Trump and The State

It took some months longer than I originally anticipated, but Trump's indictment, by the US capitalist state, inevitably came, and, when it did, its delay was made up for by its multiplicity and severity. Not just one indictment, but a flurry, not just the potential for a rap on the knuckles, but serious jail time, and also, whilst there remains the possibility of a Presidential pardon, on federal charges, there is the possibility of jail on state charges.

Trump and his supporters say that the “deep” state is out to get him. The state is out to get Trump, and his fascistic, and reactionary, petty-bourgeois supporters, as I wrote a year ago, but that does not mean that he, and they, are not guilty of the charges laid against them. It would be much better if Trump and his fascistic, reactionary petty-bourgeois supporters had been defeated, politically, and physically, by a mass, mobilised and class conscious working-class, just as that is the case with defeating other manifestations of that same petty-bourgeois reaction, such as Brexit, or the gilets-jaunes in France, and so on, but it wasn't, which is one reason the capitalist state stepped in.

In fact, had a mass, mobilised and class-conscious working-class fulfilled those tasks, the likelihood is that, the same capitalist state would have been intervening, not against Trump and his fascistic supporters, but against that organised working-class. That is why, whilst we can observe its actions against Trump and the fascists, and utilise its revelations, we should, in no way, be under any illusions about what it represents, or see it as something we should encourage. Its why Marxists do not call on that state to ban fascists, or rely on the capitalist police to fight fascists on the streets, on our behalf. If they do engage in those actions, it is only because, at the given time, the fascists pose a greater threat to the interests of the ruling class, and its state, than does the working-class, that the state does not need them as an auxiliary to fight the organised working-class, in the interests of the ruling-class. It is an indication of our own weakness.

In the given conditions, the capitalist state needed no encouragement or endorsement from socialists for its actions against Trump, any more than it did in attempting to frustrate the proponents of Brexit, in Britain. It did that, as part of its function of protecting the interests of the ruling class, in the same way that, in the 1920's the German capitalist state, slapped down the Nazis, following the defeat of the German revolution, whereas, in Italy, as workers occupied factories under workers control, and established a network of workers' councils, the capitalist state facilitated Mussolini's fascists March on Rome. A decade later, in changed conditions, in Germany, the capitalist state, also facilitated the coming to power of the Nazis. The capitalist state, does not operate, as the liberals claim, as some kind of neutral arbiter, and defender of democracy, but only as defender of the interests of the ruling-class, including the use of fascism when that is required. As Trotsky put it, for that state, democracy and fascism are simply two different masks that it puts on or discards according to its requirements.

It is not just that we do not call on that state, therefore, to take action against the fascists, by things such as state bans, but that we oppose such bans and actions by that state, because we know that, tomorrow, if the working-class is strong enough, those bans will be used, with even more ferocity, against us, and the fascists that, today, the state acts against, tomorrow, will act as the tip of its spear, as auxiliaries to its permanent bodies of armed men. We should not sow illusions in the class nature of that state, or its function, simply to compensate for our current weakness.

As I have set out before, the fact that Trump is reportedly – though the truth around it is typically muddy, given his serial bankruptcies, and mystery surrounding his tax affairs – a billionaire, confuses some, like Paul Mason, whose “How To Stop Fascism”, is an eclectic, subjectivist hodgepodge. How can a billionaire like Trump, be an enemy of the US ruling-class, rather than a part of it? Quite easily, if you utilise a Marxist rather than a crude determinist view of class, let alone, if you utilise a subjectivist categorisation, such as “elite” used by Mason, which, itself, facilitates the kind of narrative used by the fascists and populists.

Speaking of the social-democrats as representatives of the ideas of the petty-bourgeoisie, Marx, notes, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,

“The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony. However different the means proposed for the attainment of this end may be, however much it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary notions, the content remains the same. This content is the transformation of society in a democratic way, but a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only one must not get the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within whose frame alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven and earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.”

