With the inauguration of Trump as US president for the second time, we are publishing a three-part perspectives document from Socialist Alternative that is currently being discussed throughout our national organization.
Part one is an analysis of the election result, how we got here, and the developments taking place in consciousness. Part two provides a characterization for the likely trajectory of Trump 2.0 and what we can expect for various aspects of his rule, both domestically and in the escalating inter-imperialist bloc conflict. Part three covers the possibilities for struggle, the state of the left, and the strategy and program of Marxists under the coming, and highly dangerous, regime of Trump 2.0.
1. Trump’s second victory is a stunning demonstration of just how far traditional bourgeois politics have fallen. When Trump began his first campaign in 2015, he was widely regarded as a joke with no chance of winning. Nine years later, he has cemented his place in history as one of the most vile and consequential figures of early 21st century capitalism, who in many ways embodies some of the most important political changes of this epoch. His 2024 victory also reminds us once more to not underestimate the havoc the new era will bring.
2. After the Democratic establishment’s dragged out replacement of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris, we said that while Harris gave the Democrats at least a chance of beating Trump, it would do nothing to solve the deeper crisis of support facing the deeply discredited party. Though Trump’s victory did not come as a surprise, as it did to many eight years ago, few including among ourselves predicted that he would win so decisively, with the Democrats not winning even one of the seven battleground states. The absurdity of this election cycle hit its peak when two of the most powerful men in the world, an average age of 80 between them, traded barely intelligible jabs about each other’s golf swings in front of 50 million viewers as part of a presidential debate.
3. But the victory of Trump 2.0 is the farthest possible thing from a joke. Millions now face deportation, family separation, bans on the healthcare they need to survive, cuts to vital social services, education, and more. What meager regulations exist on climate change-inducing industries will be rolled back after thousands of ordinary people’s lives in North Carolina and elsewhere were decimated by climate catastrophe in 2024. The inter-imperialist bloc conflict with China will be ratcheted up even further, and the US will back global militarism even more aggressively. Though the majority of Trump voters are not fully behind him on every issue, the most hardcore, far-right section of his base is stronger both in numbers and in confidence compared to 2016.
4. On the other side of the political divide, tens of millions of people in the US are utterly demoralized, terrified, and have little to no hope for the future. Socialists must be crystal clear that only mass movements and in particular working-class action can decisively turn the tide against the growing right wing. Mass struggle combined with the building of a left-wing, pro-working class political alternative to both the Republican and Democratic parties can take this process even further.
5. For Marxists political clarity is always primary, but especially so in a moment like this. Without a correct understanding of why Trump won, what we should expect under his presidency, and what will be necessary to stop his agenda, our organization will not pass the tests or resist the pressures imposed on us by this historic change. Political clarity for revolutionaries is not a goal in and of itself, but a foundation for action. In turn, without clear socialist answers to this new situation, the wider left will inevitably fail.
6. This document has three parts. Part one is an analysis of the election result and its significance, how we got here, and the underlying processes at play, part two discusses the general outlines of what we can expect for various aspects of Trump’s second term, and part three covers perspectives for struggle, the left, and the role of Marxists under Trump 2.0.
7. Without a crystal ball, we of course cannot say exactly how Trump will rule, but by drawing out the likely general course of development, including the various arenas in which struggle could emerge, we prepare ourselves for the tumultuous months and years ahead. In achieving a greater understanding of the processes at play, we redouble our commitment to the project of building a revolutionary party that can lead the working class in overthrowing capitalism and imperialism to eradicate exploitation, oppression, and the likes of Donald Trump forever.
How We Got Here: 2008 to Today
8. To fully understand any event it must be looked at in the context of its wider process of development. Elections are a snapshot of consciousness at a given moment, but a still picture only reveals so much. A rounded out analysis requires digging into the processes which shape specific events.
9. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalism decisively won the Cold War. During the neoliberal era the capitalist class went on the offensive globally, attacking gains won by the working class in the post-war period and severely driving back working-class organization, consciousness, and traditions of struggle. The ruling class was generally in control, with US capitalism and imperialism occupying the position of undisputed global hegemon and powerhouse.
