Workers and Soldiers Need to Fight for Communist Power
LOS ANGELES (USA), October 6 — “Why now?” asked a Los Angeles bus operator. “Why didn’t they [House Democrats] impeach Trump after the Mueller report?”
Good question.
And why not after the Trump administration put children in cages? Banned Muslims from entering the USA? Gave tax breaks to large corporations and the richest individuals while cutting programs that helped struggling workers with housing, food and health care?
Why not after Trump said there were “good people on both sides” in the Charlottesville confrontation when one side consisted of open racists and neo-Nazis?
Trump can attack the working class and not get impeached, but go after Joe Biden and it’s on.
The bus operator answered his own question: “The Mueller report seemed complicated. But then Trump asked the president of Ukraine for help against Biden in the 2020 election. People can understand that.”
But the Democratic Party wasn’t just mad because Trump went after “one of their own.” Or even because they think that Russian capitalists helped him steal the 2016 election. Or because he’s openly trying to get foreign capitalists to steal the 2020 election for him.
The “real” articles of impeachment would be:
* Trump’s erratic and self-serving foreign policy is contributing to the decline of US imperialism and US global power. (See box)
* His inconsistent economic policies (including trade wars) are destabilizing the business environment and magnifying the existing crisis of capitalism.
* His shameless corruption undermines public confidence in the capitalist political system and the capitalist “rule of law.”
Your Enemy’s Enemy Is Not Always Your Friend
Racist Trump put a bounty on the heads of the Central Park 5 (black and latino youth who were later exonerated for a rape/murder of a white woman) and called for their execution. But Trump’s enemy Joe Biden is no friend of the working class.
For example, Biden played a leading role in passing the laws that created the US system of racist mass incarceration. Presidential candidate Kamala Harris also did her part as a California state prosecutor and attorney-general.
Today, the US (with 5% of the world population) has 25% of the world’s prison inmates. Black people are 12% of the US population but 33% of those in prison.
Sexism is a powerful tool that capitalists use to divide the working class. Trump famously bragged that he could get away with grabbing women’s genitals. He clearly regards women as sex objects or servants.
But Biden wrote in 1981 that day-care centers were “monuments to our growing unwillingness to accept personal responsibility.” In 2006 he said he did not view abortion as “a choice and a right… it’s always a tragedy.”
Women in the US are 35 percent more likely than men to fall below the very low official “poverty line.” Single mothers face the highest risk.
Yet candidate Andrew Yang says the “best way” to help them would be a check for $1000/month. Even if that check doesn’t replace other government assistance, it’s less than the average cost of day care!
“I am a capitalist,” declared Elizabeth Warren. “I believe in markets. … They are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity. But only fair markets, markets with rules.”
Workers and youth, let’s not look to the Democratic Party to secure our future.
Communism, not capitalism, will create opportunity for us. It will end markets, especially the “labor market” where we are forced to sell our labor power by the day or by the hour. Instead we will contribute our work freely for the collective good. We’ll get what we need without requiring wages to pay for it.
Another US Civil War?
Trump retweeted a statement that to impeach him would create a “Civil War like fracture in this Nation.” Later he added that “what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE,” etc., etc.
Rep. Maxine Waters and others warn that Trump’s hard-core supporters might not accept his impeachment or even an electoral defeat. Many have weapons and some are organized into militias. These militias are reportedly taking Trump’s tweets literally.
Where would the US military stand? We’re not the only ones thinking about that, and we don’t have an answer.
But we do know this: If our party had a much broader and deeper communist base in the US Army and National Guard, the sharpening conflict within the US ruling class would create an opening for communist revolution.
We must take much more seriously our responsibility to build that base – starting now.
Will Trump Be Impeached for Sabotaging US Imperialism?
October 9— Trump, caving to pressure from Turkey’s president Erdogan, said he’d allow Turkey to expel Kurdish forces from northern Syria. Bloody attacks have already begun.
Suddenly the entire US ruling class – from the “radical” Rep. Ilhan Omar to the hardcore Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell – seems to be on the same page.
The US rulers have betrayed their Kurdish allies many times before. This time, Trump’s proposal to withdraw all US troops from Syria was a huge gift to Turkey, President Assad and his Russian backers. The Islamic State (ISIS) must be cheering, too.
Trump may well flip-flop again, as he did when he changed his mind at the last minute about bombing Iran. But “what ally could look at the United States now and see a stalwart partner,” asked the New York Times. “What foe could look at it and fear a determined adversary?”
One columnist summed it up: “Another example of the foreign policy [Trump] has run from the White House, which has largely abandoned the elaborate systems created since President Harry Truman’s day.”
That is, Trump is destroying the foundations of 70 years of US imperialism.
Unlike Omar, McConnell and the New York Times, we shed no tears for this murderous profit-guzzling, war-making bosses’ empire. We have no illusions that US troops make the world safer for any workers.
We, the international working class, must destroy all imperialist and capitalist bosses with communist revolution. Their crisis is our opportunity.
Read our pamphlet:
Soldiers, Sailors, Marines: Crucial to a Communist Workers’ Revolution
Available at: icwpredflag.org/mpe.pdf
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