Above: from the thumbnail of Tucker Carlson’s video where he interviews Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party
To find where the biggest weaknesses within the imperial state exist at the moment, look to the conflicts that are happening between the different wings of the ruling class. This rivalry between small and big capital, traditionally called the “yankee and cowboy war,” has been present for centuries but is now escalating in important ways. On one side of this battle, there are the ultra-monopolists, whose interest is in advancing the U.S. empire’s geo-strategic goals. On the other, there are the owners of the smaller enterprises, whose interests are in economic growth. As the imperial order has declined, and the imperialist warfare waged by the monopolists has come to have more severe effects on the U.S. economy, small capital has gotten a greater reason for wanting to oust the dominant wing of the ruling class.
This is why the Libertarians, along with the MAGA people who overlap with them in many areas, seek to defeat the “deep state”: this unelected intelligence grouping is the means through which the monopolists advance their anti-growth, anti-liberty designs. The lower levels of capital share an interest with the popular masses, in that they don’t want these designs to succeed; they don’t want economic production to further be shrunk, which forms the core basis for all the other ways their interests are clashing with those of high-level capital.
This dispute over growth vs degrowth is why the U.S. has experienced its recent political reorientation, where more of the left has become pro-war while more conservatives have become antiwar. It’s also why the largely petty-bourgeois MAGA elements which follow Tucker Carlson, as well as the predominant wing of the Libertarian Party, have opposed the Uhuru charges. They see that if the APSP can be prosecuted for “Russian interference,” then the deep state wins, and all of its goals get advanced. The anti-communist purge that Uhuru’s persecution could bring is going to mean a loss for everyone who’s opposed to the deep state. And these pro-Uhuru elements of the bourgeoisie know where their own best interests are.
It’s this fundamental difference in priorities between the lower and higher rungs of capital that we need to take advantage of. And especially if Trump wins this election, the best way we can do this is by exposing and furthering the contradictions within MAGA. Obviously this area of agitation isn’t the only one we need to focus on; we also need to agitate among the elements of the masses that have gained a proto anti-imperialist consciousness, whether these elements are on the right or on the left. And as I’ve said, I believe that more than anything else we must agitate among the politically disaffected elements of the masses, who make up an even larger demographic than the MAGA base. That’s the biggest way in which we can help win the people.
For the purposes of what I’m talking about, which is weakening the state itself, exploiting these conflicts within the ruling class is vital. Plus, all of these things are interconnected; an effort to ally with anti-imperialist elements of the bourgeoisie, as Mao did, is how we gain the strategic advantages needed to win victory for the people. It’s also how we gain access to many of the people, because many of the most ideologically advanced Americans get their information from small capital-aligned voices. This fight within the ruling class is impacting popular consciousness; simply because of how big Tucker Carlson’s platform is, millions of more people have now heard about the Uhuru case.
If we build up the strength of our own organizations, and thereby enter into coalitions on equal footing with the other players, we’ll be able to build an alliance which brings the proletariat to victory. And if Biden’s handlers can’t manage to keep the Democratic Party in office following this next election, we’ll soon have a massive opportunity to help drive forward ruling class infighting.
Should Trump win in 2024, he’s going to fail at defeating the deep state like last time, except under conditions where MAGA can’t survive such a failure. His supporters solidly want him to end the Ukraine war, and more of them are becoming aware that the genocide against Palestine must end as well. When he refuses to fulfill the antiwar mandate, or to otherwise act against monopoly finance capital, he’ll destroy MAGA’s momentum. The popular anger towards the monopolies and the deep state won’t have gone away, though, it will be stronger than ever. Which means new leaders, and new political currents, will be able to fill the role within anti-establishment politics that MAGA has had for the last decade.
An important development will be when we start seeing conservative and libertarian leaders who were initially supportive of MAGA, or at least compatible with it, come into conflict with Trump over his deep state-aligned policies. Such splits within Trump’s coalition happened during his first term, but of course they weren’t significant enough to seriously damage MAGA. These next splits will be on that level.
There are so many issues that could catalyze these disruptions: Uhuru, the proxy wars, mass surveillance, censorship, and so on. Trump has already set himself up for a backlash from his anti-establishment allies over Assange if he fails to free the political prisoner, since he’s claimed he’ll strongly consider doing so. And even if he does the right thing in this area, these allies won’t be satisfied just with that. Either Trump brings fundamental change, or the Republican Party undergoes a crisis of the kind that the Democratic Party is now experiencing.
The dominant wing of the ruling class is working to crush all the forces which challenge it, including the ones within government and the bourgeois class themselves. Should Trump aid in these malign efforts, which he’s likely to do for the most part, it will fully expose the figures within “dissident right” as controlled opposition. This includes actors like the Nazi Nick Fuentes, who’s now trying to distance himself from Trump after years of acting as Trump’s sycophant; communists can win the war of ideas against Fuentes, and against the other Hitlerites who are hoping to fill the vacuum which MAGA will leave.
Amid the collapse of MAGA, our society’s proto-revolutionary energy will need a place to go, and communists must provide an outlet for these revolutionary impulses. If Trump wins, pay close attention to the people in his vicinity, whether they’re public figures, elected officeholders, or even part of his cabinet. There are actors within this sphere who don’t want to see their own leadership assist the deep state at such a crucial juncture, and who could become a source of tension within MAGA. Many of them aren’t like Fuentes, who’s simply an opportunist that promotes hate; a lot of them have actual integrity. For instance, the Libertarian Party’s chair Angela McArdle has ardently defended communists against attacks from the neocons.
There’s also the possibility that the deep state will act to help Biden, like it did last time, and succeed at getting him re-elected. In that scenario, the deep state’s defeat will need to involve coalition-building efforts that are in certain ways more difficult than they would be otherwise. The crucial thing is that we communists hold on to the allies within this fight which we’ve already been able to gain, and reject the culture war psyops designed to divide monopoly capital’s opposition. The most important fight at this stage is the one between the pro-growth and anti-growth forces; if we recognize this, the anti-growth forces are going to be further imperiled.
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