No. 15
July 17, 2026
250th Anniversary of U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776
Conversations
Counter-revolution in a Period of Transition
Part 5
Counter-revolution and Blocking the Peoples'
Creativity as Makers of History
In this issue, TML is publishing Part 5 in the series of Conversations held by the Ideological Studies Centre from December 2025 to May 2026 titled Counter-revolution and Blocking the Peoples' Creativity as Makers of History. Integral to the work of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) on modern definitions, this six-part series is published under the title Counter-revolution in a Period of Transition. Part 1, published July 13, was entitled Aim of Counter-revolution Is to Block Transition to Classless Society and Part 2, July 14 was Counter-revolution Is Integral to Transition. Part 3, July 15 was entitled Counter-revolution and Utilizing the Logic of History and Part 4, July 16 was The Source and Target of Counter-revolution.
We have spoken about the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) as being a means to block thinking. We can also say the NSS is one of the government's statements of counter-revolution. People are speculating about it, whether it is a continuation of the same ruling class agenda, or something radically new. The more serious commentary says it is incoherent and irrational, which is true. But it is also important to see that part of its aim is to be meaningless, as part of blocking thinking. Along with all the activities the state machinery is carrying out right now, we give significance to depriving people of an outlook to block the working class and people from political power. Promotion of meaningless material to block rational thought and our vantage points is part of this.
In all sorts of ways, counter-revolution is a specific social phenomenon directed at revolution and resistance both internally and externally. Currently, the rulers are contending with the fact that there is the breakdown of liberal democracy that has been underway since the end of the Cold War period. This makes destroying outlook even more critical.
The breakdown of liberal democracy includes that of the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, 1990, with its claims of human rights and democracy being shattered in current conditions. It reads: "Democracy, with its representative and pluralist character, entails accountability to the electorate, the obligation of public authorities to comply with the law and justice administered impartially. No one will be above the law." This has been obliterated by Trump and other governments worldwide.
Michael Doyle, who later worked at the United Nations (2001-2003), authored a book at that time titled, Ways of War and Peace (1997). He is a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations -- a think tank of the rulers, and professor at Columbia University. In the book he spoke about the pluralism of what he characterized as different outlooks. He gave them as socialism, liberalism and realism. He said these were historical phenomena and could not be wiped out. They were facts that must be dealt with and had their own contradictions. Socialism was given as European; liberalism was for the U.S. and realism was for how ruling circles dealt with international relations. He said these "outlooks" exist; they had to be taken seriously and that none of them could solve the problems of war and peace.
Doyle asserted that there are "isms" in the world, doctrines which he and the rulers call outlooks. Doyle's argument was that problems could be solved if these three were taken seriously, including on questions of sovereignty and democracy, as defined by the rulers up to that point in the 1990s. We are not speaking here of modern definitions but of the conceptions of the rulers.
Academics and experts of the rulers agree now that this pluralism did not provide a solution to the contradictions in the world. The problem that is not dealt with by them is that the rulers' pluralism failed to provide the thought material for solving the problems in the world because all these doctrines, as they conceived of them, were in one way or another against the creative activity of the peoples as makers of history.
The argument given by Doyle and other promoters of pluralism is a specific feature brought forward to destroy this creative activity of the peoples as makers of history. It is premised on two points that arose out of the global crises of the 17th century, reflected in Thomas Hobbes' definitions and conceptions of Covenant Thesis and sovereignty.
One point is the necessity of the bourgeoisie to deprive the people of political power, even though the people are the ones called on to do the fighting during this period. Consider the French Revolution where the whole nation is aroused to carry out the fight, but these same people must also be kept from power. But a people, a collectivity that is more than a mass of individuals, is forged in these struggles. A people with their collective history, experience and thought material emerges. Secondly, and more specifically, the aim of Covenant Thesis is to keep the working class from capturing power and vesting sovereignty in the people.
The discussion by Hobbes on Covenant deals with these two points, establishing sovereignty in the name of the people but keeping them and specifically the working class from capturing political power. The ruling classes pursue Covenant Thesis up until 1917 when, with the victory of the Russian Revolution, the working class captured political power. Then the struggle for the workers became how to hold onto the political power they created and for the rulers the struggle became how to destroy that power. The lessons that come from the post WWII period and since, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, are important in addressing this problem of capturing and keeping political power. And in recognizing that the influence and implementation of Covenant Thesis on these issues of sovereignty, representation and democracy persists.
