The US bourgeoisie sinks into the quagmire of instability

A few days after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump that claimed the life of one of his supporters, it is still too early to determine the exact motive of the gunman and the reasons for the failure of the service responsible for protecting the former president. However, the attack turned the election campaign upside down, allowing the Republican camp to take another step towards victory. Hit in the ear, his face bloody and his fist raised, almost miraculously, the bravado of Trump's reaction, already the favourite in the polls, contrasts clearly with the increasingly perceptible signs of Joe Biden’s senility.  Be that as it may, this event is yet another manifestation of the growing instability within the American bourgeoisie.

Exacerbation of political violence in the United States

The United States has a long tradition of political assassinations, four of which have reached the highest levels of government. But, after the murder of British MP Jo Cox in the midst of the Brexit campaign in 2016, after the assassination attempt that targeted Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, after the murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in 2022, after the assassination attempt on Slovak prime minister Robert Fico in May 2024, or the attack on Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen in the middle of the street last June, this new attack comes against a backdrop of heightened violence and political tensions around the world. Threats, insults, outright xenophobia, the violence of extreme right-wing groups, the involvement of gangs in electoral processes, settling of scores between bourgeois cliques... this creeping chaos, which until now has been contained to the most fragile countries of Latin America and Africa, is beginning, with all due sense of proportion, to become the norm in the major powers of capitalism.
In the United States, while one of the roles of ‘democratic’ institutions is to guarantee the unity of the state, the growing difficulty of containing and confining the violence of relations between rival bourgeois factions testify to a real sharpening of tensions. The atmosphere of violence is at its height. Ever since he left the White House and encouraged the aborted attempt to storm the Capitol, Trump himself has not stopped throwing fuel on the fire, questioning the results of the elections, refusing to acknowledge his defeat and promising to bring down his vengeful arm on the ‘traitors’, the ‘liars’ and the ‘corrupt’. He has never stopped making ‘public debate’ more and more hysterical, spinning tall tale after tall tale, whipping his supporters into a frenzy... The former president proved to be an essential link in a veritable chain of violence that spills out of every pore of society and ended up turning against him.

Towards ever greater instability

The fact that such an irresponsible and grotesque figure has been able to sweep aside any force within the Republican Party remotely capable of effectively managing the bourgeois state, that he has even been able to run for president without encountering serious difficulties, either political or even legal (despite numerous attempts by his opponents), is in itself a striking sign of the impotence and profound instability into which the American political apparatus is sinking.
But if Trump is indeed the mouthpiece of a whole atmosphere of social and political violence, an active factor in destabilisation, he is merely the caricature of the dynamic at work in the entire ruling class. The Democratic camp, although a little more concerned about putting the brakes on this process, is contributing just as much to global instability.
Admittedly, after the incoherent and unpredictable policies of the Trump administration, Biden has proved more effective in defending the interests of the American bourgeoisie, but at what price? Even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were intended to halt the decline of American leadership by imposing itself as ‘world policeman’, have ended in fiasco and exacerbated chaos in the Middle East and around the world, Biden proceeded to provoke Russia into intervening in Ukraine[1].
This large-scale massacre is getting bogged down week after week and seems to have no end in sight. With inflation soaring and the global crisis deepening, with imperialist tensions rising and the war economy swelling considerably on every continent, the conflict in Ukraine has only led to further destabilisation on an even wider scale, including in the United States.
At the same time, Biden has heightened tensions with China across the Pacific, raising the risk of direct confrontation. The war in Gaza, which the American president has failed to control and contain, has also considerably accentuated the decline of American power, which will sooner or later lead to an even more barbaric reaction from the United States.
And now the occupant of the White House is reduced to pitifully clinging on to power, while a large part of his camp is openly urging him to step down! But who should replace Biden? The Democrats are divided and discredited, barely able to agree on a replacement. Everyone is already ready to fight. Even Vice President Harris, the only one who could impose herself, is very unpopular even within her own camp. Between Trump, Biden, Harris... the American bourgeoisie is left with only bad options, a sign of its great fragility.
In another sign of the extreme tensions between the Republican and Democratic camps, Trump had not even left hospital before they began vehemently accusing each other of being responsible for the attack. Trump and Biden, aware of the explosive situation, momentarily tried to calm the incendiary atmosphere in the name of national unity... before a torrent of fake news and unfounded accusations was unleashed once again.
But the division between the bourgeois parties, the bitter infighting within them, the constant poker games, the rivalries of egos, the back-stabbings, the scorched-earth strategies - all this is far from being the prerogative of the American bourgeoisie alone. The electoral campaign in America of course echoes the situation in many states in Europe and elsewhere, of which France is the latest shining example. Capitalism is rotting on its foundations and this is having consequences at every level (imperialist, social, economic, environmental...), dragging the political apparatuses of the bourgeoisie into a logic of ‘save what you can’’. This is an ineluctable spiral of instability in which each bourgeois clique tries as best it can to pull the wool over its own eyes... even to the detriment of the general interests of the bourgeoisie.

There's nothing to expect from the elections

Despite the growing difficulties of the bourgeoisie in controlling its own political apparatus, it still knows perfectly well how to use the democratic mystification to reduce the working class to impotence. At a time when the proletariat must develop its struggle against the bourgeois state, the bourgeoisie traps us, through the elections, in false dilemmas: which party would be best suited to manage the bourgeois state? While the proletariat should be seeking to organise itself as an autonomous class, elections reduce the workers to the status of citizen-voters, merely able to choose, under the pressure of the propaganda steamroller, which bourgeois clique will be responsible for organising their exploitation.
There is therefore nothing to expect from the forthcoming elections. If Biden (or his replacement) should ultimately win, the warmongering policies of the Biden administration and all the global chaos they have engendered will be further intensified in order to maintain at all costs the United States' standing in the global arena. If Trump were to confirm the predictions of victory in November, the destabilising and erratic policies of his first term would return with greater force and irrationality. His running mate, J.D. Vance, appeals more directly to the working class, and his demagogic exploitation of his own personal story as a forgotten victim of rural and deindustrialised America allows him to strengthen his influence by convincing the ‘undecided’ that he represents a supposedly ‘new way’ alongside his miraculous mentor.
Whether Trump or the Democrats win, the historic crisis of capitalism will not go away, attacks will continue to rain down and indiscriminate violence will continue to be unleashed.
Faced with the decomposition of the capitalist world, the working class and its revolutionary project represent the only real alternative. While wars, disasters and propaganda constantly clash with its struggles and its capacity for thinking clearly, over the last two years the proletariat everywhere has rediscovered its fighting spirit and is gradually beginning to regain an awareness of being one and the same class. Everywhere, small minorities are emerging and reflecting on the nature of capitalism, on the causes of the war and on the revolutionary perspective. With all its elections, the bourgeoisie is trying to break this combativeness and this maturation, it is trying to prevent any politicisation of struggles. Despite the promises (obviously never kept) of a ‘fairer’, ‘greener’, more ‘peaceful’ capitalism, despite the ferocious guilt-tripping of ‘those who don't stand in the way of fascism’ at the ballot box, let's make no mistake: the elections are a trap for the working class!
EG, 19 July 2024.
 

 

 

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[1] Washington's aim was to weaken Russia so that it could not be a major ally of China in the event of a conflict with the latter. The aim was therefore to isolate China a little more while dealing a blow to its economy and its imperialist strategy by cutting off its ‘New Silk Road’ through Eastern Europe.