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January 21, 2017 - No. 2
Inauguration of
Donald
Trump as President of the United States
Step Up the Work
in Defence of the
Rights of All, for Democratic Renewal, an Anti-War Government and
Independent Canada!
- Statement of the
Communist Party of
Canada (Marxist-Leninist),
January 20, 2017 -
Actions
in
Washington
and
Around the World
• Mass Resistance Sets Tone for Trump Presidency
Inauguration of Donald Trump as President
of
the United States
Step Up the Work in Defence of the Rights of All,
for
Democratic Renewal, an Anti-War Government
and Independent
Canada!
- Statement of the Communist Party of
Canada
(Marxist-Leninist),
January 20, 2017 -
PDF
 Today, Donald Trump is
sworn in as the 45th President
of
the United States. The overriding necessity for the Canadian
working people is to concentrate on their own work in defence of
their rights. The antidote to the non-stop promotion of the
ideological beliefs of both Trump and the official anti-Trump
forces is the work to build the independent institutions and
voice of the Canadian working class and its allies, and broaden
the struggle in defence of rights, for democratic renewal, an
anti-war government and an independent Canada.
The extravagant celebrations to inaugurate the
presidency of
the oligarch Donald Trump as the all-powerful leader to "Make
America Great Again" are meant to overwhelm people with awe,
trepidation and a feeling of their own powerlessness. The
triumphant section of the ruling elite is not only creating a
climate of uncertainty but also bestowing on Trump an aura of
invincibility, as somebody who will solve all problems by means
of a government of police powers. The wealth, celebrity and
state-organized police powers behind Trump are to create the
impression of an individual who can crush anybody and anything
standing in his way. Everything is made a matter of personal
beliefs, likes and dislikes not to say hatreds, so as to
eliminate the political movements of the working class and others
in the United States and those countries caught in the U.S.
crosshairs. The U.S. is indispensable and the working people are
dispensable. The dispensable are declared incapable of leading
themselves and solving their problems; they are to be convinced
they need a state-organized oligarch with police powers to do
everything for them.
The media and pundits are
spreading apprehension and
doubt as
to the capacity of Canadians to defend their rights and interests
in the face of the "great disruptor." They fail in their duty to
Canadians to expose the truth that the election of the oligarch
Trump to lead a government of police powers is a sign of weakness
and crisis in the U.S., not strength.
 Trump's ascent to the
presidency used the crumbling
electoral
and political mechanisms, the power of celebrity, money and
social media to complete the destruction of the electoral process
while employing the ugliest language of racism, misogyny and U.S.
chauvinism. It exposes the crisis of U.S. imperialism and its
division into irreconcilable feuding gangs of the ruling elite.
His triumph over other members of the U.S. ruling class exposes
an empire in crisis that has turned upon itself to devour each
other in civil war where reconciliation within the traditional
institutions of U.S. state power has become impossible.
"Trump is not a legitimate president," declare those
who lost
the electoral battle for supremacy. Many are boycotting the
inauguration in the vain hope that the verdict of history can be
escaped by affirming righteous beliefs. Others hope that a
peaceful transition of power will provide the escape they so
desire, as if upholding the 18th century constitution of the
empire will provide a way out of this historical juncture in
which the old forms have exhausted themselves but the new ones
have yet to come into being.
Before the election result was known, both factions of
the
ruling class declared that if the other won, it would be because
the system was rigged or because the intelligence agencies failed
to do their job. The inability of the intelligence agencies to
predict the results of anything and their similar descent into
factional feuding, one day leaking information favouring one camp
and something else the next, are being used to fan the flames of
chauvinism and war. All the while the people are told to entrust
their security to those police powers that have been unable to
predict anything and are a source of great insecurity for all
humanity. This not only shows the degree of irrationality that
has taken over the American polity but also the intensity of the
contradictions within the ruling class itself. Siding with one
side over the other in the name of high ideals and progressive
values is not an option.
The problem is not the legitimacy of either Trump or
Clinton
but the profound crisis in which the U.S. polity is mired and the
failure of the institutions said to be democratic. The covenant
declaring, "We the people by virtue of these elections entrust
you to represent us" is archaic and broken. No amount of attempts
to enforce a government of police powers under a guise pretending
it to be a government of laws will right the situation. Not only
the U.S., but also Canada, Mexico and other countries caught in
the U.S. crosshairs need democratic renewal and modern
constitutions that bring the working people to power to solve the
economic, political and social problems of the 21st century.
Today, the recognition that people have rights by
virtue of
being human must be affirmed with a political process providing
those rights with a guarantee. Oligarchs, plutocrats and
autocrats have no place. Those who do the work to create the
value upon which people and society depend for their existence
must assume their rightful honourable role as leaders of the
economy, politics, government and throughout society.
With the election of Donald Trump, Canada is in a
quandary.
According to official circles, the problem requiring a solution
is how to appease Trump so as to come out of the "America first"
wringer with the least possible damage. Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau and the pundits are reporting that senior government
officials have had "constructive and positive discussions" with
Trump's team. Canadians are informed that under the present
