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Title: President Trump Author: Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group Date: 1 April 2017 Language: en Topics: Donald Trump, United States of America Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2021 from http://anarkismo.net/article/30137 Notes: This article was published as Vol 6, No 1 of The Anvil, March-April 2017 https://melbacg.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/president-trump/
Against majority expectations, last November Donald Trump was elected
President of the United States. He was inaugurated in January with the
most reactionary Cabinet in living memory. While, considered
individually, almost all of his choices (i.e. excepting Steve Bannon)
would fit into a government of his Republican rivals, as a whole they
represent an attempt to implement a radical shift of US public policy.
Trump has since come under strong pressure from elements within the
State to change course. These elements are aligned either to the
Democratic Party or to the old guard of the Republicans, the people
Trump shoved aside to get the nomination. Such dynamics have dominated
the media reportage of Trump and the way he has been going about
governing. While they are significant, the MACG believes that there are
two far more important considerations. The first is the reason why Trump
won and the second is how to build effective opposition to Trump and the
forces he has unleashed.
Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” struck a chord that
the Business As Usual platform of Hillary Clinton did not. It should be
noted at the outset that this was setting the bar very low. Clinton was
foisted on the Democratic Party membership by a party machine armed with
an immense war chest of Wall St money. The Democrats also took for
granted a range of US states where the working class was being kicked in
the teeth by them, and yet union officials were still expected to
deliver their votes. The result was a collapse in the Democrat vote, so
that Trump won, despite collecting fewer votes than any Republican this
century.
So why did “Make America Great Again” strike that chord? What had
changed in the United States so that a candidate who previously would
have been disqualified on many counts could actually be elected? Why
were some sections of the US capitalist class prepared to break ranks
and support Trump?
Trump’s campaign resonated because he said out loud that the US is
declining in power and he promised to change that. Trump’s slogan
combined three different issues into one compelling vision. The first
issue was the huge social changes in the US in the last forty years.
Demographic change such as the changing ethnic composition of US
society, the rise of working women and the increasing acceptance of
LGBTIQ people threatens traditional social hierarchies and lifestyles.
The second issue was the dominance of neoliberalism in the US over that
time. The consequences included stagnation of real incomes for most
people, loss of opportunity for social advancement for many and
monopolisation of the fruits of economic growth by a tiny minority
referred to these days as “the 1%”.
The third issue was the declining power of the United States on the
world stage. It became necessary to wage frequent, inconclusive and
increasingly endless wars to defend the world order which the US created
but which now seems to benefit other countries more than the US. That is
why a large minority of the US electorate and a crucial minority of the
US capitalist class decided: that America is no longer great like it
used to be. Emergency action is required to Make America Great Again.
Trump is offering the illusion that he can turn back the clock. He can
force other countries like Mexico and China to do what Uncle Sam tells
them. He can bring back secure jobs to workers impoverished by decades
of neoliberalism. He can roll back decades of social change by making
America White again. This is not conservatism – it is reaction. It is
impossible to achieve and even the attempt will require massive amounts
of State violence.
In foreign policy, Trump proposes a radically different approach he is
calling “America First”. He believes that the system of alliances which
the US has built up over the past years has outlived its usefulness to
the US. It carries a heavy overhead cost, without giving the US anywhere
near enough benefit. Some people believe that Trump will tend more to
isolationism and refrain from fighting so many wars to defend the
current order, but they are wrong. Trump’s vision doesn’t lead to fewer
wars, but different ones. Trump’s wars will be direct raids for booty,
while allies will be asked, “What have you done for us lately?” The
question will be asked regularly. It remains to be seen, though, how
thoroughly “America First” will be implemented.
There is already massive opposition to Trump’s presidency in the US and
around the world. There are different currents to this opposition, and
the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group believes it is essential to
distinguish between them in order to advance the interests of the
working class. First, it is necessary to distinguish between Trump’s
government and the pre-existing Alt-Right movement which he has
energised. Second, it is necessary to distinguish between the elements
in the anti-Trump resistance which are fundamentally establishment and
conservative and those elements which have something to offer the
working class, even if some of their offerings are flawed. Finally, it
is necessary to understand the best division of labour between movements
inside and outside the United States.
Donald Trump is a racist populist with a dangerous authoritarian streak.
To call him a Fascist, however, is a dangerous mistake. Trump’s
government, nasty as it is, operates within the norms of capitalist
democracy. Calling Trump a Fascist obscures the danger of the actual
Fascists who are now mobilising under his banner and attempting to build
gangs of genocidal thugs. The only Fascist in Trump’s Cabinet is Steve
Bannon, the former editor of Breitbart.
On the ground, however, all sorts of Fascist and even neo-Nazi groups
are emerging to support Trump and push him to fulfil his most extreme
rhetoric. At the same time they are engaging in extreme violence against
their opponents and are planning vastly more. People like Richard
Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos are key figures in the attempt to
crystallise an emerging Fascist network, though as yet they have had
limited success in making the transition from keyboard trolls with
genocidal fantasies to a cadre of genocidal stormtroopers.
