Shock. Stupor. “The unthinkable has finally happened”, the editorialists proclaim this morning. Trump’s election, which is just confirmed at the time we are writing, provokes the same reactions in the bourgeois classes of the whole world as those which had followed the Brexit victory, the vote of last June in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. The French ambassador to the United States has written on Twitter : “After Brexit and this election, everything is now possible. A world is collapsing before our eyes. A dizziness”.
This new “ unthinkable ” is not the expression of a world gone “mad”. It is the expression of the historical pushes towards the generalized war. It is the expression of the capitalist world and its dead-end; of the exacerbation of its insuperable historical contradictions; and of the growing difficulties of the different national bourgeoisies to confront these contradictions, starting with the most experienced ruling class in the world, that is the British one with the Brexit, and now the most powerful, the American one. The end of the classical bipartisan government alternation and the rise of the extreme right-wing in the main European countries, as well as the bloody attacks that have occurred since 2015, in France and Belgium particularly, announce still new “unthinkables”. The economic dead-end, above all since 2008, and the exacerbation of the trade and imperialist rivalries and wars that the former causes, precipitate the political upheavals and divisions within the bourgeois classes of the main imperialist powers.
The choice of the Military Path
The “unthinkable” election of Trump means that a fraction of the American bourgeoisie has overridden over another one. The one which made the balance that the imperialist and warlike policies led by Obama has not stopped the decline of the American imperialist influence in the world. The one which does not believe any more in “classical” economic and imperialist responses for defending the US domination. The one which only believes in the expression of force, in military and war responses. And this against the Clinton option shared by a great part of the Republican Party apparatus yet ardent for defending the American imperialism, included by war. Though she was “interventionist”, though she had voted for the war in Iraq at the time, though she is on a position openly hostile to Russia, with no doubt even more than Obama, she did not correspond to the requirements of a part of the American ruling class. The nationalist and racist ideology, the questioning of the free trade treaties, the closure of the frontiers, the economic protectionism, and the major works that he called for in his 1st speech after election for rebuilding “our inner cities and rebuild[ing] our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We are going to rebuild our infrastructure...” (Washington Post, Nov. 9th), the trade war declared against China, the reinforcement of the American army and the reorientations towards Russia and, above all, vis-à-vis the NATO, thus Europe, claimed and brought by the new American President during his campaign, are warlike speeches which sound like those dominating in the years 1930.
There are parallels between the “unthinkable” Trump victory and the Brexit. Both events fit in a dynamic of exacerbated imperialist polarization and they mark the assertiveness of an “Anglo-Saxon” imperialist camp opposed to the rest of the world imperialist powers. Even if it means sacrificing some particular interests such as those of the finance sector. Similarly, the Brexit jeopardizes the financial City of London. The marked isolationism and protectionism of the new President when it comes to international policy of the United States, express this decision of the march towards war. It is going to force even more continental Europe to develop an autonomous military defence, to reinforce the US military tensions with China, and to embolden Russia in its willingness to loosen by force the grip that the NATO presence on its borders imposes on it.
As with the Brexit, at the time welcomed by the new President, whose electoral victory represents its continuity, the “unthinkable” Trump win means a further step towards generalized imperialist war. Growing misery for the huge majority of the world population as the backdrop, the chain of events, the deadly attacks in Europe, the bloody war in Middle East, the massive waves of refugees, the political shake ups; all of this already announced this process driving to generalized war. Trump means that the American bourgeoisie, and by repercussions its imperialist rivals too, makes today the choice to march towards war even more resolutely than the policy led under Obama and defended by Clinton.
For the Working Class Too, the Time of the Choice of its Historical Responsibility
The workers, whether they are in America or not, won’t be able to escape, nor evade, the multiplication of the attacks that Trump’s election and the political choice which has just been made, will cause. It is in two ways that the working class will suffer attacks and provocations: as an exploited class, at the level of its living conditions to face the economic dead-end and the requirements of the march towards war; and as a revolutionary class, at the political and ideological level because it the only force which can oppose the march towards war and the one which is bearer of capitalism’s destruction and the coming of communism, a society without exploitation, without class, without state, nor war, nor misery.
This is why the response to this march towards war begins by the working class resistances to all the economic and political attacks against the living conditions, through the rejection of nationalism, of national unity, of the defence of the bourgeois democratic state; in short through its opposition and its rejection too of the war. But for this fight to be at all efficientat the immediate level of the attacks – to force the bourgeois state to limit, indeed withdraw, them – and historically faced with the prospect of the war, the workers have to equip themselves with the fighting weapons, organization and methods for the struggle, which correspond to this revolutionary future: that is the political confrontation against all the political, union, media, police and justice, forces of the capitalist state – including against the political forces of the Left and extreme Left which claim to act on its behalf but which, actually, sabotage its historical fight by bringing it back on the “democratic” ground of the bourgeois elections and the defence of the “people” and the nation.
Given the seriousness of the moment and the stakes, the minorities of workers already conscious and armed with the revolutionary perspective of communism, must come to the vanguard of this historical fight by regrouping themselves in the working class struggles to lead them but also, crucially, by coming closer to the revolutionary and communist groups.
The clear understanding of the historical stakes and the Communist Program which is carried by the communist groups, is indispensable for leading this struggle efficiently until the opening of the revolutionary perspective. Here is why we call all those who carry this communist consciousness and who want to engage in the revolutionary fight, to regroup around the groups of the Communist Left, as weak and dispersed as they may be, and to side with them in the struggle for the setting up of the indispensable international communist party of tomorrow.
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