Chaos and conflict in US politics: For Le Prolétaire there’s nothing new!

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The first six months of the Trump 2.0 administration has been a roller coaster. In this period it unleashed a whirlwind of statements and measures. In the US it revoked 78 executive orders from the Biden administration that did not align with its political objectives; it fired more high military officers, inspectors general, and national security officials than any president in history; it invoked emergency powers eight times in its first 100 days, more than any other president has done in the same period; it created a whirlwind of unpredictability and uncertainty, which was most obvious after his first announcements of the record tariffs in April and major US stock markets experienced the biggest losses since 2020.

Moreover, it frightened the rest of the world with statements about the annexation of Greenland and Canada, about the war that Ukraine had started, and about Europe that was no longer considered as an ally of the US.

Recently Le Prolétaire has published an article[1], in which it criticises the ICC for embracing “the fuzzy concept of ‘populism’, that veritable media pie in the sky”; and arguing that Trump's policy was not “at odds with the fundamental interests of the American bourgeoisie”. A critique of our positions by a proletarian organisation always deserves our attention, but the article fails on several points.

Is Trump's policy a break with that of the most responsible factions of the American bourgeoisie?

Le Prolétaire seems to recognise the characteristics of certain measures put through by Trump, and concludes, rightly to some extent, that “The coherence of these cookie-cutter measures is undoubtedly questionable, their effectiveness dubious and their consequences damaging to certain bourgeois interests”. Paradoxically, however the article does not ask why these measures have such dubious and damaging effects, but immediately states that it is nothing new, for Trump's policy “corresponds to an underlying trend that was already at work in previous years”. To substantiate its assertion, it gives three examples of the foreign policy of the US, such as the pivot to the East, the withdrawal of the US military from war hotspots, the threat to abandon its ‘allies’ if they don’t pay. And it also mentions the campaign against ‘marxist lunatics’ and ‘wokist’ policies against racial or sexual discrimination. The first two examples are right; they were indeed already a cornerstone of the policy of Obama and Biden. But the others were not an essential part of their policy, quite the contrary.

Biden mobilised the members of NATO in support of the Ukraine against Russia. But Trump radically broke with this policy of massive support for Ukraine. After he had stated that the EU was designed to screw the United States, he decided to cut the ties and began to blackmail his former allies. The divorce between the US and Europe was a fact, with the consequence that “the absolute guarantee of military intervention in support of NATO and the American nuclear umbrella is no longer to be counted on” [2]. Moreover, at the last NATO summit in The Hague he pressurised the other NATO members to use 5 per cent of their GDP to buy weapons in the United States.

Under Biden certain States in America imposed a ban on woke material in education and the House of Representatives was able to pass some anti-woke legislative packages, but this was certainly not the global policy of the Federal administration and of most of the States. Under Trump the anti-woke policy was turned into a general witch-hunt. From the very start of his presidency he declared war on every expression of woke. So on 28 February he signed an executive order against woke and so-called anti-American culture and directed J D Vance to remove any “inappropriate, polarising or anti-American ideology” from American culture. In his first budget blueprint the White House announced cuts to "woke programs", saying that it was meant to eliminate “radical gender and racial ideologies that poison the minds of Americans" and to counter "cultural marxism”.

Another example we can’t ignore is the US policy on tariffs. Biden had also imposed many tariffs but only partial and on strategic goods. Moreover, he gave priority to a multilateral approach in economic competition through the use of the existing international bodies. Trump turned the question of the tariffs, “the most beautiful word”, into a central plank of American policy and called their announcement a ‘Liberation Day’ for the US. In his conception these tariffs ensure that the US economy will be liberated from the scourge of cheap foreign products and the unfair trade practices adopted by other countries. Trump’s policy is based on protectionism and bilateral negotiations, to ensure that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country”.

