now issue debt in their own currency and Russia and Iran have worked out ways to go around international sanctions. On top of this are the restrictions on investment by the US and Chinese governments on domestic companies doing business in the other country.

Accompanying protectionism, is the growth of state intervention into the economy. In the US, Biden and Congress passed both the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at promoting domestic production in “strategic” sectors including microprocessing chips and electric vehicles. While the IRA was promoted as part of a transition towards an economy based on renewable energy, it is in reality entirely subsumed to the inter-imperialist conflict. If the climate crisis was the priority or even “letting the market decide,” cheap, high quality Chinese solar panels and EVs might actually be accepted. But this is not the priority.

Of course state promotion of reindustrialization as well as protectionism can play a role in strengthening the working class. The workers in the “strategic” sectors will also have a great deal of potential power because of their ability to disrupt imperialist aims. In a more general sense, the decreased mobility of capital undermines a feature of neoliberal globalization where capitalists could easily move production to foreign countries hence undermining the labor movement. The strengthening of the role of the state over the markets can also open the door to putting more pressure on the ruling class to concede reforms. In this and other ways, the new era has many contradictory features. What needs to be stressed though is that this is not automatic. Only a working class leadership on the industrial and political planes prepared to stand up to the ruling class and its war machine and nationalist crusade can turn this potential into reality.

The drive to expand productive capacity is also about direct military uses. What has been discovered by US and European imperialist powers, especially through the experience in Ukraine, is that they’re not ready to wage a “conventional/high tech” hybrid war of this type. They have had major problems providing the Ukrainian army with artillery shells. Meanwhile China is far outpacing the US in the building of naval capacity which of course will be critical in the key theater of the Western Pacific.

The US ruling class is readying its entire camp for conflict with China. The US Navy, acknowledging the limitations of US shipbuilding, is considering using Japanese and Korean shipbuilders to build Navy ships. The US supports the Japanese right wing’s re-militarization. The US is also helping Taiwan develop submarines, and arming NATO (including itself) with Korean tanks and shells.

However, it’s US military might (“security guarantees”) that underpins its ability to diplomatically restrain economic competition from allies – for which allied capitalists get a hefty “peace dividend” and premier access to the US market. In the long run remilitarization will up-end this arrangement, and a militarily independent Japan or Germany (for example) could see less strategic benefit from staying in the US camp.

The result is an increasing element of state capitalism in the US (though still far off from what exists in China) and a “pre-war economy” (Russia by comparison is a fully mobilized war economy). Protectionism and preparation for war unites both capitalist parties despite their other differences. This is seen in the overwhelming support for the CHIPS Act, the TikTok ban and the bill to provide $86 billion in military and other assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The ideological reflection of protectionism and militarism is the growing promotion of an aggressive nationalism and specific narratives meant to win compliance for slaughter on a wide scale. Of course, this is nothing new in the US where we barely exited the 20 year long “war on terror” before the current phase began. We have seen the Ukraine conflict cast as a “war for democracy,” Trump’s racist attacks on China during the pandemic; and now the “anti-antisemitism” campaign which is waged across the Western world with the aim of demonizing or even criminalizing any opposition to the war crimes of the Israeli state. During the campus protests, this was accompanied by state repression on a large scale. But all of this is only a taste of what is to come in the coming years, barring socialist revolution in key capitalist countries which is not an immediate perspective.

Economic Perspectives

It is somewhat meaningless to consider perspectives for the US economy without considering perspectives for the world economy. The trend towards deglobalization and partial decoupling doesn’t change this. 

The overall position of the world economy is fragile. Growth in the first half of this decade has been at the lowest rate since the early 90s. Bourgeois economic commentators consistently say that the position would be significantly worse were it not for the “resilient” performance of the US economy. The position in Europe and Japan can be described as treading water while China remains mired in crisis, driven by the continuing unwinding of their property bubble. 

Meanwhile, even if growth is generally stronger in the “developing world”, the debt crisis facing many of the poorest countries continues to worsen. But there is a general relief among the economists at the IMF and World Bank that, given the shocks of the Ukraine War and the crisis in the Middle East, things aren’t even worse. They immediately add that a full blown regional war in the Middle East, which of course remains a real possibility, would upend their slightly more upbeat outlook.

At a deeper level, the lack of an overall hegemonic power will be a major issue going forward. Without the domination of either a major capitalist power or the working class, the massively complex world economy created by capitalism will tend to become increasingly chaotic. Concretely, the next serious financial crisis – which is implicit in the situation with the overvaluation of assets across the board – risks leading to a much deeper slump than happened in ’08-’09 when the US coordinated the response. This is a key part of why the Great Depression was so intractable: British imperialism was no longer the dominant power and US imperialism had not “assumed the mantle.”

The climate crisis as well as the demographic crisis – which can be seen especially clearly in China, Japan and South Korea – also pose major challenges for capitalism’s functioning in the years ahead. But the most immediate economic challenge posed in the new era can be described as the clash between inflationary and deflationary trends. 

The inflationary trend which spiked in many countries, including the US, between 2021 and 2023 has several causes including supply chain problems and “greedflation” (profit gouging), but the biggest cause is the “easy money” policies of the 2010s during which the Fed and other central banks pumped vast sums into the banks to keep them stable. Instead of investing this money into expanding production, the capitalists poured this money right back into the financial casino looking for higher rates of return. This led to huge inflation for assets including housing. 

While it took a while, this inevitably spilled over from the financial casino to the real economy of goods and services. In 1980, financial markets were worth $12 trillion, equal to the value of global economic output. By the end of the pandemic they were worth $390 trillion, or four times global output. One can add that while low inflation was a feature of neoliberal globalization with “free trade deals” and mobile capital searching for ever lower labor costs, deglobalization means increasing costs of production. 

Deflation is the opposite side of the coin of a very unwell system. It is most pronounced in China where demand can’t absorb the level of production due in no small measure to very low wages. A deflationary spiral is extremely dangerous for a capitalist economy and the Chinese Communist Party is seeking to export its way out of the situation of “overproduction.” This has led to sharp protectionist measures not just by the US and the EU but also by a number of developing economies from Vietnam to Brazil. In a sense this is the attempt to export deflation. Hence the two trends of crisis are present simultaneously.

The experience of inflation is the key reason why ordinary people in the United States do not buy the Biden administration’s narrative that the economy is doing well. It’s not just about sticker shock in the grocery store. As one bourgeois commentator, Ruchir Sharma, has pointed out, “A generation ago, it took the typical young family three years to save up to the down payment on a home. By 2019, thanks to no return on savings, it was taking 19 years.” 

When we come to the perspectives for the US economy, we still have to be quite conditional. At the end of 2022, most economists surveyed expected a recession in 2023 triggered by the Fed raising interest rates at the fastest rate in 40 years to combat inflation. Early in 2023, a serious banking crisis exposed a massive level of insolvency in the banking system but the Fed and the Treasury Department intervened aggressively to essentially guarantee all bank deposits in the US.

A number of factors have allowed for a degree of economic growth and job creation. Key has been strong consumer demand. Of course, consumer demand received a boost from pandemic stimulus programs and the ability of a section of the population to work at home. It is arguable that the high level of immigration has also kept a steady supply of very cheap labor for the bosses which has helped extend the cycle.

But the limits are surely being reached. For most working class people the COVID boost is long gone. Pandemic era programs including the child tax credit and student debt deferment have ended. Part of what has kept spending high is the more affluent 10% of the population who have been spending heavily on travel and eating out. But this can only go so far. 

As the NY Federal Reserve’s Liberty Street Economics reported in May, “For all debt outside of student loans, delinquency has been steadily rising since the fourth quarter of 2021 after historic lows during the COVID-19 pandemic.” The delinquency rate on credit card loans has hit a 13 year high. The savings rate has dropped significantly. All of these factors point towards a contraction in consumer spending and there is already some evidence of this. Retail spending dropped 1.3% in the first quarter of 2024, on top of a 4.4% decrease in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The sudden slide on the global stock market on August 5th and the subsequent partial recovery, demonstrates that the present economic upturn is nearing its end. An Economist article on 7/20/24 stated that the stock market was as overvalued as just before the bursting of dotcom bubble in 2000. They indicated that in the present situation any event, or even one bad economic report, could trigger a crash. In this case it was a poor jobs report on the US economy that caused a momentary dip. While we cannot predict exactly when a real crash will occur, we can say that the date has become closer. It should be noted that October is historically a very volatile month, with many stock market crashes.

