Faced with capitalist crisis and disorder, sharpen the class struggle!

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On 20 January, Donald Trump officially took office as president. A nightmare that the most responsible factions of the bourgeoisie had tried to prevent throughout Joe Biden's term of office. A resounding failure!

Capitalism is sinking into chaos at high speed

If the bourgeoisie had been surprised at the first election in 2017, it tried afterwards to control the moods and inconsistencies of the occupant of the Oval Office.

But the vengeful speeches and the discredit of the Democrats, proved more powerful than the convictions and trials brought against him for assault, blackmail or criminal behaviour during the January 2021 assault on the Capitol. This time, the American bourgeoisie is clearly overwhelmed by the situation created by this troublemaker who has never hidden his desire to weaken the institutions of the federal state and place himself above them. Trump's grip on all US institutions is now more solid and extensive than it was in 2016, reflecting a greater loss of control over the political apparatus on the part of the more lucid factions of the US bourgeoisie, and the exacerbation of tensions within the ruling class over how to best defend the interests of national capital. Trump's programme, more brutal and outrageous than between 2017 and 2021, clearly reflects the entrenchment and expansion of the populism that is sweeping the world[1].

The height of Trump’s irresponsibility can be seen both in his outrageous statements as in the personnel of the new cabinet, symbolised by the ineffable Elon Musk. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News presenter, accused of sexual assault, with no experience of high command, finds himself Secretary of Defence. Robert Kennedy Jr, a conspiracy-mongering anti-vax campaigner, becomes Secretary of Health. The climate sceptic Chris Wright has been appointed Secretary of Energy... In short, a team of nickel-and-dimers revealing a historical phase in which the American bourgeoisie, in the vanguard of all the bourgeoisies of the major Western powers, is tending to lose its compass, with the prospect of ever deeper and more chaotic political crises.

In short, what this new mandate prefigures is nothing less than a further accentuation of world disorder. The policies pursued by the new team can only fuel the destructive whirlwind of crises that are self-perpetuating and interacting on a global scale: economic shocks, wars, accelerated climate degradation and the collapse of ecosystems, social crises, uncontrolled waves of migration...

An ideological attack on consciousness

Using the miasma of the decomposition of its moribund system, the bourgeoisie knows perfectly well how to turn it against the consciousness of the working class, both to drive proletarians to despair and to sow the illusion of a ‘fairer’ and more ‘democratic’ future. While the Trump government is a key player and agent in the global disorder, it is not the cause of it, contrary to what a large part of the bourgeoisie and its media are trying to sell, the better to conceal the historical impasse of the system behind the ‘madness’ of one man.

This global ideological campaign is the continuation of a vast political offensive, initiated at the time of the election campaign, aimed of course at confusing the workers behind the flag of anti-fascism and promoting “the defence of the democratic governmental facade of capitalist rule. A facade designed to hide the reality of imperialist war, the pauperisation of the working class, the destruction of the environment, the persecution of refugees. It is the democratic fig leaf that obscures the dictatorship of capital whichever of its different parties - right, left, or centre - come to political power in the bourgeois state”[2]. This democratic ideological campaign is continuing, with each party adding its little stone to the mystifying edifice, like Macron in France denouncing a “reactionary international” or the German and British bourgeoisies denouncing Musk's “interference”.

But it is above all the most left-wing factions of the bourgeoisie who manage, in reality, to mystify the working class most effectively, in the name of defending ‘democracy’ against ‘fascism’. The left-wing parties thus lend their ‘radical’ support and credibility to the idea of a “reactionary international’.

The proletariat must remain deaf to this intense propaganda, which is continuing and will intensify, at the risk of finding itself further weakened in the face of the forces of capital. It must understand that the democratic state is the tool of capital, its worst enemy. Today, the only means of struggle for the working class remains its fight on the terrain of its class interests and the defence of its living conditions in the face of attacks from all these states, even the most ‘democratic’ ones, whether led by the right or the left.

This fight will also have to be waged against those false friends of the working class, the trade unions. In Belgium, despite the trade union common front which seeks to contain and sterilise the struggle by organising a day of action every month, accompanied by other strikes, such as in French-speaking education and on the railways, the class is tending to go beyond the trade union straitjacket and more and more workers are joining the days of action. Proletarians in Belgium are not alone. Since 2022, all over the world, in the United Kingdom, France, Canada and the United States, the working class has been raising its head, refusing to lie down in the face of the crisis, redundancies, inflation and ‘reforms’. Everywhere, they are gradually beginning to recognise themselves as a social force. Everywhere, small minorities are emerging to question the origins of the crisis, war and the chaos into which capitalism is plunging us. It holds out the prospect of overthrowing capitalism and building another society, without exploitation and without the barbarity of war.

WH, 22 January 2025

 

[1] See our article

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After the Trump election