Friday, February 7, 2025. Black Friday! A day which may go down in history, as the beginning of the end of the American democratic republic. The day that American Members of Congress, democratically elected ‘’law makers’’, were blocked from entering several federal agencies. These include USAID, as well as the Departments of the Treasury, Labour and Education. The people conducting the ‘’blockade’’ were unelected officials, working for DOGE, the Department Of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, appointed by President Trump.
A spokesperson for that group, herself a Member of Congress, warned that ‘’Trump’s spending cuts will merely enrich Elon Musk, and harm American families’’. She gave some excellent advice, that of, ‘’Follow the money. Who they are taking it from, and who they are giving it to. Outrageous. Taking it from our kids, and giving it to billionaires’’.
Well spoken! In cases of suspected fraud, it is always a good idea to ‘’follow the money’’. Yet she was careful to avoid any mention of classes. The fact is that the ‘’billionaires’’, to whom she so delicately referred, are members of a class of people, referred to as the bourgeoisie. They are monopoly capitalists, imperialists, and as such, are completely reactionary.
Particular Members of Congress, those who are members of the Democratic Party, assure us that they are not about to take this, ‘’lying down’’. Indeed not. After all, it is the Congress that ‘’controls the purse strings’’. They assure us that the ‘’real fight is still ahead’’. This is a reference to the March 14 ‘’funding deadline’’, at which time the federal government will ‘’run out of money’’, unless the debt limit is increased, once again. Otherwise, the federal government could shut down.
As is well known, the Republican Party has a ‘’razor thin’’ majority in Congress, with a few of those Members considered to be ‘’mavericks’’, completely unreliable, if not outright crazy. For that reason, it is thought that the Speaker of the House, Republican Member Johnson, ‘’could be faced with a shutdown, if Democrats withhold their vote’’.
Consider the fact that the authority of Congress, the legislative branch of government, is being directly challenged, by locking the Members of Congress out of key government agencies, and this is the best they can do! Threaten a federal government shutdown, next month, no less! Reality check! Next month may be too late! By that time, Trump may have already seized power, completely! He may just disband Congress, and declare himself to be President For Life! Dictator! As laid out in Project 2025! Wake up!
Now is not the time to sit and wait, to ‘’play it safe’’. There can be no thought of ‘’straddling the fence’’. Now is the time to take action, to combine legal with illegal work. We live in a class society, and the class struggle is about to break out, into open class warfare.
Even the most dedicated, middle class intellectuals, although defenders of capitalism, are now deeply concerned with that which they refer to as a ‘’Constitutional crisis’’. They are convinced that Trump is ‘’wiping his feet on the Constitution’’, dismantling the democratic republic. And so he is!
On the ‘’legal front’’, so to speak, may I suggest challenging the 2024 Presidential Election, on the grounds that it violated the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution. It is the Twelfth that lays out the procedure to be followed, in all federal elections! There is no ‘’Presidential Election’’! For that reason, Trump is a fraudulent President, and Vance is a fraudulent Vice President. As I have gone into this in detail, in other writings, there is no need to repeat it here.
Allow me to urge all Scientific Socialists, as well as all Independent Socialists, to unite with all those who are determined to defend the democratic republic, no matter how objectionable they may be. Feel free to console yourself with the thought that this alliance is strictly temporary. As well, this individual probably feels the same way about us!
Act now, while we still have a Supreme Court! Tomorrow could be too late!
This brings me to the illegal aspect of revolutionary work, arguably more important. We can learn from previous revolutionary experience, especially from that of the three Russian Revolutions, of the Twentieth Century. That is because the forth coming American Revolution, is almost certain to closely resemble the Great October Soviet Socialist Russian Revolution.
The Russian Revolutionaries of 1917, built upon the experience, of the earlier Russian Revolution of 1905. Even though that Revolution failed, in the sense that the ruling noble family of Romanovs was not toppled, it did succeed in raising the level of awareness of the common people.
At the start of the Revolution of 1905, the common people, workers and family farmers, were mainly honest, hard working, patriotic, tax paying, loyal subjects of His Majesty, Tsar Nicholas. For that reason, when they rose up, in peaceful protest, respectfully asking their beloved Tsar to address their legitimate grievances, they actually expected him to respond accordingly. Instead, he turned the military loose on them. He was not about to allow any discontent!
The 1905 Revolution raged for three years, before dying down, in 1907. Then things quickly ‘’returned to normal’’, or so it appeared. The nobility, landlords and capitalists, breathed a ‘’sigh of relief’’. They actually thought, that was the ‘’end of the matter’’! It most certainly was not! The ‘’mass movement’’, the revolutionary motion, had merely died down! Temporarily!
But as Marx pointed out, these revolutionary motions continue to rise up, ‘’ever stronger, ever finer’’! And so it was!
