The November 5 victory of MAGA Republicans creates a situation of extreme danger for the working class, for humanity as a whole, and for the entire planet and every living thing on it. The Heritage Foundation Project 2025 plan that MAGA intends to implement corresponds well to the classic definition of fascism: “substitution of one form of class domination of the bourgeoisie – bourgeois democracy – by another form: open terroristic dictatorship”. Fascism today is the total merger of state power with corporate Wall Street, big real estate, big tech, and hedge funds.
With the stakes this high, we dare not despair. Defeat is temporary. What is needed is to identify the opportunities for resistance and the path forward to humanity’s future. Modern digital technology makes it possible for everyone to live a beautiful and abundant life, on a sustainable planet, with a healthy climate. No force on earth can make us believe we deserve to be dominated and impoverished by a class of billionaires, just to secure their profits. Now more than ever, we need class solidarity, unity, and vision.
The Meaning of the Vote
The election results offer a modicum of hope. First, the number of people who voted for Trump is only slightly more than the number who voted for him in 2020 (about 76 million). Although many were clearly motivated by racism and sexism, voters as a whole are not significantly more racist and sexist than they already were in 2020. As one commentator pointed out, although Trump and his cabal are fascists, most Americans are not.
The big difference in 2024 is that Harris received some eight million fewer votes than Biden in 2020 (about 73 million compared to 81 million for Biden). This is partly because the George Floyd rebellion, while not completely reversed, has been smothered by four years of racist ruling class propaganda, political repression, and the elimination of millions of people from the voting rolls.
The Harris campaign failed miserably to adequately address the distress of the working class, especially communities of color. As Bernie Sanders said, “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them.” Eight million working class voters stayed home. The youth vote (ages 18 to 29) was 22-24 points lower for Harris than it was for Biden in 2020.
Social and Class Issues
Reflecting the interests of the corporate elite, Harris overemphasized identity politics and social issues at the expense of economic issues. The ruling class uses both parties to manipulate social issues. Trump fascists divide workers with barbaric attacks on migrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims, and others. In the name of defending them, corporate Democrats pay lip service to supporting marginalized groups, but keep them separate and relatively powerless by refusing to point out their common class interests. Revolutionaries insist on unity: both the common working-class battle for basic needs AND the just social demands of all its various sectors for equality and reproductive freedom. One cannot win without the other.
The fight against fascism demands that we build working class unity, step by step, across every occupation, region, demographic, and ideology. Now is not the time for blaming third party voters, Harris voters, or even Trump voters. The workers directly targeted and most aware of the coming danger have reacted with grim determination to resist. Other sectors, including many Trump economic voters, mainstream Democrats, and nonvoters, remain relatively oblivious to the danger. Unity begins with the most impacted and will work its way outward into the broader sectors. People will become disenchanted when Trump tariff-based price increases kick in, and Elon Musk’s budget cuts start destroying lives. Many of the coming battles will be fought out beginning at the local level, where practical working-class leaders are already confronting the billionaires intervening in local elections. There are still many obstacles between a Trump inauguration and full implementation of Project 2025. Consolidation of a fascist dictatorship in a federal system like the US today will require a multitude of steps, and every one of them offers an opportunity to strengthen working class unity and resistance.
Solidarity and Vision
The election exposed the weaknesses of our revolutionary movement. Because it has not been sufficiently exposed to alternative ideas, the majority of the working class still believes that a capitalist, private property economy can elevate their living standards. The majority of workers still believe in, or at best are confused about, the benevolence of billionaires. As historian Robin D.G. Kelley said, “We have a class that’s suffering, but we don’t have a class that thinks of itself as a class …. Solidarity is what’s missing – the sense that we as a class have to protect each other.”
It is the responsibility of revolutionaries to fight for this sense of solidarity, without which the working class cannot improve its position or even survive. We fight for solidarity when we project the vision of the better world that is possible when we organize a cooperative economy. We fight for solidarity when we repudiate the lies and insults, and reaffirm the value of our deepest hopes and aspirations.
Fascists in the United States may initiate great turmoil and violence, but they cannot hold power for long. The sheer number of workers being displaced from production is making the American working class impossible for the system to contain or control. A spreading equality of poverty is removing some of the white privileges that prevented our unity in earlier eras, and makes it increasingly difficult to isolate and attack people of color today.
Capitalism in earlier times – despite temporary depressions – had vast opportunities for expansion that simply no longer exist today. Automation reduces the overall rate of profit and therefore restricts the system’s ability to attract investment in new production, causing the prolonged economic stagnation and decline we have experienced since 2008. At the same time, the role of social media and use of telephone video cameras makes the gruesome violence of Klan-like organizations impossible to conceal or minimize today. One video of the George Floyd murder moved 26 million people into the streets.
No lie can last forever. Victory is ours if we persevere.
Published on November 21, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
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