NAR-New Left Current for the Communist Liberation about election of Donald Trump in USA.
The victory of Donald Trump in the presidential elections in the USA reflects the need of capitalism, in its new period, to impose yet another reactionary radicalization on the economy, labor, even against the achievements of the Enlightenment and (bourgeois) democracy. Trump is not a revival of a fascist past, but an expression of the extreme aggression of bourgeois politics against the working class and the peoples today, on the ground of the inability of the system to effectively overcome its crisis and with the new clouds of recession looming.
It was not the victory itself that was surprising, but its magnitude and elemental qualities. Trump garnered 75.5 million votes as opposed to Kamala Harris’ 72.4 million, comfortably winning all swing-states, while the Republican Party secures control of both Houses. But this is mostly a loss for the Democrats, as Harris lost 9 million votes to Joe Biden in 2020. The Democratic party’s once-strong dominance of the Latino and African-American communities has diminished significantly as Trump addressed them not as members of “minorities” but as “workers and employers”, “consumers and producers”. Democrats celebrated improving economic statistics, while Trump based his entire campaign on the dramatic deterioration of the purchasing power of the population, the downward trend of living conditions, the absence of any prospect of improving the daily lives of American workers and youth. This situation occurs in the context of the retreat of US economic primacy on the planet, which translates domestically into de-industrialization, relocation of factories, and a decline in domestic employment.
In response, Trump projected protectionism (which presupposes a strong state) and an iron-clad shield against “illegal immigrants” and crime. His political agenda was fully imposed as Harris had no alternative to offer on these issues, fully embracing proposals on international trade and immigration control. Her campaign was even further to the right than Biden’s 2020 campaign, when Democrats tried to incorporate the powerful movements that had developed in Trump’s first presidency. The traditional neoliberal establishment supported Harris, as did “moderate” Republicans, steeped in the blood of massacres in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine. The Democrats now appear as the main “party of war” and have been defeated, as they have been in most European countries in recent election contests. The war in Ukraine is proving extremely unpopular among the working classes as it is equated with an energy crisis, rising prices, cuts to finance armaments. Trump’s promise to “end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours” and more generally his appearance as a president who will reduce US involvement in wars strengthened him even more. Maintaining American armed hegemony on multiple open fronts is extremely costly while the main rival, China, expands its power without currently engaging in military conflict.
Trump’s “pacifism” is obviously a sham. Even a reduction of the aggressive policy against Russia will be a tactical move, a truce that is impossible to maintain in the long run. After all, the main target is China and Trump is exaggerating the escalation of the trade war that he started in his first term. Trade wars hardly stay solely in this field. Capitalist competition cannot be resolved by economic means, but must increasingly resort to military ones.
Trump’s protectionism, expressed through the imposition of tariffs on imports from China, Europe and other countries, if finally implemented, will further exacerbate the exploitation of the working classes internationally, as they are the ones who will be asked to “pay” Trump’s tariffs so that European, Chinese and international capital can continue to be profitable, while at the same time they will further intensify international intra-capitalist competition.
But even on the domestic front, promises of reducing taxes and raising tarriffs could worsen an already poor state of the US economy. Debt exceeds their GDP, the abandonment of the dollar by international creditors is increasing while the trade war has not reversed the unfavorable to the US trade balance. Trump will have to face explosive contradictions, which are not political “choices” but inherent weaknesses of American capitalism. That is why the “heretical” Trump, a tycoon himself, now has the support of eading representatives of the US oligarchy, and even those who come from its most aggressive sections, such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, with Musk even taking over a political role.
The unmediated involvement of oligarchs in politics highlights the further reactionary shift of bourgeois democracy. The capitalist crisis has undermined its foundations not only in the economically backward or periphery countries, but also in the main imperialist powers with the extreme right becoming the tool for imposing a political agenda that crushes the peoples. In the US this turn obviously has Trump as the main exponent by limiting freedoms and strengthening repression. Among the first steps Trump is promoting are firing public employees and promoting an education reform to end what Trump calls “indoctrination” in schools, the teaching of even basic Enlightenment doctrines. Its vanguard is racist far-right groups, the ones that starred in the invasion of the Capitol in 2021 and are now turning into cores of support for a police state that brings militarism within the borders (to “protect” them). Racist Trump won the Latino vote despite infamously calling Puerto Rico an island of garbage, arguing that “illegal immigrants” would steal their jobs.
The complete collapse of the “American Dream” leads to social cannibalism as the Democrats fail to function as a relief valve in the name of the “greater evil”. They thought they could win the election almost entirely on women’s right to abortion, ignoring issues like job insecurity that hit women particularly hard. Surveys have shown that 2/3 of the total US population supports the legality of abortion, but only 10-15% consider it a key criterion for voting in elections. The Democrats, like the European Social Democrats and much of the Left, see social rights as individual concessions to people outside the overall economic, social and above all class reality. Harris identified with today’s social dystopia shared by women, African-American, Latino working class. Trump’s speech, although racist, misogynist, irrational, was much more coherent, managing to identify Harris’ “anti-racism” and “anti-fascism” with the defense of the establishment. A hypocrisy that also applies to the issue of Palestine and cost not only the votes of the Arab community but the consciences of a large portion of young and left-wing voters throughout the country. In American universities in the past months there has been a very advanced militant radicalism but it has not found political expression.
Trump’s victory promotes the increasingly stronger “International far-right,” which demonstrates the tragic consequences of the decades-long absence of labor and left-wing politics that could once again provide a vision of social liberation. In the recent years, a new militant radicalism has been brewing in the USA, which is channeled mainly through the Democratic Socialists (DSA), until now a part of the Democrats, with Bernie Sanders becoming an advocate against domestic anti-popular and international pro-war politics.
It is significant that several anti-capitalist forces chose to attack the “lesser evil” argument during the election campaign and to propose the need of building a real pro-working-class, socialist alternative. Their electoral influence, albeit still small, is on the rise.
With Trump cultivating an anti-communist rhetoric in a country where communism is barely politically existent, it becomes clear that the communist proposal is crucial everywhere for bringing forth a new era of revolutions which will abolish this war-laden rotten world.
