After decades of decline, British capitalism is particularly vulnerable to the instability that Trump and his ‘America First’ programme bring. The new president will inflame the political turmoil, radicalisation, and polarisation taking place in Britain.

The newly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada over the past several weeks. While initially written off as a joke by Canadian officials, the thrust behind Trump’s threats has dire implications for Canadian capitalism.

The following is an excerpt from a new title, Colossus: The Rise and Decline of US Imperialism, written by John Peterson, chief editor of The Communist – paper of the Revolutionary Communists of America. The book provides an introduction to Lenin’s classic writings on imperialism and war with modern figures, following the rise and relative decline of US imperialism. As revolutionaries it is our duty to study this history and arm ourselves with the theoretical weapons to overthrow capitalism in the United States and around the globe.

Donald Trump is once again set to helm the most powerful imperialist power in history. He has made sweeping promises to bring back American “greatness,” and there are big expectations for a serious shake-up of the hated status quo.

At time of writing, six wildfires are raging out of control in and around Los Angeles. At least ten people have perished in the conflagration, and the LA County Sheriff expects that number to rise.

After evading authorities for five days, Brian Thompson’s alleged assassin was finally caught at a McDonald’s in Altoona, PA. Dubbed “The Adjuster” on social media, Luigi Mangione has been received as a modern-day folk hero. The following is an update and supplement to our original article, written before his capture.

We publish below the short, 262-word, hand-written manifesto which was allegedly in Luigi Mangione’s possession at the time of his arrest. We publish it in full here on account of the fact that the capitalist press has refused to do so, although they sparingly quote from it.

Wednesday morning, Americans woke up to the news that UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Brian Thompson, had been shot to death in a targeted attack outside a Manhattan hotel. The country’s capitalists and their representatives shed collective tears for the death of one of their own. One of the first to react was Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, Kamala Harris’s running-mate in the last election, who described Thompson’s death as “a terrible loss for the business and health care community.”

The weeks that follow a presidential election, when the outgoing President occupies himself with putting the finishing touches on his legacy while leaving it to the President-elect to put together the team that will take the reins of power, are usually a fallow period in US politics. Not this time.

Three weeks ago, to the horror of the liberal establishment in the USA and internationally, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States for the second time, defeating the hated and discredited Democrats. The capitalist media is filled with hysteria about a dire threat to democracy and the rise of ‘fascism’ posed by Trump’s presidency… just like in 2016! Communists need to cut through all the noise and understand what is really happening here.

In this episode of Against the Stream, Hamid Alizadeh and Niklas Albin Svensson, from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International, discussed the reckless escalation of the Ukraine war by Biden, Trump’s controversial picks for his administration, and the death of the American Dream.

"The life of monopolistic capitalism in our time is a chain of crises. Each crisis is a catastrophe. The need for salvation from these partial catastrophes by means of tariff walls, inflation, increase of government spending and debts lays the ground for additional, deeper and more widespread crises. The struggle for markets, for raw material, for colonies makes military catastrophes unavoidable. All in all, they prepare revolutionary catastrophes."

Closely following our special episode with Alan Woods covering Trump’s victory in the US election, Against the Stream went live again this week for another discussion. This time, Hamid Alizadeh and Fred Weston from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International met to talk about the devastating floods in Spain and the resulting rage of the masses against the ruling class, the abrupt collapse of the German government, and more on the implications of Trump’s victory.

The shock result of the US presidential election provides yet another example of the kind of sudden and sharp changes that are implicit in the situation. Up to the very last minute, the media pundits were straining every nerve and muscle to prove that the polls were heading for a Harris victory, albeit with a narrow margin. 

This week, Against the Stream podcast went live for a very special episode. Now that the results of the US election have come in, Hamid Alizadeh and Alan Woods from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) sat down to discuss the implications of Trump's victory and what it means to communists. Alan is the editor of marxist.com, the author of numerous books on Marxist theory and the lead theoretician of the RCI.