In the perspectives document passed at the national convention in October, it was acknowledged “that the depth, timing, and trigger for immediate economic crisis is hard to predict.” We can certainly see many potential triggers including the crisis in commercial real estate or the bubble features of the current AI investment craze. But if consumer spending continues to soften, this would almost certainly provoke a wave of layoffs and tip the economy into recession. At the same time, inflationary pressure has eased and the job market remains at least superficially strong.

The current economic phase is favorable for the continuation of labor struggle and organizing drives which is certainly positive. To repeat, we should remain conditional on the short term economic perspectives while understanding that a much deeper global downturn is implicit in the current situation and will be much more difficult to manage because of the nature of the era we have entered.

Climate

Climate change poses a massive and growing threat to human lives and livelihoods all around the globe, including across the United States. 2023 set a record for the most climate and weather related disasters that caused losses of greater than $1 billion – 28 separate disasters in the US alone. Another grim record from last year are the more than 2,300 people who died due to excessive heat, which is the most in 44 years of recordkeeping. Experts say the true number of deaths due to excessive heat is likely around 11,000. Globally, May of 2024 was the warmest May on record. As of this writing, the Northeast is enduring a brutal heat wave and wildfire season is unambiguously underway in California and other parts of the West. 

Over the past four years, average temperatures have reached 1.2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. The Paris Climate Accords set a target of a 1.5 degree celsius rise, but many climate scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently surveyed by The Guardian predicted that warming will reach 2.5 degrees and some predicted 3 degrees. 

Even a 1.2 degree rise has resulted in one catastrophe after another, with the working class and poor paying the biggest price. A new paper by economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that a 1 degree rise in temperatures causes a 12% decline in GDP and that a 3 degree rise would lead to a decline in GDP exceeding 50% by the year 2100.     

The disruption of the home insurance industry in the US is the canary in the coalmine of the economic chaos that would ensue if average temperatures increase by 3 degrees. Homebuyers, unless they’re paying all cash, are required by the bank that issues the mortgage loan on the house to have homeowner’s insurance. Insurance companies have had to pay out too much money in claims to maintain their profitability due to hurricanes in the Gulf, wildfires in California, and now convective storms in the Midwest, and are canceling insurance policies en masse. This leaves homeowners scrambling to find new coverage, which is likely to be much more expensive than their previous policy, or in some cases, simply impossible to obtain, except perhaps through state-run insurance pools which typically offer lower premiums and provide barebones coverage in case of a loss.  

Although there are no national statistics on homeowner insurance policy cancellations, state level data show that the problem is widespread and worsening. Realtor.com estimates that 44% of the nation’s homes are exposed to “severe or extreme climate risk.” The former insurance commissioner of California is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “I believe we’re marching toward an uninsurable future.”

With more homes, neighborhoods and entire states deemed bad bets by the insurance industry, owning a home will become more unaffordable which has significant downstream consequences for the real estate and home building industries, and will worsen the already severe affordable housing shortage. The financial vulnerability of state-run insurers-of-last-resort could become a major national news story under conditions that are not too difficult to imagine. 

Florida and California both have state-run insurance companies that are severely overexposed to risk with too little money to pay claims in the event of a major disaster. These entities are legally allowed to charge insurers who do business in their respective states for losses in excess of what they can cover. Ultimately, the charges would be passed along to working class people in the form of increased insurance rates. The crisis of the homeowners’ insurance industry could become a major source of ire at the system for a section of working class people whose financial stability is staked on owning a home. And this is particularly true when, as an example, the three biggest California insurers hold net assets worth $255 billion.

Increasingly, the warming climate is provoking class struggle. Air conditioning in UPS vehicles was a major and well-publicized demand during the UPS contract fight. Workers have staged various small scale work stoppages over the lack of air conditioning, including at KCVG. A few Democrat-dominated states have specific legislation around required conditions for workers who have to work in high heat, and OSHA is slowly moving toward enacting new policy federally. Last year, Gov Abbot in Texas signed a law which preemptively prevents cities from passing laws on labor conditions and several other vaguely defined areas of law, which invalidated laws Dallas and Austin passed to improve heat protection for construction workers. Gov DeSantis in Florida has followed with a law that specifically preempts city heat protection legislation. The stage is set for more battles over heat protection as the climate warms.  

The climate remains a feature of youth consciousness that looms in the background, even in the absence of a mass movement. Most young people realize that their generations are inheriting a crisis of unprecedented proportion, and that the ruling class has no solution. This is leading sections of youth toward more radical conclusions. At the same time, the existing climate movement has taken up ultra-left and adventuristic tactics (for example, Just Stop Oil’s vandalism and small-scale direct action) that foster proxy consciousness and point away from mass movements rooted in the working class. Significant sections of youth would likely move into struggle if a real climate movement were to materialize. It’s unlikely for one to emerge in the short term, but there could be openings around major natural disasters. Such a movement would have an overwhelmingly student character, and our key task would be to make the case for linking up with the labor movement. This is especially crucial considering the role of EVs. Despite being insufficient to meet the scale of the crisis, the ruling class puts EVs forward as a solution to the climate crisis while simultaneously using them to undercut the power of organized labor in the auto industry.

Despite the absolutely dire condition of the climate, the bourgeoisie has in large measure abandoned its previous pretense of getting serious about reducing emissions. Global emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high in 2023. Biden has presided over an oil production boom, and issued more new drilling permits than the Trump administration. The transition to electric vehicles is a completely inadequate strategy to meet critical emissions goals, and is complicated by competition with Chinese producers. The return of protectionism makes addressing climate change under capitalism more utopian than ever. 

Ramping up of the defense industry means more carbon emissions. Already, the US military is said to be the largest single emitter of carbon in the world. Fundamentally, national security under capitalism and fighting climate change are incompatible, and the new era we are entering of increased nationalism, militarism and war will accelerate climate change and all of its concomitant horrors.

Immigration

Immigration is a divisive topic among the working class, and has been weaponized by sections of the ruling class, helping to fuel the growth of the right in many capitalist countries, especially in the major imperialist powers. However, among the ruling elite, there is agreement that immigrant and migrant workers are necessary to overcome the serious crisis of population demographics facing them. For example, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has explicitly put forward temporary work contracts as a way to allow additional labor to be tracked entering “rich democracies” while not requiring “fundamental changes in attitudes towards immigrants in rich countries” – in other words maintaining the racism and xenophobia already stoked by right populism. This ruling class consensus has allowed right wing and far-right forces to portray their anti-migrant ideas as anti-elite among the working class and poor.

Many countries are facing a reduction of working class populations. Various ruling classes in Europe and Asia are ringing the alarm bells. This crisis is a serious one, which, if not resolved, could cut across the strength of the respective capitalist classes, and even increase the leverage of organized labor in contract negotiations. Immigrants are looked-down on in many of these countries, with strict naturalization and citizenship processes, alongside decades long anti-immigrant talking points championed by each ruling class. 

The United States, however, occupies a unique position of an immigrant and migrant workforce being seen as more “accepted” by both the ruling class and sections of society. The idea of the United States being a “melting-pot” of differing cultures and peoples does still play a role in broader consciousness. 

However, the continuing crisis of economic stagnation, and decline facing large sections of native born working class families have fueled resentment against immigrant and migrant workers which is weaponized by the right and far right. It shouldn’t be ignored that entire sectors of the economy are seen as dominated by immigrant workers. This extends from the Californian grape fields to Big Tech officer towers in Seattle. This reality has been twisted into a populist screed painting immigrants as nefariously taking sectors of the economy away from the lower ends of the working class.

The current crisis on immigration is focused on the US-Mexico border. The primary source of migrants flowing from Central American countries remains largely true as a relatively recent social phenomena. Many of these families are fleeing the ramifications of US imperialism in the region as companies crack down on the organized labor movement with the open collaboration of right-wing governments via death squads and/or collaboration with criminal organizations. Human trafficking has emerged as a thriving industry, and it’s the cornerstone of the international flow of labor that is fundamental in the functioning of capitalism, particularly US capitalism. 

However, there is a surge of migrants from all walks of life and different parts of the world heading towards the US-Mexico border. We also saw the horrific deportation of hundreds of Haitian migrants as they were fleeing from a societal collapse caused by the US government over hundreds of years with devastating acts one after another. Biden’s administration oversaw the literal whipping and then dumping of these migrants off of a plane in Port-au-Prince. 

The increasing climate crisis impacting the globe has already played a large role in the current migrant crisis. Many areas in the world are facing significant drought and the disintegration of entire agricultural centers. The wars in Sudan, Gaza, Myanmar, and other regions in the world will also have an effect. What is clear is that the migrant crisis will be a key question facing revolutionaries in the coming period. The partial deglobalization in the new era entails the ruling classes, particularly US and China, redefining the flow of human labor across the globe. 

