American capitalism and its imperialist foreign policy extension are in serious trouble. The overall class balance of forces and shifting contours of world power have turned decidedly against it. The entire planet has been proletarianized, China and Russia have reemerged as superpowers in their own right, and NATO has suffered a humiliating defeat in Ukraine. The brief period of unrivaled dominance enjoyed by the US after the fall of the Soviet Union is over. Decades of decline, degradation, and discontent have reached a tipping point. Sweeping changes to the decrepit and discredited status quo are required if the capitalists are to preserve their power and privileges.

Marx explained that “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” In other words, the government exists to defend the class interests of the capitalists. However, the ruling class is far from homogeneous.

While its interests are diametrically opposed to those of the workers, it has its own inner divisions and differences. Like pigs around a trough, they more or less get along when there are enough profits to be had by all. But in times of crisis, the violent snarling, shoving, squealing, and back-biting begins. The capitalists’ warring factions are bitterly divided over how best to confront the existential threats they face.

In the absence of a mass working-class alternative, the gaping political vacuum has been filled by the right-populist hybrid of Trumpism. After decades of dysfunction, lies, and betrayals, the liberals and traditional conservatives are in disarray. Desperate for a change—any change—a slight majority of Americans opted to give the MAGA demagogues a chance. In an attempt to slow down the accelerating decline of American capitalism, Trump, Musk, and their reactionary cronies have torn up the traditional playbook and embarked on a reckless and risky experiment with no guarantee of success. Though they may not be explicitly clear about it themselves, the deeper historical necessity they express is an attempt to save capitalism from itself—and the growing anger of the masses.

Leaning on the “unitary executive theory” interpretation of the US Constitution—in which all executive power flows directly from the president—Trump is stretching that document to its limits. He calls it a “revolution of common sense.” The liberal-conservative establishment considers it a “constitutional” or “palace” coup.

Leaning on the semi-Bonapartist “unitary executive theory” interpretation of the US Constitution, Trump is stretching that document to its limits. / Image: Trump White House, Flickr

In a certain sense, they are both right. Crafted to meet the needs of rising American capitalism, the Constitution reflects a world that no longer exists. Since its adoption, there have been dramatic changes in the economy and in the relation of domestic and international forces. Unless and until it is tossed out altogether, a rolling constitutional crisis is the new normality.

Trump’s confrontation with the old guard has taken the form of a dogfight: “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.” But though they have been taken aback by the scale of Trump’s shock and awe, the so-called “deep state” establishment will not roll over without a fight. All of this injects even greater volatility into an already complex equation. Far from leading to a new equilibrium, it could well serve to accelerate the chaos and rising discontent with the existing state of affairs.

Due to the significant changes made to the state superstructure by FDR, who posed as a “friend of the workers” during the New Deal, the current state apparatus has long been associated with the “left.” But Roosevelt had nothing to do with the “left.” The aim of his limited social programs and state intervention was precisely to stave off revolution and preserve bourgeois rule during the Great Depression and to supercharge US imperialism during World War II.

For many decades after the war, the permanent bureaucratic apparatus maintained the continuity of bourgeois rule across administrations. But it has taken on a parasitic, self-perpetuating, and profoundly corrupt life of its own. Above all, it is no longer suitable for the current needs of the ruling class. Built to serve an overwhelmingly rich and dominant imperialist hyperpower, it is no longer suited for the transformed world of today.

So although Trump frames his attacks on the “ball of worms” as an attack against “woke Marxism” and “the left,” it is no such thing—that’s just smoke and mirrors. The reason Trump is retrenching and streamlining US imperialism to focus on the Americas while going after the “deep state” isn’t because he’s “restoring the people’s republic” or dismantling the bourgeois state apparatus. He’s acting out of hardnosed economic and geopolitical necessity. His aim is to build a state apparatus in his own image to defend the core interests of his faction of the ruling class.

Trump is retrenching and streamlining US imperialism to focus on the Americas while going after the “deep state” out of hardnosed economic and geopolitical necessity. / Image: In Defence of Marxism

Despite this or that superficial similarity and the panicked bleating of the liberals, we should be clear: this isn’t fascism. In Italy, Germany, and Spain, the fascists mobilized petty-bourgeois paramilitary thugs to impose a reign of terror, militarization, and war. They smashed the workers’ organizations and threw their leaders and millions of others into concentration camps. Today’s class balance of forces, which is overwhelmingly in favor of the workers, precludes this—even if there is massive confusion. Far from crushing them under a jackboot, Trump has promised a new Golden Age for American workers and co-opted their unions. Instead of perpetual war, he seeks to cut back on bloated military spending and direct imperialist intervention in the hopes of allocating more resources for the competition with China.

As communists, we fight Trump, not from a liberal perspective, but from the standpoint of working-class independence and the need for a socialist revolution. When analyzing any phenomenon, we have a simple rule of thumb: we support anything that increases the unity, confidence, and consciousness of the world’s working class and oppose anything that works against this.

As such, we don’t take sides in the cage match between Trumpism and the other factions of the ruling class. But this doesn’t mean we’re indifferent to the massive cuts and layoffs being inflicted on essential social programs and federal workers. Trump claims to be attacking the entrenched bureaucracy, but the vast majority of those being chainsawed are ordinary workers who process applications for Social Security or other benefits.  As always, we take the side of the workers—an injury to one is an injury to all! Not only do we oppose the “deep state”—we oppose the bourgeois state as a whole. We fight for a workers’ government that can uproot the apparatus of capitalist rule and the class relations it rests upon once and for all.