What Should We Do?

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, meaning that his second term will begin in January 2025. The Republican Party also won control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court is mostly Republican-leaning. In response to this “travesty”, bourgeois liberals who had long urged working people and ethnic minorities to “vote for the lesser evil” have resorted to actual racism and classism to cope with the Democrats’ loss; they simultaneously attack white workers that voted for Trump as “racists” and ethnic minority workers that voted for Trump as “race traitors”! Many of the workers that voted for Trump, however, also voted for pro-worker reforms, indicating that many simply voted for Trump as a supposed “lesser evil” for them. This does not mean that they were correct; in fact, they were as incorrect as those who voted for Harris. Legitimizing any bourgeois candidate simply goes directly against workers’ interests. We will discuss why this is the case in our first section.

That being said, millions of workers across the country simply did not vote for either big party, for they understand that American bourgeois “democracy” is undemocratic, and they see that the bourgeois state oppresses the masses regardless of which party represents it. Many see American imperialism’s support for the genocide of Palestine and understand that both parties are guilty of that crime. This is particularly the case for Muslim Americans across the country, but it also applies generally as most Americans support a ceasefire in Palestine, the bare minimum acceptable position that is already to the “left” of both Harris and Trump. This action is in line with the interests of the proletariat; rather than legitimizing the bourgeois dictatorship, these intermediate and advanced workers oppose the bourgeois dictatorship, even if many may not know what we must do to build workers’ power. That is what our second section is about.

Against the Big Bourgeois Parties

Opportunist groups like the “Communist Party” of the USA (“CP”USA) and the American “Communist party” (A“CP”) promote the ideology of one of the two bourgeois parties: the former supports the Democrats, and the latter the Republicans. Both parties claim that their preferred bourgeois party has a “stronger proletarian base” and is “better for the proletariat” than the other bourgeois party. The “CP”USA claims that Trump’s electoral victory results in fascism, while A”CP” assumes that his victory would reduce American warmongering and imperialist aggression against Russia, an imperialist country they sympathize with. These views do represent the views of many petty-bourgeois and even many proletarian Americans, and the latter hold these views as most trade unions have been crushed while those that remain have pushed these incorrect, bourgeois ideas; many proletarians also trust the bourgeois “democratic” process due to their indoctrination from capitalist “education” systems and bourgeois media, as well as the failure of us communists in our education and organization of the masses.

But before getting into that, let us explain why these ideas are wrong. Supporting Donald Trump’s campaign for office is quite obviously wrong; Trump represents a reactionary wing of finance capital, and despite his populist demagogy supporting American economic “independence”—which includes cutting economic ties with China and other trade partners via tariffs, coercing “partners” (semi-colonies and weaker imperialist powers) in NATO to “carry their own weight” in contributing to the imperialist agency’s warmongering programs, etc.—, he does support imperialist aggression against rivals, from weaker countries like Palestine, Cuba, and Venezuela to rival imperialist countries like China. Trump supports “neomercantilism” (tariffs and reduced foreign assistance) to benefit big capitalists that extract resources from semi-colonies (as opposed to those that shift industry itself to those semi-colonies), and he promotes a hostile foreign policy that benefits warmongering capitalists that specifically target the aforementioned countries. The Soviet Textbook on Political Economy says this:

The fiscal policy of the bourgeois States serves as an important instrument of monopoly inflation of prices. In the epoch of free competition it was predominantly the weaker countries, whose industries needed protection from foreign competition, that resorted to high customs duties. In the epoch of imperialism, on the contrary, high tariffs serve the monopolies as a means of attack, of struggle for fresh markets. High tariffs help to keep up monopoly prices within the country.

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This is why Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and other capitalists in aerospace companies supported his campaign. Furthermore, in terms of domestic economic policy, Trump opposes wage increases, unionization, welfare programs, and other pro-worker reforms; despite his claim that he wants to end inflation, his tariff policy will only increase inflation, and despite his nominal opposition to taxes on tips or overtime pay, he will generally increase taxes on working people as he reduces taxes on the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, he simultaneously promotes chauvinism among workers with his rhetoric of deporting illegal immigrants while taking advantage of immigrant labor’s precariousness by supporting (legal) immigrants’ employment and discouraging unity with citizen workers, prompting the depression of wages. Workers that supported Trump are simply dissatisfied with Biden’s failure to improve workers’ conditions; they were forced to choose a “lesser evil”, and they chose Trump as that; they will only face further economic troubles. As communists, we must work to show them that choosing Trump will not improve our class’s position, but it will lead to a greater degree of exploitation for us.