Since taking office, Biden has pushed the country’s deportation infrastructure to its limits. Over 2.8 million migrants were removed during Biden’s first two years in office (Trump deported 2 million in total). Such a rapid acceleration was enabled through the use of public health statute Title 42, first enacted by Trump and retained by Biden, which allowed for mass deportation without trial. Despite the expiration of Title 42 in May 2023, the rate of deportation has actually accelerated. Between May 2023 and May 2024, Biden deported over 775,000 migrants; for comparison, this is more than Trump’s maximum number of deportations in any given year and more than any year since 2010. 

Biden’s recent shut down of the border for refugees has crossed a rubicon in US politics. While functionally similar to the Trump-era “asylum ban,” which Biden criticized at the time, this new order actually increases restrictions on border crossers and provides even fewer protections. Even though Federal courts blocked Trump’s “asylum ban” in less than 10 days – a decision upheld by the Supreme Court only 30 days after that – challenges to the Biden ban remain in limbo after nearly 2 months. This can largely be attributed to the demobilization of the immigrants’ rights movement since Biden assumed the Presidency. It’s likely that in the future more frequent shutdowns of this nature will happen. Kamala Harris’s campaign recently signaled that she will continue Biden’s asylum crackdown if elected in November. We can be certain that Trump will follow a similar course if elected. Trump will also attempt to end “birthright citizenship” for children born in the US to immigrant parents.

There isn’t a significant chance of a “total” closed border between the US and Mexico in the medium term. Such an act would grind transatlantic logistic networks to a standstill, which would pose an immediate economic crisis with global ramifications. Both “pro” and “anti” immigration wings of the ruling class are for more immigrant workers as a cheap supply of labor. Both also make it clear that the US-Mexico border is “broken,” and immigration reform is a dire question facing US society. The threat of deportation hanging over the heads of a large swath of workers means a terrorized workforce that can bring riches to the capitalist bosses. However, this fuels competition between the ruling elite, with some who may desire immigrant workers trained in “professional” sectors (technology, pharmaceutical, education) and migrant workers playing a potential role in the political arena in their favor on a long term basis. Neither the Democrats or Republicans genuinely care about the immigrant worker, and the Biden administration’s horrific policies have put an end to that illusion for millions of working people. 

The question is whether there will be a development of an immigrant and migrant rights movement in the near future, despite polarization on this question existing. The Abolish ICE protests exploded onto the political scene during the Trump era. Immigrant rights activists interrupted Democratic party fundraisers to win small concessions such as the continuation of DACA. A Trump 2.0 presidency would put mass deportations on the agenda, which we could see sections of the working class having an immediate reaction against. This could even pull sections of the organized labor movement into action, as some labor leaders would see mass deportations of their members as a serious crisis. A Democratic victory may lessen this pressure, but as Americans have seen over Biden’s shutting down the border, the question of fighting for immigrant rights will be front and center whichever party is in power. 

But, we shouldn’t assume that struggle around immigrant rights will happen even in the short term after the election. The polarization in society could mean that the immigrant rights movement remains relatively small and marginal. According to a recent Axios poll, 51% of Americans, including 42% of Democrats, said they would support mass deportations; this can in-part be attributed to the prevalence of right-wing fear-mongering, particularly the invention of a “migrant crime” crisis, which the Democrats have done little-to-nothing to push back against. However, important radicalizing layers of workers and young people will be geared toward these struggles, and we could seriously recruit from strong interventions in either scenario.

Elections 

The 2024 presidential elections are a perfect encapsulation of the new age of disorder. The first debate between Biden and Trump on June 27 marked a major turning point in the election, and exposed the profound crisis facing the Democratic Party. This of course led to the chaotic process through which Biden finally withdrew from the race, and to the Kamala Harris candidacy, which has had a transformative effect on the election. Where Trump looked to be firmly in control of the election following the debate and even more so post-assassination attempt, Harris now clearly has the momentum and the polls show more or less a dead heat. 

Kamala Harris’ entry into the race spurred a massive jolt of enthusiasm from the Democratic base as well as the big donors. The rapid consolidation of the party establishment around Harris’ candidacy resembled a coronation more than any kind of democratic process, but this doesn’t appear to be a concern for most Democratic party voters who are immensely relieved that Biden is out. Now Tim Walz has emerged as a bright new star in the Democratic party. He has some progressive credentials and he knows how to connect with working class people. 

Harris raised more money from individual donors in a matter of days than Biden was able to raise in months. By April 1, Biden had 1.1 million unique donors. In two days, Harris got 1.4 million, and she signed up 170,000 volunteers in the first week. A wave of fundraising zoom calls with mass attendance followed her announcement, kicked off by the Win With Black Women call which drew 40,000 attendees. A subsequent call for white women drew nearly 200,000 and is said to be the largest ever zoom call. Harris’ campaign rapidly rolled out a youth orientation anchored by linking her with several celebrity Gen Z musicians. Coconut tree memes went viral.   

Trump will continue to play to his base with personal attacks on Harris, but this approach may not help him in holding a section of voters who are more toward the center which he needs to do to in order to win. The Harris rollout has put Trump on the back foot, and his pick of JD Vance hasn’t been helpful, so far. Democrats are making hay on the extremity of some of the pro-natalist views that Vance has expressed in the past. Trump’s accusation that Harris only recently embraced being Black isn’t likely to be popular with the broader electorate, and is likely to actually help Harris.    

Harris is hardly an unknown figure as the sitting vice president, but she was mostly sidelined in this role, and her 2020 campaign for president didn’t even last into 2020, as she was the first major candidate to drop out in December, 2019. Trump is still a deeply polarizing and unpopular figure outside of his hardcore MAGA base, and Harris will appear as a fresh face in the election. To a certain extent, Trump will appear as an incumbent. Across the world incumbents have fared very poorly this year in elections.

In her bid for the 2020 Democratic nomination, Harris took up some of Bernie Sanders’ demands, including a watered-down version of Medicare-For-All, but she’s now explicitly renounced several of those progressive positions. She will likely double down on the Democratic Party’s strategy to oppose Trump on the basis of defending the rule of law and norms of bourgeois democracy in an attempt to win over a small section of middle class swing voters in suburban districts, along with linking Trump to the GOP’s attacks on abortion access. This approach offers little to Trump voters worried about the economy and open to right populist ideas about immigration. If she makes her campaign about taxing billionaires (like Trump) and healthcare costs, she would likely be able to chip away from Trump’s base. The Democratic establishment, however, is very unlikely to take this road having decisively defeated the progressive wing of the party and having zero interest in risking its comeback.

Lesser evilism, somewhat suppressed by the despondency-inducing Biden campaign, is back in full force with Harris at the top of the ticket. Liberal identity politics are also reemerging as a significant factor in the political situation and the mood goes beyond lesser evilism and into the territory of positive illusions. We should ask ourselves: where Biden represented the crumbling of the center, does the rise of Harris point to there being a viable electoral base for centrism?

Harris’ anointment has created a burst of enthusiasm in the Democratic Party and temporarily revived the party’s image, especially among a section of young people, but this doesn’t change the underlying long-term crisis of the party, and the broader crisis of legitimacy of the US political establishment. The fact that a large minority of the country is prepared to overlook Trump’s scandal-ridden, deeply unpopular first term, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and his recent felony convictions, still points towards a deep political crisis for US capitalism. If Harris is able to defeat Trump in November, her honeymoon is not likely to extend very long past the jubilation of inaugurating the first Black woman president.  

Harris represents no real departure from Biden’s policies. As the most reliable party for US imperialism, the Democrats have nothing to offer students protesting the slaughter in Gaza other than police repression, and now Harris’ fake sympathy. On immigration, Harris is adopting the Biden approach of trying to outdo Trump on border security. Harris is able to speak about abortion much more effectively than Biden ever was, and as president she will be under pressure to codify Roe v. Wade into law. However, it’s unlikely that she will have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and she will be just as disinclined as Biden was to mobilize her base to fight for abortion or any other progressive demands. 

When Biden was the candidate, the Democrats appeared to be headed for a nearly certain defeat in November, and poised to enter one of the deepest crises in the history of the party. Harris’ rise changes the trajectory, but the fundamental crisis of the Democratic Party remains. The fact that the Democratic leadership of the party conspired to let Biden get as far as he did get in his 2024 campaign, despite all the evidence of his mental deterioration, reflects their own deep dysfunction.  

Trump got the second highest vote ever for any presidential candidate in 2020, and we should not at all count him out even with Harris’ campaign cutting into the substantial momentum he had after he survived an assassination attempt. Harris’ entrance into the race has somewhat disoriented Trump, but many different factors can cause shifts in the situation. The RNC was notable for the vice presidential pick of JD Vance, which doubles down on the anti-establishment character of the ticket. Vance is a “New Right” social conservative who has advanced populist economic positions, some of which, like support for anti-trust measures and skepticism of corporate tax cuts don’t match Trump’s agenda. 