10. Everything changed with the Great Recession of 2008, the worst global economic downturn since the Great Depression eighty years earlier. After an initial stunning period, a wave of struggle broke out globally starting with the Arab Spring in late 2010, then spreading to the US with the Battle of Wisconsin and Occupy in 2011, Spain with the Indignados movement, and general strikes throughout southern Europe. In the US, Barack Obama oversaw a “recovery” in which after three years, all new net wealth generated since the crisis went to the top 7% of society while the bottom 93% remained worse off than before the crash. The Obama years were a disaster for tens of millions of ordinary people and, under the first Black president, the Black working class fared disproportionately badly.
11. The Tea Party, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers and marked by racism and libertarianism, dressed up as anti-establishment, was the first widespread reaction to the crisis and Obama’s response given the refusal of the mainstream left or the labor leadership to take on the Democrats. But this was the context for Occupy, the Fight for $15 which broke out in late 2012 then lasted for several years, and the original outbreak of Black Lives Matter in 2014, all of which swept the Tea Party away.
12. The 2016 presidential election became the next expression of the revolt against the neoliberal era in its dying years, with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump acting as opposing poles in this process. Sanders called for a “political revolution against the billionaire class” while Trump called to “Make America Great Again,” scapegoating immigrants and other oppressed groups along the way. This coincided with the same process of left-right political polarization in the electoral arena which played out in countries across the world, including Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson in the UK (Brexit was also part of this process), Jean Luc Melenchon and Marine Le Pen in France, Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece, Podemos and Vox in Spain, and elsewhere. The Democratic establishment, far more scared of Sanders and his movement’s threat to capitalism than of Trump’s right populism, crushed Bernie. Despite losing the popular vote by three million, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the electoral college.
13. We firmly and correctly argued in 2016, both internally and in public material, that Trump’s victory did not represent a generalized shift to the right in US society. Beyond Trump losing the popular vote, exit polls showed that 20% of Trump voters that year still viewed him unfavorably (compared to 9% this time). As the Washington Post commented at the time, “There is no precedent for a candidate winning the Presidency with fewer voters viewing him favorably, or looking forward to his administration, than the loser.” While rejecting the idea of a generalized shift to the right, we were very clear, though, that it represented a shift to the right in a section of society which could deepen, while another section was being radicalized to the left by wider developments – in a word, deeper polarization.
14. Trump’s victory came on the heels of Sanders’ insurgent campaign that won 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries and two million donors. Immediately following the election, tens of thousands took to the streets to oppose Trump and two months later the Women’s March became the largest single day of protest in US history at the time. Less than one week into Trump’s presidency, mass struggle successfully blocked Trump’s original “Muslim Ban,” leading in part to an almost immediate dip in his approval ratings. DSA grew to nearly 100,000 in the years that followed and the resurgence of socialist ideas started by Sanders’ 2016 run, albeit in a confused and largely reformist way, continued, and was also reflected in the growth of our forces to a peak of 1,200 in mid-2017. The left of the Democratic Party embodied by Bernie and the Squad, the latter of which formed in 2018, was still on the ascendancy. The teachers strike wave across “red” states that went for Trump, and mass sickouts later that year to end the government shutdown of 2018/19, ushered in a period of resurgence for the US labor movement.
15. So despite Trump’s presidency, the left generally had the initiative through the end of 2020. It wasn’t Trump’s 2016 electoral victory, but rather the defeats and betrayals of 2020 that ended the period of left ascendancy which dominated the post-2008 polarization of the 2010’s. This included the Obama-orchestrated coup against Bernie in the 2020 primary followed by his rapid acquiescence (unlike 2016 when he stayed in the race until summer) and the explosive rise and then defeat of 20 million-strong Black Lives Matter. Finally came the Squad’s refusal to “Force the Vote” on Medicare for All in December of that year, signaling their willingness to move toward a full-on peace with the Democratic establishment under Biden and beginning their descent into irrelevance.