Le Prolétaire’s criticism of the position of the ICC on populism and decomposition is based on its famous “invariance of marxism since 1848”. In its view the marxist programme is not “the product of a constant theoretical struggle to analyse reality and draw out its lessons, but a dogma revealed in 1848, of which ‘not a comma need be changed’.”[3] . This position has far more serious consequences than a mere theoretical distortion. To claim that marxism is unchanging, that the communist programme cannot be enriched with new elements in the evolution of capitalism and the proletarian struggle, comes down to freezing reality. Therefore, Le Prolétaire systematically denies that fundamental changes have taken place in the evolution of capitalism and in the policy of the bourgeoisie and only looks at phenomena that confirm its invariant faith. Consequently, not only is its criticism of the ICC's position superficial and futile, but above all its understanding of the evolution of the capitalist mode of production and the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat contradicts the marxist approach itself.

Populism: a traditional expression of bourgeois politics?

The Trump government is not an isolated case; it is the expression of a general dynamic. Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, Modi in India, etc. are also manifestations of the populist wave. And this wave is actually the most spectacular form of a much wider process of disintegration, hitting the entire world bourgeoisie, affected by the epidemic of every man for himself. But the fact that such an incompetent nitwit[4] has become the president of the most powerful country in the world - and that for the second time – added to his complete indifference to the serious dysfunctions of the state apparatus, caused by his very actions, speaks volumes about the growing difficulties of this bourgeoisie to run its political system.

With the methodological instrument of ‘invariance’ Le Prolétaire first refuses to recognise that populism is anything else than an expression of the traditional political life of the bourgeoisie. It rejects the view that populism is an expression of the loss of control of its own political game. In its view the bourgeoisie even seems to be in full control! But at least that wasn't the case on 6 January 2021, with the assault on the Capitol by a horde of vandals whipped up by the outgoing president, one should think. Le Prolétaire has another view, so it seems.

“Capitalism is still standing and it succeeds in maintaining the political and social domination of the bourgeois class; the democratic system that disguises this domination, is still standing. (...) Even when the bourgeois are the first to show that they do not hesitate to trample on their own laws and their own political system for the sole purpose of defending their private interests, the myth of democracy does not fade away”[5]. The trampling on the rule of law, Trump’s failed coup, the occupation of the seat of the Congress, the very concept of electoral legitimacy: for Le Prolétaire this seems to be the usual way the bourgeoisie defends its own private interests! But ex-president George W Bush, a member of the same party as Trump, had another view “This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic”.

The article of Le Prolétaire on the events even gives the impression that the bourgeoisie provoked the assault on the Capitol, because “to protect the Capitol from the predictable incursions of pro-Trump demonstrators, there was only a thin cordon of police... who opened the gates to let the crowd through...”[6]  But the article does not tell us what would have motivated the bourgeoisie to deploy such a manoeuvre and which of its factions would have benefited from it. Actually, Le Prolétaire totally underestimates the impact and intensification of the chaos, caused by this kind of populist escalation.

Not embarrassed by its completely distorted explanation of the events of in 6 January 2021, Le Prolétaire subsequently says that the ICC’s position on populism is “an impressionistic judgement” and non-marxist. We understand, with Le Prolétaire, that the events, phenomena and tendencies in society can be traced back to the anatomy of social life, the economic apparatus. And the ICC has always based its analyses on this approach, as we can read for example in “How the bourgeoisie organises itself” (International Review no. 172). This article shows without any ambiguity that “It is therefore on the basis of the continuing worsening of the economic crisis and the inability of the bourgeoisie to mobilise society for world war that the disintegration of the political apparatus finds its main driving force.” For the ICC this quote, and the rest of the same article clearly shows, although not in a direct way, the link between the capitalist economy in crisis, for which the bourgeoisie has no way out, and the tendency towards every man for himself and indiscipline in bourgeois politics, leading to the emergence of populist cliques.

