Abraham Lincoln gave fame to the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Donald Trump had not been president again for two weeks when the U.S. took big steps to a government of the capitalist class, by Elon Musk, for some capitalists. This regime has already increased the suffering of the people, but it also moves us closer to revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Government of the Capitalists, Not of the People
Founding father James Madison wrote in 1788, “We may define a republic to be … a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people.” (Federalist Paper number 39) Sovereignty is a doctrine of the ultimate source of government. Sovereignty of the people had long been contrasted to the divine right of a king. But not all people shared in Madison’s sovereignty. He denounced those who harbor “a rage for … an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project.” (Federalist Paper number 10)
The founding fathers’ republic is not a democracy. Madison was explicit. One of “the two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic” is “delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest.” (Federalist Paper number 10) High-minded words boil down to our occasional vote for a few offices: congressional representatives and senators, the president and the vice president.
The candidates you choose among and which ones win are largely decided by capitalists’ money. It takes millions of dollars to run for Congress. The Trump and Harris campaigns together spent an estimated $4.7 billion; the total for all 2024 campaigns was more than $20 billion. That averages to $80 per eligible voter. Did you, your friends and colleagues donate $80 to candidates? If so, you are a rare exception. Capitalists buy and train the horses that run the race.
Government by Musk and Trump
Since the beginning of the federal government in 1789, the real government – the executive branch including departments, agencies, and branches of the military – has been run by political appointees and well-vetted bureaucrats. The higher up the management ladder, the more loyal the servant of capitalism. They are acceptable to the capitalist class in general, and usually to the capitalists in particular industries.
A small bit of actual government is done by congressional action. Who are the legislators? The net worth of more than half of congresspersons exceeds one million dollars. It is almost unknown for a representative, let alone a senator, to have been a worker earning an average wage before being elected. And it would make headlines if a representative left Congress and returned to driving a bus or some other working-class job.
The machinery and programs of government evolved to resolve conflicts among capitalist interests; maintain police for domestic repression and a military for conflict with foreign powers; provide for economic functions that capitalists need but could not assign to one or a few businesses, like drug certification or education of literate workers; and to administer social programs like unemployment insurance and Medicare conceded in the face of class struggle. Every capitalist benefits to some degree from it all.
Government was government by capitalists until Jan. 20, 2025. It is rapidly becoming government by Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, Space X and X (Twitter), is currently the world’s richest person with $410 billion. He is now taking over the federal government. He culled through the managerial ranks of his companies, got recommendations from Peter Thiel and rich men of similar outlook, and assembled a team of guys with tech smarts and no ethical limits. Musk calls them the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), but it is not an official department, only his gang.
Musk’s DOGE crew has obtained access to the payment system of the Treasury Department. This system pays Social Security checks, Medicare reimbursements, federal workers’ salary checks, income tax refunds, farm price supports, payments to businesses delivering products and services on federal contract, etc. The system makes 88 percent of all federal payments, $5.4 trillion a year. Musk’s DOGE bullies forced the resignation of the 30-year employee who oversaw this intricate machine of old and new computers and software.
For now it appears that Musk has “read-only” access. He can find out who gets paid what. His DOGE staff can study how the system works, obviously to prepare for changes. But Musk already claims DOGE has shut off Department of Health and Human Services payments to Lutheran Family Services. Why? The charity provides social services to refugees.
Does the number two richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos at $253 billion, want Elon Musk, owner of the Space X rocket and satellite launch company, to know the details of federal contract payments to Blue Origin, Bezos’ competing space corporation? When government by capitalists turns into government by one or a few of them, that is what happens.
Musk’s managers have also taken over the Office of Personnel Management, the federal human resources agency. The civil service staff who run its Enterprise Human Resources Integration database have been locked out of it. Musk can grab the personal records of any federal civilian employee: her date of birth, Social Security number, employment record, home address, etc. Musk can locate and count the employees employed in any particular program that he has in his rifle sight.
Government for Some Capitalists
Musk does not hide that he is staging a coup (per Merriam-Webster, a “violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group”). He forced several recalcitrant federal managers to give in by threatening to call in U.S. Marshals. On Feb. 2 he said on his X social media platform: “Regulations, basically, should be default gone. Not default there, default gone. And if it turns out that we missed the mark on a regulation, we can always add it back in.”
Musk added that now is the crucial moment for his coup: “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”
Whether Musk’s takeover succeeds or not, the capitalists of the U.S. are tearing their republic apart:
• An early sign was when Al Gore won the presidential vote in 2000, but the Bush camp would not accept defeat. An extended, public legal brawl ensued over who won Florida. The Supreme Court halted the vote count on a Saturday afternoon, then settled the matter with a clearly illegal ruling. The nine-member court itself chose the president that year by a five to four vote.
• In 2020 Donald Trump knew he had lost the presidential election. He schemed to overturn the count, he browbeat state election officials, and went shopping for agreeable judges. On Jan. 6, 2021 a violent invasion of the halls of Congress tried to reverse the official declaration of the election.
• Now the mastermind of a coup and a sitting president rip the capitalist republic into a pile of tatters.
Can We Go Back?
U.S. capitalism is in economic decay. No matter what the accomplishments in technology, broad vigor of profits will not return, let alone periods of relative mass prosperity. The disintegration of the capitalist republic follows.
Liberals are desperate to use the broken system to restore the broken system, revive the game of dangling carrots in front of working people. Robert Kuttner sees that “the courts are the last check on what amounts to an attempted coup.” But Kuttner is clear-eyed enough to admit, “Trump might just decide to ignore the courts.” (“Will the Republic Strike Back?”, The American Prospect, February 4, 2025)
Other liberals, progressives, and even some self-declared socialists demand that the Democratic party rouse itself and fight the coup. Sorry, that is not on the table. A dozen top Democratic elected officials and strategists explained to a reporter that the party must “bide its time until public sentiment potentially turns against Trump.” Wait until public sentiment turns? What leadership! These bigwigs actually insist that they must pledge bipartisanship. Meanwhile, they work on clever messaging for the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections – which are not guaranteed to happen.
Fight to Move Forward
Popular struggle is bound to emerge against the Musk-Trump oppression of immigrant workers, against the tariff grab for profits that will have us “feel some pain,” against the censoring of words by political decree, against the denial of education, against scapegoating the weak, against all the oppressions. The choice is: do we struggle to go back, or do we fight today in order to strengthen our class for the bigger fight to come?
There is no going back. Let workers discover our collective might. The stuff of life and society is produced and delivered by the labor of the working class. They need us; we don’t need them. Let us organize in mass struggle and in a communist party. Let us educate ourselves about the socialist-communist road. Let us prepare for the overthrow of capitalism. We can run our own state.
“(1) The existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, (2) the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and (3) this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” (Karl Marx in a letter to J. Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852).
By a CWPUSA supporter, newworker.us
