Fascism and the Dangerous Logic of the Trump Circus |
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
At first glance, U.S. political life under Trump looks like a sprawling, circuslike affair going nowhere. However, measures are in force hitting at the rule of law and democracy itself and promoting war and turmoil in the wider world. They are so politically dangerous for most Americans as hardly to have appeared accidently. We suggest they are purposeful.
We argue that the present situation results from the U.S. government mounting a last-ditch response to a crisis of capitalism. If that is true, defense against catastrophe moving toward some horrific end point rests, it seems, on whatever is done about capitalism, which is no bed of roses.
The term signifies arrangements in effect since feudalism that give full rein to ruling classes everywhere to organize economic and political affairs to their advantage. Capitalism is an evolving process that stumbles now and then and requires adjustments to how it works. The masters of U.S. capitalism presently seem to be carrying out a major fix of old and new problems that impede profit-taking. The tools for repair are hugely disruptive.
To get the job done, capitalist decision-makers recruited the MAGA crew as agents for taking on the unpleasantness ahead. They are presently removing protections against exploitation and abuse of U.S. working people. Even the lower-order capitalists with reservations about the endeavor are joining in, perhaps holding their nose.
Some basic assumptions introduce the discussion here:
• To fix what’s wrong, you look for the cause.
• Focus on impaired personalities running the show does not fully explain the ongoing political turmoil.
• Preexisting political rules and arrangements for how to govern did nothing to prevent catastrophe.
• Wide sectors of the U.S. population are silent, stunned, and without hope. They are generally unconvinced that an alternative way of doing politics exists or is possible.
• The Trump administration regards political opposition as inconvenient, irrelevant, and disposable.
• Actions of his government result from rational decision-making. They are not the products of random impulses.
Beginnings
Capitalists cross established boundaries. Beginning centuries ago in Europe, they have been plundering distant parts of the world. Along the way, they added an exploitative factory system, great industrial monopolies, and, lastly, a world system of markets, cheap labor, and plunder of natural resources.
Overcoming challenges and contradictions, capitalists took charge of faraway peoples, fought wars against rival capitalist powers, confronted socialist governments and suppressed resistance movements at home and abroad. They occasionally have had to recover from economic crashes prompted by impoverished workers being unable to buy goods that are produced. Our point here is that capitalists are used to dealing with challenges, and doing so successfully.
Capitalists after World War I were experiencing unprecedented difficulties, and fixing........