Editorial for issue 15 of The Communist. Subscribe now or get a copy from MarxistBooks.com!
When asked what he thought about last month’s “No Kings” rallies, which turned out millions to protest against him, Donald Trump said, “I don’t feel like a king. I have to go through hell to get things approved.”
It’s easy to understand why the chief executive feels beleaguered. Trump hasn’t had a success story since he convinced Google Maps to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Now, his cascade of political failures threatens to fracture the cross-class coalition which lifted him into power.
MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon identified three pillars of Trump’s 2024 victory: “Stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal aliens . . . and redo the commercial relationships in the world around trade deals.” But the demands of the capitalist system frustrate Trump’s efforts on all three points.
Forces beyond his control
Six months into his term, Trump remains mired in an unwinnable proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. The Middle East is an even greater catastrophe. Last month, he narrowly avoided getting sucked into a long and costly war with Iran. But his “Operation Midnight Hammer” was little more than a $200 million PR stunt with high explosives. It settled nothing, and Netanyahu still seeks to draw the US into a wider regional war.
Meanwhile, the debt continues to climb—topping $37 trillion—alongside interest rates, and the economy teeters on the brink of disaster.
Trump had to beat a costly and embarrassing retreat in his trade war against China. The president, renowned for his vanity, was reduced to pitiful boasting about a largely meaningless trade deal with Britain—one of the few major economies America maintains a trade surplus with.
To distract from these failures, he launched a vicious new offensive against immigrant workers, seeking to arrest 3,000 a day. When workers fought back, he sent federalized National Guards and Marines to LA—but backtracked after provoking a firestorm of class rage on the streets.
This is the man who liberals fear is an incipient dictator and gravedigger of constitutional “democracy.” Amid the gilded luxuries of wealth and high office, Trump is tossed to and fro by great historical forces outside his control. “A king is the slave of history,” Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace. Trump proves that the same is true of presidents.
Long before Trump was born, the capitalists developed a system which brings together raw materials and labor from every corner of the globe, requiring a highly differentiated international division of labor. “Forever wars” and mass immigration aren’t policy decisions which can be reversed on a president’s whim. They are consequences of this very system, which all American presidents are tasked with securing and defending.
In a land of crumbling bridges and abandoned factories, the ruling class can no longer afford to maintain an empire on which the sun never sets. / Image: LHOON, Flickr
An empire in decline
While its rival capitalist powers were digging themselves out of the rubble, America emerged from World War II with a mighty economic base. This underwrote massive military and diplomatic clout which allowed the US to spread its tentacles across the globe, conquering access to new markets, labor, and raw materials.
That’s over now. In a land of crumbling bridges and abandoned factories, the ruling class can no longer afford to maintain an empire on which the sun never sets. Like a schoolyard bully whose secret cowardice has been exposed, recent presidents like Trump and Biden haven’t been able to push the world around the way their predecessors used to.
Attacking Iran risked shattering Trump’s fragile coalition. A YouGov poll on the eve of the bombing showed a mere 23% of Republicans supported US involvement in Israel’s war on Iran, with 53% opposed. While Beltway neocons urged on Trump, MAGA fanatics like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and Charlie Kirk openly criticized the drive to war.
By keeping the war short, Trump sidestepped a split in MAGA . . . for now. But the same fundamental economic forces which have impeded his every move are conspiring to finally tear his coalition apart. It’s not a question of if, but when.
Downturn on the horizon
In relentless pursuit of profit, capitalists set workers to producing goods and services for sale on the market. The faster and more efficiently workers produce, the greater the returns for the capitalists—until workers produce much more than can be profitably sold, and it all comes crashing down.
Just such an economic crisis is looming. Some capitalists are already bracing for a downturn. “I think there’s a chance real numbers will deteriorate soon . . . Employment will come down a little bit. Inflation will go up a little bit,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said last month, adding ominously, “Hopefully, it’s just a little bit.”
The bombing of Iran and the timing of “Liberation Day” were both in Trump’s control, allowing him a chance to manage the chaos. But a recession will play out in its own time and by its own logic.
When it hits, Trump’s fellow capitalists will demand that workers pay for their crisis. This means overseeing brutal attacks—including on the frustrated workers who powered MAGA’s rise. The “Big Beautiful Bill’s” attacks on Medicaid are only a prologue. When economic slump collides with an unpayable debt, the ruling class will have no other option than attempting to slash Social Security and Medicare, along with even bigger cuts to Medicaid.
Ted Grant, the greatest Marxist theoretician of the postwar era, was fond of saying, “Events, events, events will drive the working class … towards the policies of social revolution.” Earthshaking events on the horizon will drive ever more workers—including many in the MAGA coalition today—towards communist politics. Our immediate task is to build the fighting force of trained Marxist cadres which can organize them and help show them how to sweep away the rotten capitalist system once and for all.