Supporting Harris and the Democrats is also wrong. The Democrats represent a more-established, and thus politically more moderate, wing of the financial bourgeoisie. That explains why Alphabet (owner of Google), Apple, and other technology monopolists funded her campaign. While claiming to oppose Trump’s policies and posing as an “anti-fascist” alternative to Trump, the Democrats largely continue Trump’s policies and fall in line with him, albeit at a “moderate” scale. While the Democrats prefer free trade as their way of maximizing profits, they continue to allow big capitalists to artificially increase prices, and they refuse to raise the minimum wage or improve welfare programs for the working people. They claim to want to tax the rich to pay for more welfare programs, which does not do anything to weaken the bourgeoisie’s dominance in capitalist society, but besides that and their other virtue-signaling, they let the workers’ plight in America and across the world worsen. They continue the trade war with China while not wanting to cut off relations with it entirely, strongly support funding NATO’s warmongering with Russia in Ukraine, continue their terrible sanctions and embargoes against Cuba, Venezuela, etc., maintain their aid for the genocide of Palestine. They are also the ones in power that support the repression of pro-Palestine activists and other progressives within the US, making them no better at maintaining “democracy” than their “opponents”. They have already expelled more undocumented immigrants than Trump was able to deport. And, most importantly, they are already working with the Republicans in implementing their goals, such as strengthening Trump’s powers, banning TikTok, and so on. Continuing to pretend that the Democrats are a “lesser evil” as they work with the Republicans to defend America’s bourgeois dictatorship is an opportunist policy, and the working people of this country showed that as millions of former Biden supporters did not vote this election.

Now, why do the big bourgeois parties continue to have support from working people? It is true that millions of workers refused to vote, but tens of millions did take part in this capitalist spectacle. The reason for this is that workers lack organizational power in America and in other capitalist countries; in the 20th century, workers had more power as over one third of them were unionized while the establishment of socialist states forced capitalists to give (white) workers better wages and programs, funded by superprofits from semi-colonies. Furthermore, revolutionary organizations formed and worked with proletarians to fight for economic and political goals, revolution among them; parties like the Black Panther Party built real political power among the people. The bourgeoisie then went on the offensive to crush these movements in the US; thanks to COINTELPRO, revolutionary parties and mass organizations saw opportunist lines spring up to split and destroy them, pseudo-revolutionary organizations gained support from the bourgeois state as they disrupted progressive and revolutionary movements, and even the petty-bourgeois “new left” saw great intervention from the state.

[The FBI] specifically had a campaign to destroy the New Left, which included SDS. While groups like PL [Progressive Labor Movement/Party] and RU [Revolutionary Union, predecessor of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA] were not themselves “New Left” (they were communists), their interaction with forces in that realm greatly blurred the boundaries. In this respect it is worth looking at the Bureau’s statement on their COINTELPRO-New Left. It is rare for a smoking gun to appear in history so fully articulated, but in the case of the FBI’s New Left Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) there is little left to the imagination:

Our Nation is undergoing an era of disruption and violence caused to a large extent by various individuals generally connected with the New Left. Some of these activists urge revolution in America and call for the defeat of the United States in Vietnam. They continually and falsely allege police brutality and do not hesitate to utilize unlawful acts to further their so-called causes. The New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses. With this in mind, it is our recommendation that a new Counterintelligence Program be designed to neutralize the New Left and the Key Activists.

The same document explained in direct terms that the purpose of the program was to, “expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize the activists of this group and persons connected with it.”

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In the meantime, labor unions saw a decline with the American capitalist system’s transformation. Finance capital shifted large amounts of industry from old industrial areas (northeastern US) to new ones (southern and western US) within the country and outside the country (to the global South). The dismantling and outsourcing of factories broke up unions, as did the bourgeois state’s hindrances on unions’ ability to strike (with “right-to-work” laws that allow non-union workers to benefit from unions’ presence without paying dues or partaking in strikes, bans on and violent suppressions of strikes, etc.):

REAGAN: This morning at 7 a.m., the union representing those who man America’s air traffic control facilities called a strike.

MALONE: Reagan was talking about the Professional Air Traffic Controllers union. He was talking about Ron Palmer. Ron was, in fact, an air traffic controller in Miami. His union and the government – they’d been fighting over wages, among other things, and the union decided to strike. Ronald Reagan was on TV to say that he was not happy about this.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

REAGAN: It is for this reason that I must tell those who failed to report for duty this morning, they are in violation of the law. And if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated; end of statement.

