EDITORIAL
“No Kings,” No Capitalists

Oct 27, 2025

October 18 protests across the country drew as many as 6.5 million people, according to organizers and news outlets. It is hard to know exactly how many people participated, because there were more than 2,500 “No Kings” events.

When the slogan of “No Kings” was put forward, no doubt it rang true for many workers. Democracy? Trump could give a flip. He mocks the very idea and makes it clear that he is not asking anyone, including Congress, for permission to do anything.

His killing spree in the Caribbean Sea is intentional and he says outright that he has no intention of asking Congress for permission to do it. He grabs workers off the street after racial profiling and deports them. He sends the U.S. military into U.S. cities to attack U.S. citizens. Where did that come from? He tears down the East Wing of the White House. Who did he ask? And why isn’t he stopped? Isn’t there a law? And on and on.

In fact, it comes from the very foundations of this so-called democracy we are living in. Trump may be taking it to a new level, but the foundations for what he is doing were laid long ago. Rich people do what they want.

The people have never called the shots! This country has been engaged in dozens of wars, for example—wars that Americans have paid dearly for, in money and lives. Did the population ever vote to go to war?

In fact, the word “democracy” is nowhere in the constitution. The founding fathers, in their bourgeois “wisdom,” made sure that the masses, the plebeians, would never rule. John Jay, the Chief Justice of the first Supreme Court, put it bluntly: “The people who own the country ought to govern it.” And when the U.S. Constitution was being written, Jeremy Belknap stated: “Let it stand as a principle that government originates from the people, but let the people be taught that they are not able to govern themselves.”

Citizens are allowed to vote for presidential candidates of parties restricted to those who represent the upper class, the ruling class of this country, capital.

The very process of voting and elections is undemocratic. Whole sections of the population are left out. Look at the fights that had to be made so that women and the black population could vote. Look at the ongoing attacks on voter rights. Millions of immigrants live and work in this country with no rights. The electoral college system, set up to impose inequality, came out of a tradeoff to deny black people the vote or even consider them one full person! It stipulates that representatives of the ruling class make final decisions, not the majority.

And then, how do they protect this so-called democracy? Look at the myth of the separation of powers, three branches, legislative, executive and judicial. This so-called protection against abuse by the executive branch is a joke. Trump didn’t make it so, he has only taken it to a new level. The Supreme Court has never guaranteed the rights of citizens. Ask women if they have ever been free to control their own bodies. Ask why so many black men languish in prison.

Underlying all this talk of a return to freedom and democracy lies the framework of a dictatorship of the owning class, the capitalist class. Equality for all? Bull! The majority of the population has to work, trapped by the rules and regulations set down by an upper class that values only profit. Where is the equality? Where is the protection against abuse? There is none. You may have it better or worse. But no worker has the right to an income nor health nor housing nor food.

The top organizers of the No Kings demonstrations feel that the system, rid of Trump, is adequate. Leaders of the Democratic Party, which puts itself forward to be the ruling party on behalf of the capitalist class, see themselves as the alternative to the Republican administration run by Trump.

But look how we got here. The same broken record of choosing the lesser of two evils has propelled us toward the bottom at an astonishing pace.

With or without Trump, the capitalist economic system is descending into crisis. War, finally, will be the solution held out to the working class as capitalism gobbles up all the profit and goes further into a downward slide.

The workers have no interest in tying themselves to old, false, outworn slogans and “solutions.” The workers need a revolutionary party and a revolutionary fight for real economic and political security that only a new system can bring.

Capitalism belongs in the dustbin of history. The working class can build a new, egalitarian society by taking the productive system that we have built, with its advanced technology and capacity to provide sustenance for the world population, out of the capitalists’ hands and organizing it to produce for the whole population.