16. On the heels of these events, broadly the US left entered into a period of general, though uneven, decline, demonstrating that betrayals and defeats have serious consequences. The failure of social struggle under reformist leadership to win meaningful victories and build a left alternative to the thoroughly pro-capitalist, anti-worker Democratic Party left the situation wide open for the right to make gains, even in spite of Trump’s resounding popular vote defeat by over 7 million votes in 2020.
17. Biden’s victory that year represented both a temporary defeat of Trump, but also a defeat of the left, through a strengthening, albeit temporary and shallow, of the political center. As we said at the time, counter to the analysis of the mainstream bourgeois press, the right was not at all decisively defeated and without a left alternative to Biden’s pro-corporate presidency, it would grow and strengthen, including winning over a bigger section of the disaffected working class. In September of 2020 we warned, “The corporate rule of a Biden presidency will still very much fan the flame of capitalist crisis and the growth of the far right, and pave the way for more Trumps and worse Trumps in the years to come.” The Democrats, and even some on the left, scoffed at this prospect, especially with Trump’s fall from grace and relative political isolation in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
18. Days after Biden’s victory we warned again, “We need to be very clear that, unless we begin to take more serious steps towards building a new political force based on the multiracial and multi-gender working class, we face serious dangers in the coming years. Donald Trump and the populist right have built a massive political base, which includes a growing far right wing. If we have a repeat of 2008-10 with working people and sections of the middle class suffering as the banks and corporations are looked after by a corporate Democratic administration, this will provide a huge opening for the far right to grow further.”
19. Unfortunately, but entirely unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happened. It is noteworthy that after Trump won eight years ago, millions took the streets to oppose him. After he lost four years later, the most important protest was a thousands-strong far right rally and violent invasion of the Capitol building. Despite Trump’s electoral defeat, the root cause of the right wing’s rise was left untouched.
20. The Democrats’ utterly useless attempts to ruin Trump’s reputation via “Russiagate” and the Mueller Investigation, two impeachment attempts, and nearly three dozen indictments, in the end served only to deepen Trump’s appeal and image as an anti-establishment figure taking on the swamp in Washington and the “deep state” out to get him and his supporters. In the 24 hours after Trump’s felony convictions in May, his campaign raised $53 million, more than in the final six months of 2023 combined. The Democrats’ legalistic “resistance” was patently useless.
21. The Biden administration oversaw the highest inflation in over 40 years, and as Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Democrats didn’t so much as lift a pinky to stop it. Biden presided over the botched withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which accelerated the declining image and prestige of US imperialism, and the doling out of nearly $200 billion to finance US imperialist interests in Ukraine while tens of millions suffered at home. Most recently Biden led the US in giving more money and military support to the Israeli regime in a single year than any previous for its genocidal campaign in Gaza and war against Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East. These have given Trump the ability to pose as against inflation and war, for the benefit of ordinary Americans, which is of course a lie. All of this and more is what led tens of millions of ordinary people to see Harris as the candidate of the status quo and Trump as the candidate of change in the 2024 election.
Democrats’ Base Undermined and Republican Inroads
22. Trump’s victory in 2024 represents a historic undermining of the modern base of the Democratic Party, which dates back to the Great Depression, and an inflection point for Republican support among the working class. Some of the biggest stories following the election were about the seismic demographic shifts that have taken place in US electoral politics over the last decade, which reflect the wider processes at play.
23. Perhaps the most stunning shifts were seen among young people and Latinos. The Democrats received their smallest percentage of voters ages 18-29 in over 30 years at 54%. This is down from 60% four years ago and 58% eight years ago. Trump received 43% of the vote from those under 30, up seven points from 2020 and fifteen points from 2016. Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump among this age group was nearly three times the size of Harris’s, and Clinton was no youth fan favorite by any stretch. The war on Gaza was a huge factor in this, as was the growing influence of right-wing ideas among young men in particular.
