So, why exactly do you think that the American capitalist class needs a dictatorship right now?
We have an almost defunct private sector labor movement (lower unionization rates and less strikes than 1900), a tame public sector labor movement that only represents a third of government employees, a racially divided working class, no workers party, no strike waves - a working class that they can inflict their will on with no fear of resistance
That being the case, why would they need to impose a dictatorship on us?
The next question is - how would you impose a dictatorship in a federal republic?
A dictatorship over the federal government would face the democratic governments of the 50 states, 5 territories, Washington DC, the 562 Indian reservations, 14 Alaska Native Corporations, 6,000 counties/boroughs/parishes and 18,000 municpalities - all of which are to greater or lesser degree autonomous of the federal government - how exactly does Trump impose this hypothetical dictatorship on them?
The short answer to your question is that my research for the last 4 years has guided me towards this conclusion. I’ve spent a lot of time studying different theories of fascism/Bonapartism from both Marxist and non-Marxist perspectives and kept finding too many parallels to ignore.
Your observations about the US labor movement are all very much correct, but they do not contradict my thesis. Even the institution of generalized chattel slavery in the US would not resolve the crisis of capitalist production; it would intensify the crisis actually. In my research, I’ve generally found that capitalist dictatorships emerge out of crises within the capitalist class, rather than struggle with the labor movement. Hence, as I repeatedly argue in my 2 articles, the move to dictatorship is not to fight the working class — though it also serves that purpose — but rather, to continue capitalist production when bourgeois democracy fails to serve its function of resolving contradictions/disputes between factions of the bourgeoisie.
Your next question makes me think you did not read the full article, as I explain at length that I believe Trump is trying to carry out a legislative coup akin to what the Nazi party did with the enabling act. All of the tools to accomplish this already exist in highly developed form. I explain all of this in the article you’re commenting on.
In the last part of your comment, you imply that you don’t believe that the federal government can fight all 50 states and US territories, but this starts from the erroneous position that the imposition of dictatorship will face unified opposition from the existing institutions of all US territory; it will not. The entire 50 states are not unified by anything other than the federal government. Without the federal government, unification becomes regional rather than national. Many states are tightly controlled by Republicans who will go along with Trump’s plans. This means that the federal government will only have to fight uncooperative states individual, or by the handful, rather than all at once, and can mobilize the forces of sympathetic states as well.
Ultimately however, I don’t think even the bluest states will offer any resistance. The Laken-Riley Act passed with a lot of democratic support. Democratic powerbrokers like Pelosi have repeatedly stated publicly that “we need a strong Republican Party.” Governors of democratic strongholds like California, Illinois, and New York really do not differ from the Republicans on economic and immigration policy. Odds are the blue states will go along with Trump’s plans so long as they are allowed to maintain a measure of autonomy, which will be undermined over time as Trump’s government consolidates itself.
You are always free to disagree with me. I genuinely hope I’m wrong about the American Bonaparte. And there’s a real possibility that I am wrong. Marxists were worried about the same things in the very early Raegan-Thatcher years, and those theories turned out to be alarmist in comparison to what actually happened. I personally feel that the current parallels to Bonaparte and Hitler are much stronger than what existed in the late 1970s, and I expressed this opinion before the Republican supporters started throwing Roman solutes in front of massive audiences.
If you want to know the theoretical works that inform most of my analysis on this, I recommend ALL of Marx’s writings on France, and The Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel (I can also link to all these resources if that helps). For further exposition of my theories on the Trump administration, I recommend my article Farce is Dead! Long Live Farce!, which I consider the superior work to Birth of a Bonaparte?, and contains more of the grounding premises which I brush over for brevity’s sake in Birth of a Bonaparte.
My view of fascism is orthodox Marxist Leninist - capitalists impose fascist dictatorships in the face of a combative working class that attempted to seize power, failed to do so, but were not completely defeated
Fascism, by that definition, only ever existed in continental Europe and Latin America in the mid 20th century - roughly 1918 to 1978
There isn't a fascist country in the world today - unfortunately because the working class was throughly defeated in the 20th century and does not have a leadership capable of leading a revolution in the 21st - thus, no need for fascism
Fascism was never a thing in the Angloshpere - especially not in America
America's working class has been far too divided by race to even have a strong labor movement, or to be politically independent of capital
Side note - Trump isn't an American Hitler or Mussolini - he's a latter day Nathan Bedford Forrest - a modern George Walllace
It's not an accident that one of his top advisors in recent times was another prominent American racist demagogue - Rudolph Giuliani
Looking at America throgh the prism of majority White countries in mainland Europe leads to some pretty fundamental misunderstandings of American politics and the American far right
One of the great strengths of the American federal system is that it lets the various groups of American capitalists peacefully resolve disputes - it also allows local groups of capitalists, at the state, county and municipal levels, to adapt goverment to fit their specific needs and resolve their conflicts peacefully
It also helps that the American federal system has a wide legitimacy among working class Americans
In much of the world, a worker who was unjustly fired or otherwise wronged will look to labor unions or their coworkers to organize a strike to resolve their grievances
What do American workers do?
