There can be a relative autonomy of base from superstructure. Importantly, the superstructure can in turn reflect back and impact upon the base. There are many factors other than the economy that need to be taken into account when examining a particular conjuncture.
An array of liberal and left-wing pundits is already blaming West in advance for the unpopular Biden’s (potential) loss to the (as yet unnamed) Republican candidate next year. Apparently, the conventional wisdom even among most self-described socialists is that it is our job to ensure Biden’s victory, even though he has done nothing to earn it.
Trump is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election. For him, winning the presidency is his existential goal. Lose, and any conviction he receives will subject him to financial ruin and prison time.
The Republican Party is no longer the most important political vehicle for the ruling class. The Republicans have become so involved in Trump’s intrigues, vendettas, and conspiracy theories that a considerable layer have forgotten their responsibilities to bourgeois democracy and to a stable system of capital accumulation.
Our work has been devoted to essentially arguing a negative point—that it’s fundamentally wrong to see any part of the Democratic Party as the road to social change. This viewpoint obviously poses a major question: if socialists shouldn’t be supporting Democrats, then what should we be doing instead? What is our alternative course of action?
Now that the election’s over, evidence is beginning to come in to judge the validity of the different perspectives. The Lavin interview is an important statement by a major ruling class player. It shows that those socialists who stressed the fundamental compatibility of Johnson with the Democratic Party and ruling class politics were on the right track.
2024 will become, as every national election since 2016 has, a referendum on Trump and MAGA. In that circumstance, Joe Biden—despite holding the support of only about 40 percent of the public—will have to be favored by the Democratic Party for reelection, assuming a health crisis doesn’t derail the octogenarian president.
This “new machine” is supposed to press the corporations to pay their fair share. But given the dynamics of electoral politics—where there is always another election to plan for—and where Johnson will be looking to shore up his support, that “new machine” can become the vehicle by which Johnson’s wing of the Democratic Party co-opts another generation of activists.
Whatever happens in this one-party Democratic Party city—the third largest in the country and one of its leading transportation, manufacturing, and technology hubs—will have national implications.
The progressives, with the Squad in tow, followed a well-worn path: set out a “progressive” position; pledge to hold fast to it; compromise with their mainstream opponents; vote for the mainstream “compromise” which drops the progressive position; then, after it passes with their votes, claim that’s what they wanted all along.
The results of the U.S. midterm election broke a well-established historical pattern of the “out” party scoring a victory over the president’s party. In the process, the results made fools of the right-wing politicians and pundits who had proclaimed that a “red wave” would wipe out the Democrats and, possibly, put President Biden on the road to impeachment.
Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, but he continued to propagate the Big Lie anyway. But the challenges to the election were only a part of a multi-pronged strategy to stop the congressional certification of Biden’s election, and to keep himself in power by hook or by crook.
Today, liberals are hoping that the shocks of overturning of Roe, the revelations from the January 6 commission, and the GOP’s nominations of some truly awful candidates might provide some margin for hope that the Democrats won’t suffer the expected drubbing.
Until Donald Trump became president in 2017, former president Richard Nixon—the only president in U.S. history to resign from office—was widely regarded as setting the high-water mark for abusing the power of the U.S. presidency.
The purpose of this report is to look at the current economic situation, developments in bourgeois politics, the general social crisis, and finally the state of the working-class and social movements.