These developments involve two key features. One is democratic revolution or peoples' revolutions as Marx called them and their completion. The other is development of democratic constitutions in service to the people. The bourgeoisie developed constitutions that were aimed at keeping the people from power and the working class from capturing power, constituting itself the nation and vesting sovereignty in the people. They were counter-revolutionary in character. But keep in mind that counter-revolution is not limited to a specific issue or event, like a specific constitution or a particular form like fascism. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, makes clear that the failure of the U.S. Constitution, and after it was adopted during Reconstruction (1860-80) was that the great upheaval of the people meant to bring the democratic revolution to completion was blocked. This blocking brings endless tragedy. Du Bois, like Marx, emphasizes that it is important to see the peoples' revolutions taking place, the role of the peoples as the makers of history.
Lenin, in State and Revolution, drew the distinction between the capture of political power and the radical rupture that must occur from one class holding power to another class seizing it. There is the problem of dealing with the transfer of the bureaucracy and military from the past. He uses the terms explosion, radical rupture. That type of explosion is connected to the thesis of Du Bois that the endless tragedy of blocking democratic revolutions is the utter inability of the what he calls the American mind of the rulers to grasp the real significance of democratic revolutions and the peoples' role in them, both nationally and internationally. The flaw in the constitutions of liberal democracy was that they were developed based on private property and protecting private property.
We can say that this concept of radical rupture is also recognized by the forces backing Trump. To keep power, they are destroying anything that resembles people's political power, which means their independent politics. Everything is the target of their attack, especially the many forms of resistance and defence of rights which contribute to the working class coming to power. In our case and for others like us fighting for the New, if we do not take transition seriously, its qualities, requirements and role, there is repeated tragedy coming from not being able to grasp the significance, nationally and internationally, of democratic revolutions and completing them.
Power Takes a Definite Shape Depending on the
Ensemble of Human Relations
In our previous discussions highlighting endless tragedy, the endless aspect is also a way of discussing the concept of continuous. A given tragedy, like the counter-revolution against Reconstruction, breaks that continuity. This is true even with advances being made by the peoples at various points, like the victory of the U.S. Civil War over the system of slave labour and the flowering of democracy during Reconstruction. Or the victory of the great world anti-fascist war and flowering of democracy after. The tragedies blocking further advance are actual halts in continuity.
Or consider our metaphor about the mighty river blocked by the dam of history. The river keeps flowing, but there are blocks, dams. Humans make dams. A counter-revolutionary constitution is a dam, for example, speaking here of how a given political society is constituted up to that point, whether or not there is a written constitution. The continuity of the river is that it runs down to the sea. But there are these dams, blocks which prevent its flow.
When speaking of laws of social development, we can say that continuity is law-like. Referring to the Mobius strip, we see that if we take a loop of paper and cut it down the middle, it simply falls apart. This is not the case with the Mobius strip. The loop of paper cut in two falling apart is the image many people have of society falling apart, two separate, unrelated pieces. But with the Mobius strip, when we add a twist, an inversion, instead of falling apart, we get two parts linked together. They do not fall apart. This inversion takes place objectively, independent of individual will and is a law-like property of society. The twist and cut creates this geometric figure, which shows law-like properties. As a way of illustrating social laws, the Mobius strip does not predict what will happen but rather provides a way of looking at society that takes a definite shape. This illustration is pertinent as power takes a definite shape. Depending on how society is constituted, it exemplifies that the ensemble of human relations exist independent of individual will.
When looking at laws of social development in our discussions on modern communism, three points have been raised about them. One is the importance of putting the laws of social development at the centre of our work. There are definite shapes that are law-like, like the Mobius strip. Hobbes refers to and uses definite geometric shapes in illustrating Leviathan, which represent the shape of power under the Covenant. He uses triangles and a pyramid structure, for example.
In any given society and more broadly, the given shapes can have splits and cracks, they can be uneven, irregular. When looking at this question of social development, it is not simply an issue of capitalists being a reactionary class. What is necessary is to recognize the laws of social development, which are independent of individual will and desires. This is true for Trump and any executive in power, just as it is true for our analyses.
Second is the question of vantage point. The ensemble of human relations has a definite geometry independent of individual will which brings forward the importance of vantage point. How do different classes look at that ensemble of relations which have a definite shape that follows law-like social development? What makes vantage point important is that because there is a definite shape to those relations, that shape and order can also be willfully shaped by humans, willfully changed with conscious collective action. The constitution of society, not the document, whether written or unwritten but rather how a society is constituted, gives an order, a shape which can be changed by the polity.