"cloud of uncertainty," federal officials and members of the
ruling elite have been "trying to develop a good relationship
with members of Trump's inner circle" and "build a case to shield
the Canadian economy from policy changes." A cabinet shuffle took
place to appoint Chrystia Freeland as Minister of Foreign Affairs
with the added responsibility for Canada/U.S. trade relations,
and to empower others who are said to have personal relationships
with members of the new U.S. administration. Chrystia Freeland is
an unapologetic proponent of resurgent Nazi forces in Ukraine and
advocates pursuing war against Russia. Meanwhile, Donald Trump
appears to want a new tri-polar arrangement to set Russia and
China at loggerheads so as to facilitate "Making America Great
Again."
While currying relations with plutocrats worldwide, the
hypocrisy of Freeland is such that she claimed a seat in
Parliament brandishing the now widespread thesis of the Trudeau
government and world's ruling elite that a small plutocracy
control the lion's share of the world's wealth and this is
unsustainable and needs to be corrected through negotiating
better terms and a change of behaviour. Highlighting the
depravity of the current situation, social agencies recently
revealed that eight plutocrats alone control as much social
wealth as half the world's people. In Canada, two oligarchs
control social wealth matching that of 11 million Canadians.
 Freeland, the great
negotiator facing those plutocrats
who
need correcting, brags of clinching the Comprehensive Economic
and Trade Agreement (CETA) with many of those very same
plutocrats of the European Union who "need correcting." This
trade arrangement will further subject Canada's economy to the
control of the world's biggest oligopolies and put yet another
nail in the coffin of Canada's sovereign independence and ability
to control and manage its own affairs. CETA gives the European
oligopolies an entry point into the entire North American market
setting up yet more competition and collusion amongst the giants
as they jockey to control yet more of Canada's economy. The
Liberal government credits Freeland with the negotiating skills
saving CETA at the 11th hour, and gaining applause from the
plutocrats who strongly advocate it. Canadians are now to presume
that Freeland is the least wimpy bet to match the "negotiating
skills" of the knavish oligarch Donald Trump.
All this ignores that the causes of economic and
institutional crises are objective, not a matter of good or bad
policies, theses or intentions of this or that political leader,
party, administration or oligarch. Such ideological beliefs
centered on policy objectives are false and divert attention from
the need to draw warranted conclusions from the objective class
and social contradictions that exist and the subjective
conditions that need to be prepared to change the situation.
The latest "Global Risks" report published by the 2017
Davos
Economic Forum continues in the same Trudeau/Freeland vein
offering the following warning: "The combination of economic
inequality and political polarization threatens to amplify global
risks, fraying the social solidarity on which the legitimacy of
our economic and political systems rests." What "social
solidarity" it does not say. What is obvious, however, is that
similar to the United States, its European allies are also mired
in civil war scenarios, which the imperialist rulers are
preparing to deal with brutally even if it means plunging the
world into a nuclear holocaust.
Launching foreign wars to avert civil war at home has
always
been the method used by the imperialists as they strive to unite
the bureaucracy and military and overcome economic crises by
destroying the productive forces on a massive scale. Lining
Canada up behind one or another of the imperialists, as they
collude and contend with other great powers, is a very dangerous
course which must be opposed.
Attempts to have the Canadian people follow behind the
Trudeau government's claims that it has Canada's interests at
heart would be laughable if they were not so dangerous and
diversionary. What will be negotiated with the Trump
administration? Not jobs for Canadians, not "good middle class
wages," peace or anything remotely resembling what Canadians
would consider their "national interest" at home and abroad.
Negotiations will centre on how best to serve the private narrow
interests of the oligopolies.
While it is true that the Canadian economy is
integrated with
the American economy and whatever affects Canada will affect the
United States and vice versa, this does not mean that integration
with the U.S. imperialists and their war economy and war
preparations is a redeeming quality, which should be endured.
When Donald Trump and his cabinet appointments talk about job
creation in the United States, they are not talking about the
creation of jobs that provide a standard of living and life
commensurate with the standard of living the U.S. working class
has fought for and created in the past. The talk is centred on
workers competing for jobs being created in the former slave
states and even in the U.S. industrial heartland where
anti-worker laws are becoming the norm. The oligopolies want what
they have done to industrial workers in the U.S. to be extended
into Canada. This is not what Canadian or U.S. industrial workers
want and that is the challenge the current situation
presents.
 Donald Trump will use the
police powers of the U.S.
state to
push wages and working conditions to rock bottom while protecting
the claims of the oligopolies that cooperate or are allied with
him. A Trump presidency represents the power of the public
authority exercised through police powers, with the same being
done more and more in Canada as well. The cause is not "bad
people" and "bad policies" but the fact that finance capital
cannot harmonize the interests of all the individuals and
collectives comprising society. The financial oligarchy cannot
provide the country with an aim worthy of the challenges posed by
the times.
The civil society based on a covenant between those who
govern and those who are governed is broken. The equilibrium
achieved by a system of representation was legitimized by
institutions and elections that formed a government of laws.
