Trump’s inauguration was like the coronation of a king. In his speech, he said he was “saved by God to make America great again.” The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, flashed a Nazi salute. A who’s who of billionaires, judges, and politicians clapped as Trump signed bigoted and unconstitutional executive orders to fundamentally reshape the federal government and concentrate his own power, while targeting immigrants and transgender people. Then he threw his pen into a screaming crowd.

Millions of people are probably wondering: is this the end of democracy in the U.S.? The answer isn’t entirely clear. Trump’s authoritarian approach is an acute threat to basic democratic rights, and potentially even American capitalist democracy itself. He has threatened to jail his political opponents. If an escalating trade war causes a new recession, it’s not hard to see Trump attacking striking workers, like the threats he’s already made to jail and deport student protestors. More profound events like war could serve as a pretext for a more developed authoritarian regime in the United States.

But it’s also quite possible that Trump will go too far and provoke backlash from sections of the ruling class, using the tried and true methods of the financial markets, who grow tired of watching him tank the economy and shred up imperialist alliances. We are on the cusp of witnessing major divisions within the U.S. ruling class about the way forward to save their system while maintaining U.S. imperialism’s dominance over China and the rest of the world. 

Meanwhile, workers and young people are fighting back to defend their democratic rights, which were won through mass struggle. There has even been outrage expressed at Republican town halls across the country, and the “50501 movement” protests have spread quickly, often organized by individuals with no experience with activism. Socialists support these protests because attacks on democratic rights are attacks on working-class people. At the same time, we think that the capitalist form of democracy only serves those in power and needs to be replaced with genuine working-class democracy, or socialism.

The next step is to take on Trump and the billionaire class at the same time, something the corporate Democratic Party will never do. Even if a section of the ruling class removed Trump—which they will only do under mass pressure from the working class—Trumpism and the far right wouldn’t just go away, and could morph into something even more extreme and dangerous. 

Right populism is rising around the world, with some parties with active fascist wings making gains. And whatever pro-corporate politician the ruling class installed in Trump’s place would continue much of Trump and the ruling class’s shared reactionary agenda of making the working class pay for capitalism’s crises and ramping up their conflict with Chinese imperialism. This is why the fight to bring down Trump and end Trumpism once and for all is directly connected to the fight against capitalism itself.

A Strongman To Save U.S. Capitalism

Up until now, Trump’s strongman approach won broad ruling-class backing because U.S. capitalism is facing new challenges in a new period, with a severe crisis of legitimacy that has only worsened since the 2008 financial collapse. In 1964, 77% of Americans believed the government did the right thing “most of the time” — today only 21% do.

Part of the ruling class’s hope is that Trump’s strongman-style populism—based on scapegoating minorities to keep workers divided, threatening to jail protesters, and jumping over partisan gridlock in Congress—will help their system’s crisis of legitimacy by getting things done, or at the very least distract from it. It appears they were even willing to risk Trump establishing a more imperial presidency and weakening other branches of government, in part because the ruling class wants to push through major changes before it triggers mass struggle from an angry working class, who have nothing to gain from what Trump is doing.

The ruling class’s other key problem is Chinese imperialism, which threatens to overtake U.S. imperialism in the struggle for global domination. Trump wants to focus the U.S. military and economy on preventing China from eclipsing the U.S. in its economic, military, and global reach, calling for the weaponization of space and raising $500 billion to make America “the capital of AI,” which will mostly go to the military. He sees Ukraine as a sideshow, resulting in highly public breaks with the previous NATO-centered imperialist strategy, like when Trump yelled at Ukrainian president Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. 

Trump is unapologetic about fighting for the naked interests of US imperialism. His strong talk about invading Panama to secure control of the Panama Canal amounted to BlackRock buying out a Chinese port company that was already hemorrhaging money. He still wants to buy Greenland and has threatened to invade Canada. His mineral deal in Ukraine is about processing toxic and radioactive rare earth metals away from US citizens. He mused about using ethnic cleansing to develop Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East. Some of these things will definitely not happen but the change in approach is very real. He renamed the Alaskan mountain Denali to Mt. McKinley—after a former president from the Gilded Age when naked corporate corruption, raw land grabs, and U.S. imperialist expansion were the norm. 

