As the crisis of capitalism leads to sharper splits among the bosses, the working class is going hungry. The 42 million workers and children in the U.S. who rely on the federal Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (also known as food stamps) are collateral damage of this conflict. Malnourished children are the pawns in the capitalist rulers’ vicious combat for supremacy. The government shutdown that began October 1 is just the latest battleground in the war between the  Donald Trump-fronted, Fortress America Small Fascists and the Democrat-fronted, finance capital Big Fascists. On November 1, Trump doubled down and refused to fund SNAP benefits for the people most impoverished by capitalism.

While it appears that the shutdown is ending and recipients will eventually get their paltry assistance, the threat to SNAP shows once again that capitalism is unable to provide for even the most basic needs of the working class.

The U.S. bosses’ cruel attack reflects their desperation amid rising inter-imperialist rivalry and a worldwide crisis of the capitalist system. While Trump is the face of the cuts, the Democrats have also done their share to starve the working class.

Capitalism can’t feed workers

As the bosses’ battle descends into fascism, food is getting ever harder to come by. Trump’s racist cruelty aside, this is not a new phenomenon. 

As inflation shot up under the Joe Biden administration, lines at food pantries swelled with first-time clients (PBS 7/14/22). Since then, with a steady rise in grocery prices, layoffs in major industries and the federal government, and most recently the shutdown, the food bank system has come under even greater strain. Many organizations can barely find enough donations to feed those in line. Even if SNAP continues as before, hunger in the U.S. will keep increasing.  A system that can’t guarantee the most basic benefits is a system fundamentally failing.

Recipients of SNAP live at or close to the poverty level, with typical income of about $2,700 per month for a three-person household. Black workers are hit particularly hard by hunger under capitalism. One of four SNAP recipients are Black, nearly double the percentage of the Black population in the U.S. But millions of white workers and families also live at a subsistence level, including more than a third of those eligible for SNAP.

The food stamp program was established during the 1930’s, when unemployment was so high that workers couldn’t afford to buy all the food produced on U.S. farms. As millions joined a mass communist movement, the U.S. bosses feared rebellion and revolution. Food stamps were part of a package of government reforms known collectively as the New Deal. From the start, they were a Band-Aid; they were never intended to solve the problem of hunger under capitalism. Nearly a century later, capitalism is doing no better at providing workers with a secure or decent life. Currently, one of every eight people in the U.S. depends on SNAP. The richest nation in the world has a perpetual hunger crisis.

Production for need, not profit

Communism puts the needs of the working class first, with food produced to feed people. But under capitalism, everything—food, shelter, health care—is produced for profit. People get adequately fed only insofar as it benefits the bosses—or if the workers fight for it.

Under capitalism, the working class is expendable. Starvation is just part of the territory.  Sometimes it grows out of the chaos of the bosses’ system, as with the reckless speculation that helped trigger the worldwide depression of the ‘30s. At other times, starvation is used by the capitalists to attack workers by withholding food, as the Israeli bosses have been doing in Gaza. In the Congo, South Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, Syria, Afghanistan, the Sahel, Sudan, Somalia, and Northern Ethiopia, over 125 million people are starving. The number-one cause is conflict between capitalist factions for control (World Food Program 6/25/24).

In the U.S., SNAP benefits keep people barely a step above starvation (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).  Even these crumbs are under threat as the bosses, focused only on staying in power, are willing to let workers starve to death. As the billionaires rake in record profits on the stock market and billions are spent on wars across the globe, the $6 a day to feed workers and their children is deemed too much. Trump has proposed a requirement that able-bodied adults without children must work at least 80 hours per month to keep their SNAP eligibility. [See CHALLENGE on the One Big Beautiful Bill.] [JC1] Though the overwhelming majority of SNAP participants who can work already do (CBPP[JC2] , April 2025), withholding food to workers left jobless by the crisis of capitalism is a particularly brutal form of capitalist oppression.

The Democrats won’t set you free

Thirty years before Trump, President Bill Clinton led a bipartisan effort to destroy the meager safety net for workers already straining to make ends meet. Clinton was the first to add work requirements for welfare recipients. In language eerily reminiscent of the sign declaring, “Work will set you free” at the entrance to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, pundits call the Clinton-Trump reforms “dignity-enhancing work requirements” (Washington Post, 7/18).

Whether it’s fronted by Republicans or Democrats, capitalism always claws at the dignity and subsistence of the working class. Over the past 30 years, the net worth of the top 1 percent in the U.S. has increased sevenfold, according to NASDAQ (10/25), while the net worth of the bottom 40 percent has gone down! Under the Biden administration, inflation shot up and the number of SNAP recipients increased because so many individuals and families needed them for the first time (PBS 7/14/22).

Workers of the world deserve communism

Under communism, access to food would be a basic human right. But human rights don’t exist under capitalism. The rise of food “insecurity”—a nicer-sounding word than hunger-- in the U.S. is even worse for workers around the world. But the causes are rooted in the same desperate drive for profit. The struggle against capitalism and for communist revolution is literally a life-and-death struggle for the working class. Fight for a world without hunger! Join Progressive Labor Party!