Where Is the U.S. Going?

Donald Trump was re-elected president, and everyone is asking: What now? To determine the tasks of socialists in this new period, we must understand how we got here and what the election represents.

The Rise and Decline of the Liberal World Order

The U.S.-led liberal world order was built on the ashes of the Soviet Union. The fall of this non-capitalist country not only established the U.S. as the world’s unquestioned superpower, but also opened up previously untapped resources and markets to plunder, including in China. To maximize their advantage, the U.S. imperialists pursued globalization with a vengeance—offshoring production and expanding their reach to every corner of the Earth. NATO was extended to the borders of Russia, and time and again the IMF and World Bank rewrote the rules according to the interests of Wall Street.

The spread of U.S. imperialism’s tentacles internationally was given ideological justification, with liberal capitalism proclaimed the pinnacle of human civilization. The U.S. and its allies ruled the world in the name of liberal principles like “freedom and democracy” and “defense of the defenseless.” Such mantras provided a convenient cover to assert U.S. dominance, inject its capital abroad and strangle oppressed countries.

The liberal world order seemed indestructible, but a temporary breath of life for imperialism could not stop the decay that lies beneath. The very forces set in motion by U.S. hegemony have steadily eroded it. Unprecedented U.S. capital penetration propelled the growth of world trade, the industrialization of neocolonial countries and the development of China—and in the process hollowed out the U.S. manufacturing base, deepened its social rot and reduced its overall economic weight. To stabilize their position, the U.S. imperialists must reverse the current dynamic. But to do so requires tearing apart the basis of globalization by raising tariffs, pressing the neocolonies, confronting China. This underlies the current conflict within the U.S. ruling class.

Cracks Start to Emerge

The 2008 financial crisis caused the first serious cracks in the global order. Great economic pain was inflicted on working people, especially black and Latino families. Many went bankrupt in the face of ballooning subprime mortgage payments or were saddled with skyrocketing medical debt. Millions of decent-paying jobs were wiped out and replaced by temp, low-tier and gig work. To rescue its system, the ruling class bailed out the banks deemed “too big to fail” and resorted to money printing and wild speculation—setting the conditions for an even greater collapse down the road.

In the political arena, the bourgeoisie did what some thought impossible: put a black man in the White House. Barack Obama was the living embodiment of liberal principles. His campaign was premised on “hope and change,” including to end the deeply unpopular war in Iraq, which was muddying the U.S.’s image. It also played up the false notion that electing a black president would show that the oh-so-progressive U.S. is a post-racial society.

Installing a black man to head U.S. imperialism cost the ruling class nothing, and it was just the thing to calm the masses (and the bosses) before the president engineered the auto and bank bailouts on the backs of the working class and deported millions of immigrants. The anti-worker attacks were aided by union leaders, who enforced tiers and givebacks in the name of saving jobs. Obama’s election didn’t come about because the bourgeoisie no longer needed black oppression to bolster its rule. Quite the contrary, “progressive” identity politics corresponded to its needs at the time.

But the financial meltdown also accelerated trends opposed to the liberal status quo. Economic devastation sowed the seeds of political discontent and the emergence of populism as an alternative. Within the ruling class, a conflict emerged over how best to shore up U.S. imperialism: go full steam ahead with the liberalism that had long served it so well or try something else. The two main bourgeois parties struggled internally and with one another to resolve which would be the party of the status quo and which would break with it.

In the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee contest, Hillary Clinton was the face of the party establishment, while Bernie Sanders was anti-establishment, having been brought to the fore by relentless post-2008 neoliberal attacks. His populist rhetoric against the “billionaire class” and promise of “Medicare for All” attracted crowds. He represented those liberals who thought that the status quo required some new dressing to stop the bleeding. But this option would have been a far too radical and expensive change for the liberal establishment. Why go with “Medicare for All,” which would cost a pretty penny, when the party could go the Obama route again? The first woman president would cost nothing, earn some “progressive” points and keep the wheels of liberalism turning for another day.

The Republican showdown was Donald Trump vs. the party establishment. Trump reflected those in the ruling class who judged that liberalism’s days were done and wanted to put U.S. imperialism on a different track: right-wing populism, protectionism and closing the border. Trump knew that a section of the class he represented was losing out to its rivals, like China, and something needed to be done. His solution—mirrored by his behavior and flouting of liberal norms—was a break with everything that had defined the previous period.

