Although Trump’s message has been against “big government,” in fact his economic plan which mainly consists of tax cuts for large companies and massive spending cuts in the public sector, does not contradict the rule of a strong state/army. His authoritarianism might be similar to what we have seen in emerging economies such as Russia and China during the past 25 years.
Frieda Afary
November 9, 2016
Donald Trump’s victory in the November 8, U.S. presidential election is a catastrophe. Of the approximately 225 million eligible voters, almost 122 million or 54% voted, of which 47.8% voted for Clinton and 47.2% voted for Trump. However, since the final election is based on the number of Electoral College votes and not the number of the popular vote, Trump gained more delegates and won. All the northeastern coastal states plus Maryland, Virginia, Minnesota, Illinois and all the western coastal states plus Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico voted for Clinton. All the other states went to Trump. The Republicans also gained a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This means that Trump’s administration will be able to reverse the hard fought gains of workers, women, African Americans, Latinos and the LGBT community many of whom voted in this election and will not easily accept the retrogression that will be forced on us.
Much has been written about Trump’s use of racism, misogyny and homophobia to appeal to the prejudices of the electorate and gain votes. Much has also been said about how globalization and the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. attracted the majority of the white working class to Trump’s populist and chauvinist message. What needs to be discussed more is how Trump represents a global economic phenomenon.
I. Trump as an expression of a global economic phenomenon
Although Trump’s message has been against “big government,” in fact his economic plan which mainly consists of tax cuts for large companies and massive spending cuts in the public sector, does not contradict the rule of a strong state/army.
His authoritarianism might be similar to what we have seen in emerging economies such as Russia and China during the past 25 years. In these economies, we have witnessed the rise of hybrid corporations that are supported by the state but act as multinational corporations. The state/army is omnipresent. There are many companies that are formally privately owned but enjoy a huge amount of overt or covert support from their respective governments. State-owned enterprises are becoming wealthier and more powerful even as the overall state sector shrinks. Governments are tightening their grip on the commanding heights of the economy even as the private sector grows. [i]
Indeed, it can be argued that the above trend is a global economic phenomenon: the simultaneous decline in the state sector and the increasing growth of state control over the economy. [ii]
In Marxist language, Trump is an expression of the logic of the capitalist mode of production which moves toward the concentration and centralization of capital in fewer hands. This tendency for the monopolization of capital in fewer hands organically flows from the fact that capitalism is based on abstract value-producing labor and needs to increase the rate of extraction of surplus value from workers in order to increase profits. This logic is not limited to private capitalism but indeed moves in the direction of state capitalism.
Although the logic of capitalism leads to war between capitalist-imperialist powers, it also leads to periods of inter-imperialist alliances to facilitate the accumulation of capital. Hence we see Trump’s affinity with Putin’s authoritarianism and his policies in the Middle East.
II. Trump, Putin and the Middle East
Trump has openly called for an alliance with Putin. Although opposed to Obama’s nuclear agreement with the Iranian government, Trump strongly supports Putin’s policies in the Middle East which includes Russia’s alliance with Iran’s authoritarian regime. Putin and the Iranian government have been allies in a joint military intervention to maintain the fascistic Assad regime and to crush what is left of the revolutionary and moderate opposition that represents the 2011 popular Syrian revolution.
While Obama has rhetorically criticized Putin’s continued aerial bombing of the 275,000 innocent residents of Eastern Aleppo, and has claimed that his alliance with Putin was limited to fighting ISIS, Trump has put aside any humanitarian rhetoric. He openly supports Russia’s and the Iranian government’s massacres in Syria. [iii]
III. Why Is History Moving Backward?
Given Trump’s outright support for fascists, his misogyny, racism, homophobia, and celebration of capitalist exploitation, how could almost 60 million people in the U.S. vote for him? How could the majority of the white working class, and sectors of the Latino working class and even over 40% of women have voted for him? Doesn’t that challenge the humanist view that human beings have the potential to be autonomous beings who move forward through the power of reason?
As a Marxist-Humanist, I would argue that the key word in the above description of humanism is the word potential. Just as human nature is not good or bad but socially and historically constructed, human beings are not automatically autonomous beings that act according to reason. Human beings can act according to reason, and history can move forward, only if we take responsibility for comprehending the achievements of past human struggles for freedom and philosophic efforts to develop the concept of human emancipation. History only moves forward if we try to comprehend it with all its dualities and learn from it.
The struggle for social justice is very complicated. It demands that we challenge the class, racial/ethnic and gender divisions outside and within our movements and always see our struggle in the context of the international struggle for human liberation. No movement for social justice can win without addressing these complicated questions and without developing an affirmative, global, humanist philosophic vision that aims to transcend capitalism, racism, sexism and heterosexism.
The 61 million people who voted against Trump and the over 100 million eligible U.S. voters who did not vote still constitute the majority of the adult population of the United States and have not been heard.
November 9, 2016
Frieda Afary produces the blog, Iranian Progressives in Translation and is a member of the Alliance of Syrian and Iranian Socialists. She can be reached at [email protected]
Endnotes:
[i] “How Red Is Your Capitalism? Telling a State-Controlled from a Private Firm Can be Tricky.” In “Special Report on Business in China.” Economist. September 12, 2015.
