Challenging Trump’s Blitzkrieg

From the Editors

Deep and broad-based mobilizations have met Trump’s assault on working people and their gains. These are only first steps toward reversing direction. As the mobilized expand their efforts, they have to focus away from intra-ruling class disputes and toward initiatives controlled by the broad working class, especially its super-exploited communities.

Trump’s incoherent blitzkrieg aggravates earlier injuries from Republican and Democratic administrations. The “America-First” agenda is not just an individual pathology; it demonstrates the inherent inability of the ruling class to resolve crises of accumulation and related challenges of global order and environment.

The most concentrated expression of these contradictions is Trump’s anti-immigrant Executive Orders. Their sweeping bans eschew US responsibility for the sabotage of the targeted states; they have also stigmatized an entire religious identity. Within days of the first EO, assaults on Muslim places of worship accelerated. More ominously, there is a ratcheting up of tensions with Iran.

The EO, even as revised, directly impacts Socialism and Democracy and its editorial board. As we defend our rights, we commit ourselves to a comprehensive resistance through our scholarship and activism. Adding to existing arguments against the EO, we (1) recognize its connections with US imperialism, (2) act in solidarity with all impacted parties, rejecting distinctions between “worthy” and “unworthy” victims, and (3) support democratic forms of resistance.

Suren Moodliar

UPDATE: The previously planned double issue on the worldwide diffusion of Marx’s Capital, co-edited by Marcello Musto and Babak Amini for the 150th anniversary of the original publication of Volume I, will instead be published as a book. The July and November issues of S&D will appear, as usual, separately.

John J. Neumeier, who died in 2016, was an important participant in S&D’s early years, during which time he was a philosophy professor at Empire State College in New York City. His review essay "Problems in Western Interpretations of Soviet Thought,” appeared in S&D #4 (1987).