Trump's Madness is not the Cause of Capitalism's Rot. He is a Product of It

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By John Clarke

Former organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). 

Member of 230 Fightback

I see a group of psychiatrists arguing that Trump shows signs of being a 'malignant narcissist' and the calls for him to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment are coming in thick and fast.

 

I don't do mental health diagnoses but I fully accept that Trump is an exceptionally cruel and selfish man who seems devoid of decent human feelings. He also appears to be increasingly unstable and dangerous.

 

The problem with treating Trump as utterly exceptional and focusing on his personal characteristics, however, is that it serves to conceal the bigger and far more important issues.

 

Two questions leap out at us. What kind of an economic, social and political system would elevate a person like Trump to power? What has happened within that system that generates the basis for the Trump administration at this time?

 

In general, we may view US imperialism as a global system of violent exploitation. The people who play the directing role in this operation have copious quantities of blood on their hands. 

 

Most of them appear more rational and personable than Trump but they all have to come to terms with the unspeakable crimes they are implicated in. They are drawn from a ruling stratum that has received the training and ideological preparation necessary for them to justify and accept the death and suffering they inflict and to do so with a sense of moral superiority. They are shaped primarily by social forces rather than personal psychology.

 

If Trump is an 'extreme' representative of this layer, he is very much the product of a particular stage of development. His administration represents an attempt to reverse the relative decline in US power by throwing the rulebook out the window and taking a path of reckless predation. Trump's crude and brutal inhumanity makes him the candidate of choice to head up such an exercise in gangsterism. 

 

Psychological factors are by no means irrelevant but the social foundations out of which they arise are decisive. Trump and the collection of thoroughly warped human beings he has gathered around himself have to be understood in such terms if they are to be properly understood.