Several years later, the revolutionary motion flared up, once again. Yet this time, the common people had no illusions. They knew what to expect. They had been ‘’schooled in the class struggle’’. They were still patriotic citizens, but not the ‘’loyal and devoted subjects of His Majesty’’, they once were. Those days were gone! They recognized the Tsar as the butcher that he was.
This, the second Russian Revolution of the Twentieth Century, came to a climax in early 1917. At that time, Lenin was living in exile, in Switzerland, but closely following events in Russia. He wrote five letters, referred to as ‘’Letters From Afar’’, in late March, concerning those incredible developments. As it is so important, I have chosen to quote it, at length:
‘’How could such a ‘miracle’ have happened, that in only eight days…a monarchy collapsed, that had maintained itself for centuries, and that in spite of everything, had managed to maintain itself throughout the three years of the tremendous, nation wide class battles of 1905-07?
‘’There are no miracles in nature or history, but every abrupt turn in history, and this applies to every revolution, presents such a wealth of content, unfolds such unexpected and specific combinations of forms of struggle and alignment of forces of the contestants, that to the lay mind there is much that must appear miraculous.
‘’The combination of a number of factors of world historic importance was required for the tsarist monarchy to have collapsed in a few days. We shall mention the chief of them.
‘’Without the tremendous class battles and the revolutionary energy displayed by the Russian proletariat, during the three years 1905-07, the second revolution could not possibly have been so rapid, in the sense that its initial stage was completed in a few days. The first revolution (1905) deeply ploughed the soil, uprooted age old prejudices, awakened millions of workers and tens of millions of peasants to political life and political struggle, and revealed to each other- and to the world- all classes (and all the principle parties) of Russian society, in their true character and in the true alignment of their interests, their forces, their modes of action, and their immediate and ultimate aims. This first revolution, and the succeeding period of counter revolution (1907-14), laid bare the very essence of the tsarist monarchy, brought it to the ‘utmost limit’, exposed all the rottenness and infamy, the cynicism and corruption of the tsar’s clique…those landlords…who own millions of dessiatines of land and are prepared to stoop to any brutality, to any crime, to ruin and strangle any number of citizens, in order to preserve the ‘sacred right of property’, for themselves and their class.
‘’Without the Revolution of 1905-07, and the counter revolution of 1907-14, there could not have been that clear ‘self determination’ of all classes of the Russian people….which manifested itself during the eight days of the February -March Revolution of 1917. …
‘’For the first great Revolution of 1905…. led, after the lapse of twelve years, to the ‘brilliant’, the ‘glorious’ Revolution of 1917’’. (italics by Lenin)
It may be objected that America has not experienced a revolution, such as that of 1905. True! But America has experienced something very similar, which is the Occupy Movement of 2011.
At that time, in America, the common people, the vast majority of whom were honest, hard working, law abiding, tax paying, patriotic citizens, decided to exercise their democratic right to peaceful protest, as is guaranteed in the Constitution. They were merely trying to draw the attention, of their democratically elected leaders, to the glaring inequalities within society. They actually thought that the system was not working properly, but that once this was brought to the attention of the proper authorities, it would be corrected. They could not possibly have been more mistaken!
As is well known, the authorities responded with clubs, tear gas and pepper spray. The tents of the protesters were torn down, with many people thrown in jail. The system was working precisely the way it was supposed to work! In favour of the multi billionaires!
This was a ‘’rude awakening’’, a ‘’bitter pill to swallow’’. Just as the common people of Russia had learned, in the previous century, the American protesters learned that they had been lied to, all their lives. It was with the utmost bitterness, that the protesters faced the fact that the ruling class of monopoly capitalists, the multi billionaires, the bourgeoisie, at that time referred to as the ‘’one percent’’, were in charge, and fully intended to remain in charge!
This revolutionary motion was followed by a time of reaction, as it was in Russia, after the Revolution of 1905.
Now the revolutionary motion has picked up again, but is now ‘’finer and stronger’’. Those who took part in the Occupy Movement, are now seasoned veterans, tempered in the class struggle. They know what to expect, and are leading this current revolutionary movement.
There are numerous videos, on the internet, produced mainly by bourgeois intellectuals, who recognize the danger, posed by Trump and his Oligarchy. Yet none of them can foresee that the future lies with Councils and Scientific Socialism.
It is significant that, immediately after the Russian Tsar was overthrown, in March of 1917, numerous Soviets, Councils, made their appearance. Up until that time, they had been working ‘’underground’’, of necessity, as they were illegal. But at the time of the Revolution, they emerged, and were almost as powerful as the Provisional Government!
This is my less than subtle way, of suggesting that Scientific Socialists get involved with Councils. Illegal activity. Train, arm and equip working class people, in preparation for the approaching Insurrection. The future belongs with these Councils.
Gerald McIsaac
Gerald McIsaac Science Project 