International Socialism Project

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.

It’s not just that the decision goes against the will of, according to opinion polls, seven out of 10 or more Americans, or that it will devastate and worsen the lives of millions. It’s the result of a government system set up in the Eighteenth Century that is increasingly anachronistic in the Twenty First Century.

Even if the U.S.’s main conservative party manages to distance itself from the chaos and corruption that Trump exudes, its Trumpiness will persist. That’s because it exists in an era of economic instability and political polarization that pushes it to make ever-more extreme positions a “new normal” in U.S. politics.

The real “strategic impasse” is that of those socialists who, finding themselves adrift and without serious organization, joined DSA in a vain hope that it could be influenced to become something it was never been set up to be.

Some commentators thought that Joe Biden as president would mean a Keynesian turn in the US. The same hopes and illusions had developed in the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009.

The Jacobin effort is not a project designed for socialists to understand how better to recruit workers to socialist organizations. It’s a project designed to advise progressive Democrats about how to win more elections to the U.S. House and state legislatures.

The mainstream media are full of interpretations on the deep meanings of the vote and the long-term prospects of the two ruling-class parties. Yet, the explanation for the November results is pretty simple, and it starts with last November’s national election.

“The idea that Manchin is to blame for killing the billionaires’ tax is too convenient,” argued a journalist who spoke with party aides about the moribund proposal.

The war, based on a lie that Iraq harbored “weapons of mass destruction”—of which none were found—killed hundreds of thousands. For that, Powell and the other architects of the war should have found themselves in the dock at a war crimes tribunal, rather than being hailed as elder statespersons.

The aim of the January 6 assault was to nullify the popular vote through a violent intervention during the Electoral college ratification… its aim was not to fight for more democracy but to impose the will of a minority whose primary goal was to reestablish white supremacy in the U.S.

So far, the “left” has stayed pretty much in Biden’s camp, and have put little pressure on him or the administration. It’s clear that they are playing a supportive role to the administration and the congressional Democrats.

Undercurrents of racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and social conservative politics have long coincided among the Republican base with the economic conservatism that more upscale voters support.

In an atmosphere of continued political polarization and of GOP expectation that it will regain the congressional majority in 2022, there is no incentive for Republican politicians or operatives to drive a wedge through its ranks.

Biden wants to draw a sharp contrast with Trump, but their foreign policies share similar assumptions, especially that of seeing China as the U.S.’s main competitor, economically and militarily, in the future.

However shocking, these events shouldn’t surprise us. In the last few years, our sense of what is politically “normal” has been stretched.