In his latest episode of imperialist reality TV, Donald Trump scolded Ukraine President Zelensky, then shut off U.S. arms and intelligence to Ukraine in its war with Russia, then restored them–for now. Trump announced across-the-board tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, walked some of them back, then declared a new global tariff on steel and aluminum–revenue he needs to cover his planned tax cuts for the rich (reuters.com, 1/22). Canada and Europe, long the closest of U.S. allies, fought back with tariffs of their own. With Trump igniting trade wars and admitting the potential for recession, Wall Street markets took a nosedive (BBC, 3/10).
In the current period, as the rulers sow death and chaos and everything seems up for grabs, a communist analysis is essential. Beneath the daily drama lies a global crisis of capitalism and sharpening tension between a U.S. in decline and rising Chinese and Russian imperialism. At the same time, boiling disagreements have split the U.S. ruling class over how to plunge the working class into fascism and war.
Recent worker-driven struggles have brought terms like “fascism” into everyday conversation. But simply calling Trump a fascist paints an incomplete picture. Our ultimate enemy is the capitalists’ dictatorship, whether it’s under the guise of liberal democracy or the more open state terror that ushers in full-blown fascism. As Vladimir Lenin, a leader of the Russian communist revolution, warned over one century ago, trade wars are the gateway to shooting wars. The bosses will use workers as cannon fodder, no matter which party wins the next U.S. election or who is the president.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party fights to turn the guns around on this entire racist, sexist, imperialist system, from Port-au-Prince to China’s Pearl River Delta. Our task is to win millions to fight for communist revolution and a society run by and for the working class.
Ukraine war reveals U.S. bosses’ conflicts
The March 2 Trump-Zelensky showdown exposed deep divisions among the U.S. rulers. The Small Fascist, Fortress America bosses who’ve hijacked the Republican Party have no interest in paying for a costly ground war between the U.S. and China or Russia. A rival group, the finance capital main wing led by the multinational banks and energy companies, is fronted by the Democratic Party. With trillions of dollars in worldwide assets defended by over 800 U.S. military bases, these Big Fascist imperialists see Ukraine as a linchpin of their anti-Russia containment strategy. Trump challenged this strategy in his 2019 phone call to Zelensky, when he attempted to barter U.S. military aid for dirt on Genocide Joe Biden, the main threat to Trump’s re-election in 2020. The Democrats responded by impeaching Trump.
Trump’s openly racist, crudely transactional approach lacks the Democrats’ phony gloss of “freedom” and “democracy” or their cynical pandering to Black, Latin and immigrant workers. The Big Fascist finance capital bosses use these deceptions to mislead honest anti-racist workers into supporting liberal Democrats–even though the Democrats, if and when they regain power, will lead the drive to war and open fascism. Faced with the escalating crisis of capitalism, they will have no other choice.
In truth, neither faction of the U.S. ruling class cares about the more than one million working class Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dead or wounded. There are no good bosses! All capitalists–and their politician stooges–serve only the brutal profit system. Communists serve only the international, multiracial working class. That means uniting to smash ALL bosses and their racist, sexist, nationalist ideas.
The rise and fall of U.S. imperialism
Since World War II, U.S. imperialism has mostly dictated the global political and economic order through the supremacy of the U.S. dollar. The dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency was the foundation for the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the NATO military alliance. For decades, the U.S. bosses and their European junior partners carved up much of the world’s markets, labor, and resources. When workers’ power in the once-revolutionary Soviet Union and China was reversed, U.S. imperialism became even more dominant. But now, with renewed imperialist rivalry, the U.S. is no longer an unchallenged global superpower. Its “unipolar moment” is done (polsci.institute, 4/9/24).
One marker of this fall is the fracturing of the U.S.-European alliance (Atlantic Council, 2/24). Three others: the economic and military rise of China, the de-dollarization of the BRICS alliance, and Russia’s defiance of NATO in Ukraine. Grand strategies aside, the Ukraine war has been a disaster for U.S. imperialism. It has depleted U.S. military stockpiles while bringing Russia and China closer together and expanding markets for Russian fossil fuels in China and India. Meanwhile, nationalist bosses from Brazil to Burkina Faso, long subjected to U.S. imperialist coercion, are realigning with Russia and China. In Africa’s Sahel, local capitalists are swapping French troops for Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries (Deutsche Welle, 10/27/24). They’re also signing more profitable trade agreements with Chinese mining companies to extract gold, lithium and uranium (Le Monde, 1/5).
Lenin was right. The imperialists’ unquenchable thirst for profits drives them to redivide the world’s spoils, over and over again. When imperialist diplomacy inevitably fails, imperialist war inevitably follows — and the global imperialist order is reset. It’s worth noting, however, that the two biggest imperialist wars - World Wars I and II - ended with millions of communist-led workers smashing the rulers’ war machines and uniting the working class under the red flag. And they will again!
The only solution to fascism: communist revolution
Within the U.S. and Europe, inflation and price gouging, mass racist and sexist terror, and sickening wealth inequality have created fertile ground for fascism – and for PLP. Just as the capitalist bosses use imperialist war to resolve their differences with bosses in other countries, they use fascism to resolve crises within the countries they rule. They develop extreme racist, sexist, and nationalist ideas to their fullest, most deadly expression. Their aim is to reorganize the social, political and economic life of a country around their necessity for imperialist war.
It’s not just Trump and the nazi-loving Elon Musk and J.D. Vance. The European Union’s liberal president announced that Europe is in “an era of rearmament” and must transition to war preparation (Reuters, 3/4). Meanwhile, the bosses of Europe’s largest economy, Germany, have “reawakened” and pledged to reorganize their economy for war (Financial Times, 3/5.) Their alarm went off after the openly fascist Alternative fur Deutschland doubled its share of the vote to 20 percent and finished second in the recent federal elections. Building a mass international PLP will remind the German bosses of the last time they “reawakened,” and the Soviet Red Army obliterated Nazi fascism from Stalingrad to Berlin.
Workers today are bravely resisting in isolated struggles, from fighting genocide in Gaza to resisting racist police terror and deportations. But only a united international working class, led by a mass revolutionary Progressive Labor Party, can smash capitalism for all time. The growing international crisis presents both dangers and opportunities. As the capitalists dismantle reforms won by previous generations, it’s a dead end to try to fight fascism through alliances with sell-out liberal capitalists. The only solution is a communist revolution! Join PLP!
