The victory of Donald Trump in late 2024 no doubt marked a shift to the right in the political situation. Not because Harris and the Democrats offered any valid working-class alternative — they did not. But Trump’s victory set in motion a right-wing agenda that, altogether, amounts to a bold attempt to redefine the balance of class forces in the United States, instrumentally couched in a vociferous, nationalist cry for reclaiming and fortifying the country’s hegemonic role in the world.
Yet we would be remiss if we understood current changes as an unequivocal shift to the right. Trump 2.0 represents an emboldened pro-capitalist, imperialist agenda. But his election was also the rightward expression of a widespread discontent with a dysfunctional economic and political system: a rejection of the status quo by increasing sectors of American society, particularly among the working class. Trump’s agenda is simultaneously an attack on workers’ rights and a catalyst for class struggle, and thus an opportunity for forces on the Left to organize collective actions, lead efforts to defend or expand our rights, and advance a working-class program.
There are three counter-tendencies to the rightward shift — developments that in the short or long term can undermine capitalist hegemony. These counter-tendencies should be taken into account when assessing the terrain of class struggle and possible openings for political action.
The Rightward Shift
Trump’s electoral victory changed the political situation within the United States and globally, sending a signal to authoritarian populists and their supporters that the “Right” is on the offensive. Democrats, still shell-shocked and disoriented after a predictable defeat, took note of the sea change and rapidly joined in the anti-immigrant crusade: 48 Democrats voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act, a measure that violates the basic human right of fair trial for undocumented immigrants. Many Democrats came out to say they are ready to “work with Trump” — including Bernie Sanders and UAW president Shawn Fein. Universities are adjusting their policies to match the repressive climate. Not to mention the tech and social media moguls that seemingly went from woke to MAGA overnight. As an influencer at one of the many MAGA events in D.C. last week put it, “we were the underdogs for so long. Now every last foe is our friend.”
This is only a deepening of a rightward trend that began before the elections, which Democrats were happy to join: Harris competed with Trump during the electoral campaign on who was the most anti-immigrant and the most “tough-on-crime.” Shawn Fein’s capitulation is particularly harmful, because as the leader of a strike that made headlines last year and revived the specter of workers’ power in the United States, he held the potential to break with business as usual, to go beyond the pro-working class rhetoric and take concrete steps in building a pole for political independence.
On the ground, the Right is emboldened and on the offensive. While the liberal press debates whether or not Musk’s gesture was really a Nazi salute, there is an army of people that supports and worships those expressions of hubris, masculinity, and bigotry.
A related but separate aspect of the current shift to the right is the loss of democratic rights. Undercutting people’s right to protest is an obvious way to quell working-class power. We can expect increased persecution of pro-Palestine activists and academics — only reinforcing a path that both parties paved the way for. New policies in the Justice Department seek to buttress the state’s repressive apparatus, for example, by ordering prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges against drug offenders. The same goes for the executive order encouraging the use of the death penalty.
Apart from undermining democratic rights, Trump’s far-right agenda has the effect of dividing and terrorizing working-class communities. Attacks on oppressed groups, including trans people, Indigenous people, and immigrants, are a way to sow division within the working class. Justified as a measure to prevent crime and protect “American jobs for [white] American people,” the onslaught on undocumented immigrants and the attempt to revoke birthright citizenship feeds into a widespread prejudice against immigrant workers, making it harder to organize across racial and ethnic lines.
Other bureaucratic or policy measures will negatively affect workers. For example, a change in the composition of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will most likely shift the scale against labor. We can also expect much of the austerity imposed on the government to particularly affect agencies like OSHA, further undermining the already-limited capacity to enforce labor safety standards.
Counter-Tendencies
Despite the undeniable shift to the right in the current political conjuncture, we should not lose sight of developments that pose the possibility, right now or in the near future, of a working-class comeback.
ONE: Growing Labor Power
Over the last few years, we have seen an uptick in labor organizing, not only bleeding into previously unorganized sectors, such as at Starbucks and Amazon, but also showing signs of revitalization and renewal. Some of these signs are the willingness to eliminate tiered employment systems, the engagement with anti-racism struggles and for LGBTQ+ rights, and the emergence of an anti-imperialist, pro-Palestinian sentiment among new labor organizers and activists. This trend is not going anywhere, and it will only intensify in the years to come as the Trump administration clears the way for businesses to a more unbridled exploitation and oppression of their workers.
TWO: Response to Attacks
Trump’s agenda includes a slew of attacks on people’s rights, partly based on ideological conservatism (xenophobia, white supremacy, transphobia) that ignites the base, and partly as an attempt to undermine working-class power: from immigrants’ right to a fair trial, to trans- and non-binary folks’ right to live as who they are, to women’s right to safe abortions, and equal opportunity and equal pay at work. Although this time around, Democrats are more willing to “find common ground” with Trump than to build a (pretense of) resistance, the Trump administration’s onslaught will sooner or later hit a wall.
Arrogance and callousness are two cardinal features of Trump and his acolytes. In fact, this is part of Trump’s appeal: many people read in it power, determination, and leadership. Yet this same exaggerated sense of their own strength can lead them to pick fights that they don’t have the strength to win. For instance, ending birthright citizenship is a brazen move directed largely at further vilifying undocumented immigrants in a context of xenophobia fueled by both bourgeois parties and the mainstream media. It may also be targeting the specific phenomenon of “birth tourism.” But in the terms the measure was issued, including, for example, the questioning Native Americans’ citizenship rights, it is not only unconstitutional but also outside the balance of forces: they will have to back down — for example, letting the executive order die in the courts — or they will face a crushing popular backlash.