Trump is trying to reshape the government to fit the new requirements of U.S. imperialism, including replacing sections of the federal workforce with disciplined and loyal ideologies regardless of competency. He’s undermining or abandoning the old institutions of imperialism like the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, United Nations and NATO, most visible with his abrupt shift on the war in Ukraine. He is targeting 10% of the federal workforce, as well as centers of “soft” imperialist power like USAID and the State Department.

Finally, Trump wants to whip up nationalism among the U.S. population. The right wing needs to cover up the brutal truth about American capitalism, which is why he attacks school curriculums that tell the truth about slavery. His replacement of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs with “Merit, Excellence and Intelligence” is an effort to re-establish the underlying values of capitalism in its early days, while at the same time rolling back the gains won by working people and the oppressed. His scapegoating of immigrants—including making English the official language—and trans people is meant to keep workers distracted from the country’s disgusting levels of wealth inequality.

While the billionaires see dollar signs in the chaos, they do not have control over the situation. After all, Trump is in it for himself. When he lost the vote in 2020 and the political establishment abandoned him, Trump tried to stage a coup to overturn the outcome. Now since coming back to office, he has pardoned literally all those who participated in January 6, 2021. During the George Floyd uprising, Trump said, “I need the kind of generals Hitler had.” He fired the prosecutors who charged him with fraud. More recently, when federal judges, some he himself appointed, stood in the way of his agenda, Trump quoted Napoleon: “He who saves his country breaks no law.”

Class Struggle Defines Democracy

While Marxists have long pointed out that “a democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism,” this does not mean the capitalists need democracy for their system to work. Democracy is useful to the extent that it gives their system a popular mandate by offering voters a choice of two similar political parties through elections. This allows the capitalists a relatively stable way to change policy while still maintaining control over their system. Even today, defenders of capitalism like The Economist are forced to admit that only one in twenty people worldwide live in a “full democracy.”

Indeed, early capitalism often developed under the repressive conditions of autocracy. While absolute monarchy was something capitalism needed to overcome to fully mature, in its current period of protracted crisis, the arc of history does not bend forever and always towards more democracy. In fact it now points firmly in the other direction.

Working-class and oppressed people have had to struggle for every reform that expanded democratic rights or improved living conditions. The ruling class always stood in the way—terrorizing Black people who challenged Jim Crow, force-feeding women on hunger strike over the right to vote, and shooting workers who went on strike. They only made concessions to contain the movement from spreading and maintain control. This is how union rights were won under an aristocrat like FDR, civil rights under warmonger Lyndon Johnson, and abortion rights under a right-wing hack like Nixon.

Events like the Russian Revolution of 1917 played a profound role in shaping capitalist democracy over the next few decades. The capitalists watched helplessly as Czar Nicholas II was overthrown and replaced with a workers’ democracy, which they then did everything they could to overthrow. Workers, women, national minorities, and LGBTQ people won gains after the revolution that were unprecedented in the capitalist, “democratic” West before a number of these were reversed under Stalinism. Capitalist politicians in the West responded by granting limited reforms to avoid revolution in their own countries.

Even after Stalin took power and crushed workers’ democracy, the existence of a non-capitalist society continued to threaten the capitalists and inspire working-class and oppressed people. Still, capitalist politicians always tried to claw back their concessions and suppress movements, but backed away under threat of working-class action. 

For example, Richard Nixon had authoritarian methods. He used the power of the state to spy on his political opponents, unleashed the FBI to kill and arrest the Black Panthers, and then fired the prosecutors who pressed charges against him. Nixon got caught, and was forced to resign over the Watergate scandal during a period when the U.S. ruling class was still reeling from over a decade of powerful mass movements. Union density was four times higher than today. It was also the height of the Cold War. This is why Congress impeached him: it was better to show that democracy “worked” than risk popular rebellion.

As the Soviet Union stagnated and eventually collapsed, the ruling class took the offensive. In the U.S., Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines and financial markets. Reagan cut taxes on the rich and razed unions. Clinton carried out historic cuts to welfare. George W. Bush made U.S. imperialism more interventionist, but when he tried to invest part of Social Security in the stock market, he faced massive backlash. Obama bailed out Wall Street and maximized fossil fuel extraction while the working class was devastated by climate change and the 2008 financial crisis.

A similar pattern took place around the world. As the threat of revolution waned, the U.S. aggressively promoted “democracy” and “free” markets. Neoliberal democracy was anchored by individualism and meritocracy, and common struggle receded.