The mere possibility that this guy might be the nominee sent shock waves through the Republican establishment and liberals everywhere. Trump was everything they hated. Liberalism is polished and hypocritical, the friend who smiles before stabbing you in the back. Trump, though, was uncouth and promised to do the stabbing from the front. His rabid insults and vulgar talk of “grab ’em by the pussy” ran totally counter to the liberal veneer of concern for the oppressed.

The conflict within the ruling class spilled over into the 2016 presidential election, as captured by the candidates’ campaign slogans: Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Clinton’s “America is already great.” But the Clinton loss was not a decisive defeat of the liberal order. In fact, the entire first Trump presidency was a clash between the forces of the status quo and the White House, making it perhaps the most chaotic political adventure in recent history. Every day, a new scandal emerged and another administration official was being fired. The Muslim ban, border wall and Trump’s Charlottesville response were an affront to liberal values and further reduced America’s stock as a beacon of diversity and tolerance. Then the pandemic broke out, bringing more economic misery and the friendly advice to inject bleach.

The anti-Trump “resistance” mobilized the foot soldiers in the faction fight between the “woke” liberal Democrats and the president. The liberals viewed Trump as a dire threat to the kingdom they had built and were not going down without a fight. They promised nothing for workers and the oppressed in the elections but right after began to posture as the biggest defenders of minorities. From crying for kids in cages at the border to kneeling for BLM in kente cloths, they did everything they could to rally enough people to kick out the “fascist” Trump and reclaim the White House.

Unable and unwilling to preside over deep changes in the economy and the orientation of U.S. imperialism, Trump’s bourgeois opponents used the only tool they had: liberalism. They launched a moral crusade for token measures, preaching liberal values ever more aggressively as the material basis for providing real relief shrank further and further. That is why they sometimes went to extremes, like promising to defund the police and advocating for gender-affirming surgeries for migrants.

The liberals used fake concern for the oppressed to cover for the fact that conditions for the vast majority were only getting worse and that the ruling class, to salvage itself, was squeezing the working class harder. The more the liberals pushed token measures while the overall economic situation deteriorated, the more they eroded the effectiveness of their own methods, preparing the ground for the working class to be entirely repulsed by them.

Where Was the Left?

Many white workers, fed up with their worsening economic situation, went for Trump in 2016. Plenty of others, especially black people, stood by the Democrats out of fear of reaction. This anger needed to be redirected, and those in the administration’s crosshairs needed to be meaningfully defended.

The task of the left was to advance the struggle for a better standard of living in combination with a fightback against the attacks on minorities. Success hinged on giving this struggle a class-independent character. This required the left to participate in the various “resistance” movements to expose the bankruptcy of liberalism and point the way forward for workers and the oppressed. To make clear that any real improvements could be won only through confrontation with the interests of the ruling class—liberal and illiberal alike—which is responsible for and benefits from oppression of all stripes.

The perspective should have been to intervene to break the liberal chains restraining these movements and split them along class lines. In the women’s movement, this effort needed to be directed against the middle-class, #MeToo feminists. In BLM, against the anti-racist liberals. The defense of immigrants could only proceed in opposition to the liberal “open border” defenders of U.S. hegemony. In each case, furthering the struggles of the oppressed required a rupture with liberalism and a fight to link these struggles to the material interests of the working class.

But this is not what happened. Instead, the left echoed the liberal hysteria, including by railing against “Trump’s base.” This liberal poison wrote off white workers who voted for Trump as unvarnished white-supremacists, and dismissed all concerns they had for their worsening conditions. The result was to reinforce racial divisions—to drive these workers deeper into the arms of reaction, and black people into the Democratic fold, despairing of the prospect of winning white workers to the fight for black liberation. The left also gave full-throated support to every liberal movement—e.g., the women’s marches, sanctuary cities and BLM—all in the name of stopping Trump and the “rise of fascism.” Most leftists latched onto Sanders, AOC and the Squad and fueled illusions in these Democrats, whose role was to provide a left cover for the liberal status quo and shackle anger to their party.

All this activity was a capitulation to the currents trying to keep the existing order afloat. Instead of charting an independent path for workers and the oppressed, the left chose a side in the imperialists’ faction fight, hitching themselves to the liberals. Ultimately, the left became associated with defense of the declining material conditions of the status quo, which had been screwing workers for years. This could only push working people further to the right.