Those arrangements are exhausted; they no longer function.
Appeals to the gods of plague to make them function are
desperate; they have no merit. What remains is the naked police
power and the need for the people to recognize the changed
situation within which they must affirm their rights. A new
direction is necessary with a new social force in command, the
working people themselves.
The Trudeau government's claim that it will do
everything in
its power to place Canada in a position where it can effectively
compete with Trump as he pushes workers to the bottom is
unacceptable. It must be fought in favour of a new direction for
the economy that puts Canada on an independent self-reliant
footing so that it can trade on the basis of mutual benefit and
the positive development of the peoples of both countries and the
world, not for the benefit of the oligopolies, which have seized
power by means of force and fraud.
The oligarch Trump is the negation of modern politics,
democratic renewal and the recognition of rights. In his twitter
tirades, Trump presents solutions to the grave problems
confronting the U.S. in terms of attacking people as things, not
people. Police categories include "undocumented migrants,"
"criminal gangs," "violent protestors," "degenerates," "cop
haters," "terrorists," "Muslim fundamentalists," with all the
like, the "things," slated for elimination. A polity made up of
human beings must create the conditions so that they can sort out
their relations and problems without violence, threats and police
powers.
 The triumphalism of Donald
Trump and the interests he
represents is their greatest weakness. They are finding
opposition everywhere including in the United States. The trend
of history is towards the affirmation of rights, democratic
renewal, the sovereign independence of the peoples and nations of
the world and their deep anti-war sentiment. The peoples have
matured in the course of waging their struggles for their rights
throughout the 20th century and since this period of reaction
began on the eve of the 21st century. Everywhere, expressed in
life and death situations and in the face of the great powers
unleashing their might, we witness the earnest desire of the
peoples to live in peace and sort out differences, social
relations and problems without violence, with respect and
dignity, and in firm opposition to any denial of the rights which
belong to people by virtue of being human.
Police powers do not legitimize the rule of the
financial
oligarchy. Police powers ensure compliance with the state and the
police powers themselves. They are used to decide whom to
criminalize and how to mete out punishment. There is no "arguing"
against them. All argument must be directed towards Building the
New that provides a way forward based on the affirmation of the
rights that belong to people by virtue of being human. People
must lay claim to all that belongs to them as human persons. The
more the financial oligarchy and powers that be try to legitimize
police powers by suspending civil rights and passing laws making
the most egregious violations of human rights "lawful," the more
they isolate themselves and expose their desperation and
inability to govern. The way is open for the working class and
its allies amongst all the people to make headway in the battle
of the New against the Old.
The key is to organize in defence of rights and the
interests
of the working people of all countries and to build their
independent headquarters, voice and institutions. This means
stepping up the organized and conscious struggle in defence of
the rights of all, for democratic renewal, an anti-war government
and independent Canada.
Step Up the Work in Defence of the
Rights of
All,
for Democratic Renewal,
an Anti-War Government and Independent
Canada!
Actions in Washington and Around the World
Mass Resistance Sets Tone for Trump Presidency
Women's March on Washington, January 21, 2017
Mass
actions
in
the lead up to Inauguration Day, on January 20 in
Washington, DC and after, including unprecedented demonstrations for
the Women’s March on January 21 made amply clear the widespread
sentiment in the U.S. to reject the Trump presidency, oppose war and
attacks on rights and for empowerment. Actions took place in all 50
states, Puerto Rico and cities worldwide. The spirit of resistance
eclipsed attempts by one or another of the ruling factions of the
financial oligarchy to use it for self-serving ends. The actions of
people in their millions were a rejection of an outmoded system of
politics that deprives them of a say and that has set the country on a
dangerous course at home and abroad.
As
CPC(M-L)
pointed
out on November 9, 2016, the election of Trump was an
end to business as usual. More than ever, the U.S. government is a
government of police powers -- the arbitrary powers that operate with
impunity outside the rule of law -- in which the ruling circles are no
longer concerned with maintaining even the appearance of a functioning
political process. This was reflected in the massive security measures
for the inauguration and other attempts to criminalize dissent and
resistance in the form of the many arbitrary checkpoints at actions,
the massive presence and live-exercise of security agencies of all
varieties for the weekend, and decisions made by these forces to allow
or not allow particular actions. Protesters were treated as a category
of potential troublemakers, not human beings with rights.
Confronting
a
government
of police powers that does not concern itself with the
appearance of legitimacy means that the notion of organizing actions
with the aim of pressuring politicians to respond has little place. Our
security does not lie with relying on the politicians and the existing
political process that has shown itself to be completely dysfunctional
and against the interests of the people. Our Security Lies in Our Fight
for the Rights of All, with actions aimed at stepping up the organized
character of this fight and quality of political discussion and
analysis. This means basing ourselves on our own program and aims as we
continue to organize resistance and fight for rights and empowerment.
TML Weekly is presenting below
photos from the mass resistance in the U.S., Canada and other
countries.
Protests at Inauguration, Washington, DC, January 20
  
