Fascism is the means of last resort used by the capitalist ruling class to destroy the working class when it poses a revolutionary threat. We have shown how the objective situation of U.S. capitalism in a terminal crisis cannot restore profits when it has largely destroyed the conditions for its existence. It cannot compete in the production of value with the rise of China and the BRICS which will soon monopolize all inputs – critical raw materials, cheap labor, advanced technology etc – without going to war on its rivals which means in practice the working people of the world.
Trump’s tariff plan is to make trading partners pay to uplift the declining U.S. hegemony which is rapidly being eclipsed by China. The so called “Mar-a-Lago accords” goals summarized by Stephen Miran (Trump’s economic advisor and senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital) pressures foreign states to concede to trade beneficial to the U.S. including buying more U.S. products, transferring production to U.S. soil, buying U.S. made weapons, and buying long term treasuries at a loss. This pipedream ignores both the complex production chains which have transitioned the most complex manufacturing equipment and developed a massive highly skilled workforce to China.
In short the Trump/Miran plan is a flop from the start and has crashed financial markets. The nations which bend a knee are not the productive powerhouses or sources of value creation capable of meeting its demands and China has doubled down in its defiance. Trade war is quickly escalating towards hot war. Who will blink first? Will the competing imperialist powers set off WWIII or will the working class lay its hands on the levers of history and remake the world with a rational socialist plan where worker’s control of trade is democratically decided in the interest of our species survival?
Trump’s tariffs are ultimately a regressive tax targeting the working masses whose purchasing power is quickly dwindling. In addition they were implemented as a con and a gift to big finance/speculative capitalist hedge funds and corrupt insiders to short the market. They know the ultimate result will be inflation! As a gift to small government demagogues, Musk’s DOGE has failed at cutting government spending while hacking government agencies to pieces.
Trump demagogically plays to industrial union workers with the false promise of manufacturing returning. The red meat for his reactionary base is protectionist “Buy American” chauvinism, a nativist political weapon against international capitalist rivals and dependent nations alike. Tariffs and protectionism divides and pits workers internationally against each other when what is needed is international class unity in action. His plan is for U.S. imperialism to wrest control of all trading partners and the global south, in particular trade from China and the BRICS free trade alliance.
The tariffs will not bring manufacturing back to the USA. The only way they will bring back manufacturing is when they drive down your wages equivalent to what they pay in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Burma! To do that the capitalist ruling class must terrorize immigrant labor and crush the unions! The attack on federal workers and immigrant labor is the first step!
To resolve the objective situation of the terminal crisis as capital destroys nature, driven by the contradiction between class society and nature in favour of the imperialist ruling class, Trump must resort to fascism to smash the subjective intervention of the working masses who produce the wealth, defending nature from total destruction, and who are the only class with the potential power to overthrow the ruling class and capable of building a new objective reality – the socialist future.
The rights and freedoms currently under attack cannot be sustained or regained within the confines of constitutional, legislative, or electoral means. The Rubicon has been crossed although the consciousness of the masses lags behind the objective situation. It is the task of the revolutionary vanguard workers to show that only a class independent workers’ government can regain and extend the rights under attack by fascist regimes at home and internationally.
The cross class politics of the Popular Front promoted by Stalinism and social democracy still dominate the trade union movement and the movements of the oppressed. The failed reformist dream that socialism would emerge as the logical extension of democratic rights has exploded as fascist reaction and in one genocidal war against the masses after another from Syria, to Gaza, Congo and Ukraine.
It follows that only organized labor, united globally, and led by a new world party of socialist revolution, can meet the challenge of overthrowing decaying capitalism and building a socialist world where society lives in harmony with nature. In the U.S. working people must wake up to the immediate threat the fascist coup poses to their own survival and that of humanity.
We must organize in our millions to resist this coup, revive the unions, create a fighting Workers/Labor Party, build councils and militias to expropriate the robber barons, bring down the Trump regime, installing a Workers’ Government’ with the power to set up a Workers’ state ruling in the interests of the working people. A Socialist United States would cease its domination of the world by its genocidal wars and create an example for workers everywhere to build a world federation of socialist states.
Our fighting Action Program embraces every democratic demand the masses are taking to the streets and fighting for including:
The separation of church and state, freedom of free speech, thought and the press, right to assemble, to be secure in one’s papers (phones) and domicile, due process, equal justice, habeas corpus, rights of migration, control of one’s body, right to self defense, right to jobs with living wages, education, medical care and to be free from discrimination and oppression. Free all political and class war prisoners. Bring the deportee’s home!
Build Labor and Community Self Defense committees and networks
The bosses seek to drive a wedge between immigrant workers and the unions! We must organize and mobilize to defend immigrants from deportation with mass mobilization of the labor movement. We need class struggle actions to stop the deportations while organizing immigrant labor into existing and new unions.
The ruling class wages attacks on immigrants to divide the working class and blind workers to our mutual class interests. Karl Marx wrote of chattel slavery “Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” This quote could be applied to immigrant labor as well as to Black oppression today. The attacks on DEI and “Woke” is racism and misogyny in 21st century rightist spin. Don’t buy it!