The consequences of the left’s capitulation can be seen in the current reactionary backlash against migrants, a backlash fueled by liberal moralizing and joined by many liberals, who switched from calling for opening the border door under Trump to slamming it shut today. It was a betrayal for anyone calling themselves a socialist to have supported any aspect of the liberal “resistance.” To meet workers’ needs and defend minorities, liberalism must be rejected. This key lesson from the first Trump presidency must guide the struggles of the moment.

The Deathblow of the Liberal World Order

In 2020, the Democrats won back the White House with Joe Biden. But the Democratic Party left initially lined up behind Sanders, whose second bid for the Oval Office was even more popular than his first. Things had gotten so bad under Trump that Sanders’s populist rhetoric had renewed appeal among working people, and some bourgeois circles were open to providing more of a social-democratic prop to U.S. imperialism. In the end, though, the majority of the ruling class and the working class for that matter did not want a drastic change, but rather a “return to normalcy” amid the COVID pandemic.

The Trump years had been a political circus and seemed like something out of a drug-fueled fever dream. But more than anything, the pandemic swung the pendulum back toward the politicians of the status quo. The ruling class was in search of tested and reliable leaders to navigate the storm. Biden rode the powerful wave of “national unity” to victory, temporarily putting the forces of right-wing reaction on the defensive.

Biden had promised to end the pandemic, revive the economy and rebuild America’s reputation. He embodied a return to the liberal road, proclaiming: “As president, I will ensure that democracy is once again the watchword of U.S. foreign policy, not to launch some moral crusade, but because it’s in our enlightened self-interest.” Unbeknownst to the liberals who celebrated the recapturing of the White House at the time, the Biden presidency would be the kiss of death for the liberal world order. Once in office, the Democrat, like Trump, proceeded to print money with abandon to compensate for the economic disruption caused by the bourgeoisie’s pandemic response. The short-term stability this bought was soon offset by rampant inflation and sharpening social and political polarizations.

In his presidency’s early days, Biden pledged to restore the country’s infrastructure and manufacturing base and postured as the most “pro-union president since FDR.” Accordingly, he proposed measures like “Bidenomics,” Build Back Better and the PRO Act. It was looking like the imperialists had found the guy who could finally bring things back to the way they were—until reality hit. The Biden agenda fell apart as the ground was being eroded—militarily, economically and politically—from under his feet. Instead of being able to confront China as planned, Biden was drawn into one military crisis after another. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan symbolized the waning power of the U.S.

Then the war in Ukraine erupted. Russia’s invasion in response to NATO provocation was the first direct challenge to the U.S. in recent history. To the extent possible, the U.S. marshalled its resources and forces as a show of strength but failed to stop Russia, revealing weakness instead. NATO is now losing the war as Russia lays waste to Ukraine.

The U.S. bourgeoise has little interest in Ukraine besides containing Russia. Antagonizing the Putin regime has cut into U.S. imperialism’s ability to pursue more important objectives, like confronting China. But to pull out now would signal more weakness and cut against the liberal values in which U.S. foreign policy is wrapped. How could the U.S.—the great defender of democracy against the evil dictator Putin—abandon Ukraine? How could the U.S. rulers justify the expansion of NATO if not under the guise of defending the defenseless? This proxy war has cost the U.S. billions. When Ukraine and NATO inevitably lose, it will be a blow to U.S. hegemony.

The war in Ukraine is extremely unpopular with the American public, which is sinking under the inflation the war helped stoke. Billions are being sent overseas to fund a war the vast majority don’t care about, while many people cannot afford groceries. But the Democratic administration tells them that everything is fine and the economy is better than ever, so stop complaining and fall behind support to Ukraine. A great way to get the public behind your military adventures!

Lofty liberal ideals again smashed up against material reality in the case of the Palestinians. For over a year, the Democrats—the party supposedly representing global enlightenment—have overseen the genocide in Gaza. Their support to Israel is ironclad, genocide be damned, because the Zionist state is U.S. imperialism’s outpost in the Middle East. But it is harder to preach “democracy” and “defense of the defenseless” when one is providing the bombs being dropped on Palestinian babies. This contradiction sparked a protest movement of outraged youth, who wanted the U.S. to stop being so hypocritical and make good on its liberal values. Widespread repression caused some activists to look for answers beyond the campus encampments, but many others were demoralized and went silent. For those who want to halt the genocide, the first step is to break with the liberal politics holding the struggle back.

