It can’t have escaped some of my readers that customary Left-wing analyses have become a rather poor fit with our current predicament, namely the ongoing disruption caused by Donald Trump’s 2nd term as US President. We’re accustomed, even those of us who aren’t dogmatic Marxists, to think about politics as having something to do with class. There’s the class of people who have to work for a living, and the class of people who own factories, studios, etc etc who employ them. In the middle there are small businesses, freelancers, artists etc etc. The assumption has been that the class who own capital knows how to stick together and protect their interests better than everyone else, hence the inequality and other ills that beset us.
Trump poses a challenge to that assumption. He captured the US Republican Party by appearing to be one of them, a representative of the ruling capitalist class who would advance their interests by deregulation and tax cuts. But what if that’s not who he is? It’s starting to look as though he may be a throwback to something pre-capitalist, a neo-feudal dynast after the model of Mogul Emperors and Chinese Warlords, whose only loyalty is to his own power and wealth and that of his immediate family (not even his disposable entourage).
What prompts this thought is that his reckless tariff war is beginning to look very dangerous to the interests of the US industrial capitalist class, and some Republicans are already starting to realise this. Perhaps those promised tax cuts might get reduced by a heap of pseudo-populist payouts to that dispossessed, disgruntled proletarian MAGA base that elected him – attempting to forge stronger links between a new peasantry and their beneficent overlord. And should the demolition of the Silicon Valley oligarchs prove another side-effect, so much the better as he sees them as competitors, not friends.
If there’s any truth at all in this speculation, then expect some very exciting fireworks in the near future as the oligos spend all the money in the world trying to dislodge the man who ostensibly controls the armed forces and intelligence services….
A feudal warlord having to deal with a modern state: hence the totalitarian-tending attacks on the judiciary, the universities and the press.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the class of people who just own shares and live off unearned income?
ReplyDeleteOwning a share is by definition owning part of a company (I was trying to keep it simple and avoid jargon)
ReplyDeleteThis fits with Yanis Varoufakis's analysis of Techno Feudalism, where ownership of the means of production is less important as a determinantof class power than it was undr capitalism.
ReplyDeleteNorman Flynn
DeleteYes it does. For a while I was torn between Varoufakis and Morozov's critique of his position, but then I watched 'Fall Of Civilisations: Mongols, Terror Of The Steppe' and it made up my mind...
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