They hire a lawyer, or file a complaint with a government agency - if they even have a labor union, that union's main funtion is to file a case with a government agency or to put a case before binding arbitration on behalf of their members
This peaceful dispute resolution process is why foreign capitalists feel comfortable investing their money here - hell, a whole lot of them ACTUALLY LIVE HERE (the richest man in Mexico lives right here in Manhattan & he's not the only foreign billionaire who resides here) - that's also why lots of them send their kids to live here
No way would the capitalist classes of this country let this guy screw that up for them - that's far too important
Regarding local governance, a majority of billioniares in America live in just two states (New York and California) and just 4 counties within those two states (New York County - Manhattan - right here in New York and Alameda, San Francisco and Los Angeles Counties in Califronia)
What party controls those states?
What party controls those counties?
I live in one of those counties (New York County/Boro of Manhattan) - we're dark blue democrat (the Republicans literaly don't even bother run candidates for office in the Assembly District I live in)
To be brutally honest, all this "fascism" nonsense is just propaganda to bulllyrag and pressure voters to pull the lever for mediocre corporate Democrats (and open up our checkbooks to fund their campaigns)
It's not real
This is not Germany!
A lot of fascism analogies make tortured analogies between mid 20th century German poltics and early 21st century American politics
Comparing a monoethnic, overwheilmingly White country that literally had an emperor and dozens of kings, princes and grand dukes just a few years before Hitler's rise to power with a multiracial democratic republic that hasnt had a monarch since the 1780s is very silly & utterly divorced from reality
On the other hand, there is a real possibility of US imperialism and Chinese imperialism getting into a world war in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits
If it stays conventional the US Navy will probably prevail... at the costs of tens of thousands of Chinese and Taiwanese lives, and several thousand US Navy sailors lives - also at the cost of a global Great Depression 2.0 when one third of the world's manufactured goods can no longer be hauled via cargo ship across the South China Sea
If it goes nuclear.... it would be far far far worse, potentially catastrophic
If you read the defense contractor trade press, it's all the arms manufacturers and the US officer corps have been talking about for the last decade or so - and the DoD has been actively reorganizing the American military in general and the Navy and Marine Corps in particular to prepare for this
On the other side of the Pacific, the Central MIlitary Commission of the Chinese Communst Party has been frantically making war preparations as well - the PLA Navy is now - by ship count - the largest Navy on Earth
Unfortunately, the working classes of Taiwan, China & America all have one thing in common - we're not politically independent, our labor unions are dominated by the ruling parties, China and the US have all volunteer militaries that are insulated from popular anti war sentiment in a way that draftee armies (like the Taiwanese) are not & we have no capacity to stop this war
I think that - instead of promoting the myth of 'FASCISM!' we need to focus on the important task of building a mass workers party in America & rebuilding the labor movement
Considering the fact that we live in a democracy (and will for the foreseeable future, despite all this 'fascism' nonsense) the only obstacle to this task is the lack of a working class leadership willing to do the hard work of organizing to carry this out
So, I'm afraid you're 100% wrong about all this "fascism" talk - and that propaganda only helps the Democratic Party
I finally got around to reading the whole thing and it's been a great source of information about what's going on in the US. My only gripe is with the sections on the lumpenproletariat since I think the mechanisms that lead workers to adopt reactionary attitudes a bit more complex, but other than, what a detailed analysis!
Glad you enjoyed the article! I could’ve done a better job explaining that I’m not talking about ideology when talking about the reactionary tendencies of the lumpenproletariat. What I mean is that they don’t really have class consciousness. They’re characterized by their desperation and will generally mobilize for whoever they believe will improve their living conditions. I think that generally holds true even among members of the lumpenproletariat who may generally hold socially progressive views. I also recognize that it’s possible to revolutionize the lumpenproletariat, but I don’t think they possess any revolutionary initiatives unto themselves like the industrial proletariat.
Ahhh that makes sense. I'm always hesitant to describe those reactionary tendencies as lumpen but the fact remains that these tendencies exist and that there are people exploiting them to advance their own goals. I think it's also part of a broader push to preserve neoliberalism by shifting focus away from the failures of free markets, but I admit I'm mostly just spitballing at this point.
What we definitely agree on though is the dangers Bonapartism and right-wing populism pose.
So, why exactly do you think that the American capitalist class needs a dictatorship right now?
