the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 24, 2025
When Trump hosted Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, he rolled out the red carpet and gave him an opulent royal reception. Trump, the wannabe king, showed the prince his new gold-plated bathroom and his plans for a Billionaire Ballroom at the White House. After Trump flaunted his extravagances, the next order of business was to cut business deals between the Saudi ruler and the Trump family.
This is not the first time a U.S. president or politician has taken advantage of his position to enrich himself and his family. But Trump has taken this kind of corruption to a whole new level, flaunting it, not even bothering to hide it. On almost every foreign trip, Trump has one of his family members along to cut a business deal. Trump just pardoned a crypto billionaire guilty of money laundering, a billionaire crook who “just happened” to have a big investment in the Trump-backed crypto venture. The pardons and deals go on and on.
Using his power as head of the world’s strongest military and economic state, Trump is blatantly enriching the Trump business empire. Meanwhile, an ever-increasing proportion of the population is struggling to pay their bills and survive from day to day.
U.S. corporations are cutting jobs in the pursuit of more profits. Verizon laying off 13,000 people is only the latest. Wages keep falling farther behind prices. Housing costs and electric bills are going through the roof. Repossessions and credit card debt are at all-time highs. The ridiculously high cost of health care is skyrocketing, whether through the so-called Affordable Care Act, Medicare or any other health insurance. Drug overdoses and suicides are climbing.
The capitalist system itself is impoverishing the working class. While Trump is flaunting his wealth, the capitalist system he is part of is driving the working class into poverty and early death.
Capitalism has always been a system where capitalists profit by exploiting the labor of the working class. Workers produce all the wealth of society but get paid only a small portion of what they produce. Most of the money ends up in the pockets of the capitalist class, a tiny, less than one percent of the population. Today, with their system in a long-running economic crisis, the capitalist class and its political servants are more brutal and savage than ever, driving down the standard of living of the working class even further, transferring wealth from the laboring class to the millionaires and billionaires at record-breaking levels.
Trump is a corrupt politician, but the real problem is a whole capitalist system that is corrupt. Trump is simply the public face of U.S. capitalism, for now. If the working class begins to rise up against the attacks it is enduring, the capitalist class may push Trump aside and bring in other politicians, from either party. But getting rid of one corrupt politician would not change the functioning of a corrupt system.
The working class is quiet today. Workers have done little striking or fighting in response to the daily attacks that are driving down our standard of living, shortening our lives, and where each new generation is already living worse off than previous generations. History has seen the working class rise up and fight against its exploitation over and over again. History may not repeat itself exactly in the same way. But the conditions are already here to produce a new explosion by the working class. When it happens, it is key that the struggle be carried all the way to the end, leaving no remnants of the capitalist system of exploitation in place.