But Le Prolétaire is mistaken when it stubbornly denies that populism is “an autonomous phenomenon endowed with a dynamic of its own”. This is another crucial question of method to be able to understand the politics of the bourgeoisie. Le Prolétaire makes it appear as if capitalism is governed by a simple causality, in which politics is mechanically determined by economy. We have to disappoint the comrades, because bourgeois politics is not a simple reflection of the material conditions. The elements of the superstructure, including the political, follow their own dynamic, as Friedrich Engels explained in one of his letters to Conrad Schmidt: “There is a reciprocal action of two unequal forces, of the economic movement on the one hand, and on the other of the new political power which aspires to the greatest possible independence and which, once constituted, is also endowed with a movement of its own” [7].The denial of the interaction between base and superstructure and of a dynamic proper to the political dimension of the ruling class is at least short-sighted and certainly undialectical.

As a final point, Le Prolétaire throws out the argument that “Trump's policy is not the result of the whims of one individual or the fantasies of a circle of visionaries”. But this point doesn’t make any sense, because this is not what we have said in our article. What we did say is that Trump’s policy is at odds with the interests of the American bourgeoisie and the policy it tries to pursue. Trump’s policy is essentially:

  • motivated by the desire for retaliation, based on a longstanding belief that any political opposition is sabotage and that loyalty to Trump personally is the highest political virtue;
  • characterised by a systematic vandalisation of the rule of law by executive power grabs, institutional purges, attacks on the press, retribution against the juridical system, etc.

The policy of Trump is the expression of a desperate revolt against the decline of the US as a superpower, but “not directed not towards the future but the past, based not on confidence but fear, not on creativity but on destructiveness and hate”.[8]

A responsible debate between left communist organisations

Finally, there is a point that needs to be raised. We don't know which article Le Prolétaire has read, but the article it criticises does not say that the US bourgeoisie has suffered “a resounding defeat”. It literally says that the return of Trump at the head of the American state represents “a resounding failure for the more 'responsible' faction of the US bourgeoisie”[9]. The article of Le Prolétaire starts and ends with a criticism based on this mistakenly quoted statement. This might put some readers on the wrong track, but the strong focus on this particular aspect of the article, while neglecting the most important ones, such as Trump’s attack on the so-called deep state, will certainly not contribute substantially to clarification about the nature of populism.

And this brings us back to another question: and that is how a debate should be conducted between the organisations of the Communist Left. Le Prolétaire not only excels in carelessly quoting and reading our article, but also makes no reference to any other article the ICC has written on the subject since 2018 (the last polemic between Le Prolétaire and the ICC). We have already mentioned the article “How the bourgeoisie organises itself”; but there are more, such as “The rise of populism is a pure product of capitalist decomposition” and “Trump 2.0: New steps into capitalist chaos” (International Review 173).

It would do Le Prolétaire credit if were to make a new and more serious attempt to criticise the ICC's position on populism, based on cogent arguments. In fact, as a revolutionary organisation this is part of its political responsibility to the class and to the politicised minorities emerging within it.

Dennis

 

[1] « Le CCI et le ‘populisme’. Les élections américaines sont-elles ‘un échec cuisant pour la bourgeoisie américaine’? » (Le Prolétaire, N° 557; Avril-Mai-Juin 2025)

[4] Trump does not read, even not the memos of his advisors. He has a lethal aversion to reading, but uses social media ten times more than the presidents before him.

[5]  “January 6, 2021, Washington: a dark day for the Capitol, symbol of American democracy”, Proletarian No. 17, Spring 2021

[6] Ibid

[7] F. Engels, "Letter to Conrad Schmidt", 27 October 1890.

[8] "On the question of populism", International Review no. 157  

[9] The latter has not the same consequences, since a defeat of the whole world bourgeoisie implies something positive for the working class, while a defeat of a faction of the bourgeoisie is not automatically beneficial for the working class. On the contrary it carries the risk that the proletariat will be drawn into a struggle between different bourgeois factions.

 

Rubric: 

Populism and capitalist decomposition