The statement is the foreword to the forthcoming book Where is America Going? It provides an essential framework for understanding the political crisis now engulfing the United States—from the military-police occupation of Minneapolis to the release of over 3 million pages of Epstein documents by the Department of Justice.
The Epstein files, North explains, are not merely a scandal involving one individual's crimes. They expose the social character of the entire ruling class:
"The documents confirm what has long been suspected and what millions of working people have instinctively grasped: that the most powerful individuals in American society—the presidents and former presidents, the billionaire financiers, the titans of Silicon Valley, the celebrated intellectuals, the princes and diplomats—moved freely and knowingly in the orbit of a convicted child sex offender. They did so not in ignorance of his crimes, but in indifference to them, and, in many cases, participation in them."
The perspective traces the deep roots of Trump's rise not to his individual psychology but to the structural decay of American capitalism over the past half-century—the collapse of manufacturing, the explosion of financial parasitism, and the concentration of wealth at levels unprecedented in modern history. Federal Reserve data show the top 1 percent now controls 31.7 percent of the nation's wealth, owning more than the bottom 90 percent combined.
On the bipartisan character of elite corruption, North writes:
"From the vantage point of Epstein's dining room, bedroom and massage table, the partisan warfare that is presented to the American public as 'politics' was a sideshow. The people with whom he networked understood this, even if the public did not. They shared a class position, a set of material interests, and—as the documents now make clear—a set of moral standards, or rather the complete absence of them."
This analysis directly challenges the dominant media narrative that treats Trump as an aberration rather than a product of systemic crisis. The Minneapolis occupation—where ICE agents killed two American citizens and violated at least 96 court orders in a single month—is the logical outcome of decades of bipartisan assault on democratic rights and working-class living standards.
The perspective situates the present crisis within the broader framework of world history, drawing on Trotsky's 1928 warning that American imperialism would seek to overcome its crises "primarily at the expense of Europe, regardless of whether this occurs in Asia, Canada, South America, Australia, or Europe itself, or whether this takes place peacefully or through war."
Nearly a century later, Trump threatens Canadian sovereignty, invades Venezuela, demands Greenland, and menaces Iran.
But North emphasizes that the same contradictions driving the ruling class toward authoritarianism are creating conditions for revolutionary struggle:
"The global integration of production has created a massive global working class of a size, concentration and objective interconnection without precedent in human history."
The massive protests under the slogan "No Kings"—including over 100,000 people braving sub-zero temperatures in Minneapolis on January 23—demonstrate that millions are already entering into struggle. What is required is a program connecting these democratic aspirations to the fight for socialism.
This statement is essential reading for workers in every industry, students, and all those seeking to understand the historical forces behind the present political crisis.
Share this statement widely among your coworkers, family, and friends. Post it on social media. Discuss it in your workplace. The building of a revolutionary socialist movement depends on the widest possible circulation of this analysis.
No comments:
Post a Comment