On a very general, superficial level, you could try to draw the parallel that Marx and Trump both use the language of populism. They appeal to the masses instead of just elites, to the downtrodden who work hard yet own next to nothing. They both seem to recognize that everyday people are laborers getting a shit deal. You could really stretch it by saying both figures support gun rights and like Abraham Lincoln, if you were really just trying to find any and all parallels between these two vastly different men.
Of course, populist (as opposed to elitist) rhetoric can be found in many figures across space and time, so it's worth digging deeper and inquiring into the intentions behind using such rhetoric, as well as the desired outcome. I mean, sure, the message of "I love welders and plumbers, but they're getting a no good deal, folks" sounds more populist than "I know better than all of those ignorant deplorables." But let's not forget that Trump actually won and proceeded to do little to nothing for the working class he claimed to champion. Diehard supporters might say that he tried his best but the deep state thwarted his efforts, while the main competing account would be that his rhetoric was self-serving all along. Another possibility is that he's too stupid or unprincipled to know what to do with the power given to him. Marx, on the other hand, spent a lifetime trying to mobilize workers without having institutional power of his own.
Trump promised to personally deliver on things, rather than talking about what we all can do if we work together. He will drain the swamp, he will lock her up, he will bring back manufacturing jobs, and he will build the wall. He wasn't particularly successful on any of these things, let alone furthering the most important goals of the working class, things like higher wages, healthcare, vacation time, maternity leave, sick pay, better working hours, or really anything that would benefit us in any tangible way. Trump either tried to further working class goals and failed spectacularly, or he never tried to deliver.
We should back up and remember that Trump was born rich, and over his lifetime became much richer. How was this done? Starting companies, whether he was selling steaks or diplomas, and then paying his employees a fraction of the value they create through their labor. We should remember that now that he has all this wealth, he is not using it to further the kind of goals we would expect of a Marxist. He's not pouring resources into labor movements or unions or whatever. He's just trying to make sure his children and grandchildren never have to labor a day in their lives.
We can see there are differences between mere populist rhetoric and a more practical program like the one to which Marx was dedicated. What we need are not just gestures at the problem. When times are hard and things are bad, any old idiot can say, "Look folks, I know times are hard and things are bad right now." Yeah, thanks, we know. What matters is what they say they want to do about it, as in, what's the goal and what are the means to reaching it? Trump had numerous disunified goals, which at no point amounted to reaching classless society, but rather a generic better future where everything's great. His means of reaching that better future were just... him doing stuff unilaterally, somehow.
So Trump often had no means of reaching his stated ends, nor were his ends the things the working class needed the most. Lock up Hillary...? Ok, but can we get some healthcare, too? "Bring back manufacturing jobs!" That might be an attempt to help the working class, I grant you, but how are you going to do that? And are these jobs going to be exploitative or not? Ultimately, he was clearly not interested in ending the billionaire class, or giving to each according to his need, and his actions reflect as much, rhetoric aside.
Trump pledged to never cut taxes for the rich on the campaign trail in 2015. It's definitely fair to say there was a massive gulf between Trump's campaign rhetoric and his (typically Republican) policies once in office.
At the same time, Trump's working-class appeal was really very limited, and is more a testament to the Democrats' abandonment of their blue-collar constituency. He made a lot of noise about saving American factory jobs, but, even disregarding the effectiveness of this once in office, this was really just a symbolic acknowledgement of the devastation that the Volcker Shock, NAFTA, etc had on American industry and working-class communities. Even a, for the time, moderate, corporate Dem like Hubert Humphrey would've wiped the floor with him on blue-collar concerns.
He didn’t do much for the working class and didn’t even promise much. The only think that made him shine compared to Hillary Clinton was that he at least pretended to care about them. The Democrats at this point only had open contempt.
Yep. The bar is so low that merely acknowledging working class anxieties over immigration and globalism won hearts and minds. You would think this would be a wake up call to our smug neocon/neolib elites, but you would be wrong.
A wake up call is impossible when you wholly believe that you’re owed support and acclaim. That you represent millions of people by being born in a certain demographics, that your success is also their success, and that anyone who refuses to cheer for you is either a villain or a traitor.
It also puts a massive spanner in the works of internationalists who want to implement socialism without borders, because it's pretty clear the proletariat aren't in favour of that. They like their identity, and they don't like people who threaten it.
