We’re witnessing a sharp intensification of class struggle, this time coming from above. The Trump administration has launched a series of actions targeting university students, unions, government employees, immigrants, and trans people. Attacks on university funding, particularly affecting graduate programs, appear to be both in retaliation for the pro-Palestine movement and an attempt to repress critical thought. Federal workers are also under fire, with an uncertain number, between tens and hundreds of thousands, laid off as of this writing. But most vicious so far have been the attacks on trans people and immigrants, who are being portrayed as criminals, sex-offenders, or both. These efforts are part of a broader “flood the zone” strategy, designed to overwhelm and disorient any organized resistance. The gutting of federal agencies, the threats to social security, and the cutbacks on Medicaid and other social spending programs, coupled with tax cuts for corporations and the rich, are simply a massive transfer of value from the working class to capitalist class. Leading this assault, and backed by other multi-billionaires, is the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk, who has been plowing through the federal government to make cuts in every corner of the executive branch. The many attacks on social movements and workers’ organizations must be understood as an attempt to disarm and weaken any organized resistance and pave the way for more attacks, regressive transfers, and elimination of social rights.

Meanwhile, the Democrats — who not long ago hailed themselves as the last bastion against fascism — have remained largely absent. Democratic Party leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have not offered even a facade of resistance. In fact, Schumer provided a necessary vote in favor of Trump’s spending bill, which includes severe cuts in social spending and tax cuts for the rich. Top Democratic operator James Carville took to the New York Times to bull-horn his “daring political maneuver” to fellow Democrats: “play dead.” Labor leaders, like Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters and even Shawn Fain of the UAW, have applauded Trump’s tariffs as a progressive solution to the problems of falling wages and unemployment. O’Brien also congratulated Trump for his pick of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary, even as she indicated she would protect anti-union “Right to Work” laws already on the books. Figures from the party’s left wing, like Bernie Sanders have drawn tens of thousands in rallies against “oligarchy” but have refused to meaningfully challenge the Democratic Party leadership that is actively working alongside Trump. 

Yet, despite the severity of Trump’s attacks on working people, there are signs of resistance from below, even if they remain relatively muted (for now!). Federal employees are joining forces and fighting back – despite, it must be said, the pitiful response by the leaders of the unions who represent them. Workers at Whole Foods in Philadelphia have successfully unionized for the first time, marking a breakthrough against Amazon, Whole Foods’ parent company. In many cities, communities are organizing to protect themselves against ICE, taking to the streets, refusing to collaborate with agents, and alerting their communities when raids are happening. And the pro-Palestine movement is stirring again too, in the marches and protests that have erupted after the Trump’s regime arrested pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil for deportation with the help of university administrators.

These domestic struggles are unfolding now against the backdrop of imperialist realignments and geopolitical maneuvering. Trump’s chastising of Zelensky during his visit to the White House and the administration’s overtures toward Putin — both mark  a shift in U.S. foreign policy priorities. At the same time, his economic agenda, characterized by tariffs and protectionist policies, are filled with contradictions and dangers in trying to reclaim the American empire’s slipping economic power. In other words, we’re witnessing a fraught, contradictory “war of position,” in which a declining superpower is trying to maneuver itself for competition with China especially.

And so the Left is facing at least two major questions: one about our objective conditions, and one about what we could call the subjective ones.

First — what exactly are the “objective conditions” we’re facing today? What are the socio-economic tendencies, the conditions-in-formation, at this moment, in this historical conjuncture? Where are those tendencies heading?  

The pieces in this magazine issue help us begin to address some of these questions. In an interview, Michael Roberts reflects on the economic side of this question. Trump’s tariffs and the massive machinery of mass deportation he’s set in motion have made the class’s official economists(in The Wall Street Journal, for example) wring their hands — not over human beings, but about whether inflation will explode again. Roberts asks: where is the economy headed, then? And what new instabilities, fragilities, and contradictions are opening up in the U.S.-led international economy? 

Josefina Martínez, meanwhile, helps us cast our gaze more broadly, historically and internationally. It was a quarter century ago, she reminds us, that Hardt and Negri’s Empire appeared. This anniversary offers us a chance to think about how the international balance of class forces has changed. Hardt and Negri said imperialism is dead and a new Empire has been built on its ashes. But now, Martínez points out, we hear the rumblings, and see the hot wars and genocide, of a new era of imperialism.  The tensions are growing especially between the United States, which is facing threats to its global hegemony, and a rising China.  How, she asks, is this new international scene setting the stage for fresh opportunities for class struggle — across borders?  

But we do not only ask about the objective conditions, since the ultimate question for us is this: how do we organize ourselves, as workers and oppressed people? How do we fight back? 

In many ways, those objective socio-economic and political conditions are far more developed than the ability of the working class and oppressed to resist and organize ourselves. The Democratic Party spearheaded the attack on the historic pro-Palestine movement that exploded on campuses and in the streets, setting in motion the state machinery that has repressed it. And the Democratic Party led the charge in driving the forces of the Left, like our union leaders, to vote for Biden — and, when he was unceremoniously dumped from the ticket, Harris. It was an unmitigated disaster. Not only did Trump win (the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush). The Democratic Party actively disarmed the Left — precisely by attacking the movements in the streets and co-opting the energies of the working class for a party machine at the service of the ruling class.

What way forward, to build a revolutionary Left, then? To start answering this question we need to turn to history, to see the power and limits of past radical movements. Robert Belano’s piece, “Lenin’s Fight Against Stalinism and the Emergence of the Left Opposition,” begins to do just that. Drawing on the lessons of the Left Opposition, resisting Stalinism’s counterrevolution, and fighting for a revolutionary Left pole of attraction, the piece is, in Walter Benjamin’s phrase, a “tiger’s leap” into the past, hunting for lessons and ideas that we’ll need to reassemble a radical Left, an independent pole of class struggle in the United States today.

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Articles in this issue:

• “Is a Major Slump on the Way? An Interview with Marxist Economist Michael Roberts” — Michael Roberts and Jason Koslowski
• “From Empire to Imperialism Reloaded” — Josefina L. Martínez
• “Lenin’s Fight Against Stalinism and the Emergence of the Left Opposition” — Robert Belano