Some are calling it a “coup.”
US President Trump has reorganized the National Security Council “Principals’ Group.” This top-level US inter-agency group discusses imperialism’s key policy issues.
The Principals’ Group includes the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Energy, Homeland Security and Defense and the Attorney General. Now it also includes Trump’s “alt-right”-hand man Bannon but not – incredibly – the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump also wanted to cut out the CIA chief but changed his mind.
Trump is consolidating power in the hands of trusted political allies. Some, like National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have close ties with Russian officials. Some “insiders” fear they are putting their secret private economic interests ahead of US imperialism’s strategic interests.
Others worry about Trump’s expansion of executive powers at the expense of the federal bureaucracy. Trump is building on the legacy of George W. Bush and Obama. Both broadened the scope of executive power, including extra-judicial killings.
Trump and Bannon may or may not be planning a “coup” to replace one ruling faction of US capitalists with another. What’s important is that a coup is not a revolution.
Bannon calls himself a “Leninist” because he wants to “smash the state.” But like the Nazis (“national socialists”) he actually wants to concentrate power even more firmly in the hands of a capitalist faction.
The communist Lenin fought to replace the bosses’ state with a workers’ state. His Bolshevik party called for “all power to the soviets” of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ deputies. They aimed to build a socialist society that would evolve peacefully into communism. It didn’t. Now we have a better plan.
Today we prepare for revolution to win communist workers’ power. That means a massive International Communist Workers’ Party uniting all who want to build a world without money: From each according to ability and commitment, to each according to need. Eventually that will be everyone.
Our strategy of mobilizing the masses for communism is the exact opposite of a fascist coup.
Bannon is a former Goldman-Sachs investment banker. Like the Nazis, he denounces “international bankers” (code words for Jews). His “alt-right” allies with Christian fundamentalists like Vice-President Pence. They see Trump as a “blunt instrument” to establish a US theocracy. They plan a third world war of Christianity against “Islamic fascism.” This is what Bannon means when he talks about a “crisis of the underpinnings of capitalism.”
The real crisis of capitalism has two aspects. First, market competition for maximum profits has created more capital than can be profitably invested. The only “solution” is the massive destruction of workers’ lives and the products created from their sweated labor. That means world war – and a massive opportunity to win soldiers to turn the guns around for communist revolution.
The second, more profound aspect of the crisis lies in its inability to meet the masses’ most basic needs. It has created an international working class that will build a new communist society over the graves of Trump and all capitalists everywhere.