The law-like nature of the shaping of developments shows itself in the peoples' resistance, peoples' creative activity, in the activation of the human factor/social consciousness. The rulers are engaging in massive work to mess with people's minds to block this creativity and channel it in a counter-revolutionary direction while claiming the opposite.
Balance of Power or Transition and Radical Rupture
The historiography that is given by the rulers says yes, there is continuity. Then the example of the Thucydides Trap, from ancient Greece, is given to show the same relations and contradictions are faced by rising powers and declining powers today. The Thucydides Trap is given as the basis for major wars, as it puts forward that because of changes in position and power, such as the U.S. declining and China rising, for example, this makes the U.S. more warlike in relation to China as well as countries resisting it more generally, like Cuba and Iran. The realist doctrine used today is based on this argument by Thucydides, the strategist and historian from ancient Greece. That is their continuity.
But the rulers also say there is change. And their historiography is that there must be a balance of power and a balance between continuity and change, which is counter to our recognition of Necessity for Change, for a radical rupture, for transition and fundamental change.
Various international treaties are all based on this conception of a balance of power. The Westphalia Treaty (1648) ended the Thirty Years War in Europe. The Napoleonic Wars and the 1851 Vienna Congress ending them, involved the contending powers of what the Communist Manifesto refers to as Old Europe. The Versailles Treaty after WWI, the treaties which gave rise to the UN in 1948, the Charter of Paris (1990) – all of these are attempts to achieve a balance of power and a balance between continuity of those powers and change. This also gives rise to notions of equilibrium and relative equilibrium between great powers, as talked about when the bi-polar division of the world existed.
Today, as in the past, these "balances" break down. To claim there must be a balance between continuity and change is to negate the question of change and deny the reality of transition. These are extremely dangerous arguments.
With social breakdown, there are phenomena when revolutionary situations ripen and all classes conclude they cannot go on living in the old way. To prevent that from developing into a people's democratic revolution, the rulers act to wipe out any possibility of it even existing. The one class that can give form to a given people's revolution, the working class, must be smashed. That is the more particular basis for counter-revolution.
Instead of saying that counter-revolution happens as a tactic or policy or strategy of fascism, however that may be defined, we are saying counter-revolution is a social phenomenon used to smash everything. European fascism and Japanese militarism are aspects of counter-revolution, not the other way around.
Use of the Insurrection Act to Make Counter-revolution "Legal"
In January 2026 in the U.S., as part of the executive's vicious attacks and raids against resistance in Minnesota, Trump again raised the possibility of invoking the 1792 Insurrection Act, which allows for use of the military inside the country to enforce domestic law. Use of the military inside the country against the people, including for arrests, searches and other enforcement, is not allowed in the U.S. It is blocked by the post-Civil War Posse Comitatus Act (1878) and, more generally, by the sentiment and consciousness of the people against it as a mark of tyranny.
The Insurrection Act gives the President authorization to use the military inside the country against the people, to counter "insurrection," "rebellion" or "invasion." To justify its use, Trump has commonly referred to issues involving immigrants and refugees as an "invasion." The Act can also be invoked when, as determined by the Justice Department, "state and local law enforcement have completely broken down." This determination is not made by the state and local officials, but by the federal executive powers. Trump commonly makes the claim that state and local authorities are unable to deal with the "invasion" and "rebellion."
Historically, the Insurrection Act has rarely been used. It has occurred when a governor of a state calls on the president to intervene, as occurred in Detroit (1967) and Los Angeles (1992), for example, to block rebellions against police terrorism and racist killings. More than 10,000 troops and National Guard were used in both cases.[1]
In the U.S., use of the National Guard inside the country, such as
for natural disasters, is distinct from use of the active military. By
law, both require requests for federal intervention by the state's
governor. Trump has repeatedly gone contrary to this law and utilized
the National Guard, alongside Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
and Border Patrol, to terrorize communities and brutally repress
resistance. Using the Guard in the streets is also an effort to make
future use of the Insurrection Act and active military troops in the streets acceptable.
A main reason Trump wants to use the Insurrection Act is because of the powers it gives to him alone as President. In an 1827 ruling, the Supreme Court affirmed that the Insurrection Act gives the President exclusive powers both to declare an "insurrection" and for use of the military however he sees fit. It specifically ruled that the authority to decide whether a situation warrants invoking the Insurrection Act "belongs exclusively to the President." Stephen Miller, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor, has repeatedly told Trump that invoking the Insurrection Act means that the powers to use the military were his alone and no one could stop him from using these powers.
