EDITORIAL
Only the Working Class Can Stop the Capitalists’ Steamroller

Oct 13, 2025

On September 30 in Quantico, Virginia, Donald Trump told a meeting of hundreds of top military officials that U.S. cities should be used as “training grounds” for the military to crush “the enemy within.”

Back in 2020, during his first term, Trump said he wanted to do exactly that. He said he wanted to bring in the military to crush demonstrations protesting the police killings of George Floyd and others. But top Pentagon officials ignored him.

Now that Trump is back, playing commander in chief for a second time, he and his puppet Secretary of “War,” Pete Hegseth, are clearing the deck, purging the military of anyone who expresses any disagreements and replacing them with officers they consider to be MAGA loyalists.

No wonder the audience of several hundred top generals and admirals greeted the speeches of Trump and Hegseth with such stony silence. Trump commented on how silent his audience was and encouraged them to applaud and act livelier—which the generals and admirals also ignored.

Ever since June, the Trump administration has purposely provoked crises in several cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Memphis—and especially Portland—with the list expanding all the time. It has unleashed masked ICE and other federal agents against immigrants, or people who happen to look like immigrants or who get in their way—and disappeared them into a system of prisons and internment camps, with the goal of deporting them.

This crisis, provoked by the Trump administration, then was used as the excuse to deploy the National Guard, supposedly in order to protect their heavily armed ICE thugs from the surrounding population.

In fact, much of this is for show. Despite the sheer brutality and thuggery of ICE, the Trump administration is not deporting more immigrants than previous administrations. The Trump administration even tries to hide this fact by not releasing statistics anymore. ICE is also very careful not to raid big workplaces. The U.S. bosses profit greatly off of low wage immigrant labor. So does the government, since undocumented immigrants pay taxes, but are denied almost all government benefits and services.

As for the heavily armed troops of the National Guard, most of what they do is stand around and guard federal buildings. In Washington, D.C. Trump ordered them to pick up trash.

One thing is sure: by sending in the National Guard to several cities, Trump has established a precedent for a much bigger military intervention in the future.

Today, when their cities are targeted, the Democratic Party governors and mayors might denounce the invasion by ICE and the National Guard, pretending to be champions of the poor and the oppressed.

What a laugh! All the Democratic officials are interested in is protecting their turf. They all say the same thing. They all say that Trump’s forces are not necessary. They say THEY have THEIR cities under control, that THEIR cops are sufficient to do the job, if any supposed problem arises.

In reality, the Democrats—just like the Republicans—preside over cities and states in which the rich are getting richer and workers are paying the price, with worsening poverty and homelessness, worsening schools, worsening healthcare. Under these politicians, state-sponsored violence imposes this on the population, with the police killing on average three people per day in this country, and with more than two million people in the jails and prisons. No, it is not just immigrant workers who are treated like criminals, but big parts of the whole working class.

In fact, this is part of the everyday class war that the capitalists, the billionaires, wage to increase their profits at the expense of the working class.

Trump is now talking about much wider repression against all kinds of opposition. But when and how that happens does not depend just on Trump, but on how quickly the capitalist crisis grows worse. Another financial crash and economic collapse can happen at any time. The tariff wars and increasing economic competition going on today can also lead to shooting wars, even a world war.

No matter what happens, the U.S. capitalist class and the U.S. government will demand that it’s the working class that will pay the price. It will crack down and take away the few rights that working people have. This is exactly what the government in this country did during World War I and II, as well as the Cold War and the McCarthy Period.

The U.S. government, no matter who is at its head, could very well call in the military to smash any opposition and bring the population to heal. As for the military officers, who were so silent when Trump and Hegseth spoke, they will enthusiastically carry out their orders when they see the order they impose is threatened.

No politician, despite all their promises, can make this better for black people, for immigrants, for the working class. These politicians are all just servants of the capitalist class.

But the working class can organize itself independently in the workplace, in the community, in the schools, on the streets, to fight against all these attacks. Those fights can grow into a more general fight against the cause of these attacks: a system which is run for the sole profit of a tiny class of exploiters and oppressors, who are aided and supported by the government and especially its military and police. It depends on whether there are enough militants in the working class advocating for this perspective. That is, it depends on whether a working-class party based on this perspective is built.