What we have just seen in the USA in the last couple of weeks is an almost classic case of a Marxist revolution, albeit one that was disguised as the election of a new president. I am no Marxist, but his analysis of the evils and dangers of capitalism was pretty accurate. Where he was mistaken, I believe, was in his solutions and in his predictions, particularly in his thoughts about who would lead the revolution. The political left, however, has also been wrong, primarily in moving away from Marx’s core thesis and seeing alienation, oppression and liberation as occurring far beyond the economic arena where Marx positioned it.
Let me begin, therefore, with the left. Marx talks about the alienation of the labouring classes from the product of their labour and, by extension, about economic inequalities and economic injustices. The economic inequalities within our current society (on both sides of the Atlantic) is as big as it has ever been, perhaps at record levels (I am not an economist). Across both countries, UK and US, there are many people who are struggling to survive and living in real, not just relative, poverty. Those numbers have also been growing recently. If many of these people are not working due to ill health or lack of jobs that does not negate their sense of alienation from the wider economic system, it simply reinforces it. Many in this group do not immediately blame the super-rich, or even the system for their situation. They project their misery onto others, scape goats, and in most cases onto migrants, those they claim are taking their jobs and reducing them to poverty. That this is not the case is, for political purposes, beside the point.
Meanwhile, however, those on the left in politics have decided that they want to support all those who are oppressed, suffering at the hands of the system, alienated for whatever reason, and lacking opportunities. They portray a society that is institutionally racist, sexist, homophobic etc. They are not essentially wrong in their analysis, but in focusing on the different forms of oppression, talking about liberation in terms of particular and specific characteristics, they are missing the fundamental, and most basic, form of subjugation, that of labour and economics, that of poverty.
Of course, many of those who are minority ethnic, women (and children), LGBTQ and so on are also victims of economic injustice, but to simply subsume this particular fact under intersectionality (however important that is in other contexts) and to underplay economic oppression while trumpeting the rights of those who are victims in other ways, many of whom are increasingly comfortable economically, is beginning to look somewhat problematic, particularly to those from the white working class who continue to suffer neglect and alienation, a position that (to them at least) is only exacerbated by the focus on those with protected characteristics. We are not all in this together!
So, what about Trump? One of the things that Marx clearly got wrong, or failed to understand (and probably even failed to reflect on) is that it is very rarely those who suffer alienation and economic injustice who lead the revolution. Leaders invariably come from privileged backgrounds although they often do all they can to disguise that privilege. We have had enough revolutions over the last couple of centuries for the mega-rich to recognise that it is probably to their advantage to lead a revolution of the economically oppressed or at least to give the impression that this is what they are doing.
The mega-rich gain credibility with the economically disadvantaged, not by denouncing capitalism, but by demonstrating how they have manipulated it and broken the rules to make it work in their favour. This is what those with nothing, with no personal investment in the system, want to hear. Thy want to know that the system can be fooled, that it is possible to beat the system, even if the means of doing that is neither legal nor moral (and perhaps even more so if it is neither legal nor moral). Above all they want to know that it is possible to get away with putting two fingers up to the system. Popularism plays on this sense of playing the system at its own game and winning, although never doing anything that would, ultimately, damage the system, as the leaders actually gain so much from it.
Trump told people they were better off under his previous administration. He played the economic card, and the fact that he, and his supporters (Musk included) are mega-rich only shows what might be possible. Those of us from intellectual, liberal, well-meaning backgrounds torture ourselves over asking why so many ordinary people are so gullible, and then feeling guilty at dismissing those who are economically disadvantaged by accusing them of gullibility. Intellectual liberals have always found it difficult not to see the oppressed as ‘ignorant’ or ‘gullible’ or whatever other term we might choose to use. The leaders of the new revolution simply tell them what they want to hear, that they are poor because of the system, and that together they can beat the system.
Meanwhile identity politics begins to look increasingly like a side show, fiddling while Rome burns as somebody has put it. It is not that the oppression of those who are different is not important, it is just that we have focused on race, gender, sexuality etc. while often ignoring the more fundamental issue, that which is most important, economic justice. In that, I have to say, Marx got it right!
Martin Stringer Quartet 