r/MarxistUnityNews

Will Donald Trump stage a coup to stay in power? If so, can the masses be mobilised for a democratic revolution?

"Since the last time the far-right attempted to disrupt the peaceful transition of power on January 6th, only one thing has changed: they are stronger, and more emboldened, than ever. The center will do nothing to stop them. It is up to us."

"Consider the sheer audacity of his most recent grift: establishing a 1.7 billion taxpayer slush fund pried from the public coffers by literally suing his own government. This is to say nothing of the staggering billions in raw estimates of public wealth he has extracted over his tenure. If a Democratic candidate, propelled by an infuriated base, promises to claw back that stolen money, are we expected to believe he would ever allow himself to be forced into a position of vulnerability? To be dragged into court yet again, made to suffer all manner of indignities in his dying senility? Cornered by these material realities, the incentive structure drives him to lash out like a dying animal.

Indeed, the danger is not merely his temperament but his structural position: shattering the republic is simply the most reliable means to keep himself out of a cell, secure his legacy, and get the last laugh on the suckers and losers who always dismissed him as a joke. The Republican base hates the Left no less than they did in 2021, and they remain eager to see our permanent destruction. Under these conditions, a willingness to break the constitutional order becomes a matter of political survival."

"If the Democrats undeniably win, they will manufacture a crisis within the Electoral College, using loyalist state legislatures to submit competing slates of electors or refusing to certify hostile results entirely. When the inevitable legal chaos ensues, the captured Supreme Court will step in, halting the certification process under the guise of investigating "irregularities."

Should this trigger the expected mass unrest in the streets, the trap will spring shut. The regime will deploy a weaponized and radicalized ICE, the newly cleansed military, and a federalized National Guard to freeze the transition of power indefinitely under the unassailable banner of "national security." Trump will remain, or he will ensure a hand-picked loyalist secures his office."

"This is a unique confluence of material forces in recent American history. Not for fifty years has such a fleeting opportunity been presented to the people to seize their own destiny.

The regime is trying to steal it from you—not over some unspecified timeline, but right now at this very moment. This is what we have been organizing for. The importance of the remaining period leading up to the 2029 transition of power cannot be overstated.

If we win, we stand to gain an opportunity to position Communism as a true political pole in American political life. By leading, and drawing a clear line between the people and their enemies, we strengthen the proletariat and show the masses who the genuine vanguard for democracy is. To prove that, when we say that the socialists believe that democracy is the “light and air” of the working class, we really mean it.

Once the regime is defeated and the immediate threat has receded, the entropy of victory, as Mike Duncan calls it, will set in, and the popular front will fracture on the basis of a progressive victory, leaving an opportunity for the articulation of a truly Communist politics.

If we lose, we stand to sink into a generation-long national-capitalist dictatorship. We doom the world to American imperial violence, the American public to despotic, corrupt, and exploitative governance, and the planet to catastrophic environmental degradation.

These are the times. These are the stakes. Act accordingly."

MUG shows the way forward in the war of position

"As Zohran Mamdani’s affordability agenda winds through the back rooms of government, DSA’s role remains to organize and educate the working class. Sid CW charts the history of this relationship and reasserts the vital importance of political independence from the capitalist state."

"The short-term future of democratic socialism as a 21st-century political movement seems to hinge on the ability of one man to carry out a sweeping and expensive political program in the face of long odds. Our job, everywhere, is to make that not the case; to present an electoral vision, a labor vision, a street action vision, an internationalist and abolitionist vision, a vision in all spaces where politics are done to agitate for a revolutionary program. The next four years will be defined by whether DSA (both in New York and elsewhere) is able to exert political authority and decision-making power independently, outside of the influence of Zohran Mamdani or any other celebrity politician."

"It is true that we cannot stay out of power forever. A strategy of permanent opposition has never succeeded in the United States, and workers grow tired of it just as quickly as they grow tired of mayors. But without tools to adapt to the reality we have created, we risk stagnation and the loss of our voice as the only truly independent force in American politics. We must continue to insist on DSA’s power as a decision maker, not only because we can win elections, but because the power of our member democracy to shape all of politics is the envy of the world. We can’t give that up."

