LOUISVILLE CPUSA

Capitalism is approaching a terminal disaster due to fundamental flaws hardwired into the system. This fact is becoming increasingly obvious to more and more people as we move from one crisis to the next with no pause or recovery between them. Our economy is inherently unstable because it depends on infinite profit growth, but competition drives down profit over time. For example, when smartphones first became common, it was easy to profit by selling them because of all the new customers, but now almost everyone already owns a smartphone, so it is much harder to make the same profit. To compensate for this, companies intensify their exploitation of the working class, squeezing us for every dollar we have. Capitalism has reduced our ability to buy the goods and services we work all day to create. It causes overproduction, where businesses generate more than workers can afford, which causes economic crashes like the 2008 financial collapse. Learning about this cycle and seeing it play out over and over was one of the biggest realizations that helped me develop from a conservative republican to a Marxist-Leninist.

Trump is accelerating these issues as a symptom of the ruling class desperately trying to maintain control as we enter the climate crisis. His administration, more than any before, has embraced plutocratic rule. Billionaires like Elon Musk are taking direct control over our government functions, openly showing that the state under capitalism is a tool for funneling wealth to the pockets of the 1%. The Republicans’ efforts to scapegoat immigrants serve their goals, suppressing the growing resistance.

Elon’s falling out with Trump does not change any of this; it doesn’t matter which billionaires are in which position of power, just that billionaires as a class are in control. The capitalist class is working towards the same goal.

The reckless financialization of the economy is reaching new extremes, with worthless cryptocurrencies and other speculative instruments risking another catastrophic market crash in the immediate future. Meanwhile, the rise of militarized police and the erosion of democratic norms reflect capitalism’s inability to resolve its crises through traditional means. Our political systems are outgrowths of our economic systems, so democracy under capitalism is fundamentally corrupt and rigged against us in favor of the billionaire capitalist.

Despite the fact that we have the tools to fix essential every problem we face, from homelessness to the climate crisis, the changes we would have to make to fix those problems don’t funnel money to the billionaires, so our government is unable to even consider them. America is frozen in a state of permanent crisis. This is what we call an “organic crisis,” where the entire country is breaking down simultaneously, unable to save itself because the problem is itself.

But as living standards continue to decline, working class resistance will grow, which we are seeing the early stages of with the surge of protests worldwide. We have to remember that Trump’s authoritarianism is not just random cruelty but a sign of the ruling class’s fear of mass revolt. The only way out is the overthrow of capitalism by the working class. Otherwise, the system will continue to drag humanity into endless wars and fascism. Trump and MAGA are symptoms of capitalism’s final attempts to survive but they will only speed up its collapse and create the conditions for the revolutionary change to socialism.