24. Harris won the overall Latino vote by a mere 5%, down dramatically from 33% four years ago and 38% eight years ago. Trump won a majority of Latino men’s votes at 54%, a stunning result for somebody who made anti-immigrant rhetoric such a centerpiece of his campaign. While women still disproportionately vote Democrat on the whole, this continues to be chipped away at by the Republicans, and did not turn out to be the saving grace the Democrats hoped for and mainstream media predicted it might be in the final days before the election. Trump only lost the overall women’s vote by 8%, cutting the difference by half from this margin against both Biden and Clinton.
25. There was much speculation in advance of the election on the Black vote, a historically key voting bloc for Democrats. The Democrats largely held onto the Black vote, with only a 3% decrease from 2016 and 1% from 2020, but when broken up by gender the results show a different story. More than one in five Black men, 21%, voted for Trump this year, up from 19% four years ago and 13% eight years ago, showing the gaining influence of right-wing ideas among a section of Black men. Many Black people, as well as Latinos, feel with good reason like they have been taken for granted by the Democratic Party and, while they may be opposed to some of what Trump says, have been impacted by right-wing ideas nonetheless and opted to give Trump a chance in part to “send a message” to the Democrats.
26. Crucially, there are signs of a deeper historical inflection point in the class makeup of the two parties’ bases. For decades the Democrats have been seen in wide swathes of the country as the party of working people and the Republicans that of the educated elite, but this has significantly shifted. A majority of registered voters without a college degree, a certain marker for the working class, are now registered Republicans. Voters in families with a household income lower than $100,000 voted for Biden by a margin of 13% in 2020 and Trump by a margin of 4% this year, a 17-point swing. These and many other statistics are indicative of the totally historic crisis facing the Democratic Party.
Contradictory Consciousness
27. Understanding consciousness, including its twists, turns, and contradictions, is a key task for Marxists. Without a correct assessment of consciousness and how it may evolve, revolutionaries run the risk of being caught flat footed by important developments, under or overemphasizing different aspects of our program at a given time, and falling into political disorientation and demoralization.
28. A section of the left, such as Workers Strike Back, is arguing against the idea that there has been any rightward shift in US society. A few factors tend to be pointed to, namely a widespread rejection of the pro-corporate Democratic Party and several victorious ballot initiatives around progressive issues in states that still went for Trump.
29. Tens of millions of those who voted for Trump did indeed do so primarily in opposition to Harris and, by extension, Biden and the Democratic Party. As we noted in our immediate post-election statement, “After decades of voting for Democrats as the “lesser evil” to stop the Republicans, we are now seeing signs of the opposite phenomenon: millions of ordinary people ‘holding their nose’ to vote for Trump out of a greater dislike for the corporate, out-of-touch Democrats.”
30. However, while still a critical piece of the overall picture, exit polls show a statistically significant shift in this arena from eight years ago. In 2016, 53% of Trump voters explained their vote as being primarily against Hillary Clinton as opposed to primarily for Trump. This year only 36% of Trump voters explained their vote as being primarily against Harris as opposed to for Trump, a 17% decrease. In 2016, a minority of 44% of Trump voters voted primarily for Trump, whereas this year a majority of 55% did so. The situation is not identical to eight years ago—old talking points and explanations are not sufficient.
31. The ballot initiatives give important insight into the contradictory features of consciousness at this time. As many have pointed out, the fact that four states that went to Trump also voted to protect abortion rights shows that not all Trump voters are fully consolidated in right-wing politics. In all ten states where it was on the ballot, abortion rights received a higher vote than Harris. Missouri went for Trump but passed a $15 minimum wage, more than double the federal minimum wage, which both Obama and Biden failed to raise despite Democratic majorities in Congress during both of their first two years in the White House. Many of the workers who have recently taken part in important industrial strikes against big corporations also voted for Trump, showing, again as we said in our post-election statement, “that workers can be part of a militant struggle against the boss and still be susceptible to anti-working class ideas like racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia.”
