Since his inauguration Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has moved to implement his pledge to save money, eliminate waste and shift the political priorities of the vast federal bureaucracy. This encompasses the Treasury Department, “foreign aid,” “diversity” programs across all federal agencies and more.
He established the Department of Government Efficiency and appointed billionaire Elon Musk as a “special government employee” tasked with running it.
Many working people welcome steps aimed at reducing government intrusion and “nudges” into our lives by the self-serving middle-class meritocrats who run these agencies. Democrats and the middle-class left are enraged. They’ve turned to the courts to try to block implementation of DOGE’s steps to eliminate waste, “woke” mandates and politically motivated programs.
Just four weeks into the administration, 74 lawsuits have been filed against Trump’s actions, including those of Musk’s DOGE.
Liberals claim Trump’s cuts will hit services vital to working people. But a look at the agencies Trump is targeting so far tells a different story.
The administration has moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. Its 10,000-strong staff dispenses “foreign aid” that’s used to prop up allied governments and grease the palm of politicians allied with the party in power in Washington, as it advances the foreign policy goals of U.S. imperialism. Democrats got a compliant judge to suspend DOGE’s efforts.
Trump issued an executive order putting an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government, upending a crusade pushed by the Democratic Party administrations of both Barack Obama and Joseph Biden.
DEI programs were a source of perks and class advancement for the middle-class layers who ran them, and used them to deepen racial and class divisions. They are the opposite of the affirmative action programs set up in the 1970s that opened the door to the hiring of Black and women workers into jobs they’d been excluded from, gains that grew out of the Black-led movement that overthrew Jim Crow segregation.
To shrink the bloated size of the government bureaucracy, the administration offered a buyout package to some 2 million government employees. They were offered their full salary and benefits for eight months if they left their jobs.
The five most senior FBI bosses were fired Jan. 31. The Justice Department is considering getting rid of the 2,400 spies who carried out the FBI’s Jan. 6 inquiry, along with thousands of recently hired snoops.
This isn’t a plan to cut back the FBI, rather the target is those agents who took responsibility for the Democrats’ assault on constitutional protections in their partisan drive to go after Trump and his allies. The capitalist state will retain its number one spy agency.
Democrats are determined to block the administration from whittling away at the bloated, bureaucracy they have spawned.
A flood of articles in the liberal press claim the administration is creating a “constitutional crisis,” as Trump tries to implement the program he ran and was elected on. Some claim DOGE’s initiatives are nothing less than a coup. Notwithstanding these claims, Trump said Feb. 11 he’ll abide by court rulings against his administration while he appeals.
Origins of modern imperialist state
The size and scope of today’s modern capitalist state, replete with invasive welfare corps, spy agencies and huge military forces, has its roots in the rise of monopolies at the dawn of the imperialist epoch in the early 1900s.
The world’s dominant ruling classes needed a larger state apparatus to pursue their conflicts over the redivision of the world’s markets and resources, conflicts that would eventually lead to two imperialist world wars. An expanding capitalist state was also required to suppress rising revolts against colonial domination and, above all, to shield the rulers from revolutionary struggles by workers and their allies.
No capitalist government — Democratic or Republican — will break up what the imperialist rulers have put in place.
As part of this expansion, there has been a proliferation of bloated federal agencies, with growing powers to monitor, interfere with and administer the lives of working people. Trump wants to trim some of these agencies, especially those used by Biden, Obama, Bill Clinton and others, as well as those used to target him and his supporters. For good measure, Trump also cut off the federal government’s $8.2 million worth of subscriptions to liberal mouthpiece Politico.
What Trump and Musk project as “smaller government” is nothing new under capitalism. Their view is that trimming away at the government bureaucracy will leave the regulation of society to the workings of the capitalist system. But this won’t help working people either.
Karl Marx, the founder of the modern communist movement, explained that only when the working class holds power can social relations be transformed and millions among the exploited and oppressed begin placing their stamp on the priorities of society.
Marx spelled this out in response to the establishment of the world’s first working-class government, the Paris Commune, in 1871.
“The Commune,” he wrote, “made the catchword of bourgeois revolutions, cheap government, a reality by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure — the standing army and State functionarism.”
They were replaced by the organization of the millions of working people themselves. The fight for workers power in the U.S., the only road to make that possible, is what the Socialist Workers Party exists to promote.