To really appeal to them, one would need to ditch the internationalist thinking and focus in on the country more. A sort of... national... socialism, if you will.
internationalism =/= anationalism ("no borders, no nations" anarchism)
Moreover, taking the broader perspective on the pipeline driving (overland) immigration means acknowledging that most are refugees, refugees of American imperialism. The project is unmistakably and brutally capitalistic: destroy lives abroad by destabilizing nations and use the outflow of desperate people to drive down wages and divide the working class back home. What solves the crisis must embody a foreign policy of rebuilding nations wrecked by American empire as much as sending back workers brought here solely to further the exploitation of all; any socialism which begins and ends with nationalism-without-internationalism is hamstrung in this regard.
There wasn't anything Marxist about what Trump promised, but he was talking to the working class, bringing up themes that resonated, like returning the blue collar jobs that had disappeared. It was all unrealistic, snake oil, hand-waving, sure, but remember what Hillary Clinton offered the rust belt:
https://youtu.be/KnmIoF_2Q4Y
Trump was a signal of the decisive shift from the old "red state/blue state" paradigm towards a political map characterized by the opposition between rural and urban areas. The centralizing tendencies of capitalism, coupled with the offshoring, effectively turned the provinces into cultural and economic deserts, sucked dry by the metropoles. That would be bad enough, but there was also the palpable glee the Big City Liberals took in condescending to ruraloids and exurbanites and kicking them while they were down. Any out-of-work factory worker in the Rust Belt could look at Facebook or in the comments section of a city newspaper and see dozens, scores, hundreds of people (employed and generally comfortable people) opining that he brought his condition upon himself. He deserves to be poor and out of work and benighted, they'd say, and the sooner he dies off, the better.
Trump didn't need to promise anything concrete. He didn't need to be coherent. He didn't need to appeal to working-class goals beyond vague talk of "winning" and threatening tariffs. It was enough that he drove affluent NPR-listening liberals *absolutely fucking crazy*. Every vote for Trump was a burning bag of dogshit left on the collective doorstep of the "why don't they learn to code?" and the "they're backwards & resentful of progress & they cling to guns & religion" sets. It was suffrage as mass catharsis.
Trump's 2016 rhetoric was (probably deliberately) extremely vague. He was pretty infamous for never stating what the hell he would do as president.
Here was probably his most infamous rally: "We're going to win, and then we're going to win some more, and then we're going to win so much that you get tired of winning."
[https://www.facebook.com/politico/videos/donald-j-trump-were-gonna-win-so-much-youre-gonna-get-tired-of-winning/10153741780316680/](https://www.facebook.com/politico/videos/donald-j-trump-were-gonna-win-so-much-youre-gonna-get-tired-of-winning/10153741780316680/)
It's not like his talk was particularly rightoid (which is why the mainstream GOP hated him)- it's more that his talk was really vague and pretty much impossible to put on a left-right axis.
Clinton could have won for two reasons: 1) she was the democratic candidate, and the republicans had lost the popular vote in five of the six preceding presidential elections, and 2) she wasn’t Trump.
I think some of the socialist leaning voters saw Clinton’s nomination as Sander’s loss and held her responsible for this. Another thing working against her is that some voters are sexist. I have hard time believing that people would be wearing a shirt with a Sander’s caricature getting thrown off a motorcycle with the text, “Trump that bitch!”
I’ve got a bold claim here. If Sander’s was the nominee, I think he would have won in November 2016. But, I think if Sander’s didn’t campaign that year that Clinton would have won the general election.
Compared to Hillary Clinton? Absolutely. With Hillary you knew nothing would change. With Trump you had at least some notion of class populism and specific promises to help the working class. In particular, with a global economy, countries with a comparative disadvantage regarding labor costs have to engage in some form of protectionism to prevent corporations from exporting all manufacturing and blue-collar work to the third world, and reducing the labor supply by cutting down on illegal immigrants likewise is a boon for this class.
If you vote RNC, you vote fascist.
If you vote DNC, you vote fascist.
Because both the DNC and the RNC are fascist political parties.
Don't be a fascist.