The Rise Of Trumpism & The Fade Of Democracy

The 2008 financial collapse profoundly discredited capitalism and the political establishment. A wave of global rebellion was kicked off by the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa which toppled dictators in early 2011. Hundreds of thousands of workers and students in Wisconsin occupied the state capital to stop attacks on unions.

That summer, there were mass occupations and strikes in Southern Europe against austerity, which inspired Occupy Wall Street to ignite class consciousness in the U.S. like wildfire. Capitalist classes everywhere were horrified by mass rebellions like what followed the murder of George Floyd, where the burning of the third police precinct in Minneapolis was supported by a majority of the U.S. population.

In its decay and decline, the ruling class can’t tolerate a world where powerful CEOs are brought down by allegations of sexual assault, oil pipelines are blocked by indigenous people, and unions go on strike and shut down the auto sector. They can’t have Democratic politicians promising to “abolish the police” simply because a mass movement demands reform. They prefer Trump and did everything they could to sabotage social democratic reformers like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who called for working class unity against the billionaires. To a section of the ruling class, liberal democracy has become more of an obstacle than the useful tool it once was.

Back in office, Trump has triggered events that can easily spiral out of control, especially as he inspires other right-wing nationalist forces, like the far right AfD in Germany, to act like him. There are more wars involving major countries today than at any point since WWII. Over the last few years, capitalism has faced unprecedented crises of climate change, migration, and pandemics. It’s not difficult to imagine that the next major economic crisis will lead to a full scale crisis of the system like the 1930s, with the further collapse of global cooperation among major capitalist countries. 

Defend Democratic Rights – Fight The Billionaires

Trump is far from the first U.S. president to have authoritarian ambitions. What makes him so dangerous is that he’s come to power at a moment when the ruling classes are engaged in a massive militarist buildup on a global scale, and when the forces of the organized working class are still weak compared to the past.

Only the working class can build a movement strong enough to force Trump to back down. Globally, mass protests, occupations, civil disobedience and strikes have stopped coups—as in South Korea recently—and brought down outright dictatorships. In fact, during Trump’s first term, mass protests and airport occupations stopped his Muslim Ban, and the threat of general strikes ended his government shutdown over border wall funding. Likewise, a breakthrough here or in another country can have a ripple effect in the fight against right populism around the world.

Federal workers who are protesting Trump and Musk were pointing in the right direction when they carried signs with slogans like “immigrants didn’t take my job,” by linking attacks on jobs to scapegoating immigrants. Working-class struggle can naturally bring out solidarity against a ruthless opponent. The next step is to put forward a program to fight for the interests of the whole working class, and to directly challenge corporate politicians like Trump and MAGA billionaires like Elon Musk.

We need to link all these struggles into a mass day of action on May 1, International Workers’ Day, which was also the day when immigrants organized a successful one-day mass national strike in 2006 to stop threats of deportations. While union density is still relatively weak, unions still represent millions of workers, and there has been a revival of strike action in recent years. However, rank-and-file workers will need to organize to put pressure on the conservative union leaders who have based their careers on working with rather than standing up to the boss.

When Trump’s plans to privatize the U.S. Postal Service were leaked, rank-and-file workers with Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) called for national protests on March 23. Then they forced their conservative union leaders in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) to support it. Now the much wider Federal Unionist Network has signed on. The next step is to link up with others facing attacks from Trump and Musk, like trans people, immigrants, environmental groups, etc. It’s worth pointing out that some of the most energetic builders of these actions voted for Trump, and now recognize it was a mistake.

It’s also necessary for the movement to build its own working-class party that can put forward a coherent alternative to Trump’s divisive corporate politics. The Democrats are not such a force. They are a capitalist party funded by and accountable to the billionaires. They themselves admit they have “no coherent message” to defeat Trump. The party leadership blames immigrants and trans people for their electoral defeat, and has carried out imperialist policies for over a century. They have no plan to defeat Trumpism, because that would require alienating what remains of their corporate donors.

Trump 2.0 is both the result of deep changes taking place within global capitalism, and his reelection has caused these changes to speed up even further. Working-class people can defeat Trump, but to eliminate the basis for future authoritarians like him, we need to eliminate capitalism once and for all. Real and lasting democracy can only happen on the basis of socialist society, where billionaires don’t exist.