Contact meeting about the implications of the election of Trump for the international situation and in the US

We publish here a contribution of a sympathiser of the ICC about the discussion at the online contact meeting of Sunday 2 March.

We fully agree with the contribution of the comrade as he emphasises for instance that today the depth in the political crisis of the bourgeoisie in in the USA is unprecedented. After the election of Trump, as he writes, “USA and its upper elements resemble a rogue state with elements of a regime like North Korea”

Just one point we want to clarify.

The comrade writes that, in the current situation in the US, any form of a political choice seems to be absent, since the bourgeoisie has to “submit itself to the dynamic of the tendencies laid down by the decomposition of its system”. However, we think that the American bourgeoisie is not merely a victim of  decomposition. Even if the response of the Trump clan with “America First”, “Make America Great Again”, etc. is completely irrational, it is and remains an attempt to defend its interests as a faction of the American ruling class against the decline of US leadership in the world. And there will be reactions within the US ruling class to the Trump faction’s policies as their disastrous implications become more and more evident. For example, we are now seeing big anti-Trump rallies being organised by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others on the left wing of the Democratic party

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Meeting on Sunday March 2.

1.

In order to understand Trump 2’s consequences on the world we have to be clear why Trump has been elected as President of the United States.

The reason is that the bourgeoisie have no alternative, no choice in the matter overall – it has to follow, submit itself to the dynamic of the tendencies laid down by the decomposition of its system. It cannot escape from them no matter what or whatever elements exist among itself including the so-called “grown-ups”. The bourgeoisie is in thrall to its system and thus its system’s decay and decomposition is a reflection of a class with no future. The consequences, if it’s not clear how this will pan out, are profound. The post-45 consensus is, as the ICC has laid out for some time now, finished. What takes its place is more chaos and even more centrifugal tendencies. Agreements, pact and protocols are increasingly worthless as chaos and irrationality takes hold.

There’s no Machiavellianism here, no strategy or plan from the bourgeoisie as has been suggested in previous meetings and particularly by MH[1]. Machiavelli is out of the window and instead of the strengthening of the state (state capitalism is the direct descendent of Machiavelli), we see the disembowelment of the most powerful state, its pillaging, as the mighty USA and its upper elements resemble a rogue state with elements of a regime like North Korea (with whom the US voted  last week against Europe!). And one of the great strengths of Machiavelli was his giant nail in the coffin of feudalism with his separation of religion from bourgeois politics. Look at the USA today in this respect (along with India, the Middle East, etc).

The depth of this political crisis is underestimated by the clockwork analysis of the CWO/ICT[2]. It was initially wary to mention Trump’s election and when it did. In “Trump and the New Golden Age”, it emphasises the continuity between Trump, the only difference being “the character of Trump”. That position of continuity was defended by MH in his intervention at the meeting on Sunday where he welcomed the ICC’s position which he suggested supported the continuity of Trump’s election rather than the disaster that it was.  In a further article of the ICT, “As regimes fall...”, dated mid-February, it states: “imperialist camps are re-aligning and ironing out some creases” – yes, that what it says, “ironing out some creases”! The march to world war is ticking away for the ICT. The war between the USA and Russia has long been heralded by the ICT; in Trump’s first term, his hit on the Iranian general Soleimani was seen by the ICT as a precursor to war with Russia when in fact Trump had done Russia a favour (which it later acknowledged).

The rigid and mistaken analysis of the ICT and the position of MH underestimate the enormous upheaval in international relations, the political weakness of the bourgeoisie (that the working class cannot exploit – on the contrary) that has happened with Trump 2. While banging the drum about WW3, the ICT underestimates the real dangers to the class struggle.

2.

Since the rupture the working class has continued to fight with examples from Belgium and the USA where anti-Trumpism is a particular danger to the working class. But nowhere in the western metropoles of capitalism is the working class ready to be mobilised for war. After the betrayal of Social Democracy[3], the class was hoodwinked into war and marched off willingly from towns, cities and villages. In a situation of a profound defeat for the working class, we saw workers mobilised and volunteering to fight for democracy and against fascism in WW2. Not today. Populism is not the expression of a deliberate policy of the bourgeoisie, a ploy to contain the working class as some have suggested. It is instead an expression of the loss of control by the bourgeoisie. It is also an expression of the continuing stand-off of the two major classes and by no means a strategy for containing the working class and mobilising it for war. The British government, as mentioned by the ICC during the meeting, has taken an intelligent approach to its confrontation with the working class by not adopting a frontal attack – as in Belgium – but allowing above inflation pay rises, sick pay rises for lower paid workers and various “workers’ rights” programmes. But this can’t last as inflation rises everywhere with the majority of workers living from paycheque to paycheque.

The ICT position of a march to WW3 underestimates the unbeaten nature of the working class alongside the real dangers coming from decomposition that threaten it.

In previous discussions there were some elements that said the working class should fight this or that element of decomposition (war, ecology, etc.) but the class needs to fight on its own terrain which brings it directly against the needs of the war economy. Therein lays the basis for an offensive from an undefeated working class.

Baboon. 3.3.25

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] MH is member of the Old Moles Collective

[2] Communist Workers Organisation, Uk affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency

[3] The comrade refers to the start of the World War One