We have an almost defunct private sector labor movement (lower unionization rates and less strikes than 1900), a tame public sector labor movement that only represents a third of government employees, a racially divided working class, no workers party, no strike waves - a working class that they can inflict their will on with no fear of resistance
That being the case, why would they need to impose a dictatorship on us?
The next question is - how would you impose a dictatorship in a federal republic?
A dictatorship over the federal government would face the democratic governments of the 50 states, 5 territories, Washington DC, the 562 Indian reservations, 14 Alaska Native Corporations, 6,000 counties/boroughs/parishes and 18,000 municpalities - all of which are to greater or lesser degree autonomous of the federal government - how exactly does Trump impose this hypothetical dictatorship on them?
My deepest apologies for not responding sooner.
The short answer to your question is that my research for the last 4 years has guided me towards this conclusion. I’ve spent a lot of time studying different theories of fascism/Bonapartism from both Marxist and non-Marxist perspectives and kept finding too many parallels to ignore.
Your observations about the US labor movement are all very much correct, but they do not contradict my thesis. Even the institution of generalized chattel slavery in the US would not resolve the crisis of capitalist production; it would intensify the crisis actually. In my research, I’ve generally found that capitalist dictatorships emerge out of crises within the capitalist class, rather than struggle with the labor movement. Hence, as I repeatedly argue in my 2 articles, the move to dictatorship is not to fight the working class — though it also serves that purpose — but rather, to continue capitalist production when bourgeois democracy fails to serve its function of resolving contradictions/disputes between factions of the bourgeoisie.
Your next question makes me think you did not read the full article, as I explain at length that I believe Trump is trying to carry out a legislative coup akin to what the Nazi party did with the enabling act. All of the tools to accomplish this already exist in highly developed form. I explain all of this in the article you’re commenting on.
In the last part of your comment, you imply that you don’t believe that the federal government can fight all 50 states and US territories, but this starts from the erroneous position that the imposition of dictatorship will face unified opposition from the existing institutions of all US territory; it will not. The entire 50 states are not unified by anything other than the federal government. Without the federal government, unification becomes regional rather than national. Many states are tightly controlled by Republicans who will go along with Trump’s plans. This means that the federal government will only have to fight uncooperative states individual, or by the handful, rather than all at once, and can mobilize the forces of sympathetic states as well.
Ultimately however, I don’t think even the bluest states will offer any resistance. The Laken-Riley Act passed with a lot of democratic support. Democratic powerbrokers like Pelosi have repeatedly stated publicly that “we need a strong Republican Party.” Governors of democratic strongholds like California, Illinois, and New York really do not differ from the Republicans on economic and immigration policy. Odds are the blue states will go along with Trump’s plans so long as they are allowed to maintain a measure of autonomy, which will be undermined over time as Trump’s government consolidates itself.
You are always free to disagree with me. I genuinely hope I’m wrong about the American Bonaparte. And there’s a real possibility that I am wrong. Marxists were worried about the same things in the very early Raegan-Thatcher years, and those theories turned out to be alarmist in comparison to what actually happened. I personally feel that the current parallels to Bonaparte and Hitler are much stronger than what existed in the late 1970s, and I expressed this opinion before the Republican supporters started throwing Roman solutes in front of massive audiences.
If you want to know the theoretical works that inform most of my analysis on this, I recommend ALL of Marx’s writings on France, and The Economy and Class Structure of German Fascism by Alfred Sohn-Rethel (I can also link to all these resources if that helps). For further exposition of my theories on the Trump administration, I recommend my article Farce is Dead! Long Live Farce!, which I consider the superior work to Birth of a Bonaparte?, and contains more of the grounding premises which I brush over for brevity’s sake in Birth of a Bonaparte.
Hard disagree
My view of fascism is orthodox Marxist Leninist - capitalists impose fascist dictatorships in the face of a combative working class that attempted to seize power, failed to do so, but were not completely defeated
Fascism, by that definition, only ever existed in continental Europe and Latin America in the mid 20th century - roughly 1918 to 1978
There isn't a fascist country in the world today - unfortunately because the working class was throughly defeated in the 20th century and does not have a leadership capable of leading a revolution in the 21st - thus, no need for fascism
Fascism was never a thing in the Angloshpere - especially not in America
America's working class has been far too divided by race to even have a strong labor movement, or to be politically independent of capital
Side note - Trump isn't an American Hitler or Mussolini - he's a latter day Nathan Bedford Forrest - a modern George Walllace
It's not an accident that one of his top advisors in recent times was another prominent American racist demagogue - Rudolph Giuliani
Looking at America throgh the prism of majority White countries in mainland Europe leads to some pretty fundamental misunderstandings of American politics and the American far right
One of the great strengths of the American federal system is that it lets the various groups of American capitalists peacefully resolve disputes - it also allows local groups of capitalists, at the state, county and municipal levels, to adapt goverment to fit their specific needs and resolve their conflicts peacefully
It also helps that the American federal system has a wide legitimacy among working class Americans
In much of the world, a worker who was unjustly fired or otherwise wronged will look to labor unions or their coworkers to organize a strike to resolve their grievances
What do American workers do?