"The first couple of official Your Party branches are being set up in the most hesitant, most fearful, most controlled way imaginable. Carla Roberts reports"

"There is at least one glaring discrepancy between the two first branch formation meetings: while in Wales members will “hear from members standing for officer positions”, the election of officers for the Isle of Wight branch will have already concluded - and members are invited to “meet your newly-elected branch officers”. HQ has organised the election of “chair, treasurer, secretary, organiser and workplace liaison” entirely online. Members were able to self-nominate between May 12 and 17, with the “candidates announced” on May 20 and an “online hustings” taking place on May 30. Voting takes place between May 31 and June 5 - ie, the election finishes the day before the actual “branch formation meeting”.

From our perspective, this is entirely the wrong way around. Members should be able to meet the candidates in an actual, real-life meeting. Everybody should be able to ask questions, hear the candidates’ answers, and then also see the reactions of the other members in the room - and only then cast their vote. Online hustings and votes are not only a very poor substitute: they depoliticise and demobilise members. Why bother coming to a meeting if you can just click a button at home? That is, of course, exactly what the Corbyn clique wants: a quiet and pliant membership that does not propose motions (which might, for example, criticise the lack of democracy in YP)."

Ewan Tilley lays out a framwork for understanding cadre development through four sites: Internal political education, fraction work (labour organising), community organising and faction participation. Should socialists adopt the framework? How do socialist organisations develop their cadre today and is it sufficient?

"What is the best approach to developing a revolutionary cadre? Ewan Tilley presents a common framework."

"The cadre development framework is not a curriculum. A curriculum specifies content to be transmitted from a knowledgeable instructor to a developing student, and the transmission model of political education is precisely what the organic framework refuses. The cadre is not developed by being taught the correct positions on a defined range of questions. They are developed through political practice in the three sites the main text identifies, with internal political education functioning as the analytical framework through which that practice is understood and developed rather than as the primary site of formation itself."

"Cadre development is not only the cadre’s individual responsibility. It is the party’s collective responsibility, and the party that treats cadre development as a matter of individual political will rather than of organisational conditions has misunderstood the organic framework’s central argument. The cadre is produced by the party’s political life, and the quality of that political life is determined by the party’s constitutional architecture, the richness of its deliberative processes, the seriousness of its fraction work and community organising, and the vitality of its factional contention. A party with an impoverished internal political life produces impoverished cadre regardless of the formal education programme it maintains."

Anthony Teso argues in Platypus Review that DSA is not doing enough to break from the Democrats and reformist politics. Is the critique valid? Will the momentum behind DSA be captured by the Democratic Party?

"BY ANY SURFACE MEASURE, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has become a serious political force. As of February 2026, DSA said it had surpassed 100,000 members, and Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election gave the organization its most visible municipal triumph to date.[1] Yet from a rigorous Marxist standpoint, the organization’s present political and organizational trajectory raises deep strategic concerns. The problem is not that its immediate demands are necessarily wrong. The problem is that the methods and structures it has adopted may systematically prevent those demands from ever being realized. This essay argues that DSA’s commitment to electoralism within the Democratic Party, its reformism without a developed theory of the state, its class composition, and its ideologically diffuse “big tent” model together forms a set of contradictions that Marxist analysis reveals as structural rather than accidental."

"The issue is not whether DSA can win elections, pass reforms, or radicalize a layer of activists. It plainly can. The issue is whether its dominant strategy builds the forms of working-class power capable of surviving collision with capital and the state. On that question, the doubts remain serious. A Marxist critique of DSA is therefore not a complaint that it wants too much; it is the harsher claim that, by tying socialist politics to institutions designed to absorb and domesticate them, it may be constructing the very machinery of its own containment."

Unity on the basis of theory must be replaced by unity on the basis of a revolutionary programme. This requires that the different tendencies and groups on the far left embrace sharp debate and open factionalism. How can this be achieved?

"Common-sense anti-factionalism is beginning to be called into question. So the likes of Claudia Webbe, RS21 and the Mandelites have been putting up what passes as an argument. As Mike Macnair shows, the results are neither impressive nor convincing"

"The party grounded on theory - or on ‘method’, as Duncan Chapel quotes Livio Maitan as arguing - cannot tolerate any serious differences persisting over any prolonged period of time. But, for precisely that reason, the effect is inevitably the multiplication of sects and their ineffectiveness in face of the ‘official lefts’ like Pablo Iglesias in Spain, like Mélenchon in France, like Corbyn and his clique in Britain.