 
 
 
Women's March, January 21
Washington, DC
Boston, Massachusetts
New York City
Chicago, Illinois
Austin, Texas
Denver, Colorado
Los Angeles, California
Portland, Oregon
Anchorage, Alaska
Vigorous Actions Leading Up to
Inauguration
Actions for Rights and to Oppose
Profiling and Criminalization on
Martin Luther King Day, January 16
Washington, DC, January 14
 
New York City, January 14
New York City, January 16
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, January 16
Lexington, Virginia, January 14
Chicago, Illinois, January 14
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, January 14
 
 
McAllen, Texas, January 14
Denver, Colorado, January 14
San José, California, January 14
Oakland, California, January 16
 
Actions in Defence of Right to
Health Care, January 15
Portland, Maine
Boston, Massachusetts
Buffalo, New York
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Atlanta, Georgia
Portland, Oregon
Week of Action for Sanctuary
Against Deportations
Portland, Oregon
Tuscon, Arizona
Actions in Canada
January 20
Windsor
Vancouver
Montreal
 
Women's Marches, January 21
St. John's; Moncton
 
St. John
Halifax
Charlottetown
Montreal
  
Ottawa
  
Toronto
   
Hamilton
Windsor
Edmonton
Calgary
Vancouver
Nanaimo
Yellowknife
Whitehorse
Other Countries
January 20
Mexico City
  
London, UK
Brussels, Belgium
Bethlehem, Palestine
 
Colombo, Sri Lanka
 
Melbourne, Australia
Women's Marches, January 21
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Buenos Aires, Argentina
London, England
Edinburgh, Scotland
Bergen, Norway
Brussels, Belgium
Paris, France
Rome, Italy
Barcelona, Spain
Tbilisi, Georgia
Lithuania
Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
Lusaka, Zambia
Cape Town, South Africa
Mumbai, India
Seoul, Korea
Aukland, New Zealand
Antarctica
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Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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