Our fight is not only to protect the immigrant workers doing the most dangerous and unhealthy work, but to take hold of the economy and run all jobs under workers control in a safe and healthy manner with living wages, benefits, vacations, medical insurance and pensions!
Today Trump, Musk and MAGA are going after the legal right to unionize. To protect our lives and livelihoods workers need to organize the unorganized coast to coast and bring all immigrant workers into the trade union movement!
To counter the life crushing inflation and right to fire that the ruling class is unleashing through Trump and Musk, we need to reinvigorate the workers movement with politically independent class struggle methods.
We need to take our unions back from do-nothing leaders who tie our movement to the capitalist Democratic and Republican Parties and refuse to challenge anti-labor laws with mass strikes and general strikes!
To rebuild our labor movement we must start by defending and embracing immigrant labor and their families! Everyone in the USA is an immigrant except the Indigenous, and now MAGA wants to deny their citizenship rights! We Demand Full Citizenship Rights for all workers and Indigenous people! We Fight for the Same Contract for the Same Work through international struggle on both sides of the borders! This is how we prevent the bosses from driving wages down at home! This discourages Capital flight.
For the Indefinite General Strike: To win even the most basic demands labor must take the lead to escalate the ongoing mass mobilizations to workplace occupations and General Strikes organizing mass strike committees in every city, town based on factory and workplace action committees that pose the question of which class should rule!
The self conscious working class movement must launch the General Strike to take power and establish a Worker’s Government. The Worker’s Government must be based on worker’s councils that expropriate the capitalist class and reorganize production under workers’ self-management and control!
Trump flim-flammed the masses with his opportunist claim that he would end the inflation of the prices of the necessities of life. He has done nothing but spur on price hikes while causing layoffs with his trade collapsing policy!
Against high prices we need worker/community wage and price committees across the whole country and in every neighborhood to refuse inflation. These should be backed by union-led workers’ militias, which will be the organized power of the workers’ state..In the same way, layoffs and plant closings must be met with factory occupations and sit-down strikes industry-wide!
The capitalist class and their dying system has brought living things to the brink of extinction by climate catastrophe and war. The workers movement can only win if it offers an alternative program and builds a mass party of labor that mobilizes the masses around its program.
The workers movement and its fighting Workers/Labor party must:
Build class struggle caucuses in our unions and community organizations of struggle which displace leaderships who accommodate the bosses and promote class peace.
Organize and mobilize to defend immigrant labor from deportation with mass mobilization of the labor movement, with actions to stop the deportations while organizing immigrant labor into existing and new unions.
Defend Black, Brown, Asian, Indigenous and immigrant communities with union led self-defense guards built up in workplace and factory committees, united and mobilized in district and regional workers assemblies. The workers’ organizations must welcome, defend and advance the equal rights of women and all specially oppressed people. Hands off foreign students! Hands off Palestine solidarity activists! Smash the fascist bands in embryo!
Demand: Jobs for all with living wages and automatic COLA’s to counter inflation. To close the widening gap between productivity and stagnant wages, to share necessary work among all capable hands we demand to shorten the workweek with no reduction in pay! The automation coming to industry via technology must be made to benefit the working class. 24 hours work for 40 hours pay is long overdue!
Demand: Trillions of dollars in public works programs to build and provide free quality housing, education and healthcare for all, upgrade public transit, re-forest the wilderness, eliminate toxic infrastructure and make a transition to clean energy.
Expose Business Secrets and fight for Workers Control: the workers party will show what the savings are. The bosses say we are unreasonable. We demand: Open the books of the finance and monopoly capitalists, the corrupt politicians, the back room deals, the hidden offshore accounts, to identify where the money is. Such will show that the billionaires and big shareholders hoard, speculate for personal gain rather than investing to produce for public need.
When the capitalist class and bosses say profit is their right and wars are in the national interest, we demand an end to speculation, hoarding and military profiteering. Stop funding the Military Industrial Complex. Not one person, not one penny for imperialist war!
The bosses hired Trump to bring Genocide home! We say: End the genocides! Stop funding the Ukraine proxy war! For dual defeatism in all inter-imperialist conflicts! Dependent nations have the right to expel occupiers! Defend Gaza! Free Palestine! Imperialists hands off the Syrian Revolution!
Demand NO IMPERIALIST WARS! CLOSE THE 900 overseas bases! Troops! Build a “Come Home Now Movement” and an enlisted persons international union.
When the bosses try to stop our strikes with Police, National Guard and their private armies, the workers movement must appeal to the soldiers to organize enlisted unions which support the workers movement to arm the workers militia to defend the Mass Strikes, factory and workplace occupations and the seizure of the capitalists’ hoarded and stolen social wealth.
Defend Panama! Hands off Greenland! Workers need an international program! Build a working class anti-imperialist United Front to stop inter-imperialist wars! For a New Zimmerwald and a New Workers International!
The workers movement and Workers Party will mobilize with class struggle methods of the Mass Strike (general and political) to implement a Workers Government which will nationalize the commanding heights of industry, finance and monopoly capital without indemnification, run under worker’s self management and democratic workers central planning.
Communist Workers Group (CWG-USA), 04/26/2025
Posts