During Trump's first term, one of his Homeland Security people was Myles Taylor (2017-19) at a time Trump also raised using the Insurrection Act. Taylor is supposed to be an expert on technology and national security issues. He also served under former President George W. Bush. He later opposed Trump and supported Biden. This same Myles Taylor is today promoting use of the Insurrection Act but also saying securing its use is not spontaneous but a ten-year project that those demanding it have been working on. He was promoted in the press then and now, saying he is certain Trump will make use of it at some point.
Taylor and the media also promoted people like Dick Cheney and others who are among those, including retired military officers, opposing use of the military inside the country in part because they think it damages the integrity of the military as a force for foreign aggression. Cheney was Secretary of Defense in the administration of the first Bush and Vice-President for George W. Bush, and the main architect of the U.S. war of terrorism against the peoples, including the Iraq war.[2]
In a more recent Supreme Court ruling, where the Court ruled that Trump could not deploy the National Guard in Chicago, Justice Kavanaugh, while agreeing with the ruling, said the Court's opinion "does not address the president's authority under the Insurrection Act," thus promoting it and leaving open its use. This is the same Kavanaugh who, in a September 2025 Supreme Court ruling, sanctioned openly racist profiling by federal policing agencies, including simply having an accent or speaking a different language as justification for detaining people. Such racist stops are now widely known among the people as "Kavanaugh stops."
There are three issues concerning the Insurrection Act. Point one is that the Insurrection Act addresses some form of interference with state or federal law. The conception of interference is raised. Point two is that one of the items that the President has sway over is any interference with impeding the "course of justice." This is a legal term used to justify federal police actions, arrests, jailing etc. Interference with a public officer is also a common charge against protesters at the state and local level, for example. Point three is the ruling by the Supreme Court which says that invoking the Act belongs exclusively to presidential powers.
Those three points are also at the heart of the liberal conception of sovereignty. This conception has historically been put forward to prevent the working class from capturing power and vesting sovereignty in the people. Specifically, the relationship between interference and the course of justice is used. This goes back to original formulations of sovereignty by Hobbes. Hobbes was acting to prevent civil wars and prevent the people from coming to power. He developed the arguments used then and now by proponents of liberal democracy.
In the covenant argument of Hobbes, the question of civil liberties is raised. Three arguments were developed historically on this, from the point of view of the bourgeoisie. Then there are our arguments.
The three arguments, starting with Hobbes in the 1660s, involve his definition of civil liberties, which exist within civil society. He puts forward that you have liberty if you have the power to change something and you are free from interference. You do not have liberty to walk on water, for example, as you do not have the power to do so. The image given by others was if you are held up by a highwayman, demanding your money or your life, you have a choice. You could willingly hand over money to save your life. That is physical interference from the outside. This concept was developed further in the next century in Anglo-American thinking. There is not just physical interference to deprive you of liberty; there is also what is called coercion, the power to bend your will to the will of someone else. By the mid-1800s, John Stuart Mills says you can do that interference to yourself, such as by imposing self-censorship for whatever reason.
These are different forms of interference that come down to us today. Interference is part of the concept of whether liberty exists or not, with liberty said to only exist when there is no interference.
Another part of this argument was liberty as independence, such as put forward in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The Declaration says the states would not be dependent on bodies where they did not have representation, reflected in the slogan No Taxation Without Representation. It also had the concept of the U.S. being a separate and equal state. Those forming the U.S. and opposing the British needed standing as an independent state, separate from Britain and equal to France and Spain, to negotiate with them as equal nations. These conceptions about liberty and civil liberties are put forward in diverse ways by the bourgeoisie, including liberals and realists, and captured in their constitutions.
Using the claim of continuity while conducting counter-revolution, the state comes along and says people are interfering with the liberty of the government. For the U.S., central to its concept of "insurrection" is interference with the federal government and its policing agencies, including the military. The same claim is being used in other countries called liberal democracies to justify attacking the people.
Without modern conceptions and definitions, those defending liberal democracy have all the same problems that came up at the end of WWI. At that time, Lenin put forward that part of democracy was the right to self-determination, vigorously opposed by then U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. There was a sharp division worldwide which came to be known as Lenin vs. Wilson. This battle continues today with people, established as comprising a people, demanding self-determination and independence and the rulers instead asserting, as is used against Palestine, that they are not a people and are considered conquered slaves with no rights.