32. There is also no doubt that, in a distorted form, anti-establishment and even a form of anti-system consciousness are also important features within a large section of Trump’s base. There are absolutely positive aspects of this, ranging from anger at the “swamp in Washington” to a generalized feeling that “the system” in a broad sense is rigged in favor of the elites. Frustration especially at the state of the economy, recent decades-high inflation, and the Democratic Party’s constant broken promises and thinly veiled corporate rule contribute to a healthy hatred of the political establishment. What’s dangerous is that, in the absence of mass struggle and a left alternative, the right has seized on this and successfully corrupted healthy anti-establishment sentiments in millions of working people with thoroughly right-wing ideas.
33. There were also ballot measures that pointed in a different direction from those above, however, such as eight states passing ballot measures banning non-citizens from voting even though this is already illegal. This includes Wisconsin, where 49% voted for Harris but 71% voted for this anti-immigrant referendum, or North Carolina which went 48% for Harris but 78% supported this ballot measure. In all eight states, significantly more Harris voters voted to restrict immigrants’ [already restricted] democratic rights than Trump voters who voted for abortion rights. In famously liberal California that went 59% for Harris, a majority voted down a measure which would have overturned the law that allows prisoners to do unpaid labor, the famous racist loophole to the abolition of slavery in the Constitution’s thirteenth amendment.
34. Consciousness is complicated and flexible; contradictory elements can be present within one person or even a section of the working class’s collective consciousness at the same time. These different elements can be more or less dominant at different times, as well as being more or less quickly and easily reversible depending on a multitude of factors. We should remember how consciousness shifted rapidly during the George Floyd uprising, when the burning down of a Minneapolis police station became more popular than either presidential candidate at the time. But in the face of struggle retreating with few concrete victories and a ruling-class onslaught, within just over a year support for reducing police funding dropped significantly.
35. This sort of phenomenon isn’t new. The infamous anti-Black race riots of 1919, “Red Summer,” took place in the United States two years after the October revolution. Alongside the massive labor struggles of the 1930 and 40s was the immense impact of the ideas of Jim/Jane Crow within wide sections of the working class. Even at the height of the historic CIO organizing drive there were cases of white auto workers launching workplace actions against desegregation of the job site. There can be highly positive aspects of worker’s consciousness while negative fetters simultaneously exist that act against the immediate needs of the class as well as its historical task of eliminating capitalism.
36. In the coming years, divisive right wing ideas sown by the ruling class can serve to cut across class struggle, or increased struggle can positively impact consciousness and cut across divisive ideas within the working class. In all likelihood, a combination of both processes will take place in the coming years, but which more forcefully is yet to be determined. The decisive factors will be struggle and major objective events like wars and economic crises. Both Black Lives Matter and women’s struggles over the last decade have shown how movements can rapidly and drastically change consciousness, as can important strikes and organizing drives. But we’ve also seen that lack of results and exhaustion, followed by an offensive by the ruling class, can throw back consciousness.
Impact of the Ruling Class’ Rightward Shift
37. Following the global wave of revolts from 2019-2021, of which BLM was a part along with mass uprisings and near-revolutions in over a dozen countries, the ruling class felt they were too near the brink and had to act more decisively to repress movements and the class struggle. In the US in the wake of BLM, both parties supported a wave of laws criminalizing basic protest rights and creating harsher penalties for certain activities. Many Democrats used January 6th as an excuse to support these bills but in reality the main target was the left, sometimes obviously, like laws in Arkansas, Kansas, and Montana that created increased penalties for protesting near an oil or gas pipeline. This was accompanied by a sharp turn toward “law and order” rhetoric by both parties, seen quite notably in the 2022 midterms and other local elections since 2021. The right-wing recall effort our own organization faced in Seattle was part of this process, though our defeat of it was a rare exception due to the effectiveness of Marxist strategy, tactics, and organization.
38. At the same time, the ruling class encouraged the backlash to #MeToo, which served as a collective confidence boost for women in struggle on issues of sexual violence and beyond, and watched as the deeply misogynistic manosphere pulled in millions of men and boys. Even beyond the most hardcore Andrew Tate fans, the vile ideas espoused in the manosphere had a knock-on effect among a much wider section of the population. Of course the overturn of Roe v. Wade, one of the most important gains for the women’s movement in the history of the country, was part of this overall process too, as was the drastic rise of anti-trans laws in recent years.