Perhaps the most significant development at the RNC was Teamsters president Sean O’Brien’s appearance, an unprecedented development. O’Brien’s speech was a laced with a small amount of sycophancy toward Trump, and a large amount of nationalism. Working class internationalism will need to be a big feature of our approach in union work in the period ahead as nationalism ramps up and becomes a more dominant focus for union leaders.

In general the Republicans now have the support of the majority of voters without a college degree which is a certain marker for the working class. In Europe and other countries growing electoral support for the far right is prominent amongst young people. It is of course false to believe that those who vote for Trump or the far right in other countries are all supporting the ideology of these parties and figures. This is far from the truth. This is first and foremost the result of the left failing to provide a clear alternative. In the US, the defining moment remains the capitulation of Bernie Sanders to the Democratic leadership in 2020. But a section of the working class and youth have shifted to the right as part of the overall polarization in society. 

Our perspective has always been that an independent left or working class party would be constructed from people breaking with the two corporate parties as well as those who do not vote. A layer of those who are planning on voting for Trump this year will be a part of such a new formation if it is formed in the next period, which is far from guaranteed. However, our primary orientation needs to be towards the healthier sections of these communities that are fighting back against the growth of right wing ideas.

As opposed to the period of the ascendant Democratic left of Bernie and the Squad, it is simply not realistic to point to the current makeup of progressive electoral politics as a potential avenue to a new party. Tragically, this includes Jill Stein’s and Cornel West’s independent runs for president this year. Instead, our primary emphasis right now on how a new party could form should be through the labor and anti-war movement. We could be looking at a very different scenario if following the historic Big 3 auto strike, Shawn Fain declared an independent run for president with Sara Nelson as VP, under the banner of a new labor anti-war party. 

RFK Jr.’s support has dropped since the announcement of Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate, going from double-digits in the polls to a current average of 4%. From the announcement that part of his brain was eaten by a parasite to the more recent admission that he disposed of a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park in 2014 and has a “freezer full of roadkill”, RFK Jr. seems an increasingly unserious candidate to many voters, especially in light of the momentum around Harris. Harris performed better in polls that included third-party candidates, and RFK Jr. appears to mostly pull support from Trump. Trump has been urging RFK Jr. to drop out of the race, because his candidacy could still impact the outcome of the election in key swing states, even with very low levels of support. In recent days RFK Jr. has slowed down his campaign schedule and is reportedly burning through cash faster than the campaign is able to fundraise.  He was also recently disqualified from appearing on the New York ballot. His popularity does not seem likely to increase, though we should still argue for those who support him to support left independent, anti-war candidates instead.

In many states there will be at least three left challengers to the Democratic Party on the ballot, including Claudia De la Cruz, the PSL candidate. However, none of them come even close to being the type of candidate the moment calls for. If there were a dynamic, movement-building independent candidate who made the same type of appeal directly to working class people that Bernie did in 2016 and 2020, it could be transformative. Instead, we have three competing candidacies with relatively listless campaigns that are likely to get very small numbers of votes.

Despite her campaign’s inability to mobilize people or generate much attention among left workers or youth, we should call for a vote for Jill Stein. Stein has much better ballot access than Cornel West, and so far has not chosen a vice presidential running mate with the baggage that Melina Abdullah has as a former member of the now disgraced inner circle of Black Lives Matter Global Network leadership. Among a small layer of youth, De la Cruz appears to be developing more of a dynamic than either Stein or West. We should not discourage a vote for De la Cruz, but instead explain that we see a big vote for Stein and West as the best way to open a discussion on the need to build an independent and viable workers party.

If Harris wins in November, she will lead an administration that will be looking to reassure the capitalist class that it is perfectly capable of repressing social struggle and controlling the rise of labor. However, they will have been elected by a voter base that is largely pro-labor and against the genocidal war in Gaza, setting up a perspective for a very weak administration. This would be objectively favorable for the labor movement and social struggle. Unions could make gains, especially if a recession was again delayed or shallow. A weakened Democratic Party facing an invigorated labor movement would strengthen the case for a new left party. A Democratic sweep of the presidency, senate and house is not ruled out, and would put significant pressure on the Democrats to pass legislation around abortion, labor and the environment to name a few areas. 

A toss up or a contested election in November can certainly not be excluded and is more likely with Harris as the Democratic candidate compared to Biden, would create a highly volatile situation. We correctly pointed to the danger of Trump trying to steal the election in the run up to November 2020, which he immediately set out to do as the results came in, beginning on election night. Trump’s slow moving and poorly-organized coup culminated on January 6, two months later. If a contested outcome seems likely we will need to raise democratic demands as we did in 2020 to defend the vote which is entirely different from defending the Democrats. The ruling class in the US has historically seen bourgeois democracy as the most favorable political form for their rule and it has indeed served them well. But from the perspective of the workers movement, bourgeois democracy gives more opportunities for the working class and left to develop its own democratic institutions and for the left to organize. Therefore we defend bourgeois democratic rights for our own reasons.

We can raise democratic demands for the unions to organize their own poll watchers, count observers, and discussions to take the initiative away from the deeply hated and distrusted political establishment and put it into the hands of the working class in a way that can cut across conspiracy theories and individual action. Pointing toward the organized working class as the key force to defend democracy will be essential, especially if Trump encourages far-right groups like the Proud Boys, who have been regrowing since January 6 and the state’s extensive prosecutions.

We must weigh up what the increasingly likely prospect of a Trump 2.0 administration would mean for the working class and oppressed in the US. As we have pointed out, unlike 2016 when Trump and his entourage were completely unprepared to take office and had to rely on Republican establishment operatives to fill various roles, this time the reactionaries will be far better prepared. Besides the usual plans to cut taxes on the wealthy and to ramp up protectionism even further, Trump threatens to round up undocumented immigrants and put them in detention camps on a vast scale. There are also clear plans to purge government agencies including the Justice Department and FBI of people not considered reliable and replace them with Trump loyalists.

If successful this would be a very big step towards an authoritarian regime. Trump also routinely threatens to round up political opponents and this should not be seen as simply rhetorical. Alongside packing the courts with even more reactionaries, this agenda represents a massive threat to the organized labor movement and the oppressed. It almost goes without saying that Trump 2.0 would resume the right’s crusade against even the pretense of doing anything about climate change.

Obviously some parts of what Trump might seek to achieve would be very difficult without Congressional approval and it is in no way guaranteed that the Republicans will control both houses of Congress even if Trump wins. Harris’s ascendance to the top of the ticket casts more doubt on the Republicans’ ability to win in the Senate, and their hold on the House was already shaky.

A section of the US ruling class is genuinely concerned that Trump 2.0 would destabilize their system further and weaken it internationally and are opposed to a move towards authoritarian rule. It is absolutely the case that the ruling class overwhelmingly rejected Trump’s attempted coup in 2021. After that it was widely considered to be inconceivable that Trump could ever win again. The fact that he is the Republican nominee again with a chance of winning tells us a lot about how the ruling class has lost control of the political process.

But it is also a mistake to think that Trump has no ruling class support. The Financial Times and other publications have been recently writing articles appealing to billionaires to look past their short-term interest and stop supporting Trump 2.0. Some of the people supporting him are deeply reactionary and others may think he can be controlled but we should expect that the closer he gets to the White House the more ruling class support he will receive though it will be very far from unanimous.

Trump 2.0 would feel vindicated by claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, that he is essentially above the law after facing criminal prosecution, and he owes nothing to the political establishment that stood by while he was impeached and indicted and scandalized. If Trump moves forward with completely undemocratic measures like pardoning all of his friends, or purging the state apparatus of “disloyal elements,” we could see sections of the liberal bourgeoisie publicly confronting Trump. However, the liberal establishment will not lead determined, effective, ongoing mass action against Trump 2.0. Their intervention in street protests will be to direct efforts towards “safe” channels, to derail genuine struggle and direct action, and to sideline the interests of working class people. We should prepare to boldly counterpose a socialist approach to fighting Trumpism to the intentionally ineffective approach of the Democratic Party leaders.

After suffering setbacks following Charlottesville and January 6, the Proud Boys and other far-right groups are growing. They have become a regular feature at Trump rallies, and the list of active chapters is spreading. Especially if Trump wins, we should expect renewed clashes with these groups along the lines of what we saw in 2016. When this happens, we will need to point out the importance of a mass mobilizing approach using examples like the 43,000 person strong counter protest in Boston that decisively pushed back the far right nationally for a time.

