By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Revolution
begins by giving things and social relationships their real names. *
What Is To Be Done?
Lenin wrote an historic pamphlet under this title back in
1901 in an attempt to lay out the path for revolutionary socialists, the
Russian Marxists, on the future and organizational form for the Russian
social-democratic movement.
That pamphlet is still being debated today and we can be
sure that “What is to be done” is the
question most asked and debated by the US bourgeois, most often behind closed
doors but as time passes, out in the open. The subject in this debate though, is
Donald Trump and the crisis of Bourgeois Democracy.
Peggy Noonan, countering months of Trump’s abusive and crude
campaigning, called on the seasoned representatives of her class to unite
around their leader: “…..there are former officials
and true experts with esteemed backgrounds who need to be told: Help him.”,
she wrote in the Wall Street Journal a week after the election.
She made a collective appeal to
the unelected rulers of this country, “Donald Trump doesn’t know how to be president. He isn’t a reader of
the presidency. He’s never held office. There’s little reason to believe he
knows how to do this. The next president needs you. This is our country. Help
him.
After months of Trump’s misogyny, racism, xenophobic rants
being broadcast across the nation as well as scenes at his rallies of Nazi’s
and KKK supporters screaming at opponents if not violently attacking them, the
candidate the US bourgeois dreaded won the election and has to be dealt with.
Serious representatives and theoreticians of the US bourgeois like Noonan put
their best foot forward and hoped that it was all a game, that the past year
would be behind them and Trump could be reined in. After all, Trump is one of
them, a maverick yes, a crude and vulgar individual, but class solidarity
matters.
But as each day passes it appears Trump is beyond their
control. What worried them most during the campaign was not Trump’s association
with White Supremacists and the Klan, or his comments about women, it was his
constant reference to the system being rigged and daring to suggest he might
not respect the results of the elections. Trump was undermining the legitimacy
of the system, of bourgeois democracy, “Their system of governance, bourgeois (capitalist)
democracy, is in peril.”, I wrote on May 21st.
US
capitalism is in a bind, “They’re damned
if they do and damned if they don’t.” as I pointed out last week, “There’s a sense nobody’s in charge, that there’s no power center that’s
holding, that in Washington they’re all randomly slamming into each other……The
world sees the U.S. political system once again as a circus. Once the circus
comes to town, it consumes everything, absorbs all energy.” Peggy Noonan
wrote on May 25th.
Today, 5-31-17, the Wall Street Journal, the main paper of
the US ruling class, pulled no punches, “It’s
impossible to run a communications operation or a policy shop, if the top man
prefers chaotic, make-it-up-as-you-go management.”, the editorial reads,
adding that “…if Mr Trump can’t show more
discipline, the fair conclusion will be that he likes the chaos.”
On the other side of the pond, Martin Wolf, associate editor
and chief economics editor of the Financial Times lamented at Mr. Trump’s
preference for “autocrats to today’s
western Europeans.” ( Duterte—Erdogan)
“A recent history of
failed wars and financial crises has savaged its leaders’ credibility” says
Wolf. “The choice of Mr. Trump, a man so
signally lacking the virtues, abilities, knowledge and experience to be
expected of a president, has further damaged the attractions of the democratic
system” **
This
is the crux of the matter, the damage Trump is doing to the system of
governance we call bourgeois democracy or the “democratic system” as Wolf calls it. Under Trump, Wolf argues, the
US has abandoned “soft power” and
diplomacy-----“guns matter, diplomacy
does not.” Mr. Trump Wolf argues, "...is in a permanent war with reality." Wolf even suggests that
if the US pulls out of the Paris climate change agreement, the rest of the
world “must consider sanctions”. Of course, capitalist diplomacy is the
diplomacy of thieves, it is a phony diplomacy agreed to by all to avoid
violence which is a last resort. And I always remind my American friends and
remind Wolf, that British capitalism traveled the world stealing everything
that wasn’t nailed down but they did it with the right grammar. Colonial
Britain was not quite fond of extreme violence and short of virtues.
So what is to be done?
It is
inevitable in my mind that Trump has to go. He is bad for business and is doing
tremendous damage to US capitalism and its global influence. Merkel’s comments
about not being able to rely on the US as an ally threatens US power, she has
even suggested closer ties to Russia. Other world leaders are beginning to look
more favorably to china.
Of
course, the US ruling class could assassinate him, they are certainly not
incapable of such actions as history shows. But this is unlikely as it would
simply add to the chaos. Because we are witnessing a major political and
economic crisis not one of an individual nature but a systemic one, removing
Trump does not solve the problem. Events
in the US are part of the crisis of the traditional capitalist and social
democratic parties worldwide.
The
most likely method of removing Trump might be through legal procedures, finding
further damaging information about his relationship with Putin and the
Russians, and more stuff may come out about his sleazy son-in-law Jared
Kushner. Is it possible he could be persuaded to resign? He could then argue
that he tried to reform things but the “Swamp
couldn’t be drained.” He could save face claiming the forces against him
were too great, the corruption too deep.
Regardless
of the outcome, it is important for us as workers to recognize that what is
happening has nothing to do with “evil”
or flawed character traits as unpleasant as the degenerate Trump is. It is a
crisis of the system in general and of bourgeois democracy in particular. Facts
For Working People explained what we mean by bourgeois
democracy in
a statement in late 2016 and why the capitalist class prefers to govern in this
way. We explained that this political crisis will add further fuel to the
economic and military aspect of life:
“These economic and military crises will be unlike any
other in the past. This will be so because they will take place amid
unprecedented political turmoil as the monopoly the two capitalist parties has
had over American life and the relative stability this provided US capitalism
is coming to an end. This is the significance of the crisis in the Republican
Party. This will have huge repercussions, not only in the US, but worldwide.
What is happening must not be underestimated.”
Ridding the system of Trump
will not solve our problems and the Democratic Party, the anti-Trump
alternative will not either. In the wake of this chaos the heads of organized
labor in US remain silent. As fascists, white nationalists and Nazi’s, all
enemies of workers and the trade union movement, are emboldened by Trump and
his gang, assaulting and killing people of color and any whites that might
oppose them, the leaders of organized labor with 14 million members keep their
mouths firmly shut. In Portland and
Maryland where there have been recent murders by white nationalists union heads
are shamefully absent. The heads of organized labor at the highest levels are
to blame for the rise of Trump and with him the rise of fascism and racist
groups and the delay of a mass movement of the working class that can drive
back this reactionary tide. It is left to young antifascists, students and
groups like Black Lives Matter to face them in the streets. The white working
class must also join these forces; it is in our interests to do so.
*
Leon Trotsky: Forward to the Russian edition of Stalin School of Falsification
** The Rise and Fall of
American Leadership. Financial Times, 5-31-17
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