The alternative is to break with the method altogether and unite on the basis of a summary political programme, put to the vote and amendable, and accepting that there will be open and long-lasting factions and sharp debates. If we can achieve this among the Marxist left, we may be able to pose this method as an alternative to the method of bureaucratic-managerial controls the ‘official lefts’ seek. And then perhaps we can de-managerialise and democratise the workers’ movement. And by de-managerialising the workers’ movement, we may be able to pose the possibility that a socialist and democratic transformation of the society is possible."

"Approximately two years into the second Trump administration, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is at a critical crossroads. In this semi-annual check-in, we sit down with members of the Marxist Unity Group (MUG)—Cliff Connolly, Gene Allen, and Amy Wilhelm—to discuss the evolving landscape of American socialist politics. In this deep dive, our panel explores the significant shift following the passing of Resolution Seven, which officially declared the DSA's intent to transition into an independent, mass-based political party. We tackle the "New York contradictions," the limits of holding executive office without legislative support, and the struggle to maintain a revolutionary program in a "multi-tendency" organization.

In This Episode, We Discuss: The Blueprint for a Party: Why the DSA is moving away from being a "political advocacy non-profit" toward a formal party structure. Executive vs. Legislative Power: Analyzing the challenges faced by elected officials like Zohran Mamdani in New York and the dangers of "shortcuts" to power. The Utility of Protests: Why street movements like "No Kings" are vital for recruitment even if they don't immediately "move the needle" on foreign policy. Building a Worker State: The development of a revolutionary program aimed at ending capitalism in the United States. Member Protagonism: How doubling down on internal democracy and STV (Single Transferable Vote) is the key to retaining the DSA's 100k+ membership

Connect with the Marxist Unity Group: Website: marxistunity.com Publications: Check out Light and Air and the Bulletin for internal and external socialist theory. Read: Cliff Connolly’s latest piece in Democratic Left regarding the Security Commission’s de-escalation and safety trainings"

"Socialist Alternative leaders in the new electoral front want to ban caucuses from identifying with the party in public. NSW Socialists member Clarrie Lewis – writing in a personal capacity – argues this is a tipping point in defining the organisation’s democratic culture."

"The labour movement in Australia needs a socialist party capable of combining unity of purpose with confidence in its own members’ political initiative.

If NSW Socialists – and the broader Socialist Party project – hopes to present itself as a serious electoral and working-class alternative, it will require a political culture that encourages organised participation, not one that restricts it unnecessarily.

The Bread & Roses caucus represents one attempt to contribute to that broader project.

The outcome of this discussion will help determine what kind of socialist party develops."

"We argue that developing DSA into a party beyond a ballot line goes hand in hand with running candidates with a Marxist strategy and to ensure elected socialists are embedded with their local chapter, developing members both politically and as leaders within itself. DSA chapters should be encouraged and supported by the NEC to develop electoral campaigns for candidates that intend to use their campaigns to build DSA at the local level, making sure candidates have sufficient political education and alignment, and develop a relationship with the candidate that isn’t transactional but mutual. In order to continue to build a party independent of the capitalist parties, DSA should develop relationships between former and current endorsed DSA members across the country towards the development of independent electoral organizing and fundraising programs like Socialist Cash. We should utilize DSA members that want to work on electoral campaigns to be connected with locally endorsed campaigns at other chapters running candidates for things like phonebanking and texting.

Most critically, building the party we need in this moment requires learning the lessons of socialists in the past. Running candidates in liberal bourgeois elections must be done not solely to get elected, but to heighten class consciousness and bring people into DSA to develop them as leaders and organizers. DSA members who eventually do get elected need to operate independent of the capitalist parties and instead organize with DSA rather than outside of it. DSA at the local and national level must develop a mutual relationship with candidates it runs and elects, and utilize the whole of DSA electoral programs as a single party apparatus that is greater than the sum of its parts."

"We on the left are a minority, we Marxists are a minority of that minority and we partyists are a minority of that minority. How do we change that? Not, argues Mike Macnair, by silencing ourselves through factional bans and speech controls"