Trump’s deeply reactionary agenda will provoke massive opposition in US society. But defeating it will be a whole different matter. It would certainly require the social power of the working class to be brought to bear. It was the threat of mass strike action at major airports that forced Trump to end the government shut down in January 2019. The outcome of the fight against Trump 2.0 will have very significant implications for American politics and the position of the left and the labor movement.

Trump passing significant aspects of his agenda without a serious fight would obviously be the worst outcome. But a mass mobilization against Trump’s attacks that suffers a decisive defeat would also be a major setback for the working class in the US and around the world though in no sense a permanent setback. However, in the event that a mass movement centered on the working class defeated part or all of Trump’s agenda, it would open up a whole new chapter where the ruling class would be placed very much on the defensive. Of course, the Democrats and a section of the ruling class would seek to co opt such a movement, as they did with some success with the #Resistance in 2017, but if social struggle leads to victory this will be the key lesson and it will massively energize all other struggles.

Youth Consciousness

There are important features of the situation today which make the consciousness of Gen Z and Gen Alpha quite different to that of Millenials at the same age. This is important to spell out because the last time we did concerted youth recruitment was between 2014-2018 when we were interacting with Millennial consciousness. These differences can be characterized as an increase in despair and disorientation, as well as decreased illusions in reformism and in some ways a more explosive consciousness. An element of this explosiveness was demonstrated by the student encampments against the genocidal war on Gaza that swept the country this past spring.

Young people today are growing up with deepened disorder in the world, and without institutions, figures, or organizations to look to for inspiration. Millennial consciousness was shaped by the existence of Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party left for around five years. Many young people cut their teeth in left politics and got exposed to “socialist” ideas (though in reality social democratic ideas) campaigning for Bernie or a local progressive Democrat.

However in the intervening years, particularly since COVID, this political project has been completely exposed and is no longer a beacon of inspiration for today’s young people. In fact, for a significant portion of Gen Z, Bernie and the Squad are not even a reference point at all for their political ideas.

In addition to the collapse of the Democratic left, the massive uprising against the murder of George Floyd won very limited victories, and the right seized space in the period that followed. We need to assess the continuing impact that the collapse of the ascendant left has had on the consciousness of workers and particularly youth, and weigh it up against other factors: the continued decline in the authority of institutions of US capitalism, the growth of right wing ideas, the protest movement in solidarity with people of Gaza, the rise of the labor movement, and the deep social crisis afflicting the working class and especially youth.

Data on youth consciousness demonstrates the profound despair experienced by this generation. Over half of 18-34-year-olds report feeling “down, depressed or hopeless.” Only 15% of young adults aged 18-26 rated their own mental health as excellent. One third of teens felt that things were going well for children and teens today. Less than one half of teens felt that they would be better off than their parents when they grow up. Gen Z (people aged 12-27) were significantly less likely to rate their current and future lives highly compared to Millennials when they were the age of today’s Gen Zers. 

Youth polling data shows that young people have overwhelmingly negative feelings about school and about politics. They’re pessimistic about their financial futures. They’re anxious about the climate. Rates of anxiety, depression and suicide are all up for youth. Hopelessness and despair about the state of the world and its future are key elements of today’s youth consciousness. 

In some cases these features of consciousness can be generalized across age groups, but there are significant generational differences. People over 55 express more hopeful feelings than despair, opposite to the trend among youth. The cost of living crisis is hitting Gen Z adults hard. They are paying dramatically more than Millennials did at the same age for basics such as housing, car insurance, and healthcare. Trust in institutions is down across the board, but younger people are leading the decline and Millennials and Gen Zers have significantly less trust in the police, the news, and the criminal justice system than older generations.

Young people are extremely pessimistic about the future and are turning to all sorts of different ideas to try and find a way out. The failure of social movements in the past period to win many tangible gains has translated into a lack of confidence that protest movements can lead to victories. Importantly, however, the youngest of “young people” are less affected by the failures of movements during the 2010s because of more limited experience of the period.

Increasing political polarization is a key feature of consciousness generally, as well as among youth. The percent of 12th graders identifying as “very conservative” doubled from 4% to 8% in a 2023 study compared to 4 years earlier, while the percent identifying as “very liberal” or “radical” went from 9% to 16%. Overall, young voters hold more leftwing views compared to older people. However, several factors point to right wing views gaining purchase particularly with a layer of young men. Nearly half of younger men say they trust anti-feminist or pro-violence influencers from the “manosphere.” Close to half of young men have broadly ambivalent to somewhat suspicious attitudes toward the impact of feminism. Young men are very supportive of abortion rights, although they rate the issue as much less important compared to the rating of young women.

A yawning gap between the political positions of young men and young women has developed in the US, which is part of a global trend. It appears that this trend is driven more by young women moving significantly to the left, with 36% of young women identifying as liberal in 2018 compared to 44% in 2020. This figure has dropped to 40% in 2023, but this still represents the second highest level in at least 25 years. Glocalities, a market research firm, found that while all young people expressed a sharp increase in feelings of despair and hopelessness in 2023 compared to 2014, young women simultaneously moved to the left, and had concerns about social issues including sexual harassment, domestic violence and mental health. 

This polarization within the youngest generations can become quite explosive. We should pay close attention to the mood among high schoolers and college students this fall as it’s possible that Trump-supporting young men may become more vocal in school, provoking a reaction from their progressively minded peers. We should not rule out that this polarization could find expression in quite dynamic and important actions taken by students.

Young men in the Glocalities poll trended toward the right, and were more concerned about their individual social and economic status than about social issues. Long term trends show men underperforming women in educational attainment, wage growth, and in workforce participation growth. Social networks have declined for every group over the past 30 years, but the decline has been much steeper for men than for women. 

Young men are more disconnected and socially isolated than young women, and while there are major contradictions, working class young men are more downwardly mobile economically than young women. Right wing ideas about society being too “feminized,” and about how men can regain their rightful place of dominance are appealing to a layer of young men in the absence of any coherent and credible left wing making arguments emphasizing class and the need for solidarity across racial and gender lines. The moralistic arguments of identitarians in the activist layer, a version of which has been adopted by a wing of the bourgeoisie, is twisted to provide “proof” for the right wing idea that it’s men who are the oppressed gender.  

A positive trend in youth consciousness is the strong support for unions. Gen Z is the most pro-union generation, and even 56% of Republican Gen Zers approve of unions according to 2023 data. There are straightforward economic reasons for young people’s support of unions. The wage premium for young workers is higher than it is for older workers, and highest for the very youngest workers. While there was very little activity around social movements in the period between the end of the Black Lives Matter uprising and the beginning of the pro-Palestine protests, despite the right wing offensive on women and queer people, workers went on the offensive in Striketober, at Amazon in Bessemer and then Staten Island, at Starbucks, in a wave of graduate and undergraduate student unionization campaigns, and the several well-publicized and important strikes of 2023. Particularly in comparison to the failures of the Bernie Sanders left, unions are seen as a viable tool with which economic victories can be won.

A small but important layer of youth are moving to the far left, drawing the conclusion that capitalism is a dead-end. For decades, SA has been recruiting young radicalizing people who were open to the idea that system change is required. However, today’s youth have had the experience of the failures of movements and the social democratic Bernie Sanders left to win gains in the past period, plus the myriad of horrors that are the result of capitalism today, and are much more pessimistic than the young people of the 2010s that the system can be reformed.  

The growth of the IMT through their simplistic “Are you a communist?” campaign is worth discussing, not because we should emulate it, but for what it might indicate about youth consciousness. During the rising tide of popularity for “socialism” stoked by Bernie Sanders and others, a small layer of youth excited by “communism” intentionally faced away from the more “mainstream” socialist movement. Their instinct pointed in an ultraleft direction. Now, in a different period, Bernie and the Squad have demonstrated the dead end of reformism, and the appeal of terms like “communist” and “revolution” among youth can often (though not always) represent a more healthy instinct for system change beyond what the Berniecrats failed to accomplish and a grasping for an alternative way forward. 

That the IMT has had this period of significant growth while taking on identity politics with a blunt and even class reductionist approach at times suggests that there is a layer of radicalizing young people that is primed to reject identity politics. Of course identity politics should not be taken on with class reductionism but a Marxist approach that seeks to fight oppression in all its forms, pointing to the united working class as the best force to do this, and only force to end oppression once and for all. Alongside the negative features of youth consciousness, it also represents a major opening for Marxists that some of the most forward looking young people are rejecting a host of damaging ideas that had a grip on Millenials (i.e. reformism, liberalism, and toxic identity politics). Of course in many cases where we are recruiting youth, we will need to have the same types of discussions combating ideas alien to Marxism that we commonly had in the past period alongside taking up other wrong ideas that can gain more of an echo today (ultraleftism, Stalinism, etc). 