39. According to Pew Research data, in 2017, 54% said a person’s gender was determined by their sex assigned at birth. By 2022, over a year into the concerted wave of anti-trans bills and laws across the country, 60% believed this. The study showed that this increase was proportional across the board, meaning for instance that while young people still tend to have more progressive views on trans issues, the shift in attitudes has affected all demographics relatively uniformly. The Democrats created space for the current backlash when it cynically co-opted the language of anti-oppression struggles without delivering substantial change. This has allowed the Republicans to attack “woke culture” as a way to energize their base and exploit splits inside the Democratic Party.
40. Far from limited to the US, this right-wing backlash by the ruling class in the early 2020s was a widespread international phenomenon, as we have commented much on in ISA material, and which was a key topic of debate with the recently departed faction who underestimated this trend, its causes, and effects.
41. But while reaction to the global wave of revolts at the turn of the decade was certainly an impetus and catalyst for the ruling class’ offensive and rightward shift, the most fundamental backdrop has been the need to get the working class in line as the inter-imperialist conflict begins to seriously heat up. The power struggle taking place between US and Chinese imperialism, each flanked by ever more consolidated blocs, is an unavoidable development within the logic of the global capitalist system. It is an objective process, superseding the desires and machinations of the world’s leaders, instead subordinating them to it. The new age of inter-imperialist rivalry requires the ruling class to come up with accompanying narratives that can be used to bring along the masses as they plunge the world toward senseless bloody conflict while billions needlessly suffer and the planet burns.
42. The ruling class is still in the process of constructing their new narrative after the loss of credibility for neoliberal ideas – part of what led to the revolts of the 2010s and early 2020s – but we know that nationalism, and by extension militarism, are at the very center of it. These are flanked by increased xenophobia, transphobia, racism, sexism, and a reassertion of the nuclear family. This is a key piece of the context for the growth of right populism, including fundamentally anti-working class ideas recently taking hold among a bigger section of the working class.
43. As the 2024 World Congress World Perspectives document stated:
“Neoliberalism’s dominant ideas, parties, figureheads, and institutions are damaged beyond repair, and the ruling class is attempting to design a new ideological basis to justify its rule… Amid the decomposition of liberal bourgeois society, scare campaigns about war, terror, “national interests,” and “culture wars” are propagated. We see reactionaries pushing the reassertion of the reactionary pillars of the old order – nation, empire, (nuclear) family, etc.
Branding these ideas as new or radical and selling them back to working class people repackaged as “anti-establishment” is one of the ways which capitalism and imperialism will attempt to maintain its rule and fend off the threat of revolution, which while it may currently seem dim and distant, remains a part of ruling class consciousness.”
44. While the right wing of the ruling class is on the cutting edge of this offensive, it is not limited to them. Kamala Harris proudly proclaiming her plan to turn the US military into the “strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” is a part of the same trend. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fundamentally both a product and a further catalyst of the new period, have forced different wings of the ruling class to come together and unite around turbocharged nationalism and militarism. While differences remain about which wars to prioritize, the overall trajectory is clear. Even where there are exceptions, like Marine Le Pen in France or Georgia Meloni in Italy originally being closer to Putin, over time these figures have trended towards “getting in line.” We will comment more on this below, but if Putin refuses Trump’s “land for peace” deal, Trump too may well shift toward a more aggressive pro-Ukraine stance.
45. The same goes for both parties’ sharp turn toward xenophobic rhetoric and stronger border security policies, which is not at all unrelated to the ruling class’s need for heightened nationalism and patriotic pride. In the debate between Harris and Trump, Harris’s comeback to Trump’s disgusting lies about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets was to pose as even more in favor of strong anti-immigration policies. Without a strong left, social struggle, and labor movement to push back, it is inevitable that this push by both capitalist parties and their candidates, which is then echoed by the mainstream media, will have an impact on consciousness. Many comrades likely have anecdotes of friends or family who, in the last year or two made an offhand remark tinged with anti-immigrant, anti-China, or transphobic rhetoric, something they would not have done five years ago.
