Workers Need a Hammer
Red Star statement on the 2024 Elections
With the election called, we now know which faction of capital will be leading for the next four years. The Trump wing was able to secure victory against yet another historically unpopular Democrat, locking in the more brazen face of U.S. fascism for this cycle. Harris and her party promised genocide in Palestine and sanctions against half the world, along with militarized borders and capitalist-friendly economics at home. This platform, combined with her capitulation to racist and transphobic rhetoric, was unable to mobilize significant enthusiasm and resulted in her defeat.
This outcome was always in the cards; socialism can beat fascism, but liberalism nurtures and abets it. By running on a platform almost indistinguishable from the Republicans’, and by pointedly quashing any trace of left-wing policy, Harris announced that she’d rather ally with the right wing and abandon any pretense of appealing to the left. This strategy lost her the election and ratcheted U.S. party politics further to the right than they have been in recent memory.
Trump and his movement are now back in control, better equipped to handle the machinery of state in service of their particular forms of oppression and exploitation. Bolstered by a wave of reaction that grew under Biden’s failed “return to normalcy” administration, Trumpism represents a serious challenge to any movement that aims to better the conditions of the working class. Trump’s reelection reinforces a pattern of neoliberal defeat across the global North. It is impossible to deny that reactionary forces are on the offensive, and the left must rise to the occasion.
Our tasks are unchanged. Trump represents the most straightforwardly hostile form of capitalism, but is ultimately just another of its loyal servants. DSA and the socialist movement in the U.S. need to channel collective outrage into building working class power to overturn our economic and political system. We must redouble our commitment to each other, strengthen ourselves as organizers and thinkers, and remain steadfast in our resolve to win socialism even as fascism is on the rise.
If you are in DSA already, come out to your chapter’s next meeting; chances are, they’ll have empowering work for you to do in your community. If you’re not in DSA yet, join us – DSA has the potential to become a real instrument the working class can use to develop, connect, and expand its struggles. It will take a united militant movement against oppression and exploitation, organizing on many fronts, to put the working class on the offensive again. The powerful sense of solidarity that comes from standing side by side with comrades and fighting back will relieve the feelings of helplessness and rage.
What this election result shows us, more than anything, is that liberalism has no tools to offer oppressed people within in the United States and the world over in the face of mounting political-economic crises. Liberalism, as the ideology of capitalism, imperialism, and the market, has shown itself time and again to be the tool of the oppressors. Attempts to bargain for a junior coalition seat at the table of capital have only led to cooptation and defeat, and we cannot wait forever. The working class has only itself, and must free itself. To do this, we need our own party, our own ideology, our own tools.
Workers need a hammer – to smash the existing order of oppression and to forge the new world.
Further Discussion
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