A Donald Trump presidency means a continuation of Barack Obama’s wage-killing exploitation, economic crises, racist and sexist demagoguery, persecution of immigrants, ever-widening inequality, and plans for broader inter-imperialist conflict. It can also be one of mass fightback! Communists have a vital role to play in this volatile period. Multiracial unity is our most powerful weapon. Our job is to organize the international working class to defend itself and fight back.
Trump was clearly not the first choice of the main wing of the U.S. ruling class. The finance capitalists were more comfortable with the racist, sexist Hillary Clinton, a proven general for U.S. imperialism. But the bosses are flexible and resourceful, and they’ll exert all of their power to bend Trump to their will. To maintain their dominance, protect their oil profits, and build support for the next big ground war, the bosses will move to bring workers from across the political spectrum into line. As the Council on Foreign Relations, the leading think tank for U.S. main-wing, finance capitalism, observes:
Trump may provoke lasting political realignments. On the right, this will most likely take the form of a resurgence in muscular exceptionalism, which would call Americans to unite in confronting a freedom-hating enemy (perhaps China, Iran, or Russia). Less predictable, but potentially more interesting, will be the opposition from the left. After eight years of deferring to Obama, the left now has an opportunity to get creative. For instance, left-wing Democrats (and some Republicans) may attempt to constrain the power of the executive, as occurred after World War I and the Vietnam War, but after the war in Iraq has not.
Relative to its rivals in Russia and China, the U.S. ruling class is internally divided and in accelerating decline. The volatility around Trump’s incoming presidency makes the U.S. bosses even more vulnerable. It is too early to gauge Trump’s impact on the splits that plague the ruling class. The rulers themselves are as unsure of how to make a Trump presidency work best for them. But we can be certain that the bosses’ relentless drive for profits will intensify their attacks on the international working class.
Obama’s War Legacy
Assassin-in-Chief Obama paved the road for Trump to continue wholesale killing with drones. As of January 2016, Obama had authorized more than five hundred drone strikes, killing 3,040 people labeled as terrorists and 391 civilians (New York Times, 1/12/16). Trump’s racist anti-Muslim policies were derived from Obama’s racist military attacks on the working class in the Middle East.  Obama’s efforts to institutionalize and normalize the practice of drone strikes will be now be pushed by Trump.
Eight years of a Barack Obama presidency has resulted in mass deportations (a record 2.5 million through 2015), a bank bailout ($700 billion) and rampant, racist police terror. But Obama did little to assuage the bosses’ biggest concern: the waning of patriotism among disaffected U.S. workers, and their lack of enthusiasm for a military draft for the next ground war.
The U.S. military is essential to U.S. capitalist dominance around the world. While Trump may have made isolationist-sounding campaign promises to cancel trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or to step back from NATO and give Russia freer rein in Eastern Europe, make no mistake. Trump will be a war president. As Foreign Affairs (1/3) noted,
Trump never promised to retract the United States’ global power. To the contrary, he vowed to build up the military, go after Islamist terrorism, and counter Chinese aggression. An isolationist he is not.
The Brookings Institute, another top imperialist think tank, laments Obama’s decision to avoid “messy” conflicts that would require, “sizing military forces in particular for larger-scale stabilization missions. In other words, he directed the armed forces not even to retain the capability to do big things that extended beyond their warfighting comfort zones” (1/6).  The report encourages Trump to correct Obama’s mistake before the next war.
All Capitalists Are Our Enemies
Based on the people he’s nominated to cabinet-level positions, Trump could represent an opportunity to unify the rulers’ dominant section with the wing represented by more domestically oriented capitalists.
The jobs that deal directly with profits generated within the U.S. are going to allies of domestically focused bosses like Charles and David Koch. The Kochs are “well positioned to influence the Trump administration, with many allies in important cabinet and transition positions” (Times, 1/6). For example, Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, received $175,000 from the Koch brothers’ network for a nonprofit Pruitt helps lead (Politico, 12/27/16).
On the other hand, Trump’s appointment of Walter “Jay” Clayton to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that polices and regulates Wall Street, is a clear nod to the finance capital section of the ruling class.  Clayton is a lawyer who has represented mega-banks like Barclays and JPMorgan Chase. He also handled the U.S. Treasury Department’s capital investment in Goldman Sachs, where  his wife is a private wealth advisor. Mike Sherrod, a ranking member of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, stated,
“It’s hard to see how an attorney who’s spent his career helping Wall Street beat the rap will keep President-elect Trump’s promise to stop big banks and hedge funds from ‘getting away with murder’” (NYT, 1/4).
The bosses will continue to use Trump’s racist rhetoric to divide the working class by blaming Black and Latin workers for unlivable wages and housing conditions. The Republican Party, in particular, will use openly racist, far-right movements to deepen this divide. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party will use Trump’s presidency to mislead the working class into dead-end, liberal social reform movements, while pushing the lie that voting can change capitalism.
Even as friction within the ruling class heightens, the bosses will do their best to use Trump’s presidency to serve their common interest in maximum profit, and to attack the working class to that end.
Same Enemy, Same Fight
Historically, workers have fought together against their oppressors from the very inception of capitalism. Although we understand that the profit system can never be reformed to serve workers’ needs, reform movements and tactics--rallies, strikes, walkouts, and local fights against racism and sexism—can be extremely valuable for our class. They build unity with our class brothers and sisters. Most important, they teach us how to fight the bosses.
Like the Obama presidency before it, Trump’s presidency is hazardous to the international working class--and an opportunity for mass militancy. Since the November elections, we have seen thousands of workers hit the streets with their fists in the air, ready to fight back against capitalism. Trump’s open racism can be smashed only by multiracial unity.   We must continue to struggle with misled workers to fight back against the true beast. Only a multiracial mass movement for communist revolution can smash capitalism and all of its lies.
Our ultimate goal is communism. It can be realized only with mass revolutionary violence by millions of workers and youth--by people just like you. United as one class, freed from exploitation and artificial borders, the working class can build a new world from the ashes of the old. Join the Progressive Labor Party!  When you do, you will be joining hands with billions of fighters past, present, and future. The world belongs to the international working class, but only if we dare to fight for it.