“Emerging Market Multinationals: The Rise of State Capitalism.” Economist. January 21, 2012
“State Capitalism’s Global Reach: New Masters of the Universe.” Economist. January 21, 2012
[ii] According to Thomas Piketty, the influence of the states in the global economy is much greater than in the 1930s and “in many ways greater than it has ever been.”
See Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Belknap Press, 2014, p. 473.
Also see my article, “New Alliances in the Middle East and Iranian Discussions on 21st Century Imperialism,” August 24, 2016.
[iii] For a discussion of the Syrian revolution, see my review of Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami’s excellent book, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. Pluto Press, 2016.
Your article confuses me since a socialist analysis would consider both Clinton and Trump representatives of US capitalism and militarism and thus both completely unacceptable as president.
The president does not formulate US policy. That is done for the capitalist oligarchy in think tanks, special advisory bodies, the Pentagon & CIA, by bankers and corporation heads. US policy toward Syria would not be altered on the basis of who was elected president but by developments in Syria.
I would hope, as a Marxist, that you did not consider Clinton the preferred candidate for Americans, Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, refugees and immigrants, and others suffering from US militarism & sweatshop economics.
Can you clarify your views on that issue? Thank you.
Mary,
When you argue that progressives should refuse to vote for representatives of US capitalism and militarism, when only Trump or Clinton can win, that means asking progressives not to take part in deciding who next gets the nuclear codes and leaving it to less progressive voters to decide the question. That’s exactly what happened.
The Green Party’s “Jill not Hill” campaign put Donald Trump in the White House. That is the simple truth of the matter.
http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/2016/11/did-green-partys-drjillstein-help-trump.html
In the context of the existing capitalist system, it is a given that anyone who wins the presidency in the U.S. defends capitalism and militarism. In the last election, the choice was clear: Trump, an outright racist, misogynist, homophobe, Islamophobe, immigrant basher, or Clinton who defends the basic civil rights that the U.S. allows its citizens, supports abortion rights, the affordable care act for health care, and immigration proposals that would have helped many undocumented immigrants. One can be a socialist and still recognize that given the extreme dangers posed by Trump, it was our responsibility to vote for Clinton. Unfortunately, now that Trump has won, we will lose many of the hard-fought gains of the struggles for labor rights, civil rights and women’s rights in the U.S. We will also see more support for the Assad regime and for Netanyahu’s policies against Palestinians.
Even as discordant as the socialist movement is today, many Marxists and socialists do not agree with your assessment that it was our responsibility to vote for Clinton.That is particularly true for antiwar activists who oppose her role in supporting US wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere; for those who support Palestinian rights and listened to her pledge support to Israel and denounce Palestinians over and over again as terrorists; for those who oppose genocide of the Myanmar Rohingya and watched Clinton honor Aun San Suu Kyi as a human rights leader; for those who listened to Honduran human rights activists denounce the role of Clinton in the 2009 Honduran coup.
Many opponents of Assad and of Russian military intervention in Syria campaigned for Clinton under the delusion that she would commit US forces to a so-called “humanitarian intervention” against Assad. But they neither understand how US policy is formulated, the purpose of US intervention in Syria now, and regrettably they look to militarism as a solution in Syria–suggesting they lack confidence in the popular revolution.
Just Clinton’s commitment to accelerate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians should give pause to anyone claiming it was a responsibility to vote for her. That is why many socialists, including myself, do not accept that compromised approach to US state power. Some of us (including myself) ran election campaigns against her to explain the importance of principled politics over expedience and compromise with war, occupation, genocide.
I agree with Frieda. Both fascism and liberal democracy are compatible with capitalism and militarism, but that doesn’t mean it’s of no interest to us whether a fascist or liberal democrat is in power. Even if Trump is not really a fascist but was merely using fascist rhetoric to come to power, his campaign and his win have empowered the KKK, terrorists who firebomb mosques and abortion clinics, gay-bashers and Latino-bashers: it’s happening already, hate crimes have spiked, and people in these vulnerable categories are feeling terrified. And how can struggles for workers’ rights succeed when a large section of the working class has the threat of deportation constantly hanging over its head? Instead of being able to push for more rights, it will be a matter of trying to prevent the erosion of existing rights, and even that may not succeed.
I support the international liberation struggles that Mary Scully enumerates. However, all these struggles are worse off with Trump as president.
As a socialist, I do not look to any capitalist regime in the period of what I call “the barbaric phase of capitalism” to protect human rights, worker’s rights, or end war. I look only to the organization of working people, including in their constituents as women, Blacks, Latinos, immigrants and refugees, and victims of US wars. If we learned nothing from the Obama administration, it should at least be that.
I could never support Clinton after her portrayals of Palestinians as terrorists and pledge to defend Israel against them. That is where I see my commitments as an antiwar activist, feminist, human rights activist. I would never betray that out of electoral expedience. Socialists must have uncompromising principles, with solidarity against oppression and war being chief among them.