On Trump's victory

Some comments on the Trump electoral victory from comrades on Facebook:

Strange how all the so-called educated liberals are dumbstruck by the events unfolding and can only recourse to non-sense to explain them: it's all the fault of racist white workers! It's white peoples fault! The idea that capitalism is the issue does not cross their minds, apparently.

This is what bourgeois education offers: the incapacity to understand how the world functions and what must be done to transform it for the benefit of toilers the world over (most of whom have lived in a nightmare for centuries due to the condemnation to misery that certain countries are destined to under imperialism)

Meanwhile, all those "ignorant" working people that toil in this country have shown more political clarity. Through political actions workers have shown a better grasp of the problems we face and have taken steps to address them through the only option available to us: struggles against capitalism in all its manifestations.

Liberals shouldn't kid themselves: How can they sing defeat because of trumps presidency when in reality the struggle against capital is barely in resurgence after its historic defeat in the 20th century?

Liberals and other 'progressives' will show their true colors when they pick sides not in the voting booth but where it matters: in the streets and demonstrations and picket lines that will proliferate in the coming days weeks and months.

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Are you stunned by the electoral victory of demagogue and turn-working-people-on-each-other Donald Trump against Wall-Street-Pentagon Hillary Clinton? Don't be!

Whomever was elected was going to rule on behalf of the ruling class of the last empire on Earth, offering working humanity a prison-house of more wars and more misery.

THAT is the only future that capitalism can offer the workers of the world. That is their "answer", their "solution".

We - on the other hand - have to offer ourselves another future, a political future based on the coming together and solidarity of the class - the proletariat of the world - whose labor makes possible the progressive transformation of nature, making possible culture and the beginning of a truly Human history.

But if you insist, if you were betting on "business as usual"... a shake-up or two was coming your way, anyway...as the powder kegs of imperialism go off in one country after another. Get yourself a stronger stomach, because the ride is going to get bumby, a rude awakening is waiting for you.

If you are a fighter in heart and soul, if your spine is not broken; if your place is in the struggle for dignity, among the ranks of world labor destined to rise up: there is no place for fatalism or despair.

Don't let the fears of the imperialist oppressors become your next-to-last "hope", nor their inhuman calculations become your horizon.

There is nothing to mourn; there is a world to win. Move forward and join the banding together - worldwide in scope - of the workers who have nothing to lose but their chains. Their political imagination is the promise of a truly livable future. But if you ask me where the greatest danger is, I tell you this:

"...The greatest danger we've faced for a while now is not recognizing the degree to which every fighting worker and workers grouping that uses its strength, imagination, commitment, integrity, and capacity - that acts in a timely fashion, with all the weight it has - can work in a way that brings together on a national and international scale these experiences of working people. It can affect events. It can attract other sections of the population to the liberating spirit of these battles - beginning with the youth, beginning with those who don't have a million conservatizing worries and commitments draped on them from the past."

("Linking Up With The Past, Present, And Future Of Groups Of Vanguard Workers And Farmers In Struggle", in the Feb.15, 1999, issue of the Militant.)

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"My two cents on the election results.  Keep in mind that millions of people who voted for Trump also voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 AND Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary. I believe the main motivation for these voters is change, although it is true that some of them, a minority, were motivated by the chauvinist demagogy of the campaign.  And now Trump has to try to implement what he has promised, the good, the bad and the ugly. He will not be successful in doing so, regardless of whether we are talking about "building a wall" or "bringing back good-paying jobs". The capitalist parties are in crisis and this does not, in my view, represent a move to the right by the working-class electorate, which is multinational. In fact, it appears that Afro-American participation was significantly down and the expected Latino participation apparently never materialized.  This is the first time in my life that the capitalist class and it's meritocracy has developed an acute fear and loathing of the working-people, in part for not doing what they were supposed to do, which was to nominate Jeb Bush and then elect either him or Clinton.  Whether a Clinton or a Trump presidency, the need for our class to organize to defend it's interests would not have changed."

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Donald Trump beat Romney among latino and black voters by a significant margin. He won hundreds of thousands of those who voted for Obama twice, especially in Pennsylvania.

Irredeemable bigotry and misogyny didn't decide this election, broad working-class discontent at an increasingly crisis-ridden world did.

Donald Trump IS a crude bigot, a misogynist, and a demagogue. He warrants no one's confidence. He's a billionaire capitalist who can and will do nothing to resolve the crisis that we face. But it's a losing recipe to double down on resentment and anger towards millions of workers who may have cast a ballot for him.

Fight and build organizations worthy of the mantle of leadership. My confidence remains with working people the world over. We have lessons to learn and a world to win.