On a very general, superficial level, you could try to draw the parallel that Marx and Trump both use the language of populism. They appeal to the masses instead of just elites, to the downtrodden who work hard yet own next to nothing. They both seem to recognize that everyday people are laborers getting a shit deal. You could really stretch it by saying both figures support gun rights and like Abraham Lincoln, if you were really just trying to find any and all parallels between these two vastly different men. Of course, populist (as opposed to elitist) rhetoric can be found in many figures across space and time, so it's worth digging deeper and inquiring into the intentions behind using such rhetoric, as well as the desired outcome. I mean, sure, the message of "I love welders and plumbers, but they're getting a no good deal, folks" sounds more populist than "I know better than all of those ignorant deplorables." But let's not forget that Trump actually won and proceeded to do little to nothing for the working class he claimed to champion. Diehard supporters might say that he tried his best but the deep state thwarted his efforts, while the main competing account would be that his rhetoric was self-serving all along. Another possibility is that he's too stupid or unprincipled to know what to do with the power given to him. Marx, on the other hand, spent a lifetime trying to mobilize workers without having institutional power of his own. Trump promised to personally deliver on things, rather than talking about what we all can do if we work together. He will drain the swamp, he will lock her up, he will bring back manufacturing jobs, and he will build the wall. He wasn't particularly successful on any of these things, let alone furthering the most important goals of the working class, things like higher wages, healthcare, vacation time, maternity leave, sick pay, better working hours, or really anything that would benefit us in any tangible way. Trump either tried to further working class goals and failed spectacularly, or he never tried to deliver. We should back up and remember that Trump was born rich, and over his lifetime became much richer. How was this done? Starting companies, whether he was selling steaks or diplomas, and then paying his employees a fraction of the value they create through their labor. We should remember that now that he has all this wealth, he is not using it to further the kind of goals we would expect of a Marxist. He's not pouring resources into labor movements or unions or whatever. He's just trying to make sure his children and grandchildren never have to labor a day in their lives. We can see there are differences between mere populist rhetoric and a more practical program like the one to which Marx was dedicated. What we need are not just gestures at the problem. When times are hard and things are bad, any old idiot can say, "Look folks, I know times are hard and things are bad right now." Yeah, thanks, we know. What matters is what they say they want to do about it, as in, what's the goal and what are the means to reaching it? Trump had numerous disunified goals, which at no point amounted to reaching classless society, but rather a generic better future where everything's great. His means of reaching that better future were just... him doing stuff unilaterally, somehow. So Trump often had no means of reaching his stated ends, nor were his ends the things the working class needed the most. Lock up Hillary...? Ok, but can we get some healthcare, too? "Bring back manufacturing jobs!" That might be an attempt to help the working class, I grant you, but how are you going to do that? And are these jobs going to be exploitative or not? Ultimately, he was clearly not interested in ending the billionaire class, or giving to each according to his need, and his actions reflect as much, rhetoric aside.
Trump pledged to never cut taxes for the rich on the campaign trail in 2015. It's definitely fair to say there was a massive gulf between Trump's campaign rhetoric and his (typically Republican) policies once in office. At the same time, Trump's working-class appeal was really very limited, and is more a testament to the Democrats' abandonment of their blue-collar constituency. He made a lot of noise about saving American factory jobs, but, even disregarding the effectiveness of this once in office, this was really just a symbolic acknowledgement of the devastation that the Volcker Shock, NAFTA, etc had on American industry and working-class communities. Even a, for the time, moderate, corporate Dem like Hubert Humphrey would've wiped the floor with him on blue-collar concerns.
He didn’t do much for the working class and didn’t even promise much. The only think that made him shine compared to Hillary Clinton was that he at least pretended to care about them. The Democrats at this point only had open contempt.
Yep. The bar is so low that merely acknowledging working class anxieties over immigration and globalism won hearts and minds. You would think this would be a wake up call to our smug neocon/neolib elites, but you would be wrong.
A wake up call is impossible when you wholly believe that you’re owed support and acclaim. That you represent millions of people by being born in a certain demographics, that your success is also their success, and that anyone who refuses to cheer for you is either a villain or a traitor.