They hire a lawyer, or file a complaint with a government agency - if they even have a labor union, that union's main funtion is to file a case with a government agency or to put a case before binding arbitration on behalf of their members
This peaceful dispute resolution process is why foreign capitalists feel comfortable investing their money here - hell, a whole lot of them ACTUALLY LIVE HERE (the richest man in Mexico lives right here in Manhattan & he's not the only foreign billionaire who resides here) - that's also why lots of them send their kids to live here
No way would the capitalist classes of this country let this guy screw that up for them - that's far too important
Regarding local governance, a majority of billioniares in America live in just two states (New York and California) and just 4 counties within those two states (New York County - Manhattan - right here in New York and Alameda, San Francisco and Los Angeles Counties in Califronia)
What party controls those states?
What party controls those counties?
I live in one of those counties (New York County/Boro of Manhattan) - we're dark blue democrat (the Republicans literaly don't even bother run candidates for office in the Assembly District I live in)
To be brutally honest, all this "fascism" nonsense is just propaganda to bulllyrag and pressure voters to pull the lever for mediocre corporate Democrats (and open up our checkbooks to fund their campaigns)
It's not real
This is not Germany!
A lot of fascism analogies make tortured analogies between mid 20th century German poltics and early 21st century American politics
Comparing a monoethnic, overwheilmingly White country that literally had an emperor and dozens of kings, princes and grand dukes just a few years before Hitler's rise to power with a multiracial democratic republic that hasnt had a monarch since the 1780s is very silly & utterly divorced from reality
On the other hand, there is a real possibility of US imperialism and Chinese imperialism getting into a world war in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Straits
If it stays conventional the US Navy will probably prevail... at the costs of tens of thousands of Chinese and Taiwanese lives, and several thousand US Navy sailors lives - also at the cost of a global Great Depression 2.0 when one third of the world's manufactured goods can no longer be hauled via cargo ship across the South China Sea
If it goes nuclear.... it would be far far far worse, potentially catastrophic
If you read the defense contractor trade press, it's all the arms manufacturers and the US officer corps have been talking about for the last decade or so - and the DoD has been actively reorganizing the American military in general and the Navy and Marine Corps in particular to prepare for this
On the other side of the Pacific, the Central MIlitary Commission of the Chinese Communst Party has been frantically making war preparations as well - the PLA Navy is now - by ship count - the largest Navy on Earth
Unfortunately, the working classes of Taiwan, China & America all have one thing in common - we're not politically independent, our labor unions are dominated by the ruling parties, China and the US have all volunteer militaries that are insulated from popular anti war sentiment in a way that draftee armies (like the Taiwanese) are not & we have no capacity to stop this war
I think that - instead of promoting the myth of 'FASCISM!' we need to focus on the important task of building a mass workers party in America & rebuilding the labor movement
Considering the fact that we live in a democracy (and will for the foreseeable future, despite all this 'fascism' nonsense) the only obstacle to this task is the lack of a working class leadership willing to do the hard work of organizing to carry this out
So, I'm afraid you're 100% wrong about all this "fascism" talk - and that propaganda only helps the Democratic Party
So agree to disagree
I finally got around to reading the whole thing and it's been a great source of information about what's going on in the US. My only gripe is with the sections on the lumpenproletariat since I think the mechanisms that lead workers to adopt reactionary attitudes a bit more complex, but other than, what a detailed analysis!
Glad you enjoyed the article! I could’ve done a better job explaining that I’m not talking about ideology when talking about the reactionary tendencies of the lumpenproletariat. What I mean is that they don’t really have class consciousness. They’re characterized by their desperation and will generally mobilize for whoever they believe will improve their living conditions. I think that generally holds true even among members of the lumpenproletariat who may generally hold socially progressive views. I also recognize that it’s possible to revolutionize the lumpenproletariat, but I don’t think they possess any revolutionary initiatives unto themselves like the industrial proletariat.
Ahhh that makes sense. I'm always hesitant to describe those reactionary tendencies as lumpen but the fact remains that these tendencies exist and that there are people exploiting them to advance their own goals. I think it's also part of a broader push to preserve neoliberalism by shifting focus away from the failures of free markets, but I admit I'm mostly just spitballing at this point.
What we definitely agree on though is the dangers Bonapartism and right-wing populism pose.