Biden’s four years proved to be a catastrophe for working people and accelerated the bleeding out of U.S. hegemony. After he was forced to drop out of the presidential race by his party—because having a man who was one bad stretch away from death’s door as the face of U.S. imperialism was not very encouraging—Kamala Harris entered the fray. She was the last dying hope of the liberal status quo, and she lost in a major way.

This time around is not the same as 2016. Trump’s victory then was considered a fluke, and the “resistance” coalesced to put things back to normal. The Democrats fought back with everything they had. But now they are busy tossing out one liberal value after another, abandoning the very groups they claimed to champion and walking away from globalization’s economic foundations—e.g., free trade and open borders.

The more the Democrats doubled down on liberalism as it was reaching its material and ideological limits, the stronger the forces hostile to it became. The ruling class is now consolidating around a radical shift in strategy to advance its interests. The conditions that made liberalism its dominant ideology are gone and not coming back in the foreseeable future. The liberal mask is slipping off to reveal the snarling teeth that have been hiding underneath all along.

The Working Class Abandons the Liberals

The working class, battered by inflation and many years of concessions, has grown increasingly restive and willing to engage in class battle. But thus far this combativity has been paired not with a leadership capable of turning the tide in favor of the workers and winning their demands, but rather with one seeking palliatives within the confines of the liberal status quo. The problem is that the conditions of the working class cannot be qualitatively improved while respecting the objective of the U.S. ruling class to dominate the world.

Pro-capitalist union leaders, like the militant-talking UAW head Shawn Fain, have undercut strikes through their refusal to create a crisis for the ruling class and otherwise serve as the main conduit for liberalism into the workers movement. Fain himself, trading on his role in the 2023 auto strike, became a prominent hustler for the Biden/Harris campaign. Even so, the left treats Fain as if he is a cut above the rest of the labor bureaucracy when in fact he is simply its most outspoken advocate of liberal ideals. Far from fighting right now for a new leadership with a class-struggle strategy counterposed to liberalism, the left cheers Fain or pressures him to go a little further down the road he is on—which can only spell disaster for workers struggle and the socialist cause.

The working class has reacted to Trump’s re-election with a bit of a shrug mixed with a sense of dread at the direction the U.S. is heading. Many workers believe they will be somewhat better off under Trump, while others fear what he has in store. Notably, greater numbers of black people and Latinos went for Trump this time than previously. These voters, although personally repulsed by the Republican nominee, have had their fill of moral browbeating, broken promises and economic pain at the hands of the liberals. Under their hammer blows, the working class has shifted to the right.

Liberals have fed right-wing reaction by, among other things, driving a wedge between the working class and oppressed groups. They preach tolerance, while pitting different sectors of the oppressed against one another in a scramble over an ever-shrinking pool of resources. This combination punch only breeds resentment and division. For example, in Democratic-run cities, migrants are forced into black and brown communities, where they are considered competition for the crumbs on offer. Workers see migrants receive some measly state services while they can barely make ends meet, and if they say anything about their situation, the liberals label them as racists or bigots. Ever conciliatory to liberalism, those claiming to be socialist have not proposed any real challenge to this “divide and rule”—that is, the independent working-class movement needed to resolve the migrant crisis in a progressive manner—and thus have themselves helped serve up working people to the right.

Trump 2.0: Tariff Man

Trump came to power promising to fix the country’s economic ills with protectionist policies and has plans to slap huge new tariffs on all goods entering the U.S. from China, Mexico and Canada. The self-described “Tariff Man” views import taxes as a mighty weapon to restore domestic manufacturing and coerce other countries into doing U.S. imperialism’s bidding. But in fact, they are an open expression of the declining U.S. empire. While throwing around the country’s economic and political weight in the form of protectionist measures might in certain instances give a short-term boost to its standing, in the end this road—like free trade—can only exacerbate the fundamental problems afflicting it.

The U.S. is not some fledgling capitalist country that needs to develop industry from the ground up but the world’s predominant imperialist power. If one branch of industry prospers from tariffs, another will take a major hit—in particular, one based on more advanced technique and better suited to the conditions of the world market. In his first presidency, Trump imposed massive duties to protect the U.S. electric vehicle industry from China’s far cheaper, tech-forward EVs; China responded in kind against U.S. agribusiness, causing its exports to drop precipitously. Here is the problem in a nutshell: imperialist-sponsored trade barriers are a brake on the productive forces internationally and reinforce the parasitical character of the U.S. economy. A system of tariffs, if enforced, would also cause prices to go up for both domestic production and consumers.

