Trump returns to the scene of the crime

Today, June 13, ex-president Donald Trump returned to Capitol Hill for the first time since the January 6, 2021 coup. He used the occasion to meet with congressional Republicans to review their plans for the implementation of extreme right measures during a second Trump presidency.

Trump’s fascistic and authoritarian agenda has the support of significant sections of the financial oligarchy. In between meetings with House and Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill, Trump spoke at a meeting of the Business Roundtable, where he presented his economic agenda to the “chief executives of the nation’s largest banks” the Wall Street Journal reported. 

The paper noted that among Trump’s “expected” audience was “JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser and Wells Fargo’s Charlie Scharf.”

The January 6 coup was a political turning point–a coordinated and planned attempt by the president of the United States to overthrow the election in order to remain in power and establish a personalist dictatorship. Three and-a-half years later, Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party and is leading Biden in polls.

In a statement on Trump’s visit, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that Trump came to Capitol Hill to “dismantle democracy.” There is no doubt that Trump and the Republicans represent an extreme threat to democratic rights. But the Democratic Party does not represent a “democratic” alternative to Trump. 

First, the Democrats in fact did nothing to stop the attempted coup of January 6. As it was unfolding, Biden’s silence was only broken to appeal to Trump–the organizer of the coup–to get on national television to put an end to it. The Democrats refused to make any appeal to the population for fear of triggering an explosion of social opposition.

Second, the response of Biden in the aftermath of the coup was to insist on the need for a “strong” Republican Party. Throughout his presidency, Biden and the Democrats have worked to forge a bipartisan agreement with the Republicans.

Over the past several months, Biden has formed a close political relationship with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who heaped praise on Trump during his visit today. Last month, the Democrats voted to keep Johnson in his position as House Speaker. 

The political basis for this alliance is support for the US-NATO war against Russia over Ukraine. Democrats and Republicans joined hands earlier this year to pass $61 billion for the war against Russia and $17 billion for the genocide in Gaza. They have also united in slandering opponents of the genocide in Gaza as “antisemitic” and arresting thousands of peaceful protesters.

Third, the Democrats’ differences with Trump are not over his threat to democratic rights, but over foreign policy. As Trump was visiting Capitol Hill, Biden was at the G7 meeting in Italy, hosted by the fascistic Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose party traces its heritage to Mussolini. 

The leaders of the imperialist powers discussed a vast escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia and the developing confrontation with China–a global war that threatens nuclear annihilation. All the heads of state gathered in Italy are guilty of aiding, financing and politically justifying the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 45,000 people.

The crisis of American democracy does not arise out of the head of Donald Trump. Trump and his band of fascistic conspirators are a product of a diseased social and political system. As for the Democrats, they are another expression of the same disease. Both parties represent reactionary factions of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

Underlying the assault on democratic forms of rule, in the US and throughout the world, are two factors: global war and the extreme growth of social inequality.

The United States has the highest concentration of billionaires in the world, whose collective wealth grew to $5.2 trillion in 2023. The capitalist oligarchs turn today toward authoritarianism and fascism—as they did in Germany in the 1930s—to defend their wealth against the rising tide of social discontent and class struggle.

And the assault on protests against the genocide in Gaza demonstrates once again that the corollary to imperialist barbarism abroad is the destruction of democratic rights at home. 

The defense and indeed vast expansion of democratic rights requires a frontal assault on the wealth and power of the capitalist oligarchs. The anti-democratic institutions and repressive organs of the capitalist state (the professional military, police and intelligence agencies) must be abolished and replaced by organizations of workers’ control and power, to establish a democratic and planned economy on a world scale.

The growing struggles of workers throughout the world is the objective basis for the development of a mass, international movement for socialism. The transformation of this objective movement into a conscious struggle for power requires the development in the working class of a mass international socialist movement.