Read part I here
A comedy
The person who runs the US and arms fascistic elements under police uniforms to execute civilians in the streets, like Renee Goode and Alex Pretti recently in Minnesota; who renames the US “Defense Ministry” into “War Ministry”(here we must give him credit for at least telling the truth); who supports the genocide of the Palestinian people and wants to turn their land into a Riviera for the rich; who bombs Iran (last summer) basically wanting to show his fist; who invades militarily and kidnaps the president of another country, Venezuela; who threatens a multitude of other countries with similar military interventions, such as Mexico, Colombia, Cuba etc; beyond the issue of Greenland with which we have already dealt extensively, this same person had the audacity to claim… the Nobel Peace Prize!
The Nobel Prize Committee in Norway refused to give it to him. It offered it to Maria Machado, leader of the right-wing opposition in Venezuela. Maria Machado had previously repeatedly called on the US to intervene in her country to overthrow the Maduro government. In other words, this lady wanted war and was furiously propagandizing for it – and that is why she won the Nobel Prize! No comments are necessary.
Trump was angry at losing the prize, and according to several Western analysts, this seems to have played a role in Trump’s refusal to offer the presidency of Venezuela to Machado after Maduro’s abduction, preferring to keep Vice President Delcy Rodriguez in that position.
But Maria thought the prize was of less value than taking over the presidency of Venezuela, so she decided to offer it to him. The Nobel committee protested, explaining that the Nobel Prize is not transferable – one would think, if a Metro ticket is not transferable how could the Nobel Peace Prize be transferred?
But Maria and Donald do not understand what the committee wants, so Maria goes to New York to offer it to him. And he? He accepts it! And he takes a photo with Maria Machado, for whom he has, now, after she gave him the award, the best words!
If all this were not so dangerous and so tragic, it would be perfect material for a hilarious comedy. In any case, it is absolutely ridiculous. But that is always the case. When the system goes into crisis, its representatives combine regression, the most reactionary ideas, attacks on the achievements of society, attacks on democratic and all other rights, along with absurdity.
It is not a personal issue
The biggest mistake one can make is to attribute this whole situation simply to Trump’s character.
Trump is the reflection of the general situation in which the system he serves is in – the American capitalist system. The strategists of capital, in the media and elsewhere, will try to convince us that the whole problem is Trump’s personality. But what are the conditions that allow a bully and at the same time ridiculous person to be at the helm of the planet? This is something they do not want to touch upon. Even the most serious system analysts will try to hide the crisis that lies in the background – economic, social, and political. But Trump is not the generative cause, he is the symptom.
In the period ahead, and after only a year in power, Trump can be expected to face serious resistance from three directions: on the one hand, the serious sections of the ruling class not only in Europe but also in the US who understand that the man is fickle and ultimately dangerous to their interests, on the other hand, the rising new forces in global capitalist competition led by China, and finally the American working class and wider layers in society that are already in the streets against his policies.
Xi Jinping receives visits…
While European leaders faithfully followed the US in its anti-China rhetoric and measures until recently, the last few weeks have shown them doing some rethinking. This does not mean that the Left is in any way entitled to support them – let’s be clear about that.
In December, French President Emmanuel Macron went to China to talk to the country’s president, Xi Jinping. Soon after, in early January, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung went (along with 400 businessmen, a not insignificant detail). Then came Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, and then Micheál Martin, Prime Minister of Ireland. Immediately after that, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo; and soon after him, Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of the UK. All of them in January. In the immediate future, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is also preparing his visit.
It’s rather simple. The USA administration treats the Europeans (European imperialists – let’s never forget their real character just because some, right and “left”, talk about “European civilization, democracy, cultural superiority”, etc.) like garbage. And it leads the capitalist world into chaotic situations, to the extent that they cannot know what the next day will bring. In the conditions created by Trump, China appears as a relatively more serious constant for global capitalism.