On the international level, an aggressive effort by the U.S. to grab a bigger piece of the pie for itself would magnify all manner of frictions. For example, this would strengthen political trends in other countries directed toward getting out from under U.S. imperialism’s umbrella and tighten the economic vise on neocolonies like Mexico. Right after Trump’s win, the peso dropped sharply, and he has since pledged to hit Mexico with a 25 percent blanket tariff on day one to blackmail its government into further policing the border on behalf of U.S. imperialism. This raises the prospect of deepening the national oppression of Mexico and the misery of its working and toiling masses.

The U.S. working class will not benefit from this protectionism either. Contrary to Trump and the labor bureaucrats, protectionism will not bring back good-paying manufacturing jobs. Rather, in order to operate any reshored industry at a profit, the U.S. bosses will demand extensive concessions from workers. The capitalists’ devastation of the economy points to the need for workers to combine the day-to-day battle to improve their economic conditions with the fight to reindustrialize under workers control—that is, a general fight for quality jobs against the U.S. rulers.

This fight would strengthen the position of the Mexican masses by impeding heightened imperialist subjugation. In turn, a defense of Mexico against U.S. strong-arming and domination would open up more space for workers here to advance their struggles. An anti-imperialist alliance of the proletariat of the two countries is essential to maximize their fighting power against the common enemy. Making this alliance a reality requires struggle against both those in the workers movement who echo Trump’s chauvinism and those who wag their fingers like liberals at chauvinism without offering an alternative.

Trump 2.0: Deporter-in-Chief

Trump’s comeback is a big win for the forces of right-wing reaction. He has already promised mass deportations, and attacks on trans people and other minorities are to be expected. The recent influx of immigrants has come into collision with shrinking available resources, generating a widespread backlash. Many liberal Democrats have dropped the act of pretending to care about immigrants and are actively competing with Trump on border security. Other liberals look to the bosses in industries that rely heavily on undocumented immigrants to fill poverty-wage, backbreaking jobs to put up a fight against deportations. This “defense” of immigrants is premised on maintaining the oppressive liberal status quo—and is delusional to boot. The agribusiness and meatpacking bosses will benefit as much or even more than others from a reign of anti-immigrant terror. An extremely vulnerable workforce confined to the shadows outside the workplace is primed for superexploitation.

Some workers have illusions that Trump’s deportation plans will force employers to raise their wages in order to attract and keep qualified labor. But having a layer of workers living in constant fear only undermines the ability of the working class as a whole to rip what it needs from the bosses’ hands. Mass deportations will put wind in the sails of the forces of repression and compel immigrant workers and their descendants to not cause any trouble for the bosses. The battle should not be U.S.-born workers vs. immigrant workers over the scraps from the capitalist table, but rather U.S.-born and immigrant workers vs. the bosses to make real gains and raise conditions for the entire class. The bosses want workers terrified and divided to make sure they clash with one another, not with the bosses themselves. The struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants would bolster the fighting capacity of the working class.

In recent major class battles, like the ILA longshore and Boeing Machinist strikes, some of the most militant workers have been Trump supporters. The union bureaucracy, including the leadership of these two unions, has worked tirelessly to divert the evident militancy of the class into the prison of the status quo. Where it will be channeled in the future depends on the ability of the left to intersect the living struggle and build an alternative leadership committed to upholding the interests of the entire working class in opposition to right-wing reaction and liberalism. The working class will be able to regain its footing only if it fights back against both wings of the ruling class.

Trump will likely take one of two approaches to the working class: crush it outright or try to buy off its top layer. At the moment, he is posturing as a man of the people. But he has also surrounded himself with billionaires like Elon Musk, who want to smash the unions. This balancing act cannot last long. Large-scale layoffs of federal employees are on the horizon, as Trump gears up to eliminate “wasteful government spending.” This march to government efficiency will hit a wall. Easily the most bloated and wasteful portion of the federal budget is defense spending. Such is the price of running an empire.

Trump has presented himself as antiwar and vowed to end the war in Ukraine immediately upon taking office. The likelihood of this happening is little to none since it depends on Russia actually agreeing to a deal. Russia has no interest in pulling out when it is clearly winning. To reach a deal, Trump would have to serve Ukraine on a silver platter to Russia and might even have to concede to pull NATO back from Russia’s border. This would show incredible weakness from the U.S.—something Trump might find difficult to swallow.