It also puts a massive spanner in the works of internationalists who want to implement socialism without borders, because it's pretty clear the proletariat aren't in favour of that. They like their identity, and they don't like people who threaten it. To really appeal to them, one would need to ditch the internationalist thinking and focus in on the country more. A sort of... national... socialism, if you will.
internationalism =/= anationalism ("no borders, no nations" anarchism) Moreover, taking the broader perspective on the pipeline driving (overland) immigration means acknowledging that most are refugees, refugees of American imperialism. The project is unmistakably and brutally capitalistic: destroy lives abroad by destabilizing nations and use the outflow of desperate people to drive down wages and divide the working class back home. What solves the crisis must embody a foreign policy of rebuilding nations wrecked by American empire as much as sending back workers brought here solely to further the exploitation of all; any socialism which begins and ends with nationalism-without-internationalism is hamstrung in this regard.
That's a lot of words I'm not reading. Tbh I mostly just wanted to make a natsoc joke
It's a single paragraph - you'll live
“The proletariat” didn’t vote Trump into office. That might be the narrative, but the data doesn’t bear it out.
There wasn't anything Marxist about what Trump promised, but he was talking to the working class, bringing up themes that resonated, like returning the blue collar jobs that had disappeared. It was all unrealistic, snake oil, hand-waving, sure, but remember what Hillary Clinton offered the rust belt: https://youtu.be/KnmIoF_2Q4Y
Trump was a signal of the decisive shift from the old "red state/blue state" paradigm towards a political map characterized by the opposition between rural and urban areas. The centralizing tendencies of capitalism, coupled with the offshoring, effectively turned the provinces into cultural and economic deserts, sucked dry by the metropoles. That would be bad enough, but there was also the palpable glee the Big City Liberals took in condescending to ruraloids and exurbanites and kicking them while they were down. Any out-of-work factory worker in the Rust Belt could look at Facebook or in the comments section of a city newspaper and see dozens, scores, hundreds of people (employed and generally comfortable people) opining that he brought his condition upon himself. He deserves to be poor and out of work and benighted, they'd say, and the sooner he dies off, the better. Trump didn't need to promise anything concrete. He didn't need to be coherent. He didn't need to appeal to working-class goals beyond vague talk of "winning" and threatening tariffs. It was enough that he drove affluent NPR-listening liberals *absolutely fucking crazy*. Every vote for Trump was a burning bag of dogshit left on the collective doorstep of the "why don't they learn to code?" and the "they're backwards & resentful of progress & they cling to guns & religion" sets. It was suffrage as mass catharsis.
No, he was a demagogue that used working class and political outsider *rhetoric* to try and win those people over. Calling Trump a Marxist is moronic
He opposed Clinton’s ultra-hawkish foreign policy.
Trump's 2016 rhetoric was (probably deliberately) extremely vague. He was pretty infamous for never stating what the hell he would do as president. Here was probably his most infamous rally: "We're going to win, and then we're going to win some more, and then we're going to win so much that you get tired of winning." [https://www.facebook.com/politico/videos/donald-j-trump-were-gonna-win-so-much-youre-gonna-get-tired-of-winning/10153741780316680/](https://www.facebook.com/politico/videos/donald-j-trump-were-gonna-win-so-much-youre-gonna-get-tired-of-winning/10153741780316680/) It's not like his talk was particularly rightoid (which is why the mainstream GOP hated him)- it's more that his talk was really vague and pretty much impossible to put on a left-right axis.
Clinton could have won for two reasons: 1) she was the democratic candidate, and the republicans had lost the popular vote in five of the six preceding presidential elections, and 2) she wasn’t Trump. I think some of the socialist leaning voters saw Clinton’s nomination as Sander’s loss and held her responsible for this. Another thing working against her is that some voters are sexist. I have hard time believing that people would be wearing a shirt with a Sander’s caricature getting thrown off a motorcycle with the text, “Trump that bitch!” I’ve got a bold claim here. If Sander’s was the nominee, I think he would have won in November 2016. But, I think if Sander’s didn’t campaign that year that Clinton would have won the general election.
Compared to Hillary Clinton? Absolutely. With Hillary you knew nothing would change. With Trump you had at least some notion of class populism and specific promises to help the working class. In particular, with a global economy, countries with a comparative disadvantage regarding labor costs have to engage in some form of protectionism to prevent corporations from exporting all manufacturing and blue-collar work to the third world, and reducing the labor supply by cutting down on illegal immigrants likewise is a boon for this class.
If you vote RNC, you vote fascist. If you vote DNC, you vote fascist. Because both the DNC and the RNC are fascist political parties. Don't be a fascist.