Our rulers are scrambling; their hold on the masses is faltering. What will we do with this opening? Can we take advantage of it? Are we organized enough, prepared enough, to intervene, to radically shift society? To speak in our own voice, use our own weapons? Refuse to follow the masters? Or no?

Trump has been in office for a little over six months. A barrage of executive orders has been signed since day one, affecting several spheres of the state and the bipartisan regime. Tariffs are being enacted supposedly as a means to promote U.S. manufacturing, but the deeply connected nature of contemporary capitalism, heightened by neoliberal policies, did not magically dissipate once Trump took office. That has driven the International Monetary Fund — in important part, in response to Trump’s “economic nationalism” — to predict vastly slower rates of economic growth, not just for the rest of the world, but for the United States as well. And just days ago, the administration executed an unprecedented attack on Iran, forkasing one of Trump’s main campaign promises: not to start new wars, especially in the Middle East. A tentative ceasefire may be holding, at least for now, but the attack has opened profound uncertainties for the global economy and the geopolitical situation. It has also brought criticisms from some of the leading public figures of the Far Right, like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz. 

In Trump we see an acute expression of the crisis of the bipartisan consensus on neoliberalism, which Perry Anderson once called the most successful ideology in the history of the world. Trump’s tariffs, rejecting so-called “free trade” — like Biden’s push for massive public spending to prop up the economy in a pandemic — offer proof of the end of the neoliberal consensus. Indeed, the Democratic Party’s ineptitude today is an acute expression of neoliberalism’s “sickness unto death.” Running a more or less standard neoliberal campaign against Trumpism in 2016, 2020, and even 2024, it has been feeble in the face of Trump 2.0’s Executive overreach and is now scrambling — with seemingly negligible headway — to find a path forward.

Meanwhile, the masses have begun to stir. Class struggle from below is not yet the deciding factor of the national situation, but the fight against ICE in LA has shown the risks immigrants and their broader communities are willing to take to defend their rights. This militant fight also points to the possibilities latent in a massive bottom-up defense of the fundamental right not to be deported. Events in LA have come on the heels of a historically large turnout for May Day, and helped fuel the “No Kings” protests into what may be the largest national day of demonstration in U.S. history, with over 4-6 million people taking to the streets, including in “Trump country.” 

We’re seeing a new — more acute — stage of what Antonio Gramsci called organic crisis.  The anger and misery of the masses is rupturing the capitalist parties that exist to control them. The “social classes,” in Gramsci’s words, are becoming “detached from their traditional parties.”

This issue of our magazine dives into the challenges of the bipartisan regime in this convoluted moment when the old political order is rupturing, ever more deeply. 

In “The American Political Regime in a Post-neoliberal Moment,” Daniel Kóvacs points out that when a crisis sets in, the state shows what it is: a system of organized violence to maintain class rule. He engages with several authors who have explored the deeper roots of this convoluted political moment: Steve Hahn and his analysis of illiberal trends in America, and Gary Gerstle, who discusses the end of the neoliberal order. In dialogue with their contributions and in contrast with the classically liberal interpretation of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Zeblat, Kóvacs examines the tensions of an atrophied bipartisan regime. While these accounts help us to see the signs of a transitional moment in the regime from the top, Kóvacs brings to bear the role of class struggle — the eruption of the masses onto the political stage from below to advance their own interests — in shaping and reshaping a regime frayed by the decline of the neoliberal world order. As these forces from above and below come together in clashes, or chafe against each other in mutual tensions, the stage is set for sharp shifts in the political situation, to the Left and to the Right — including toward more authoritarian measures.

Madeleine Freeman dives into the existential crisis of the Democratic Party. Laying out the tensions between the possible paths for the party, Freeman goes beyond the “dealignment” debate and places the current predicament of the party as a consequence of its defense of the neoliberal status quo. The paucity of ideas and ways forward for the party derives from its inability in the last ten years to adapt to the crisis of neoliberalism. She lays out routes the party may take at this moment. Perhaps it will be forced  to actively mobilize the working class via the union bureaucracy, and the social movements via its vast network of NGOs, to combat Trump; or maybe it will continue to act as a force of de-escalation of class struggle, a role it has played to a tee in both the New Deal and the Neoliberal orders. In other words, being the “anti-Trump” party is not a viable long-term strategy to contain the political upheavals at the end of the neoliberal world order. 

Claudia Cinnatti’s “The Coordinates of a New Stage in World Affairs” helps us see the crisis of neoliberalism in the United States against the backdrop of the international situation. Part of the  20th Congress of the Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS — Party of Socialist Workers), held in June, Cinatti’s intervention charts the limits of Trump’s “peace through strength” policy. Those limits have become clearer as the Ukraine war drags on, a clear sign of the decay of U.S. hegemony abroad. Indeed, the United States’ decline on the global scene is driving Europe’s rearmament and creating chaos and ever greater instability in the Middle East. In other words, crisis is far from limited to the United States. The task for socialists today, she argues, is to take a revolutionary perspective, recognizing the surges in mass struggle that have accompanied, and challenged, the decay of the neoliberal U.S.-led order worldwide.

Freddy Lizarrague’s “The Relationship Between the PTS, the Vanguard, and the Masses” closes our issue. It reflects the debate in the PTS around the paths towards building a revolutionary party that can lead a large swath of the working class and the oppressed. The contexts are different, but the PTS offers a perspective we can’t afford to ignore in the United States. It has over two thousand members (in a country of 17 million), and is the largest party of the FIT-U, a coalition of class-independent parties that share common agreements to run election campaigns. The PTS has four representatives in the Camara de Diputados (the Argentinian House of Representatives), and several in different states. 

Lizarrague raises crucial questions for the Left in the United States in this moment of political shifts, as the relationship of the working class to the regime is in flux. How can a radical organization build linkages with the “vanguard,” organic leaders with class consciousness mobilized in unions and in the student and LGBTQUIA+ movements, the ones leading the strikes, marches, and showdowns with the state and the Far Right? And how can such an organization connect with the wider masses, the wider hundreds of thousands and millions — many who might be starting to enter class struggle for the first time?

This issue aims to chart some of the domestic and international contours of  neoliberalism’s profound decay. And it does so to chart, at the same time, the openings — the opportunities — for the radical Left to build its power alongside the working masses. 

What will we make of these opportunities?

Articles in this issue:

• “The American Political Regime in a Post-neoliberal Moment” — Daniel Kóvacs
• “The Seismic Crisis of the Democratic Party” — Madeleine Freeman
• “The Coordinates of a New Stage in World Affairs” — Claudia Cinatti
• “The Party, the Vanguard, and the Masses: Experiences from Argentina” — Fredy Lizarrague