In his Substack post on 2 January, veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh posed the question, “What chaos will Trump unleash in 2026?” Trump’s response came in less than a day.

The US strikes on Venezuela, and the abduction of Venezuelan president Maduro and his wife, are not unprecedented. Over the past 42 years, the US has invaded Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, all with the aim of overthrowing their governments. But what is different now is that Trump has made it plain that the aggression is about seizing Venezuela’s oil industry for US corporations.

This outrageous imperialist attack demands condemnation from governments and peoples worldwide. At the time of writing, UK prime minster Keir Starmer has refused to condemn the US actions or even to say whether they broke international law. Germany’s Foreign Ministry has called on “all involved parties to avoid an escalation of the situation and to seek ways for a political settlement” – which is code for externally-imposed regime change. 

Western governments won’t condemn Trump because that would risk fractures in NATO. While putting pressure on our own government to condemn the US, we also need to win the labour and progressive movement to support Britain’s withdrawal from the imperialist NATO alliance.

Trump says that the US will “run” Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition”. At the time of writing, he has not said how that will be done.  If force is used, whether by the US or factions in the Venezuelan military, there is bound to be resistance and bloodshed. The Venezuelan people need our solidarity.

Noting that Trump is unmoved by the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, Hersh wondered whether he is just obdurate or “in thrall to the possibility of future billion-dollar private investments in Gaza and the Middle East”. Hersh then raised the same questions about Trump’s motivations over Ukraine, suggesting that he “has apparently lost interest because the going got hard.” 

The going has also got hard over Trump’s tariffs on Chinese exports to the US. To ensure continued supply of rare earths – vital in a number of sectors, including military equipment – Trump has had to agree a trade deal with China. 

These two last examples show that, despite all his bravado, Trump can be forced onto the back foot. And if the going gets hard in Venezuela, he will look for a way out. Here in Britain, we have a special responsibility to build opposition to imperialism. 

In the lead article in this edition of CR, Johnnie Hunter reviews the Communist Party of Britain (CPB)’s recent 58^th Congress, commenting that the Main Resolution demonstrates the links between the international and domestic crises, articulating how the Party and working people in the heart of the imperialist camp should respond. The Resolution’s declared central aim is to build a United Front in Britain against monopoly capitalism and war, to take arguments for this into the working class and the labour movement, and to build a Communist Party capable of constructing and playing a leading role in that front.

Among the pressing issues facing the Congress delegates was how to respond to the advance of the far right. Not long after the Congress, the formation of the Together Against the Far Right alliance (in which the CPB is involved) was announced. This will provide the opportunity to build mass opposition to Reform UK and fascist groups in Britain.

Opposing the far right is an issue taken up by Nick Moss, in his Soul Food poetry column. Focusing on Manchester rapper Jordan McCann and Dublin singer Conor McLoughlin, he argues that “What is required is an anti-fascism that sees those targeted by the far right as potential recruits and seeks to win them to the left.”

Several other culture-based articles are also included here. Marking the 125^th anniversary of the birth of Communist composer Alan Bush, Ben Lunn explores both Bush’s life and his contribution to Marxism in music.  After that we reprint a 1949 article by Bush himself, on then-current developments in Soviet musical theory.  It has been fashionable to describe those developments as examples of crass Stalinism, but Bush gives an interesting analysis, setting them in the context of Marxist approaches to the arts by Lenin, Plekhanov, Gorky, Christopher Caudwell and Ralph Fox. 

Elsewhere in the journal, David McKinstry writes about Irish author Sally Rooney, who has been vocal in her support for Palestine Action. 

Five more articles make up this edition. First Kevin Donnelly looks at the relevance of Critical Theory to political struggles, particularly with regard to Henri Lefebvre and Ernesto Laclau in relation to “spatialised” politics in Chile. While the combination has some value, he finds that the issue of organisation needs to be viewed as a theoretical problem in its own right, with a clear role for a Communist Party.

Then C Ritchie looks at the care industry in England, and how the support of children in care, and care home residents, can be destabilised by a turnover of staff, caused by low wages, high stress levels and government migration policies.

Next, responding to criticisms of Part 3 of his ‘What Drives Economic Development Forward, and What Holds it Back’ in CR116, Jerry Jones accepts the importance of economic planning and state ownership after the revolution. But he maintains that markets can play an important role, and that the task is to get right the balance between central planning and what markets are allowed to do. In fact, as Marc Vandepitte explains in the following article, China’s massive lead in renewable energy derives from state-led economic steering within a market economy.

Finally, Margaret Levy reviews leading Indian Communist Brinda Karat’s account of her first decade of activism, including a period underground in the Emergency.

Notes and References

¹ https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/what-chaos-will-trump-unleash-in.

² https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4qgvwxp08o.

³ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-kallas-urges-respect-international-law-after-us-capture-maduro/.

⁴ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5yqygxe41pt.