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With this great defeat of workers’ power in America, and the restoration of capitalism in socialist states worldwide, workers have had no choice but to choose between bourgeois parties to pretend they have power, while these bourgeois parties make sure that nothing in the people’s interests gets passed. State unionism has taken over the role of workers’ economic struggles, and this means bourgeois union leaders have led workers into bourgeois politics’ nonsense, greatly reducing class consciousness and even trade union consciousness. Besides the ongoing people’s wars (in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru) and the current national liberation struggles (of Palestine, Yemen, the revolutionary Sahel states, etc.), the working class and its allies have quite little power against the international financial oligarchy, particularly here in the belly of the US imperialist beast. Liberals and opportunists see this and tell us to “choose the lesser evil”, but we’ve already shown how useless that is.

In fact, not only is it useless, but it is a form of tailism, as is pandering to reactionary workers with patriotism for US imperialism (which the “MAGACommunists” of the “ACP” engage in). We can clearly see this with the growing unpopularity of imperialist wars, the massive support for minimum wage and other economic improvements for workers, and, most amazingly, the outpouring of sympathy and praise for the assassination of UnitedHealth Group’s CEO Brian Thompson. That last fact is proof that the working class in America does have a spontaneous understanding of the problems with aspects of the capitalist-imperialist system, and that it largely does not oppose violence as a tool to stop those problems. It is true that this violence was an act of adventurism, which “has the immediate effect of simply creating a short-lived sensation, while indirectly it even leads to apathy and passive waiting for the next bout” [Source]. Nonetheless, it reveals the mass base that revolutionaries can and must unlock to fight for better economic conditions and, more importantly, workers’ political power; it also shows just how disorganized the masses and revolutionaries are, and our dire need to get to work!

How, then, do we build workers’ power?

Form the Three Weapons of Revolution!

In place of bourgeois electoral politics, communists must work to form a proper communist party upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, a people’s army under the party’s leadership and dedicated to serving the people, and a united front of mass organizations that exercise workers’ power before, during, and after revolution. There is nothing that substitutes working for revolution when it comes to empowering workers and improving our position in society.

First and foremost, we must form a communist party, such as the party we hope can use our “Manifesto for the American Communist Party (Maoist)” (this party does not exist yet, nor is there even a pre-party organization; this is simply a draft manifesto that could be used for a party in the future). To build this party, pre-party members and cadres must be among the masses, and they must be able to educate and agitate them regarding topics they care about to a point that they would be willing to take action. Once members of the working people are interested, the priority would be to get them into their various organizations. When the party is organizing to be a functional group, cadres must find advanced workers that can join the party; party chapters should spring up all over the country, and they should democratically decide their higher-ups, up to the central committee.

The party must use democratic centralism in its organization, so that it can execute its tasks properly; this means all positions are elected, the majority rules over the minority, higher bodies rule over lower ones, and decisions cannot be doubted once a vote has been held confirming them—until it is time to judge the decision and implement a new one. Party members and cadres should be able to analyze the situation in a given area, conduct social investigation (“the investigation of the conditions of society,” particularly via class analysis and taking ideas from the masses [Source]), make decisions via democratic debate, and implement those decisions in a centralist manner by bringing the masses’ ideas back to them with directives and action. By applying the mass line, it can properly involve itself in the mass struggle, expanding its operations and exercising real leadership. The vanguard party must be involved in all the people’s struggles to expand its influence over the masses and to show that its interests align with the interests of the people.

Communists and advanced workers must work in existing mass organizations and form new ones for all segments of the people, namely anti-imperialist groups, unions, factory/workplace organizations, workers’ parties (possibly including some non-Maoist “communist” ones, so long as they do not oppose the Communist Party’s program), women’s associations, cooperatives, students’ groups, oppressed nations’ revolutionary advocacy groups, environmentalist organizations, indigenous nations’ organs of power, progressive queer groups, religious mass organizations, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups, mutual aid teams, and so on and so on. In fact, it is this legal work that allows certain reforms to be made for the working class, or at the very least it shows that communists strive to serve the working people and that reform does not truly place the working class in power over society; this will radicalize intermediate workers and win over some backward ones to the revolutionary movement. By engaging in boycotts, strikes, protests, and so on, we show that either we can win concessions from capital, or that we strive to empower the working class. No amount of pandering to bourgeois liberals and pacifists can do that.

The mass organizations must be able to replace state-sponsored organizations that claim to represent the people; bourgeois organizations must be replaced with genuine workers’ ones. This does not mean abandoning work within bourgeois organizations; on the contrary, it means working within them to win working people over to build revolutionary groups.

We cannot but regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary disquisitions of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such work, that it is necessary to withdraw from the trade unions and create a brand-new and immaculate “Workers’ Union” invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part very youthful) Communists, etc., etc.

If you want to help the “masses” and win the sympathy and support of the “masses”, you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the “leaders” (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations—even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers’ co-operatives (the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organisations in which the masses are to be found.