What distinguishes the petty-bourgeoisie, as against the bourgeoisie or the proletariat, is its heterogeneous nature. As an intermediate and transitional class, it is in a constant state of differentiation, a small number making it into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, but with a much larger number being perpetually at risk of falling into the ranks of the proletariat, and, with the development of large-scale capitalism, always suffering from a limitation on its living standards that often places them below the level of the average worker, and more akin to the precariously employed, under-employed, and poorly paid, unskilled workers. At times, when the working-class is strong, and advancing on the basis of a clear programme, these latter elements, can be drawn behind the proletariat, much as with the poor peasants, but, at others, it makes them the targets of fascists, and populists, the foot soldiers and storm troopers mobilised, not only on the basis of a reactionary “anti-capitalism”, against big capital, but, also, against its concomitant, organised labour.

Fascism, is the political expression of this reactionary, petty-bourgeois, ideology. By definition, because it seeks to represent these interests of the petty-bourgeoisie – much as did Sismondi, Proudhon, or the Narodniks – as against a more rapid and rational development of large-scale capital, it is antagonistic to the interests of the ruling-class, whose interests lie in precisely such a development. That is true both in relation to the actual large-scale, industrial capital itself, which requires ever larger single markets, the removal of national borders and frictions, and in relation to the ruling-class of owners of fictitious-capital, whose long-term interests depend on the profits of that real capital, as the source of their revenues from the interest payments on that fictitious capital (dividends and coupon). As owners of that fictitious-capital, the ruling class, long ago, became a truly global class, entirely footloose, and able to live everywhere and anywhere, and simply to shift their ownership of shares and bonds, at the press of a computer key. The narrow, nationalist and protectionist agenda of the petty-bourgeoisie, is wholly antagonistic to those interests.

Trump is the representative of those reactionary, petty-bourgeois ideas, irrespective of his status as a billionaire or not. It is why the US state, as representative of the interests of the ruling-class, acted to frustrate his Presidency, just as, in Britain, the state acted to frustrate the similar agenda of Brexit. The fact that Trump, or the Brexiters are the enemy of the capitalist state, of course, does not make them our friend. Trump, the Brexiters et al, and the capitalist state are both our enemies.

Indeed, in opposing Brexit, our goal and agenda is not at all that of the British capitalist state, for several reasons. Firstly, that capitalist state, always orients to the development of the EU, on the basis of its own national agenda, as does that of the state in all other EU countries. It seeks to obtain advantage for British based businesses within an EU context, as it also seeks advantage for the British state as a whole, whether in terms of budget contributions, opt-outs, or positions for British politicians and bureaucrats. Secondly, its goal is a liberal goal of free markets and competition to maximise profits, whereas, our goal is the greater unity of the EU working-class, the raising of its level of class consciousness, and its ability, thereby, to move forward, across the EU to socialism.

The same is true, in relation to the interests of US workers, in relation to both the agenda of Trump, and that of the US state. We do not, therefore, as a consequence of our own weakness, respond to Trump by adopting a philosophy of lesser-evilism, by supporting his temporary enemy, the US state, and its agenda. To do that would be the surest route not only to strengthening the forces of reaction, but also to do so by ensuring our own impotence and irrelevance, making us nothing more than cheerleaders for our own main class enemy.

In the 2002, French presidential election, voters were encouraged to vote for Chirac rather than le Pen, on the slogan, “Vote for the crook, not the fascist”. Reluctantly, voters did, and the story was repeated in the election between Macron and Le Pen. Already, however, after the experience of Macron's Presidency, many voters turned away, and many more have done so, following the last elections, as Macron unleashed a new series of attacks on French workers. A similar sentiment swept across US voters in 2016, when the bureaucratic machinery of the Democrats ensured that the lacklustre, at best, offerings of Hillary Clinton, was the meagre fare that workers were to be offered.

In the US, today, the polls show that the combination in one candidate of both the crook and the fascist, is not a sufficient deterrent, as against the lacklustre, offerings of the Democrats, in the form of Biden, with both showing more or less the same level of support.