Where Is the Democratic Party Going?

Ever since the elections, the Democrats have been soul-searching to figure out what went wrong. Most acknowledge having lost the working class, and a consensus has emerged to shift away from the “woke” stuff—which both the ruling class and working class have turned against—to “bread and butter” issues. This means dropping any mention of special oppression.

The Democrats are trying to cleanse themselves of the liberalism that made them deplorable to the masses so they can vie for power again. It will take some time to establish the path the Democrats go down to again pull the wool over the eyes of workers and the oppressed before turning the screws on them. A shake-up in the Democratic Party is coming down the line—dinosaurs like Nancy Pelosi may well be a thing of the past.

The DSA and other social democrats want the Democratic Party to return to the road of FDR. This is a distinct possibility in light of the world situation. When an imperialist power is falling behind under the economic pressure of rivals, the natural tendency is to turn to state intervention to fortify itself through direct means. Much of the left paints this statism as inherently progressive and a boon for the working class. But in fact, the purpose would be to regiment the population and the economy in line with the interests of the imperialist overlords in preparation for great power conflict and war with China. The Democrat-initiated CHIPS Act was a step in this direction—state intervention to boost America’s high-tech self-sufficiency and military systems by reviving the domestic semiconductor industry.

Biden’s COVID relief bill was a significantly more massive state-sponsored economic stimulus, hailed by the DSA’s Jacobin magazine for “bringing back government handouts.” But these payments were swallowed up many times over by the inflation that the package triggered, all to save the bourgeoisie’s skin after its lockdowns had ground the economy to a halt. As Trotsky wrote: “State-ism, no matter where—in Mussolini’s Italy, in Hitler’s Germany, in Roosevelt’s America, or in Léon Blum’s France—means state intervention on the basis of private property, and with the goal of preserving it. Whatever be the programs of the government, state-ism inevitably leads to a transfer of the damages of the decaying system from strong shoulders to weak” (The Revolution Betrayed, 1936).

The DSA itself was largely paralyzed over the past year by the contradiction of claiming to be socialist from inside the Democratic Party. On the one hand, Biden was widely hated by the working class, and the genocide in Gaza burned red hot; on the other, he was the party candidate. To create some separation, it was all the rage among DSAers to hurl insults at Genocide Joe and call for a workers party. Harris taking the ticket’s reins was manna from heaven. Even though she was politically indistinguishable from Biden and equally responsible for the administration’s crimes, she was a non-senile black woman, not him. The DSA left caucuses, which formally stand for a break with the Democrats, went dark, and most DSAers held their noses and voted Harris in the name of stopping Trump.

Many signs point to the DSA making a social-democratic pivot post-election. Not only is Jacobin advising the Democratic Party to head that way, but also some DSA electeds are running campaigns that focus on the cost of living and have nothing to offer specially oppressed groups. For the DSA, it is again fashionable, with the elections safely in the distance, to scream the need for a workers party from the rooftops. These calls, though, will go nowhere absent a fight to expel the Democratic electeds now and make a clean break with the entire Democratic Party. These imperialist vipers were just soundly rejected by the majority of working people; the goal must not be to pull workers back in to the snake pit, but rather to pull revolutionary-minded DSAers out. Then, the project to build a workers party would have some real momentum, especially with the fissures in the DSA likely to increase after Inauguration Day.

The Left and the 2024 Elections

The elections were a prime opportunity for the left to turn the working class further against the liberal status quo and steer it toward friendly shores. But once again, declared Marxists failed miserably. Some stood on the sidelines, shouting “no choice” and empty calls for a workers party, while others openly tailed liberal politicians.

Among the latter, Socialist Alternative (SA) and its Workers Strike Back (WSB) split-off drummed up votes for the Green Party’s Jill Stein, claiming that support to this crunchy bourgeois liberal who has no intention of building a workers party was the best way to…build a workers party! They would have had better luck squeezing blood from a rock—and done far less damage to the cause of class independence, the foundation of a workers party. After the elections, where Stein received only a half percent of the vote, the Greens fell off the map and proved themselves completely irrelevant, as usual. Undeterred, SA is now pinning its hopes for the launch of a workers party on two of the biggest Biden boosters in the union bureaucracy—Shawn Fain and liberal “resistance” darling Sara Nelson. It is anybody’s guess who SA will grasp at next, but it’s a safe bet that it will not be a socialist fighting for an alternative to the status quo.