Evidently, many of these measures are not meant to stay in place, but are performative acts directed at their base. Still, Trump might be more serious about other measures, such as gutting Social Security, which for decades has been the epitome of “third-rail” politics. The arrogant ethos of the administration, combined with a resolute willingness to please both its business constituents and its radical conservative base, will likely push the administration over the cliff to unleash an uncontainable social unrest.
THREE: Working-Class Consciousness and the Legitimacy of the State
This is not necessarily a development that will happen overnight, but over the medium and long term. The overt pro-business character of the current government will erode the legitimacy of the state itself. In other words, because the state and its institutions will be increasingly seen as serving exclusively the interests of the rich and powerful — i.e., the capitalist class — growing numbers of people will lose confidence in it. More and more people will see through a Supreme Court that always rules against women and working people, a Congress that reduces taxes on the rich while working people continue to struggle, and a president whose main advisors are tech billionaires and corporate tycoons.
Working-class politics are probably more muddled in the United States than anywhere else in the world. The absence of any relevant historical example of a working-class party (the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are parties of the bourgeoisie) and the salience of race and ethnicity, among other factors, contributes to this fogginess. The resulting backwards state of working-class consciousness in the United States makes it more likely for a worker to hold backward values and beliefs. A recent New York Times/Ipsos poll showed that a large percentage of people supported the deportation of undocumented immigrants, especially if they had committed a crime. It also documents a certain level of support for anti-trans policies. At the same time, a whopping 72 percent of respondents said that the government mostly works to “benefit itself and the elites,” and 88 percent agreed with the statement that the U.S. “political system has been broken” (for decades or for the last few years). In other words, there is a widespread anti-elite sentiment and a deep distrust of the government that, after a second experience with Trump, could move masses of people to identify a clearer class-based antagonism.
Trump’s disrespect for protocol and convention, the continuous norm-erosion that characterizes his rule — and that New York Times liberals have fretted about so much — will accelerate this trend. If the United Nations and the WHO are no longer revered as honorable institutions for the common good, they will be less efficient in conveying the idea that world powers care about climate change, or the refugee crisis, or the genocide in Gaza. If even the U.S. constitution is put into question — or re-interpreted to protect only the rights of a few — then nothing is set in stone. So, we have a “scissor” effect of two simultaneous phenomena undermining state legitimacy: on the one hand, the government, the courts, the law, and the police are increasingly seen as serving only the rich and powerful; on the other hand, the seemingly universal institutions such as the constitution, or the separation of powers, are not as “immutable” and unassailable as they once appeared. A byzantine edifice of rules, laws, and bureaucracy could turn into a house of cards. Everything that’s solid melts in the air.
An Opportunity for the Left
Trump 2.0 is not only an opportunity for the Far Right and the business class to win new terrain in the continuous tug-of-war against workers. It is also a second chance for the working class to build strong, effective organizations to advance workers’ interests. One of the main principles that should guide our organizing efforts, learning from the repeated failure of any project linked to the Democratic Party, is political independence. Worker organizers, socialists, and all combative union activists should push for a total class independence within our unions. Sean O’Brian’s flirting with Trump and Shawn Fein’s Democratic allegiance — and his more recent support for Trump’s protectionist agenda — only lead to locking workers’ wagons to the tail-end of different capitalist projects. Remaining independent of the two bourgeois parties is the only way that we as workers can aspire to have a party of our own — and unions can play a big role in such an important task.
By the same token, rallying behind a nationalist, protectionist program leads to chauvinism and class-conciliation. It reinforces the idea that it is in workers’ best interest to side with our domestic class-enemy, the American capitalist class, to exploit and oppress workers in other countries. The most resolute form of internationalism and working-class solidarity must guide our program and actions, defending immigrant workers in the U.S. as well as oppressed communities who are victims of U.S. imperialism around the world.
It is likely that much of the response to Trump’s attacks will come from spontaneous organization of workers, students, and social movements. Left organizers must encourage self-organization everywhere that’s possible. This means building the necessary spaces and structures for democratic debate and decision-making, so that the course of a struggle is not unilaterally decided by a clique of NGO staffers or union bureaucrats. Self-organization can not only boost struggles to higher levels of militancy, but it can also unveil pockets of working-class consciousness that were previously muffled by the lack of spaces for political articulation in this country.
Lastly, political activists and organizers in the Left must embrace diversity, fight for democratic rights, and point to workers’ hegemony as the most powerful weapon to counter the witch hunt against immigrants, queer and trans people, and women. This means that, far from capitulating to the conservative reaction and downplaying the fight for democratic rights for the benefit of economic demands, there is an opportunity for the Left to show that workers’ organizations, particularly unions, can play a leading role in defending immigrants from deportation, stopping layoffs and austerity measures, and defending women’s and trans people’s rights.
This will not only allow us to wrest important gains and rights from a repressive state — degrees of freedom to continue our fight — but it will also showcase the enormous capacity we have when we fight as a class. It can be a small step in creating a gravitational pole for working-class politics, in building our own institutions, organizations, and spaces for working-class solidarity and action.