A mob was permitted, even helped, to take over the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021. No government can allow that sort of thing and survive.
Officials and public figures ranging from social-democrats like Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez through a broad range of conventional politicians and even continuing into the right wing condemned the action as a threat to democracy.
That is, the capitalist state must bring a faction of the capitalist class and some of its followers to justice. This demand is the same in essence as Ocasio-Cortez's call for Trump to be impeached, picked up by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Ocasio-Cortez is pretty straight that she is a social democrat: she strives to reform capitalism and make it humane. The demand for capitalist justice is consistent with her political position. But it is a shameful demand for a group that claims to be both socialist and revolutionary.
Do you want democracy? Then you need to replace the capitalist regime with a people's dictatorship based on the working class.[2] That is what communists stand for, organize for, prepare for. A revolution is a mass upheaval of the working people, not an imitation of Mussolini's 1921 march on Rome orchestrated by some capitalists and government officials.
Only in a people's dictatorship will fascist scum have no right to assemble.
The purpose of democracy is not to take pride that government governs by a book. Capitalists want their version of democracy for themselves. Most of them also see that it makes a good show. It bestows "legitimacy" on capitalism, without actually hearing out the masses, proposing real solutions to their needs, and submitting them for acceptance.
Today, U.S. working people must demonstrate and riot to bring forward our grievances about wealth and poverty, racist oppression, globalized outsourcing, about all the anti-democratic realities of our lives. We won't need to do that in a people's dictatorship. Only in a people's dictatorship can working people speak out as a matter of course. Speak out and be heard – and see changes made.
[1] https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-trump-incites-fascist-insurrection-against-congress-what-comes-next/
[2] For the substance and program of this dictatorship, see "Not Populism, Not Socialism, but Communism Will Get It Done" ( http://www.idcommunism.com/2020/05/not-populism-not-socialism-but-communism-will-get-it-done.html ). This is working-class communism, not the cynical Chinese parody.
* Charles Andrews is the author of The Hollow Colossus.
