In the wake of Trump’s sweeping victory, millions of young and working people are asking, “How did we get here?” To answer this question, we need to understand the root of the right wing’s recent growth—the crisis of capitalism itself. 

Trump and the far right all over the world are a reflection of a fundamentally broken system. When society is a haunted house of inequality and oppression, a few particularly loathsome ghouls are bound to emerge from time to time. But Trump is more than just a uniquely terrible manifestation of the crisis facing the system. He’s a symptom—and capitalism is the disease.

What Is Capitalism?

Capitalism is a system based on an undemocratic private ownership of production for the purpose of maximizing profits on the backs of workers. Like pigs at the trough, capitalists will gorge themselves on human labor and natural resources. But unlike pigs, capitalists can’t and won’t stop their plunder of the world of their own volition. 

A small handful at the very top amass obscene levels of wealth created by the working class, the vast majority of society. In short, we do all the work to make society run and capitalists get rich off it. And the wealth that we produce is funneled back into the casino of Wall Street instead of being used for what we actually need: housing, education, healthcare, jobs. A huge portion of our society’s wealth is poured into war and destruction. Would a sane system produce missiles that cost tens of millions to level hospitals in Gaza when hospitals in the US are indebted and crumbling? Capitalism is clearly incapable of productively developing society, and in fact, is an active block on it.

Racism, sexism, xenophobia and other forms of divide-and-rule oppression are part and parcel of capitalism. Without these backwards ideas, the bosses would have a much harder time dividing and conquering working people to defend their system. As the ruling classes of imperialist countries from the US to China prepare for direct war, they must promote increasingly virulent forms of nationalism, leading to outbreaks of anti-migrant hate and even far-right violence. 

Even the concept of the nuclear family and traditional (sexist) gender roles as the basic building block of capitalist society is making a comeback in the guise of “trad” ideology. This is a right-wing reaction to struggles led by women and LGBTQ+ people against sexual harassment and abuse, oppressive gender norms, and for bodily autonomy in recent years. Capitalism depends on the subjugation of women and control of their bodies and sexuality. And without the millions of hours of unpaid work women perform in the home to raise, educate, and care for the next generation of exploited workers, the whole system would not be able to function.

Nationalism and the return of “traditional” gender roles were front and center in Trump’s campaign, but they didn’t come out of thin air. These ideologies, and many others promoted by the ruling class, reflect the needs of capitalism and imperialism today.

Revolutionary Struggle: The Only Way Forward

At one time, capitalism was “progressive” in the sense that it was capable of improving living standards and advancing society from the feudalist system that came before it. That time has long since come and gone, and capitalism today is nothing more than a ball and chain.

The overthrow of capitalism in Russia in 1917 punctured the myth of capitalist invincibility and proved once and for all that a socialist economy based on the working class is possible. In 1917, the Russian working class, led by the Marxist Bolshevik Party overthrew the reactionary Tsarist government and took power after sweeping away an attempt to impose capitalist rule. They implemented working-class democracy by putting workers in charge of their own factories and industries. Stalin, however, represented a conservative backlash to the revolution under pressure from reformism and imperialism abroad, and he and his successors undermined its gains until capitalism was finally restored in 1991. 

The clear lesson of 1917 is that capitalism creates the conditions for revolution, and it is the working class that must play the decisive role. The backdrop of the revolution was the largest imperialist war the world had ever seen and untold poverty and deprivation. Under these conditions, all-out revolution was the only option left for survival.

Today, capitalism faces its most severe crisis in decades. War, climate destruction and untold poverty are escalating. But capitalism won’t overthrow itself or collapse from a final crisis. It will require the working class consciously getting organized for revolution by forging its own revolutionary leadership and rebuilding its organizations of struggle. 

But even winning victories short of revolution will require ferocious struggle by the working class in this era of capitalist decline. The biggest victories of the working class in the advanced capitalist world were won through mass struggle organized by forces that posed a threat to the whole system—and weren’t just looking for a sweetheart deal with the bosses. Nationalized healthcare was one such victory in advanced capitalist countries across the world, with the US being the sole exception. But as the strength of working-class movements declined during the neoliberal era, the ruling class was given a free hand to undermine those gains of past struggle—as is happening with the defunding of the National Health Service in Britain and elsewhere.  

The ruling class and the far right is only as strong as we are weak. In other words, it’s possible to push back the right and force concessions from the billionaires by building powerful movements of working people, youth and the oppressed. To build the most effective struggles against Trump, we need to fight independently of all capitalist parties and take on capitalism itself. 

Fight Trump AND Capitalism: Join The Socialists!

Socialist Alternative members have fought Trump and the far right before. Within hours of his victory in 2016, we called protests of thousands in cities around the country. In 2017, we took part in a protest that drew out 40,000 working-class and young people and swept the far right off the streets of Boston. In large part due to these and other actions, including a NYC taxi drivers strike, Trump was unable to carry out some of his most reactionary proposals, including his xenophobic Muslim ban. Protests work, especially when they’re based on the power of the working class and unchained from the Democratic party.

We need to build a new revolutionary movement to sweep away the far right forever. Socialist Alternative calls for mass protests and school walkouts on Inauguration Day. We will fight to build defense committees against deportations in our schools and workplaces. And we’ll work to smash any illusion that Trump or the far right has a “mandate” to carry out their destructive agenda.

If you’ve never been to a protest before, but are ready to fight back; if you’re furious at attacks on migrants, women, people of color, trans youth and other oppressed people; if you’re not willing to tolerate a second more of the genocidal Gaza war; if you agree that capitalism is at the root of the crises that we face; if you believe that a socialist world is possible and want to fight for it—now is the time to join us!