The developments in the labor movement, while clearly having inspired a broad layer of youth who are enthused about unions, are not yet of a scale to overcome widespread proxy consciousness in the labor movement, nor a pervading sense of pessimism among youth. It is certainly posed, that if activity in the labor movement continues to accelerate, “a mood among thousands to dedicate their lives to fighting against the injustices of capitalism,” can develop, as we put it in last fall’s labor document. Identity politics would likely be further undermined by big developments in the labor movement, and the situation would be broadly advantageous for the recruitment of youth radicalizing in part on the basis of victories by unions, and a sense that changing the entire system is necessary.  

In addition to the positive features of youth consciousness discussed above, the pessimism that is also a feature of consciousness has negative aspects in that among some layers there are those who are not convinced that mass struggles are effective. We should respond to this consciousness with some analysis of the movements of the 2010s, emphasizing that it was the lack of leadership, strategy, and in many cases, a clear program that held movements back. But pessimism is significantly directed at the institutions of capitalism and, often, at the entire system itself. Huge opportunities exist to build the forces of Marxism from among a layer of youth who don’t need much convincing that the capitalist system is an absolute disaster for humanity. 

The growth of right wing ideas among particularly young men and boys is a sobering reminder of the consequences of the failure of the left. If he’s elected, Trump 2.0 will be a more ideologically consistent, harder right-wing force and the possibility exists that the support for right wing “manosphere” influencers can increasingly be cohered into a dangerous force, potentially by existing far right groups that are regaining their footing amid the Trump campaign. However, if a second Trump administration spurs new movements that enthusiastically fight the right and win, the perspective of the far right gathering strength from a layer of disaffected and isolated youth would be more limited. 

Labor

After decades of a declining labor movement, the tide is changing. While the potential to rebuild a fighting labor movement in the coming years is significant, we should not understate the low starting point and we should be clear we are still in the very early stages of what will be a long process.

In the decade following the PATCO defeat in 1981 workers rose up and challenged their leaders, but ultimately lost in a series of strikes that turned into lockouts. Then the collapse of Stalinism strengthened the bosses and the labor leaders sought to make peace at any cost with the employers and to silence the members; undermining the power of their own organizations. The last 40 years have seen a dramatic fall in union membership and strikes and left the ranks of the labor movement, as well as the leaders, almost entirely inexperienced for the fights that have now begun to unfold. 

The mass West Virginia wildcat teachers strike in 2018, with its roots in the process begun by the CORE caucus in the Chicago Teachers Union half a decade earlier, marked the opening of a new period for labor. This upturn was then further spurred on by the pandemic and dramatic return of price inflation.  

The 2010s also witnessed a number of significant defeats for the labor movement including Act 10 in Wisconsin and the Supreme Court’s Janus decision. A number of states became “right to work” which mainly remain in place, but were repealed by the legislature in Michigan and by referendum in Missouri. The ten years after the onset of the Great Recession saw a sharp further decline of union power, coming after crucial defeats in the 1980s that led to a massive decline in union density. Historic lows in strike figures and union density occurred year after year until 2018. The defeats of many decades have served to hollow out most unions of an ongoing activist layer. The wide array of anti-union laws and decisions will need to be defied to rebuild a fighting labor movement. But it is striking that even by 2018, the Red State Revolt in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma, all right to work states, showed how this could be done in a year that saw more workers on strike than any since 1986. And now the UAW is showing how to organize industrial workers in the right to work South.

In 2023 nearly half a million workers went on strike, the second most in a year since 1986, and the net number of unionized workers increased by almost 200,000 workers. 229,000 workers under the age of 23 became union members in 2023, and as the Economic Policy Institute reported, “Unionization among workers of color accounted for the entire increase in the union level in 2023.” However, due to overall job growth in the economy, union density has remained essentially flat.

There are now two main processes taking place in the labor movement: union workers trying to get their organizations battle ready (we see this mainly via reform caucuses, and the rise of the new left bureaucracy) and non-union workers trying to break through the wall to join the unions, with a growing section of unions increasingly trying to reach out to meet them too. In the long run these two trends will be intimately connected, as the UAW foreshadows.

The working class hasn’t had a figure like Shawn Fain in decades. Fain has become a nationally prominent labor leader who directly attacks the employer and billioniare class in his live streamed speeches. He has laid out a clear plan for organizing the unorganized in auto, and he’s called for unions to line up their contract dates with UAW to prepare for a general strike in 2028. There is tremendous support and admiration for Fain among workers looking for a way forward.

As with Bernie from 2015-2020 what most workers like about Fain are the more fighting aspects of his approach, not the more conservative ones, including his approach to the Democrats. While some on the labor left revere Fain for the “ingenuity” and cleverness of the standup strike, the wider layer of class conscious workers primarily appreciate that he led a simultaneous strike at the Big 3 automakers at the same time for the first time in history and won real concessions.

The victory at Volkswagen in Chattanooga – the first Southern auto plant to unionize in 80 years – represents a historic gateway to unionizing industrial workers in the region. After Mercedes in Alabama stepped up their game, boldly using the carrot and conceding to the union’s main demand to end tiered wages in advance of the vote, raising pay by $2/hr, and firing their CEO, the union lost. The UAW still got 44% of the votes, but this was a setback. Chattanooga will remain a beachhead for the labor movement in the South as American imperialism moves to re-industrialize and building SA in the region will be critical.

As increasing strike activity and the left bureaucracy raise the expectations and confidence of workers, they also sow the seeds for their own memberships to check their leaders if they are betrayed. This is similar to the first Bernie campaign, culminating in the #DemExit movement. Unlike the Bernie campaigns, however, there is no short definitive timeline of the primaries barreling toward a near-guaranteed betrayal at the end. More than Bernie, Fain’s trajectory can be more up in the air, more easily affected by wider developments and moods in the class. 

Without serious pressure from below to counteract the bourgeois pressure from above, most new reform leaders move to the right. In a bumpy historical period, leaders can go back and forth. Sara Nelson called for a general strike during the government shutdown in 2018, then argued party politics was irrelevant and is now leading a relatively cautious but important organizing campaign at Delta. The difference with the Bernie/squad phenomenon, centered around the Democratic Party, is that they had no genuine democratic structures or mechanisms for accountability compared to the unions. Union members’ anger and will can be expressed through leadership elections, strike authorization votes, contract ratification votes, rank-and-file or reform caucuses, and other means. In other arenas of struggle over the last decade: Bernie, BLM, #MeToo, this type of organization was something that needed to be built from scratch, and it generally wasn’t. This was a big part of the defeats we’ve seen. In fact we’ve already seen this type of check on Fain with many UAW members expressing their frustration and opposition against the Big 3 contract with a “no” vote. 

It’s hard to understate how much of a sea change it is to have the most well known labor leader in the US, when announcing his call for the May 1, 2028 general strike, say “If we’re truly going to take on the billionaire class, then it’s important we not only strike, but that we strike together.” This call will be greeted by many workers as a breath of fresh air and at the same time a bit abstract, given the long timeframe. So many factors can change in four years that it is impossible now to predict the outcome. Under pressure from the state and conservative labor leaders, Fain could back off and lead a symbolic action, or real momentum could be built and the immediate lead up coincides with a wider mood for action, becoming the largest day of strike action in US history; or somewhere in between. At this point, it is highly unlikely that anything approaching a true general strike in the United States occurs in 2028, unless there are major changes in the labor movement before then. That said, even a coordinated strike of the UAW, AFT, and one or two other major unions, would be unprecedented and hugely significant. At minimum, May Day 2028 provides an important opportunity to talk about the role of the working class as a social force and agent of change when it acts together en masse.

The history of the labor movement in the US is historically characterized by explosive developments. Nevertheless, at times we have overestimated the possibility for one victory to lead to a “breakthrough” moment, similar to how the West Virginia teachers strike in February 2018 led to the #RedForEd strike wave over the following year. In general, we need to expect that the process of transformation of the labor movement will be an extended and contradictory process. There will not be a singular “1934 moment” but probably many key “moments.” After ALU’s victory at JFK8 in 2022 we anticipated – and we were not alone in doing so – that a wave of successful Amazon union drives would follow. This was reflected somewhat through the campaigns at LDJ5 and ALB1, but they ended in defeats. After the unionization wave at Starbucks kicked off, smaller efforts popped up at Apple, Target, Home Depot, Chipotle, and other retail or service chains, but then fizzled. While we never said the UAW organizing drives would have a domino effect of victories, the loss at Mercedes underscores the complications of the period.

