Americans are used to hearing that every election is “the most important in our lifetime.” This year, both candidates have taken it a step further, arguing that it’s the most important election in the history of the United States. “For or against Trump?!” This is the alleged existential question posed by both major parties. But what exactly is Trumpism in the first place? Confusion abounds on this question, and yet, it is impossible to understand where US society is headed without a correct diagnosis of this disease.

This week, Jorge and Hamid sat down to discuss three flashpoints in the world crisis of capitalism: the floods that are devastating Spain, the spiralling conflict in the Middle East, and the impending US election.

With both candidates neck-and-neck in the run-up to election day, you can sense the anxiety of the ruling class, who mostly oppose the maverick Trump. But why has his anti-establishment message struck a chord with a section of American society?

The American Civil War, unlike the conflicts that plague the world today, was just and historically progressive. The Union north smashed the Confederacy of southern slave states and carried out the biggest expropriation of private property in history at the time, with the emancipation of 4 million enslaved people. The Union cause was praised by Karl Marx, who said Lincoln’s battle cry should be: “death to slavery!” With elections in the US just a few weeks away, the American bourgeoisie once again has civil war on its mind…. 

University administrations, under intense pressure from their billionaire donors, are cracking down on pro-Palestine students and faculty on campuses across America. They’ve introduced draconian measures aimed at extinguishing the embers of last spring’s Palestine solidarity encampment movement, which sought to force colleges and universities to divest from Israel and the American imperialist war machine.

On 5 November, general elections will be held in Puerto Rico. As happens every four years, people will vote to elect officials to administer the government. But, unlike previous elections, these offer us a historic opportunity. 

Two weeks after being slammed by Hurricane Helene—the strongest storm to make landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region in 150 years—the Southeast is now bracing for a potentially worse “monster storm,” Hurricane Milton. It’s the latest in a series of humanitarian disasters across the region, which have wrought destruction far beyond anything seen in living memory.

Two weeks ago, the US Department of Commerce put forward a bill proposing to ban car parts and software linked to China or Russia. The White House held a press briefing and published a fact sheet justifying this, with implications that this was a measure to prevent terrorist attacks. The irony of such measures coming so soon after the US-sanctioned Israeli terror attack that was carried out using technological sabotage appears to have been lost on them.

The first annual Vancouver School of Communism was a smashing success! With ninety communists in attendance from Vancouver, Victoria, Abbotsford, Surrey and Calgary, Communism is back on the west coast! We also had over a dozen American comrades come from Seattle, Bellingham and even as far away as New York to participate. 

For the first time since 1977, the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) has gone on strike. At midnight on October 1, 47,000 dockworkers walked off the job at 36 ports from Maine to Texas, including important logistical centers like Baltimore; Boston; Charleston, South Carolina; Houston; Jacksonville; Miami; Mobile, Alabama; New Orleans; New York/New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; Philadelphia; Savannah, Georgia; Tampa, Florida; and Wilmington, Delaware.

One minute after midnight on September 13, thirty-three thousand members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Districts 751 and W24 walked off the job and set up picket lines. It’s the first strike since 2008 at Boeing, the aerospace behemoth employing 66,000 workers throughout Washington state and over 171,000 nationwide.

This school year, RCP activists have launched a campaign for a student strike for Palestine. We have hit the ground on multiple campuses around the country and are happy to report that thousands of students are already supporting this campaign.

Once again, Donald Trump appears to have been the target of an assassination attempt. More than four decades elapsed between the shootings of Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Donald Trump in July of this year. Now, in the span of just two months, there have been two attempts on a presidential life. Such is the political polarization and social decline in the United States—a country that could once boast being the most stable haven of world capitalism.

We are publishing this appeal, signed by the Venezuelan section of the RCI amongst others, in solidarity with those arrested in protests after the official announcement of the election results. Add your signature, or that of your organisation to the appeal here.

As the 2024 election heads into its final stretch, the newly founded Revolutionary Communists of America has launched a coast-to-coast campaign to counter the cynical cesspool of bourgeois politics by injecting a much needed class-struggle perspective.