46. An important point is that our acknowledgement of a rightward shift in a large section of the US population, now including a bigger section of the working class than before, did not fall from the sky with Trump’s election. What we are seeing is the beginning of a deeper and longer-term process, driven by the ruling class and which has its roots in the objective needs of capitalism in the new era. As Karl Marx said, “The ruling ideas of every epoch are the ideas of the ruling class.”
47. The key thing to understand is that the rightward turn by the ruling class is not a reflection of a rightward shift in the working class, but rather exactly the opposite. Right-wing ideas like pro-imperialist nationalism and racism, sexism, transphobia and other divide-and-rule ideologies are fundamentally anti-working class ideas, inserted into it from the outside. But that doesn’t minimize their danger. Again as the World Perspectives document stated:
“Racist, sexist and anti-immigrant poison are indeed injected into society by the ruling class and serve their interests. But they also develop a life of their own. Likewise voting for the far right once as a protest vote is problematic but it is far more dangerous if this becomes a section of working people’s ongoing affiliation. As economic and social conditions worsen, the forces with reactionary “answers” to people’s problems are now sinking deeper roots in wider sections of the working class and middle classes.”
48. Underestimating the dangers posed by the ruling class’s ideological offensive would be a significant mistake, resulting in us being surprised by future developments and having an improperly balanced program. In the 2010s the US left, and the various tendencies within it, was primarily defined by how it differentiated itself from the Democratic Party and pro-capitalist liberal ideas. While still of course related to this, in the coming years the question of what politics, program, and strategy are needed to defeat the right and far right, including winning back millions of workers who have fallen victim to their ideas, will come increasingly to the fore.
Economic and Social Issues Cannot be Divorced
49. There are many statistics which show that the economy and economic hardship played an absolutely central role in this election. A widely circulated CNN exit poll broke down how people voted by how they rated the impact inflation had on their family. The results showed an extremely clear picture which fits in with the demographic shifts explained above.
Severe Hardship (22%) | Moderate Hardship (53%) | No Hardship(24%) | |
Voted Harris | 25% | 47% | 78% |
Voted Trump | 73% | 50% | 20% |
50. It’s clear that billionaire Trump’s fake populist appeal to ordinary people’s financial hardship had its desired effect. In the final weeks of the campaign while the corporate media droned on about Kamala Harris’s growing list of Wall Street backers, Trump maintained an emphasis on inflation and the disastrous “Biden/Harris economy.” According to Pew, 93% of those who voted for Trump cited the economy as “very important” to their vote, but it would be wrong to view this as negating Trump’s broader right-wing program, or the fact that tens of millions of people overlooked or agreed with Trump’s overt bigotry.
51. Economic questions and “voting with your wallet” are not politically neutral matters; the question, as always, is who will pay and who will suffer? While Trump undoubtedly spoke to ordinary people’s pockets, he did so with right wing “solutions.” Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, spoke to ordinary people’s pockets from the left, emphasizing raising taxes on big business, that billionaires shouldn’t exist, free public college, Medicare for All, and so on. The absence of a left alternative, not just in this election but in US society more widely, with the betrayals and defeat of reformism, gives the right essentially uncontested terrain to push its false reactionary “answers.”
52. While Trump gave lip service to populist promises such as no taxes on tips, overtime pay, or social security, these were obviously not accompanied by proposals for how to make up that lost revenue. Instead, whatever tax reductions ordinary people would receive under Trump (if these measures are even passed), big business and the super rich will see a far bigger reduction. And it is not the Pentagon or Homeland Security which will see its budget cut, but education, Medicaid, Section 8 funding, and other pieces of the federal budget that disproportionately affect the working class and poor. This is part of what makes right populism so dangerous, that it can disguise itself as “for the people,” while convincing working people to throw immigrants and oppressed minorities under the bus as scapegoats, weakening the whole working class all for the benefit of the super-rich.