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With Trump in power, our work will be difficult, no doubt. In 2020, Trump and the bourgeois state led by him harshly repressed Black Lives Matter protesters and anti-racist groups generally, and he has been anti-union (which prompted many bourgeois union leaders to side with the Democrats, though that does nothing for workers) and strongly against any sort of pressure against US imperialism’s support for the genocide of Palestine. With the Republican party in power in all three branches of government, the state will be quick in repressing mass organizations; but that would not have changed under the Democratic party given the intense contradictions US imperialism has to deal with. All this means is that we must work to develop trade-union and then class consciousness among the workers; this occurs with educating and agitating the masses, then organizing them in the many mass organizations listed above, and then uniting these groups under a united front. With the mass organizations in a united front, we will have a proper mass base upon which a revolutionary communist party can launch revolution.

But to secure the gains our class makes with mass organizations, and to defend the masses from fascist goons and eventually repressive arms of the state, the people need organizations to defend themselves and their communities. That is why we need armed self-defense teams, militias, and a people’s army (specifically a red army for our socialist revolution), with members from all sectors of the masses, with supervision from the masses, and with leadership from the communist party to ensure the security of working people and the conquest of state power. As long as obtaining arms is legal, we must use that right to obtain weapons and train rigorously with them, and in the event of confrontations with fascist goons, working people must not need state authorities to defend themselves from those agents of capital.

At the same time, we need security when it comes to allowing people into organizations. Mass organizations obviously have the fewest restrictions for entry, with their bars being dependent on their rules. The people’s army has more bars, with ideological and physical testing needed to determine whether people should be let in, among other things. And of course, the Communist Party needs the highest bar of the three weapons, for it consists of the vanguard of the proletariat, i.e. the very best fighters of our working class. This is one key reason the proletariat’s party is democratic and centralist: by imposing the proletarian line on the minority, bourgeois line, the party protects its unity and considerably reduces the influence of bourgeois infiltrators. It is also why the party is militarized and why it uses the mass line, for federal agents wreck organizations by promoting either tailist pacifism (i.e. abandoning revolutionary work) or commandist adventurism (i.e. engaging in needless violence) as long as the masses are separated from those organizations.

When mass organizations get banned, i.e. when we are no longer allowed to legally resist capitalism’s exploitation and all the other forms of oppression this country has, that is when we shift to covert mass work. Since Trump has made grand threats against those he deems Marxists (which will include a good number of opportunists of course, but a good number of them will collaborate with this fascistic repression), it is likely that we will deal with this challenge. At the same time, Trump nominally supports expanded rights to bear arms, so we must take advantage of that for our class’s defense. Under these conditions, it is likely that the masses will become greatly dissatisfied, and that is when a people’s war can begin.

Even if revolution does not occur under Trump, we need to be prepared for conditions where the masses are riled up and ready for an uprising. Without these fundamental preparations, any mass dissatisfaction and agitation will fizzle out as soon as it begins. Working people need to resist capitalist pressures against our wages, our welfare programs, and our unity; we must also oppose imperialist endeavors against oppressed nations, and we must combat bourgeois media’s warmongering. When we are organized and we can actually face off the bourgeoisie, the state will want to crack down on the movement—and that is when the revolution can begin.

Marx pointed out: ‘Every few years the oppressed are authorized to decide which members of the oppressor class will represent and crush them in parliament!’ … Thus, elections are merely the method to renew the government administration of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in capitalist societies, and this happens even in the most democratic government we could imagine, and they are the usual means to preserve and develop capitalism. …

To resolutely uphold Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism, it is decisive to conquer Power countrywide, build the People’s Republic of Peru [or a socialist republic in “America”] and serve the world proletarian revolution by assuming firmly the undefeated and unblemished ideology of the proletariat in its three integral parts: the Marxist philosophy, the proletarian political economy and scientific socialism, not only to understand the world, but mainly to transform it. Thus, we must always base our politics on the powerful truth of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, today more than ever, because Marxism is standing up against the sinister converging attack of both imperialism and the counterrevolutionary revisionist offensive led by Gorbachev and Deng. This is true even more so today, when the bloody world counterrevolution dreams of wiping out the proletariat and its irreplaceable historic role, aiming at the heart of the class: its ideology Marxism- Leninism-Maoism Class of which Chairman Mao said: “The proletariat is the greatest class in the history of humanity. It is the most powerful ideological and political revolutionary class, and due to its strength, it can and must unite the great majority of the people isolating and smashing the handful of enemies.”

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Workers and oppressed nations in America, unite with the people of the world! Smash the chains of US imperialism, crush the bourgeoisie, and build socialism under your proletarian dictatorship!