While some of these instances are certainly related to a leadership’s political weakness and strategic failures, they also underline just how difficult the process of rebuilding a fighting labor movement will be and the need for a sober view of where we are starting from following the loss of traditions during the neoliberal era. The idea that someone else should do the work to organize for victories remains a dominant form of proxy consciousness and a serious obstacle. While academic workers at the University of California went on a limited strike to protest the repression of student encampment protesters, the idea that labor must concretely play an active political role in social movements is not yet on the radar of most union activists and energetically opposed by most of the labor leadership. Again, the process of transformation of the labor movement will occur over an extended period and we need a long-term orientation. The fundamental way we will impact this process and build our organization is through the direct intervention of our cadre in unions and struggle.

Corporations like Amazon, Starbucks, and auto manufacturers will do anything to avoid unionization. While workers today are not being jailed or shot on the picket lines, in some ways modern day organizing drives at big corporations are far more complicated than the past. The bosses’ sophisticated union-busting strategies ensure that organizing drives cannot be casual affairs, but require serious deep organizing that is driven by clear class politics. In most industries, lessons will need to be learned through a series of losses before a bigger wave of victories comes. The two prior losses in Chattanooga are instructive.

During and following the pandemic some organizing drives gained traction, initiated mainly outside the large established unions. It is now a very significant development that large industrial unions, namely the UAW and Teamsters have stepped onto the organizing scene. At Amazon now the Teamsters have been dragged into the center of the ring and our organization played a key role in this. Though it will be uneven and a long process, more established unions will likely take to organizing in the years to come.

While we have mainly seen reform caucuses form in already-existing collective bargaining units, organizing drives will also provoke discussions and debates about their leadership’s strategy. It is already clear this will happen in the Teamsters Amazon Division where it is abundantly clear the leadership does not have a viable strategy and program to organize the company.

While the defeat of the UAW unionization vote at the Alabama Mercedes plant put a small dent in the labor movement’s momentum, a number of factors point to the continued rise in combativity and organization in labor. While inflation has significantly cooled from its 2022 highs, it hasn’t gone away, nor will its impact be quickly forgotten, and as we discuss in this document, inflation is a likelier perspective in general in the current era of increased protectionism. Inflation and low unemployment have been key economic drivers of workers feeling more confident about going on strike. As we discussed in last year’s US perspectives document, a deep recession with a sharp increase in unemployment will likely cut across labor struggle for a period, although it would not likely have the longer term stunning effect of the 2008-9 Great Recession. 

As international events and the movement of US capitalism toward a “pre-war” posture play a bigger role in shaping the consciousness of US workers in this new period, the strategic power of workers particularly in logistics, defense, and technology will increasingly be a feature.

Anti-War Movement

The sharpening inter-imperialist competition, which is already a key dynamic in a number of conflicts internationally and points towards a potentially far bigger military conflict between the US and China in the next period, also indicates the potential for the building of an ongoing anti-imperialist, anti-war movement.

The Ukraine War, as we have insisted from the beginning, is very much part of the global inter-imperialist conflict. But the sympathy, particularly in Western countries, with the Ukrainian people facing the brutal Russian invasion, limited the scope of anti-war protest. Shamefully, the broad social democratic and ex-Stalinist  left in Europe and in the US Congress, largely capitulated to the pressure to support massive shipments of armaments to a conflict which then turned into a bloody stalemate where hundreds of thousands have died or been maimed. The protests that did occur in a number of cases took on the character of a right/left alliance against war. We insisted that this is a completely false basis for an anti-war movement. Those on the right who oppose funding Ukraine obviously are not anti-imperialist. They simply think this particular war is not in the interests of US imperialism.

There is also the problem that a large section of the far left supports either Russian or Chinese imperialism, or both. We have staked out a distinct pro-working class, internationalist position which opposes all the imperialist powers.

The war in Gaza detonated a massive international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people. In the US the campus protests in the spring were a very important development, the highest expression of student anti-war activism since the Vietnam War. This significantly rattled the bourgeois establishment which ramped up its “anti-antisemitism” campaign to demonize or even criminalize all opposition to the actions of the Israeli state while deploying the police to repress the movement.

But as with the limited protests against the Ukraine War, there are significant issues in the movement, with a wing giving support to deeply reactionary Hamas and even having illusions in Iran’s reactionary, dictatorial regime which is very much aligned with China in the global struggle for domination. This has again underlined the importance of our clear and unique position on the national question. Our opposition to both “sides” in the global conflict will need to be a central part of our intervention if a full scale regional war ensues.

If a wider regional war in the Middle East is averted and an actual ceasefire implemented in Gaza, protests would die down but the basis is being laid for an ongoing anti-war movement. To see why, we need to think about all the effects of the “pre-war” phase. The anti-China rhetoric from both parties contributed directly to the sharp rise in anti-Asian attacks. Now there is a rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic attacks. The pre-war phase means the expenditure of massive resources on military buildup while the climate crisis gets ever worse. It means not investing in education or healthcare. As the conflict between the two imperialist blocs develops an all-consuming character, it will become more and more clear to millions that the continuation of imperialism is incompatible with the continuation of human civilization.

The drive to war will tend to become a bigger point of discussion within wider society and will be utterly unavoidable for all left trends including within the labor movement. The ripple of ceasefire resolutions in some unions, most notably the UAW, but also the way the Gaza solidarity movement played a role in SBWU bringing Starbucks to the bargaining table, is a sign of what’s to come and how these struggles will be linked. Discussion and debate on war and anti-war movements in the unions provide the left with a hugely important opportunity.

The fake “anti-war” wing of the Republicans will be exposed as the militarists they are as the issue becomes more and more squarely about China. Any move towards working class political independence cannot avoid this question. Any element of support to US imperialism’s position will doom a new left party to failure.

Young people have always been at the forefront of anti-war movements and this will be the case again in the coming years. If US troops were actually sent to fight in one of the conflicts flowing from and subsumed to the wider US/China conflict, which is no way ruled out, it would boost both the movement and nationalist sentiment among the right wing. Anti-war movements should become a long term orientation for the US section and our international in this period. By campaigning against militarism and the bourgeoisie’s ideological campaign in a consistent way, along with our international, we will win young and working class people looking for real answers as well as preparing ourselves for much bigger developments in years to come.

The Black Working Class 

The George Floyd rebellion four years ago shook the US society to its core. Millions mobilized under the broad banner of Black Lives Matter while the ruling elite mobilized militarized police forces across the country to stomp out the movement, with serious clashes occurring in the streets. There was a serious opening for mass anti-racist organizations to develop a clear program on ending police brutality. However, the lack of any serious gains being won by this movement, and its co-optation by the Democratic party, cut across its potential. BLM is in a prolonged retreat, and the Black working class is now stuck in a process of poverty and confusion. 

There has been a serious attempt by Democrats and Republicans to placate the small Black capitalist class. Trickle-down economics is still being promoted under the motto of “Black Capitalism” or “Black entrepreneurship”. All of these half-hearted attempts by the white capitalist class have hardly resulted in a rapidly emerging Black counterpart. Stagnation continues to plague this small layer in society. Black businesses are deemed to be more risky and lack access to historical financial institutions as would others. Despite profits soaring 48% from 2017 to 2021, a significant section of Black business makes between $0 – 25,000 in revenue. Around 68% of Black businesses request loans in order to meet operational expenses — ~40% are denied loans in general.

Unemployment for the Black working class is currently at relatively historic lows — 6.1%. Compared with the previous decade (2010-2020), this does paint a rosy picture of the Black laboring masses climbing themselves out of a cycle of poverty. However, unemployment for Black Americans has still not recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, with 2019 being at 5.9%. Significant debt held by Black communities are forcing many to live paycheck to paycheck. 

Many of the jobs created in this supposed boom are either minimum wage jobs, or those that are in physically-intensive occupations that are precarious in nature. Service work, transportation & logistics, sales sectors make up a bulk of the employment of the Black working class. Wages and benefits outweigh the known dangerous working conditions in this sector. The need for these Black workers collides with the unbearable working conditions many are in. These developments have positioned Black workers at the cutting edge of the current wave of labor organizing. Black workers making up a bulk of new union members joining in 2023. Organizing drives in the South, particularly the victorious Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, has certainly played a role in this development. Black women in particular are playing an outsize role. 

Consciousness & Threat of the Right

The stagnation of the Black population on the economic front is connected to the general developments of consciousness in this layer. Many Black people are looking for a way out of this cycle of precarity and poverty. The lack of any mass working class organizations means all sorts of ideas can be entertained from revolutionary ideas to reactionary. 

