Editorial for issue 12 of The Communist. Subscribe now or buy a copy from MarxistBooks.com!

Numerous factors are pushing a layer of the US working class toward revolutionary conclusions—and they’re not letting up.

One crisis is layered upon another as legal scholars warn that a bonafide constitutional crisis has begun, and the business press sounds the alarm about recession fears.

Republican voters’ outlook on the economy has dropped 10% since mid-February—an early sign of disappointment in Trump’s promise to deliver “the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.”

During Trump’s first term, Fox News consistently reported above-water approval for his handling of the economy. Now, for the first time, Fox polls report 58% disapproval of Trump’s handling of inflation, versus 40% approval—a negative rating by an 18-point margin.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are in even worse shape. Two separate polls at the end of March found record-low approval ratings for the party. CNN found that just 29% of voters view the Democrats in a positive light (the lowest since 1992) while NBC reported just 27% (the lowest rating going back to 1990).

In other words, Americans don’t see the party in “opposition” as an alternative to Trump. In fact, the hatred against the ruling liberal status quo—which in the minds of millions equals declining living standards and endless war—was what fueled Trump’s win in November to begin with.

Constitutional Crisis

With Democrats discredited and a Republican congressional majority, Trump is plowing full steam ahead with his attempt to purge the federal bureaucracy and remake it in his image. The only “guardrail” left in Washington is the power of the courts—and they don’t have any real enforcement power if the executive branch decides to defy their rulings.

This is a grave dilemma for the ruling class. If Trump presses forward on his collision course with the authority of the courts—and all signs indicate that he will—he’ll be crossing a line that can’t be uncrossed. If the courts are exposed as mere talking shops, if their claim to legitimacy as interpreters of the country’s “sacred” founding document is shown to be worthless, then the ruling class will have lost another of its stabilizing pillars—for good.

In years past, the ruling class saw the prospect of a constitutional crisis as a distant threat at most, the alarming music of the future, not a short-term scenario. Now it has arrived. The fact that they’re facing it so helplessly and indecisively is a sign of their incredible short-sightedness and arrogance. The inevitable outcome will be an even more rapid loss of legitimacy for all the ruling institutions in the eyes of the vast majority of the population—a necessary prerequisite for a revolution.

The Need for Class Independence

The role of communists is not to come to the aid of these discredited institutions, or to defend one ruling-class party against another. Far from treating the Democratic Party as the “lesser evil,” we have consistently explained that it has become the primary political vehicle of the ruling class, and that it deserves condemnation no less than the Republican Party. We shed no tears for the sorry state it finds itself in today, and we don’t look to it to “resist” Trump or defend “democracy.” We say: neither party represents working-class interests!

Our task is to make a consistent case for class-independent politics. What is needed, today more than ever, is a coherent political program that can unite the working class around its own class interests and galvanize it against the interests of its common enemy: the capitalist class, their hired politicians, media, state, ruling institutions, and world outlook.

Approaching politics from the standpoint of the class war means rejecting the way issues are framed by the dominant bourgeois parameters. The fundamental conflict of our time is between those who work for a wage and those who own capital and profit from the value we generate with our labor.

The idea that the country is divided “down the middle” by a culture war between “progressive” liberals and MAGA “conservatives” serves to blur this underlying class conflict. The main weapon in the hands of the class enemy is to disguise the fight of “the 99% versus the 1%” as a “50-50” conflict of one half against the other.

Bourgeois politics portrays the Republicans as “the right” and the Democrats as “the left.” The battered approval ratings of the Democrats are presented as evidence of a “shift to the right.” Communists reject this superficial view. It’s a step forward that the hypocritical mask of the liberals no longer fools a significant segment of the working class.

The only reason Trump has managed to falsely present himself as a friend of the workers is the total absence of class politics and the gaping vacuum on the left. But his pro-worker charade won’t stand the test of events. The real question is this: when Trump betrays his voters and his base fragments, where will they turn? Back to the old, discredited party of the hated status quo? Or will there be a genuine revolutionary alternative putting forward a class-war program?

The Maneuvers of Bernie and AOC

At a moment that screams out for class-independent politics, the leaders of the “soft left” are touring the country attempting to corral voters back into the smoking rubble of the Democratic Party. The stated aim of the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour is to pressure Republicans in swing districts to vote against Trump’s policies.

Sanders has paid lip service to the need for independents to run outside of the Democratic Party, not as part of a plan to create a mass, working-class alternative, but to pressure the Dems to “open the doors and let working-class people in.” He and AOC merely seek to restore the Democrats’ damaged image, at a time when real socialists should be helping to push the party into the dustbin of history—and creating a new party to help finish the job.

Despite our limited size, the RCA is the only party arguing for consistent class-independent politics. Our forces are growing, and so is the urgent need for our message. •