One can look at Wilson's 14 Points from 1918, which formed a statement of principles that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. Or look at the Balfour Declaration, which was the British writing for the U.S. In both one finds the Zionist conceptions of liberty reflecting liberal conceptions of the 1660s, like those of Hobbes, and this claim of balancing continuity and change.
The second argument involves the concept of impeding or perverting the "course of justice," as defined by the state. This refers to actions like destroying evidence, fabricating evidence (e.g., false alibis), bribing officials, intimidating witnesses or lying to police to conceal a crime. For the peoples, however, the concept of justice involves their rights. The people often contest both state or provincial and federal governments for denying equal protection under the laws secured in constitutions. The "course of justice," then, is supposed to be determined in the courts, yet the courts most often do not rule on behalf of those seeking justice based on the people's conception of justice. Part of counter-revolution is smashing even these conceptions, including that justice must deal with these issues of equality and rights.
Protection under the law, domestic
and international, is being eliminated. Court orders are
repeatedly ignored by the presidency. Determinations by
international bodies like the UN and the International Court
of Justice are also ignored, especially by the U.S. and
Zionists and the majority of the countries which comprise what
is called the Genocide Seven. Laws of war are being
imposed domestically, including use of the military inside the
U.S., for example. Increasingly, any rule of law is being
obliterated.
It is widely grasped that the existing U.S. Constitution and laws have utterly failed in providing even civil rights, let alone human rights. This claim by governments of providing justice is being destroyed, including widespread branding of the Justice Department as the Department of Injustice.
In addition, a flaw in Covenant Thesis is that there is a federal government, itself existing based on a covenant between states, which stands above sovereign states or provinces. But if those sovereign states, which for the United States are themselves republican states, are denying equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution, there is serious conflict. The same is true when the federal government acts against the states in a manner contrary to the Constitution, as is widely occurring. Both intensify conditions for open, violent, civil war.
For the U.S., the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution specifically states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." We are seeing the whole Covenant breaking down as the Constitution is openly defiled, including the First Amendment concerning freedom of speech, the press and assembly. The so-called "separation of powers," between the President, Congress and the Supreme Court, meant to keep presidential powers in check has clearly failed. When the balance of powers the Constitution is meant to preserve breaks down, there can be no justice. Calls and actions for counter-revolution, led by the presidency, are given as a solution.
The argument being used by the federal government is that the "course of justice" is being interfered with both by the states, and the peoples resisting, as determined by the federal government. This is evident in Trump's claims that governors and mayors, in Illinois/Chicago and California/Los Angeles are interfering with federal policing of immigration.
When it comes to this issue of justice, Harvard University professor John Rawls (1921-2002) authored the influential 1971 book A Theory of Justice. Most everyone in academia since then either supports him or opposes him. He puts forward a liberal conception of justice. This is not the conception of the forces backing Trump, which is that of counter-revolution, with its exclusive presidential powers.
The third main argument involves the 1827 Supreme Court ruling that gives exclusive powers to the President, something which does not exist in the Constitution, as defined under Article II. With the ruling, the Supreme Court was giving itself powers not only as arbiter of law over all other courts, but as supreme arbiter of government. What this means is that unelected justices are to determine who the people are, what government powers are, what justice is. While in general the Supreme Court acts as an arm of the executive and rules in a manner needed by the rulers at any given time, with the breakdown of institutions and norms and the increasing conflicts, the Court is also acting to secure greater power for itself while claiming to defend democracy.
The quality of counter-revolution today is obliteration and complete destruction -- of laws, institutions, standards and norms, both nationally and internationally. Trump is the champion of this direction favoured by those factions of the rulers that back him, while others still cling to the notion that preserving the institutions will get them out of their deepening crisis. Both leave out that it is the resistance and creative actions of the peoples that are decisive.
We are seeing the breakdown of these liberal conceptions of
continuity and balance, and in many ways a return to the days of slavery
because the people are subjected to civil death -- they are relegated
to live outside the law. On our part, just as we need modern definitions
of democracy and equality, we must give these questions of
equality, justice and independence meaning consistent with today.
Notes
1. For more explanation of the Insurrection Act see "The Insurrection Act, Explained," Joseph Nunn and Elizabeth Goitein, Brennan Center, April 21, 2022.
2. See the website defiance.org for more on the actions of these forces.
(Conversations, May 3, 2026)
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca