A Note for the Upcoming “No Kings” Protests

Many people recognize the “patriotism!” trap and disdain politicians who try to invoke it. But we also need to discard the tenacious wish that the U.S. can return to “a robust democracy.” The U.S. capitalist class enabled the Trump regime and still largely accepts it. Capitalists are happy with slashed social programs, with ICE thugs grabbing militant workers, with repeal of meager anti-racist measures in corporations and colleges, with tax and budget shifts from those who need help to those who are already rich.

When mass anger at the murderous war in Vietnam threatened to boil over in 1968, the ruling class had no problem retiring President LBJ to his Texas ranch. When Richard Nixon’s shakedowns of corporations for his campaign committee became onerous, the ruling class easily made him resign in 1974. But Donald Trump and the reactionary ghouls around him have not been ousted despite all that happened in 2025. This demonstrates that those who control the capitalist republic are okay with it. There is no democracy independent of class. The capitalist class commands the capitalist state, juggling playpen democracy and brutal force to maintain their profits.

“No Kings” is a backward-looking slogan. The U.S. republic cannot even return to the slick bourgeois democracy/bourgeois dictatorship that operated before Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” thirty-two years ago. Its economic and political decay has passed the point of no return.

The only way out is to get rid of the capitalist class and its republic. We, the working class, do all the work, and we are more than capable of running everything ourselves, for our collective health, security, and prosperity. To that end, we can go to these No Kings protests, agitating for our true class interests and for a party dedicated to the socialist-communist path.

Charles Andrews is the author of The Hollow Colossus and other books.

A list of his occasional essays is at http://www.hollowcolossus.com/moreCA.htm