The appropriate response to Right wing populists who operate within the
parameters of capitalist democracy is a political mobilisation. The
appropriate response to the Fascists attempting to organise in Trump’s
reflected glory is reasonable force in self defence. This means that
public events organised by or giving a platform to actual Fascists
(defined clearly so as to distinguish them from mere Right populists)
should be shut down and the participants dispersed. In this case, self
defence encompasses pre-emptive force because their violent intent is
not open to reasonable doubt and it is impractical to follow Fascists
around waiting for them to attack their intended victims.
Large sections of the US ruling class believe that Trump is pursuing
dangerous policies in a dangerous way. Perhaps the most notable evidence
of the depth of this disaffection is the stream of leaks coming out of
the CIA and FBI. The wide variety of activities in the anti-Trump
resistance, however, have only two strategic orientations. One is
essentially conservative and aims to keep Trump within the bounds of
capitalist legality and to build electoral support for the Democratic
Party. The other is radical and aims to build a movement with the social
power to prevent Trump implementing his program, regardless of its legal
status. Such social power can only be based on the working class.
Attempts to build this movement based on forces other than the working
class have insufficient power and will be dominated by the conservative
Democratic Party.
The conservative anti-Trump resistance, while impressive in scope, will
fail for two reasons. Firstly, its organisations act to demobilise and
disempower grassroots activists, while remaining silent on the areas of
continuity between Trump and previous presidents. The Democratic Party
has no strategy to deal with Trump’s policies if they are upheld by the
courts. Democrats will find it difficult to support anti-deportation
actions when Barack Obama himself earned the title of
“Deporter-in-Chief” by deporting more immigrants than any previous US
president. Secondly, and more fundamentally, the conservative anti-Trump
resistance cannot address the reasons why Trump came to power in the
first place. It has no answer to the ever-growing disparity between rich
and poor, no answer to the decay of industrial towns in the mid-West and
no answer to the gradual erosion of US primacy in world affairs. Its
policies have produced the first two phenomena, while there is no answer
to the third. The resistance of the Democratic Party, therefore, is
built on sand.
Mobilising effectively can only be done through the working class. The
airport mobilisations, while inspiring, stopped with the limited court
victories. If airport workers had occupied their workplaces, the
challenge to Trump would have been stronger. A few hundred coppers can
clear a terminal of protestors, but they cannot find a scab workforce to
handle baggage, check tickets, or re-fuel and re-provision planes – let
alone fly and staff the planes. The working class has the social power
to turn Trump’s Executive Orders and his laws into mere pieces of paper.
Two conditions must be met before the working class will mobilise
against Trump. First, there must be a program that is clearly in their
interests that they can fight for. It is only in the context of the
struggle for higher wages and better conditions for all that white
workers can be broken from racism and won to the principle of “Touch
One, Touch All”. Only in the course of struggle will white workers
recognise that their racial prejudice is an impediment to their victory.
Fighting racism and all other forms of special oppression is an
essential part of building the strength of the class sufficient to win.
Second, there must be a recognition of the obstacles on the road –
principally the union bureaucracy. In most industrialised countries, and
the US in particular, union officials are wedded to conservative
industrial and political strategies that guarantee death to unionism.
This was displayed to great effect in the US last year when the union
bureaucrats, almost to a person, supported Hillary Clinton in the
Democratic primaries, despite her program being manifestly inferior to
Bernie Sanders (who, himself, was unsupportable, though this is a
different topic). For workers to mobilise to fight Trump, rather than
merely voting against him, will require rank and file networks capable
of rolling over the opposition of union bureaucrats. These networks must
begin to take the dimensions of a parallel and unofficial union movement
outside the control of the officials.
For the most part, it is only workers inside the US who can take the
necessary direct action against Trump. Only they can fight for the
program which is necessary to defeat Trump, the old guard Republicans
and the Democrats. Direct action against Trump may be possible for some
workers outside the US (e.g. workers in US-owned corporations, workers
supplying US military bases), but this is necessarily supplementary and
guided by the tempo of US events.
Outside the US, the main task will be to continue building resistance to
the capitalists in countries where we are. Here in Australia, we must
build a movement which can defend wages, jobs, housing and social
services, while also consolidating the working class by fighting for
Aboriginal rights, refugee rights, abortion and child care rights and
the right to same sex marriage. Here in Australia, building resistance
means creating a rank and file movement to take on the Laborite
bureaucrats who run the unions, but don’t defend them against
capitalists’ attacks.
Finally, the role of Anarchists, whether in the US or elsewhere, is to
organise to argue in support of a program of this nature and to play an
exemplary role in the struggle for it. Hop to it, comrades.