The next attacks our ruling class is planning, & the unbreakable bond Americans will forge by resisting them

It’s through class struggle that the American nation came into being, and it’s through class struggle that America’s people will save their nation. This nation, the one which was built up when the USA’s people united against monarchy, defeated the slave-owning class, and fought for workers rights across racial lines, is now under threat. Under threat from the same international capitalist forces which Americans have resisted in these past instances. These forces are getting ready to launch massive new attacks against the popular masses, seeking to take their austerity schemes and anti-democratic assaults even further.

The Zionist Palantir surveillance system will be used to expand the numbers of people who get targeted for speaking out against the Gaza genocide, or who challenge the government on any other untouchable issue. Our ruling class will use numerous means to terrorize the population, weaponizing not just the state itself but also lumpen elements to proliferate violence throughout our society. As the economy gets further degrown, we’ll see a revamp of the left-liberal austerity rhetoric that we’ve seen in recent times, where scarcity is portrayed as necessary for fighting pandemics or stopping climate change. And this rhetoric will be backed up by a techno-tyranny that’s now had at least several decades to develop. But these next attacks against the people are not going to be met with passivity. When the American people unify again in defiance of the capitalist forces which threaten their nation, it will make this nation stronger than it’s ever been.

In The American Road to Socialism, William Z. Foster observed how revolutionary struggle brings a people together: “Inexorably the masses must unite ever more strongly and fight with increasing vigor to combat the growing disasters of economic breakdown, destitution, fascism, and world war. The daily struggles around broader and ever more urgent demands, led increasingly by the Communist Party, finally culminate in a mighty movement to abolish the capitalist system itself, as the source of the intolerable evils from which the people suffer.”

When Foster wrote this in 1952, American communism was coming off of a period of great strength, so much that Foster believed socialism could plausibly be established in the United States through an elected government. Then the country’s communist movement was destroyed, and the USSR’s fall let the ruling class further its destruction of workers rights. This assault on the people reached a new phase in 2020, when lockdowns were used to create an ongoing unemployment crisis that’s correlated with massive new inflation. Yet it’s been these attacks we’ve collectively experienced throughout this decade that have compelled Americans to overcome the old culture war divisions, and unite around anger towards what our government is doing to us. The MAGA base has come to an agreement with many independents and former Democrat voters, with these groups sharing the feeling that our leaders have deeply failed us.

It’s this development that gives us reason for hope as the ruling class plans its next maneuvers. These military deployments in the streets are just the start of the crackdown, and there are parts of our ruling class that oppose this tactic because they don’t think it goes far enough. The liberal technocrats in Davos, the oligarchs who don’t just hate the working class but despise the American nation itself, are preparing to strike back. And when they do, Americans will be confronted with the reality of their task as freedom fighters: that in order to win against monopoly finance capital, the people will need to overthrow their government.

Foster didn’t believe this was necessarily the case; and though the conditions have since proven him wrong, his perspective is worth studying. Foster concluded that if a people’s government were to be elected in the USA, it would be able to survive capital’s counter-attacks by

…weakening the economic and political power of the monopolists by the nationalization of the banks, the basic industries, the press, radio, television, etc., and eventually by the reorganization of the army, police, etc., and by beginning to lay the basis for a planned economy. All of which measures the legally elected people's coalition government would have the full authority and national mandate to carry out. This course would be the path to a people's democracy.

Failure of a people's government to take such necessary measures would surely result in its downfall and probably bring about the victory of fascism in the United States. It was, for example, the fatal mistake of the pre-war people's government in Spain that it did not, from the outset, proceed to weaken the capitalists basically, as indicated, and did not nip in the bud the potential military rebellion which finally destroyed it. On the other hand, the fulfillment of the above historic tasks by an American people's government would so strengthen the working class and all the forces of socialism, while weakening those of reaction, that a peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism would become possible through a people's democracy, in its American forms.

This idea of electing a people’s government is actually something that a great number of the American masses have sought out as a solution. When so many of the Americans who’ve become disillusioned with liberalism voted Trump, their hope was that he would break from the established paradigm, freeing our country from the war machine, big pharma, and the national security state. Now that this idea of revolution through electoralism has been tested, and these masses have seen its lack of viability, the people are becoming more advanced in their consciousness. And the prospect of a popular revolutionary front is coming closer.

Prior to the 2024 election, the parts of the American communist movement which understood Foster already knew that electing a “populist” government wouldn’t be a step towards defeating monopoly power. They also knew, however, that the MAGA base is motivated by real class-conscious desires, and that therefore this base does not deserve to be treated as synonymous with Trump. The MAGA movement was born out of the popular wish for a new American revolution, and now that Trump has betrayed this revolutionary vision at a critical moment, much of his base has turned against him. Americans, including conservative Americans, are learning the same lesson that U.S. communists have learned about whether we can reform our way into freedom.

The American Marxist-Leninists who are serious no longer speak about electing a workers government, mainly because we’ve already seen the country’s workers movement be devastated by state suppression. A pivotal historical experience of U.S. communists has been to see their efforts crushed, right after they’d gotten so far in building power in the early 20th century. We’ve also looked at how so many popular movements around the world have come to power through elections, only to have their leaders overthrown by U.S. coups and have their members massacred.

These atrocities of the Cold War turned out to be much bigger than what the earlier communists had anticipated; and the knowledge of this history has contributed to a new culture among U.S. communists, in which elections are no longer seen as a potential route to power. They’re still treated as necessary tools for advancing the working-class cause, but it’s now understood that the only way the American masses will win is by overthrowing their monopolist dictatorship.

The people won’t be in place to do this until the former workers movement has been reconstituted; organizing the masses is the task we need to focus on at this stage. There is a desire among the people to unify against the ruling class; that desire has been there for a while, it’s just been exploited and misdirected by controlled opposition figures like Trump. Now, when Trump’s brand is collapsing and MAGA is looking for a new place to go, represents a unique opportunity for organizing the people—and thereby fortifying the American nation against the menaces it faces.

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