Trump’s dismantling of international organizations, his throwing of the UN into the trash and its replacement by Trump’s “Board of Peace” (peace!), the replacement of diplomacy and the international rules called “International Law” (which is the agreed-upon law of capitalists and imperialists and not at all of workers and poor peoples) with crude taunting and bullying are dangerous paths for international capital.
The capitalists did not discover diplomacy, international rules and organizations all of a sudden, because they had some kind of epiphany. For centuries, European colonialists operated on the basis of brute force, robbery, genocide and wars. They were led to diplomacy and international organizations by the repeated crises of their system, economic and social, by the wars they found themselves in, especially the two world wars, and finally by the revolutions that these conditions gave birth to. They were led to them by the need to protect their system. They needed international coordination to face the destructive crises into which they were thrown by the anarchy of the markets and the fierce competition that has characterized capitalism since its birth. And which today is even more acute than a few decades ago. Trump throws all of this in the trash and declares “Veni, vidi, vici“, as Julius Caesar used to say.
What Trump Didn’t Understand
Trump is attempting to turn the world back 200 years with his “Donroe Doctrine”, but is blind to the implications of his strategy:
- The era of colonialism is over. It reached its peak in the 19th century, when the European powers completed the division of the world among themselves, but in the 20th it ended. It did not end because the “democrats” of “civilized” Western Europe understood that it was not right to slaughter millions of people, but because the slaves revolted – we had the colonial revolution that swept the planet in the decades after World War II. And if we had not had Stalinism in the Soviet Union, with the momentum of the colonial revolution in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the planet would be socialist today. The end of colonialism does not mean that colonial economic and other relations have stopped – what we now call “neo-colonialism” and which is characterized by negative/exploitative terms in the relations between industrialized and former colonial countries. But that is a different issue.
- Pax Americana (from “Pax Romana”, i.e. the imposition of “peace”, so called, through force, in the Roman Empire) was tested, and indeed very recently, in the 1990s. Then, after the capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1989-91, waves of triumphalism erupted in the West by capitalists who believed that history had been judged once and for all, that American capitalism was the undisputed victor and nothing could challenge its power and authority. Pax Americana went hand in hand with Francis Fukuyama’s theories of the time about the “end of history” – that is, that history had judged, capitalism was the final and undisputed social/economic system. The 2000s dashed the hopes of the capitalists/imperialists and Francis Fukuyama publicly acknowledged that he was wrong… and even declared himself a socialist (“social democrat”, of course, let’s not ask for too much).
- What else does Trump forget? Yes, that Western capitalism is in decline – it is losing ground in international markets, in global GDP, in global manufacturing and trade. It remains the most powerful capitalist pole on the planet but it is constantly losing ground. And it is being directly challenged, in terms of its global primacy, by China. All the experts’ predictions converge on the fact that within the next one or two decades, the first economic power on the planet will be China and the third India. America, whether with Trump or with a “Democrat” in the presidency, cannot stop this process.
America against everyone – something that cannot go far
Western capitalism is in a phase of historical retreat (see here and here) unable to face the new forces that are emerging and challenging it. This does not mean that these forces are progressive, and that the Left should support them – this too is something that needs to be clarified.
Trump does not understand that if he wants to face the real danger for him, China and its allies in the BRICS, he needs Europe (as well as Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., the traditional allies of the US). By seriously undermining relations with them, he also weakens America’s position in international capitalist competition. He is creating a kind of “America against everyone” situation. With this approach, he cannot win in this confrontation.
He will face the reaction of capitalists on the rest of the planet, but also of the capitalists within the US itself, who are following with intense anxiety to see how far this chaos will go. The “chaos” does not only concern the geopolitical consequences of Trump’s policies; it also concerns the internal ones.
What will be the consequences for the economy and American businesses? And what will be the reaction of American society. What will be the course of the class struggle in the US, considering, for example, the latest strike mobilizations in Minnesota, on January 23, the 7 million demonstrators in 2,700 protest rallies on “No Kings day” last October and many others?
Ultimately, Trump’s policies will be judged on two levels: the course of the US economy and the balance of power in relation to China.
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The 3rd part of the article, in the coming days.