In the elections, the choice for workers was clear: the presidential ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which opposed not only both the Democrats and the Republicans, but also capitalism. That made it a vehicle to polarize society along class lines and give the workers and oppressed a fighting chance to advance their struggles against whichever reactionary candidate won the election. We gave critical support to PSL and helped build their campaign, but no other Marxist tendencies followed suit. While the PSL candidates received around 160,000 votes—which for socialists is nothing to scoff at—they were a non-factor in the elections.

Our main criticism of PSL was its conciliation of liberalism—which undermined its campaign. Let’s look at their intervention into the pro-Palestinian movement. To stop the genocide and free Palestine, there must be anti-imperialist struggle in the U.S. But the PSL pushed every pro-imperialist liberal illusion, from platforming Democrat Rashida Tlaib at their Palestine conference to supporting the Democrats’ “uncommitted” electoral scheme to cheering UN ceasefire resolutions. Their tailing of the liberals and refusal to draw a class line are obstacles to mobilizing the needed anti-imperialist struggle.

In a final opportunist move just days before the elections, PSL endorsed Cornel West and Jill Stein in certain states in order to get their endorsement in other states. Building coalitions with liberal politicians is completely counterposed to anything resembling class independence and only hinders the struggles of the working class. While we fought for the left to help build PSL’s campaign as a working-class alternative, we also fought with PSLers to stop their campaign from being undermined by conciliation of liberal politics in order to seed the ground to build a workers party. PSL’s orientation toward petty-bourgeois liberals also kept it from campaigning seriously in the unions or working class more broadly. In order to build a workers party, as the PSL claims it wants, it is necessary both to go to the class and be armed with a plan of action to cut against liberalism

Whither the Left?

The left’s association with liberalism has opened a chasm between itself and the working class. The left is seen by workers as either irrelevant or liberal sellouts. For this reason, the central task for the left in the coming period is to overcome this divide in order to be able to guide the upcoming struggles.

In the arena of workers struggle, the left has either intentionally remained outside the fray or completely tailed the union bureaucracy. A picture of the problem is given by WSB’s activity during the recent Boeing Machinist strike in the Seattle area, the home turf of WSB and its leader Kshama Sawant. One might assume an organization named “Workers Strike Back” would give its all to put the strike on a course to win in the face of its demobilization by IAM honcho Jon Holden. But one would be wrong. A couple of weeks into the crucial class battle, WSB shipped themselves off to Dearborn, Michigan, to shill for Jill Stein. They chose a small-time liberal politician over the working class. It would be difficult to better capture the left’s bankruptcy and irrelevance.

Many on the left, while acknowledging that society has undergone a rightward shift, bizarrely deny that the working class has been swept along in that direction as well. Indeed, many working people voted for Trump out of disgust at establishment politicians, economic immiseration, forever wars, etc. In addition, large numbers of Trump voters supported pro-abortion measures. There are contradictions, and one of the key tasks of socialists is now to tap into this vast reservoir of anger, give it a working-class expression and turn it against Trump (and the liberals).

But many leftists use these contradictions to deny or downplay that Trump’s victory is a reactionary backlash against liberalism. In fact, many working people who went for Trump out of legitimate anger believe that protectionism, mass deportations and Trump’s strongman approach will advance their interests. It is grotesque and disorienting to deny this and to attribute to the working class a consciousness it doesn’t have. This is also a way to avoid confronting the left’s disastrous course in the past period in order to continue doing the same thing.

And indeed, the way forward proposed by most of the left is either to try to pump life back into the long dead “resistance” or to join their own tiny organizations and “fight for revolution.” Neither of these trends can possibly fulfill the task at hand of bridging the gulf between the left and the working class. In fact, everything the left is doing will just widen that gulf.

Left Voice and SA are typical of those who put stock in reviving the liberal movements of yesterday. But these movements didn’t do a damn thing for the working class or the oppressed groups they claimed to champion, besides set them up for the current reaction. Furthermore, with the defeat of the liberal order, the conditions that sparked the “resistance” no longer exist. But the attempt at revival will accomplish one thing: repelling workers who have decisively rejected liberalism. Trying to move forward on the 2016 model stands in the way of organizing the type of working-class defensive action needed.

