America stands on the precipice of fascism, and whether it falls is up to us. The “slow-moving coup” unfolding since the failed insurrection of January 6 is intensifying the political motion to destroy democracy, install minority rule, white supremacy, and decimate women’s freedom and the planet for years to come. The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War. Donald Trump’s false charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now aimed at making sure future elections that do not support the ruling class’ corporate priorities over the needs of the people are administratively overturned, overruling democracy.
Trump and his supporters aim to have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Future elections could see weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as both parties claim victory and charge each other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Elections could be rendered null and void under intense pressure from corporate speculative capital.
But the final outcome is not yet determined. People who believe in democracy and oppose corporate control of politicians are on the move, protesting in the streets, striking for their basic needs, and pushing back against attempts to dismantle democracy. They want a government that supports their needs. At the national level, the outcome rests in large part on what happens inside the Democratic Party, how it responds to the escalating social motion. A victory by those fighting for some version of the now scaled-down Build Back Better bill could signal their progress in slowing the the push toward fascism. Defeat will likely bring increasing poverty, violence, racial and gender oppression, and dictatorship.
The corporate push for fascism is an expression of the deep antagonism between advanced digital technology and the worker-intensive capitalist system it is steadily destabilizing. Privately owned corporations like Facebook would like to see all our lives corralled into their pay-to-play products. Their goal is the substitution of representative democracy by State power openly controlled by corporations, to remove all restrictions from the global operations of private-corporate-property interests.
On a federal level, the corporate strategy was to push through the proposed President Biden infrastructure bill, since it privatizes more public resources, while at the same time delaying the Build Back Better bill in order to whittle it down or kill it altogether. The battle in the Democratic Party between those tied to corporate predators and those striving to meet the basic demands of the masses is approaching a turning point. If the latter can force passage of some version of the Build Back Better bill, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, and passage of the Freedom to Vote Act, it would mark a major step forward in building a movement to battle for people’s needs. It would signal a new era of political engagement and political independence
To install a fascist political system, the rulers need a political motion to clear away the obstacles—the old bourgeois laws and old ideas of the promise of democracy, such as the economic rights of the workers—and move the new speculative economy forward at the expense of the people’s basic needs. Wall Street, the international banking and financial system, the transnational corporations, the military-industrial complex, the technology corporations, fossil fuels, big pharma and the medical industry are some of the engines driving the corporate property pursuits. To achieve their goals, they have been laying the foundation for a new political movement to merge corporate power with the State. The ruling class is feeling its way towards a more fully formed fascist political ideology that will facilitate dictatorship, including concerted social media attacks on “democracy” through algorithm-driven promotion of disinformation about the election being stolen. It has launched a campaign against teaching the truth about the role of race and class in American history, and has fostered an anti-science, anti-vaccine, and anti-mask culture to support the false narrative of individual “liberty” versus the public good.
Another part of the fascist offensive is the multipronged attack on voting, waged as part of a movement to transform the old GOP into a new fascist party. Recently former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon endorsed a “precinct strategy” to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up, starting with election precinct workers. Precinct officers are typically the worker bees of political parties, responsible for routine tasks, but collectively, they can influence how elections are run. Bannon’s promotion of the “precinct strategy” has rocketed across far-right media. And it provides protection and encouragement to insurgent groups like the Proud Boys, the One Percenters, the Oath Keepers, and other groups whose members have been charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
We also see the creation of a fascist narrative in which the lives of a growing section of the American people are considered worthless. This includes more Q’Anon candidates, promoting conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing miracle cures for unvaccinated patients, or are even killing them on purpose. Some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatments. They are attacking women and their reproductive freedoms to culturally advance the political goal of corporations.
The social movement for basic needs—led by groups like the Poor People’s Campaign and the Sunrise Movement—has doubled down on street heat around economic issues, environmental justice, and voting rights. Workers striking John Deere, Kellogg, and others—including those refusing to work in unsustainable low paying jobs—are also part of this movement. Employers are struggling to fill jobs because they refuse to pay wages that people can afford to live on.
While the social face of fascism threatens all of humanity, it is also an admission by the ruling class that the dying system of capitalism cannot meet the needs of the people when workers are steadily bring replaced by digital devices. The fascist offensive is a desperate push for permanent minority rule, not evidence of ruling class strength. It shows us the ruling class is so weak that it must turn to naked and open lies and violence to enforce some element of social cohesion.
Although the outcome is still not decided, larger and larger sectors of the ruling class are gravitating toward this fascist solution. Meanwhile, the social movement for basic needs is continuing to clarify its demands, including a $15 minimum wage, universal health care, reproductive freedom, housing for all, quality public education, and an end to police violence and the use of fossil fuels.
Corporations cannot and will not allow the people to utilize the vote to meet these demands and are prepared to end the legal forms and structures of democracy altogether. More and more, they see the Trump movement as the shortest route to accomplishing this objective. Liz Cheney Republican and corporate Democrat opposition to Trump is mainly because they fear the disruption and chaos his supporters will unleash. But as the digital economy threatens maximum corporate profit, their support for democracy will not be sustained.
The cultural war against democracy and the development of today’s fascist social movement both require stepped-up assault on science and on science-based social policy, and the devaluation of human life. The war on working class voting and reproductive freedom for women is accompanied by a war on vaccine and mask mandates and on teachers and school boards. Resisting fascism with appeals to America’s historic democratic ideals is important, but by itself will not sustain the struggle. Fascism cannot be defeated until the meaning of democracy includes people’s right to basic needs. We need a class plan to defeat American fascism and, in the course of the battle, to introduce the ideas necessary to keep the movement on course to remove the root of the problem—the private property system and the corporations that dominate it. The elections of 2022 and 2024 will be watersheds in the battle to demand a government that stops serving corporate profit and starts providing for peoples’ basic needs.
How do we achieve these goals? Build a broad movement to meet people’s needs by diverting national resources to feed, house, and clothe our people, and guarantee health care and education for all. The time has come to bail out the working class. The battle for these demands will challenge corporate domination of both major parties and ultimately lead to splitting and the emergence of new parties. Revolutionaries are all those who help guide their class through the twists and turns of these political transformations, working with and helping to create the means to best fight for basic needs. This positions them for the next stage in the march toward their ultimate aim, which is to take over the corporations completely and organize a cooperative economy designed to meet human needs. Attacks on voting rights cannot stop this process. When the government fails to meet basic needs, it is time to take power into the people’s hands and rebuild the system from the ground up.
Published: November 27, 2021
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