Trump’s victory: New challenges for socialists

The International Socialism Project website published a larger assessment of Trump’s election victory and its meaning for U.S. politics. This article will concentrate on the challenges socialists face in the new political situation.

Face reality

There’s absolutely no point in denying reality. At the time of this writing, Trump has won the presidency, the Republicans control the Senate, and the House of Representatives’ results are still being counted.

Importantly, Trump won the popular vote. Jill Stein of the Green Party’s vote was generally minimal. Election day went smoothly, with few incidents either at polling places or in the counting process. This is a major victory for the Republicans. We were not supporters of Kamala Harris, but we never claimed that the two bourgeois projects were identical. The election represents an important shift to the right in the US political situation.

There are a number of ways that socialists could hide from this unpleasant reality. Some may choose to stress the large number of non-voters as a way of emphasizing working class dissatisfaction. Others may confine themselves to pointing out that both parties represent the capitalist class and that attacks on the working class would have occurred under a Harris administration. Some activists may quite accurately point out the broad agreement of both parties on Palestine and therefore conclude that nothing much has happened.

All of this misses the point. Not just does Trump’s victory open the way to serious new attacks, but his ideas clearly have broad popular support. The election changes the overall situation which socialists work in.

Don’t panic

There will be a tendency on the left to overact. Analogies will be made with Germany in 1933. Some will see a hopeless situation with few opportunities for revolutionary socialists and retreat into demoralization and withdrawal. This is a mirror image of minimizing the new situation. Yes, the election marks a serious move to the right. But no, unions are not about to be banned, and socialists are not about to be rounded up. That’s not where the situation stands. The real attacks are going to be bad enough without us losing our nerve and exaggerating them. Trump is a lumpen capitalist who stands on the far right of the bourgeois political spectrum. He’s not a fascist whose aim is the total pulverization of the working class and its organizations.

What can we expect?

It’s hard to discern what’s serious and what’s just chatter in Trump’s rambling “weaves”. In my opinion, we will see serious action on, at least, the following issues:

Deportations of migrant workers.
Increase in tariffs.
Tax cuts for the wealthy.
Increased deregulation, particularly removing any obstacles to “Drill, baby, drill”.
Ending US opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Vindictive harassment of public figures who have earned Trump’s displeasure.
Pardoning of January 6 attackers.

These measures alone are certainly enough to justify our assertion that we are in a new period.

Hold firm in our opposition to the Democratic Party

The “lesser evil” left will certainly condemn revolutionary socialists for our supposed indifference to the suffering that the Trump administration will cause. The pro-Democratic Party left always rounds on us after a Democratic defeat, and this time the process will be particularly strong. Blame will be laid on those who didn’t support Harris because of her support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

We should feel confident in rejecting these arguments totally. Harris’s political positions were the positions of the mainstream of the US capitalist class. The Democratic Party has been the proverbial graveyard of social movements. The fate of the Black Lives Matter and of the women’s demonstrations following Trump’s first victory conclusively prove this point. Illusions in Harris have played their role in some reduction of the size of Palestinian demonstrations in the last few months. Support for Harris has weakened the very mass movements that are so desperately needed now.

Our across-the-board class opposition to the Democratic Party has been verified, not disproved, by this election. We should not cede an inch.

The Trump-supporting working class must be won over to our side

It’s no mystery why Trump received so much working-class support. Years of deindustrialization and austerity have knocked the bottoms out of many workers’ lives. There’s a widespread perception that the “elites” don’t care about ordinary people. Inflation has had a serious negative effect on working-class living standards. Trump has been able to cynically, but skillfully, ride this wave. He has positioned himself as someone who is outside of, and not afraid to offend, the establishment.

The workers who voted for Trump are right that their lives have gotten worse over the past four years and that the rulers are hostile to them. They are of course quite wrong that voting for a far-right billionaire and con man will advance their interests. Migrant workers and the oppressed are not their enemies, but their natural allies.

The working-class movement needs to win these Trump workers over to our side of the class struggle. This is an extremely hard, but not an impossible, task. The challenge is to show them that united class action will improve their lives and lead to better results in the real world than hating other workers. Workers who see union members win gains through strikes and organization can see that there is another more effective course of advancing their class interests. Practical experiences of union victory are the best way of showing Trump-supporting workers that another way is both possible and successful.

Immediate tasks

Our central task today is to show that our movement is not defeated and demoralized. This means concretely finding the issues on which we can organize most successfully today. Three issues dominate our agenda:

1) The trade union movement. Each picket line walked shows that we are still here and are not going away. Every act of union organizing shows that collective action brings results. This means that socialists will put a premium on strengthening the unions and strike solidarity.

2) Palestine. The extraordinary youth solidarity movement must be continued. It has faced the challenge of new extremely repressive measures on college campuses. The Harris campaign also syphoned off some support. But Palestine is still going to be the center of the world political situation. The movement is still the most important left-wing development in decades. It must continue to be at the top of our agenda.

3) Immigrant solidarity. The incoming Trump administration will certainly carry out some high-profile deportation operations. Socialists will do everything in our power to help the immigrant rights movement to respond to these impending attacks. At the present time, it’s not possible to say the exact form that this work will take. But it’s a task we should be prepared for.

To conclude, revolutionary socialists should keep a level head and a sense of determination. If we do these things, then we can make an important contribution to the fightback that’s going to be so necessary during Trump’s second term.