The second trend on the left, represented by the Revolutionary Communists of America, is to engage in abstract revolutionary phrasemongering. This also does nothing to bridge the gulf between the left and the working class, making the left look even more out of touch than they already do. Lacking a concrete plan of action for the working class right now, they have no means of drawing in workers and the oppressed in struggle—the raw material for building a workers party.

Another key question for the left in this period is to bridge the divide between the working class and the specially oppressed. Doing so will require an approach that does not further alienate the working class, but rather makes clear that defense of immigrants, trans people, black people, etc., is in its interests. We need to show the working class that its hatred of liberalism is being used by the ruling class to crush the most oppressed layers, which will only further bring down conditions for all working people. But this is possible only if a decisive break is made with liberal politics. Anything short of that will pave the way for more reaction.

Work in the black community will be crucial to redressing the divide between the working class and specially oppressed. Racial polarization permeates U.S. society and the class, and given the importance of the segregation of black people to capitalist interests, the state of the black struggle is a strong indicator of the way the winds are blowing. That certainly was true in the case of BLM, whose liberal politics not only ground the struggle against racist police terror to a halt but also helped fuel the right-wing backlash. The Democrats went from writing BLM on the streets outside the White House to the potential first black woman president not saying a peep about the cops, except that she would be tougher on crime and never wanted to defund the police. In the same vein, all the BLM-supported “progressive” DAs are now being thrown out of office.

The shift has not only been away from BLM liberalism, like “defund the police” and community control, but also from the black struggle across the board. The left’s reaction has been either denial of this reality or capitulation to it and the corresponding abandonment of the black struggle. Left Voice is an example of the first. They somehow have convinced themselves that BLM is not dead, but rather can be easily resuscitated in this right-wing climate, in which BLM cop reform politics have been rejected. The rest of the left is no better—it does nothing to address the question. The fate of BLM is a warning to every other movement of what will happen if the left does not fight to take away leadership from the liberals.

Today, police brutality is more rampant than ever. With the liberals having washed their hands of the matter, it has fallen on the left to swim against the stream and reignite the movement—not on liberal grounds, but rather on the basis of the unity of interests of the working class and black people against the ruling class and its repressive state apparatus. That is why we launched the “Open the Police Archives” campaign. Crucial to the campaign is the exposure in action of the liberals, who claim to be on the side of black people but when push comes to shove, show themselves to be on the side of state secrecy. We encourage everyone on the left to join us in this united front to rebuild the movement against cop terror.

What Next?

The left is currently irrelevant and disoriented. Revolutionaries must break through the impasse and find ways to advance the interests of the working class. To build a revolutionary nucleus in this reactionary period, we must:

1. Debate our tasks, including what it is going to take to build a workers party. Most left groups are entering this new era without a compass, clueless about the seismic shifts that just took place and set to repeat the same mistakes that led us here. Or they find comfort in the revolutionary phrasemongering of sects, abdicating any immediate fighting perspective. It is urgent to open broader discussion and debate between left groups on how we got here and what the tasks of the socialist and workers movements are in this new era.

2. Organize formations within the unions to provide a class-struggle road forward in opposition to the current pro-capitalist leadership, which has only held working-class struggle back. The socialist left is discredited as a political force, particularly in the working class, where many see them as bleeding-heart liberals who lawyer for the Democrats and union bureaucracy. Against this, real socialists must turn to the working class and fight to improve its most basic conditions, using the politics and methods of the class struggle. The precondition for this fight is complete opposition to all capitalist parties and all wings of the union bureaucracy. Only in this way can socialists gain authority among workers, undermine the appeal of right-wing populists, rebuild the power of the unions and lay the basis for a new, class-struggle leadership of the working class.

3. Build large united-front actions to defend the oppressed against the attacks to come. Black and trans people, Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, women—all the oppressed—will be in the crosshairs of the new administration. The necessary defensive struggles cannot be left in the hands of impotent liberals, whose moralist politics will further divide workers and the oppressed. Nor can socialists concede one iota to those “leftists” who are abandoning the fight for oppressed groups in the face of right-wing reaction. Socialists must place themselves at the head of these struggles, in complete opposition to the liberals, always seeking to put forward a class-struggle strategy that connects the specific needs of the oppressed to the material interests of the broader working class.

Only in pursuing such a course can the socialist movement confront head-on the strong wind of reaction, re-establish itself as a pole against the discredited liberals and rebuild the working-class movement into a real fighting force.