53. In the final month before election day, the Trump campaign spent more money on an anti-trans ad with the punchline, “Kamala is for they/them, president Trump is for you,” than any other advertisement. Earlier in the ad the narrator says, “Kamala will give criminal, illegal aliens taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries.” The overall message of the virulent fear mongering ad is that your hard-earned money is going to “they/them,” an insidious appeal to ordinary people’s economic concerns and skepticism of how the government spends their money, through vicious transphobia and xenophobia. In the same vein, in the Jim Crow south, vile racism, anti-union activity, and later on anti-communism were all completely interconnected by the capitalist class and landowning elite.
54. While of course being patient with ordinary people who have genuine confusion as opposed to more deeply held right-wing views, we cannot shy away one bit from exposing the true and highly dangerous nature of right populism, and right wing ideas in general. This can only be effectively done through struggle with a working class program, and opposition to all capitalist parties.
State of Left Consciousness
55. To say that a rightward shift has taken place within US society, including among a section of the working class, is not at all to say that everybody has become right wing; far from it. For one, to state the obvious, most people living in the US did not vote for Trump. 77 million people voted for Trump out of approximately 245 million eligible voters, and just shy of 90 million eligible voters did not cast a ballot at all, more than those who voted for either candidate. Beyond that however, there are more important indicators.
56. Approximately 1.5 million people took part in protests against the war on Gaza in the months following October 7, where a strong anti-Biden and anti-Democratic Party mood was pronounced. The mass wave of student encampments last Spring was the largest student protest movement since the Vietnam war. Even before this, we had written about and discussed the not insignificant layer of young people who, following the betrayals of mainstream reformism from the 2010s, have drawn broadly revolutionary or “communist” conclusions, even if these are still very confused and not fully formed. Just under 1 million people voted for either Jill Stein, Claudia De La Cruz, or Cornel West, up from 480,000 for Hawkins and Gloria La Riva in 2020 (though down from 1.5 million for Stein in 2016).
57. Despites attitudes on several important questions shifting to the right in response to a ruling-class ideological offensive, there clearly remain tens of millions of people, disproportionately certain demographics such as young people, LGBTQ people, and Black women, who have stayed on the left and even moved further to the left. While the gains in consciousness from movements like Black Lives Matter have been slowly chipped away at, they are very far from being fully turned back. There are millions of workers whose consciousness has been positively impacted by watching (or for some, participating in) important labor battles like the UAW strike, Boeing strike, dockworkers strike, and Striketober before that, as well organizing drives at Starbucks, Amazon, and others.
58. There does exist, however, a strong mood of demoralization among the millions of left-wing and left-leaning working people and youth. This largely flows from the betrayals of reformism and defeats of various recent movements, and is then in turn inseparable from the rightward shift taking place in wider society. The only thing that can stop the growth of the right is a strong left, social struggle and workers movement. Demoralization and lack of clarity about what kind of struggle can win leads to a lack of struggle, which allows the right to take steps forward largely unopposed.
59. There are other, smaller indicators that show these same trends. It is no coincidence, for instance, the uptick in acts of politicized and anti-establishment “individual terrorism.” It has always been the case that in the absence of mass struggle, a small layer of deeply desperate individuals will attempt to “take matters into their own hands.” While not an act of terror, the widely discussed and tragic self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell in February, 2024 fit into this. The two assassination attempts on Trump, as well as Luigi Mangione’s murder of the United Healthcare CEO, also show this. The massive outpouring on social media and sense of gleeful vengeance at the murder of the CEO of a hated corporation in a hated industry shows at the same time the millions of ordinary people who still hold righteous hatred for the billionaire class, but are also desperately searching for and failing to find a viable strategy to fight back. If mass struggle does not reassert itself, we very well may see more acts like this in the coming months around any number of issues.
60. The positive features of consciousness which undoubtedly exist provide the raw material for the reemergence of a higher level of struggle in the years to come. It is through the revival of struggle on a mass scale that further steps forward will be taken in consciousness. In addition to fleshing out the broad outlines of what we can expect under Trump 2.0, we will also discuss more fully perspectives for struggle in part two and three of this document.