The fight to defend democratic rights is urgent: Trump's efforts to establish a fascistic movement based on nationalism and religious bigotry threaten the social rights of hundreds of millions of people, not only immigrants and LGBT people. But to fight political reaction, one must understand its objective roots.
Political reaction draws its strength from a set of economic and social relations that have arisen on the basis of the dramatic expansion of social inequality and wealth concentration under capitalism. After more than 15 years of permanent war fought for the profits of American corporations, the military and intelligence agencies control the elected officials and dictate the policies of the government. Faced with growing social polarization, the police are armed with military weapons left over from the wars waged in the name of the "war on terror." They have been granted a license to kill by the courts.
Since the growth in the power of the military, the police, the churches and the deportation agencies is the product of the growth of inequality, the fight for democratic rights must be based on the struggle for social equality. Such a struggle must involve the political activation of the working class, the powerful social force that produces all of society's wealth under capitalism, but which is exploited by the capitalists regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Genuine democracy can be achieved only by abolishing capitalism, the system of economic relations that gives rise to political reaction in all its interrelated manifestations. Only on the basis of the unity of the working class in the struggle for socialism can democratic rights be won and preserved.
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