Right-wing ideas are currently receiving an echo in many Black communities. Immigration has been a key talking point of Trump and the Republican party. In his Bronx rally, Trump said that immigration has always disproportionately impacted the Black and Latino working class and this was a focal point of his during the first presidential debate. Many Black working people have pointed at the supposed hypocrisy of local and state governments controlled by Democrats giving social services to migrants rather than the Black poor. Biden reinforcing this right-wing rhetoric with his increasingly horrific policies on the border, and treatment of migrants such as those from Haiti, has given even more momentum to these ideas. 

The lack of economic revitalization of the Black working class, the rapid downward trajectory of the Black bourgeoisie, has many looking to the previous Trump administration as a lesser evil compared to Biden. The COVID-19 stimulus checks are still a reference point for many Black workers, especially for youth, as many parents were able to provide some semblance of stability most likely for the first time in their lives. Despite this flirtation with Trump, most Black Republicans have no illusions in the racism of the Republican party or US institutions in general. Across political lines, the majority of the Black working class believe that US institutions want to hold Black people back. 

A Trump 2.0 victory would be devastating for Black working class communities. Project 2025, a vision for Trump’s second term, would see mass incarceration reforms virtually blocked, and the complete destruction of public/subsidized housing that many Black working class families need.  

The correct assumption that Black working people cannot trust the US ruling class is not inherently positive for the developments of the class struggle. Without the conscious intervention of working class organizations, on the basis of clear demands and a militant method, this skepticism can turn to old, and tired, ideas of Black Nationalism and other right wing ideas. 

The rise of Umar Johnson encapsulates this phenomenon among young Black people in particular. Umar is a pan-African Black nationalist who peddles many reactionary ideas like being anti-LGTBQ and for racial segregation. He has also repeatedly attacked both Democrats and Republicans, and called for a new Black political party. His videos are viral, with many receiving hundreds of thousands of views. He may be seen as an internet meme by many young people, but his ideas are still seriously entertained by a radicalizing section of young Black people. 

Rather than a decisive shift of the Black working class to the right, we are seeing right wing ideas gain momentum in the absence of any serious left alternative. The development of a future wave of social struggle on the scale of the 2020 BLM uprising is dim in the short/medium term. A second Trump administration, with more focused reactionary policies can provoke anti-racist struggle. The rise of a growing disillusionment in US institutions, and increased Black membership in organized labor can see struggles in the workplace take an increased importance. The radicalization of young Black people will most likely continue to be untapped by nascent organizations of the left, and it’s vital that our revolutionary socialist program clearly speaks to the everyday concerns, and aspirations, of Black workers, poor, and youth.

While the George Floyd rebellion has been followed by a significant backlash, the positive effects on consciousness are still bubbling under the surface. Even though the 2020 BLM uprising is less politically visible than other struggles of that magnitude 4 years later, a section of the people brought into the streets will continue to look for avenues of action in the labor movement, politically, and elsewhere. The whip of counter-revolution can be a sudden spur into action in the coming months and years, be it from right-wing legislation, reactionary violence, state repression, or the alt-right returning to the streets. Marxists need an ongoing orientation to find the best fighters who can draw revolutionary working-class conclusions from a deeply felt need to defeat anti-Black racism once and for all.

Abortion & Attacks On LGBTQ People 

Mass struggle in response to the vicious right wing backlash against women and LGBTQ people has remained at a low level. The struggle for abortion rights, dealt a brutal blow by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, has since picked up steam as an electoral phenomenon which the Democrats have seized upon as one of the very few issues where they have a clear advantage over Trump with a broad section of the electorate. The right wing of the ruling class has been forced to rethink their approach to the question as abortion rights have gained in popularity since Dobbs. 

State level abortion initiatives are leading in the polls in Florida and Arizona, which bolsters the Democrats. The unbeaten record of state abortion ballot initiatives for the pro-choice side, and the widespread availability of abortion pills may in fact be working against the development of mass struggle around abortion in the current conjuncture, when there are still many questions in the consciousness generally about whether protesting works. 

The fact that several Socialist Alternative branches were able to mobilize hundreds and even thousands for the “Day X” protests after the Dobbs decision was announced showed that had a real lead been given by the Democratic Party-aligned women’s organizations or the union leadership, protests could have been much bigger and more sustained. In the fall of 2021, a wave of relatively small but remarkably angry and combative protests against incidents of gender violence swept through particularly college but also some high school campuses for a brief period. These protests were mobilized with very little organization, or even semi-spontaneously, and seemed to be easily cut across by school administrations rapidly making some limited concessions, but that they happened at all gives a glimpse of the anger around this issue that lies under the surface.

Currently, expressly feminist struggle has very little profile, even if consciousness among broad layers of youth has been significantly radicalized on gender oppression and there is a lot of anger about the Dobbs decision among broader layers. Of course, there is much more that could be said about consciousness around feminism. The rightwing backlash has absolutely won a layer of particularly boys and young men to “manosphere” type influencers and their reactionary ideas on women and gender roles. With the recent experience of the campus encampment movement against the war in Gaza, feminist student protests could be a feature in the period ahead, especially given the political gender divide that is developing in countries around the world and in the US.

The 2010s saw a major progressive sea change in attitudes about LGBTQ people. The percentage of young people who identify as queer has dramatically increased over the past period, and opposition to the oppression of LGBTQ people is a key feature of consciousness, reflecting the rejection of traditional gender norms by millions of young people. A wing of the capitalist class has moved to try and co-opt this consciousness, while another wing is scapegoating queer people as part of the “culture wars.” So far, the Democrats haven’t really paid a price specifically for their inaction on defending the rights of trans people from the vicious right wing attacks in statehouses across the country. 

The Democratic Party’s inaction on defending trans rights is a factor in the consciousness of many young people, and will impact their ability to muster enthusiasm in November to an extent. However, we cannot underestimate the impact of anti-queer and anti-trans rhetoric that has promulgated throughout the Republican Party and mainstream right-wing discourse. Fears of persecution under Trump, and the violently anti-LGBTQ recommendations of Project 2025, in particular, open the floodgates for a significant layer of LGBTQ youth to set aside whatever anger they had and support the Democrats as a lesser evil; Harris taking control of the ticket after Biden stepped aside only serves to make this process easier. Initially, there could be real illusions in a new Harris presidency, if she is elected, but young people are likely to be disappointed again by the Democrats, contributing to their overall crisis.

Despite the importance of the issue in the consciousness, there is limited struggle on LGBTQ issues. Queer activists led state house mobilizations against anti-LGBTQ and particularly anti-Trans legislation, but these protests weren’t big enough or sustained enough to push back the reactionary backlash. LGBTQ activists have used Pride month to protest the genocidal war on Gaza through boycotts, protests, and building more radical events as alternatives to the corporate-backed Pride parades. While on a fairly low level, these “no pride in genocide” protests and the very positive reception we receive show the opening for radical politics among LGBTQ youth.    

Conclusion

In this document, we have sought to outline some of the further consequences of the new era of capitalist instability and inter-imperialist conflict. These include a rapidly developing global trade conflict centered on China and the US, and the features of a “pre-war economy”.

The logic of inter-imperialist conflict means that even the pretense to address the developing climate disaster or any other crisis is being dropped. This will create increased opposition and understanding of the existential threat posed by the continuation of capitalist imperialism. We already see the very significant mass opposition to US support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.

But the new era also has contradictory features. By stressing a partial re-industrialization, the development of “strategic” sectors, a lower mobility for capital, and the increased role of the state, a potentially more favorable situation for the labor movement and winning reforms has opened up compared to the era of neoliberal globalization.

Since 2018, and culminating in 2023, we have seen a resurgence of the class struggle but from an extremely low base. It is clear that there is a huge desire for a force that will give the working class more of a share of the wealth it creates and reverse the trend towards the degradation of life in recent decades. At the same time, there are huge contradictions in consciousness, especially among young people and the oppressed, with elements of despair, proxy consciousness, political polarization, some being seduced by poisonous right wing ideas but also a layer we need to orient to who see more clearly than in the 2010s the need for fundamental, revolutionary change.

The Harris bump temporarily papers over the grotesque exposure of the political crisis of US capitalism which was a feature of the Biden candidacy. The candidate has changed, but the fundamental crisis of the Democrats hasn’t. At the current moment the election appears too close to call. If he is elected, Trump 2.0 will represent a serious danger and challenge to the working class and the oppressed. The outcome of the attempt to foist a deeply reactionary agenda on American society will have far reaching consequences.

Despite difficulties on many fronts, Marxist ideas are vindicated dramatically by events in the US and internationally. Even while facing many challenges, we should be able to build our forces in the coming months and years. The struggle for socialism is the only way out from the multiple crises faced by the working class and humanity as a whole.