I’ve just spent the past two weeks in Liverpool. I enjoyed chatting over beers about the political pantomime taking place in America, I listened attentively as fellow travellers described the woes and shortcomings of the UK political system, and as the froth was blown off ‘just one more’ how they longed for reform – thankfully not the private company run by Nigel Farage – but a new politics.
So, as it is May Day – an historic celebration of workers, with hours to kill at the airport waiting for my connecting flights back to the ‘land of the free’, and supported by free airport wifi, online tools and translations of Das Kapital, I wondered; What would our old mate Karl Marx have to say about Trump’s first 100 Days?
Here is what I think he would have made of it all…
The MAGA Philosophy and Totalitarianism
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as an ‘immense collection of commodities’.
From the outset, Trump’s manifesto – “Make America Great Again” – resonated as a clarion call to the bourgeoisie, promising them a restoration of that vanished hegemony.
In his first 100 days, Trump, a figure most emblematic of capital’s excess, has wielded executive power to consolidate the interests of the ruling class. Trump’s reliance on executive orders—a record-breaking 142 in his first 100 days—is a testament to the centralization of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie. while the proletariat remains ensnared in the chains of systemic, institutionalized exploitation.
These orders, bypassing the democratic process, reveal the illusion of democracy under capitalism, where the state functions as an apparatus of continued class domination.
In his first 100 days, the President has wielded power as a blunt instrument to accelerate the interests of the ruling class. The moratorium on environmental regulations, rescinding constraints upon oil and gas pipeline construction, and the opening of public lands to corporate plunder all bear the unmistakable signature of capital’s dominance over communal well-being.
Likewise, the attempted dismantling of the health care program known as Obamacare, far from being a necessary public reform, it represents an assault on the safety net which shelters the working masses, substituting collective provision with market forces whose “invisible hand” all too often beats the vulnerable.
And yet, within MAGA’s rhetorical flourish lies a reactionary longing for a prelapsarian Eden, one of bountiful wealth and unchecked capital accumulation. Hence, the MAGA slogan is bewitching to those whose circumstances see them desperate for change, but rather than invoke solidarity amongst labourers, it only serves to promote the illusory unity of the wealthy and middle class in fortifying themselves against the “others”—immigrants, the unemployed, the dissenting poor—thus deepening the fissures within the proletariat itself.
Trump’s Tariffs and Trade
Trump’s flirtation with protectionist tariffs, ostensibly to defend American workers against foreign competition, is but a superficial remedy to the deep contradictions of the global market, multinationalism and supposed free trade.
Tariffs, once instruments of mercantilism, here appear as a desperate means to shore up domestic industry against the rising tsunami of global surplus. Yet this “economic nationalism” cannot abolish the fundamental ‘law of value’ – a commodity’s price is a function of the labour required to produce it.
Under Trumpian capitalism, labour itself remains alienated, to be simply exchanged as a commodity whose price -wages -are to be beaten down and can never fully capture their true social substance.
Rather than creating predictable trading conditions, the tariffs have instead exacerbated the flaws inherent in global capitalism, leading to retaliatory measures and economic instability. Nation is set upon nation. Trade as a tool for peace and fellowship is blunted and institutions which helped raise billions out of the worst depths of poverty are dismantled.
Trump’s plan to erect literal and figurative walls around the nation are his administration and its bankers’ ploy to erect barriers to proletarian solidarity across borders, ensuring that the workers of the world remain divided and exploited, unable to rise up against the ruling elite.
Trump and the Media Machine
The administration’s mastery of mass media — from late night Truth Social bombs to Twitter proclamations at dawn, to his staging of political rallies as quasi–religious gatherings with cultish overtones and iconography – reveal an uncanny understanding of ideology as a material force.
The presidency therefore becomes not merely an office but a performative apparatus which cultivates false consciousness amongst the proletariat so that workers are convinced their ills spring from “others” rather than from the systemic logic of capital itself. Through this we witness the grotesque spectacle of workers justifying the policies and practices of the elite despite the negative impacts they have upon themselves. This all serves to mask the true locus of power—the financial elites and corporate boards—who, through campaign contributions, Mar-a-Largo summits and revolving‐door appointments, ensure the President’s directives continue to serve their interests alone.
The Continuing Struggle of the Proletariat
Comrades, If the first 100 days teach us anything, it is that the capitalist state, even under a president who revels in anti-establishment rhetoric, remains tethered to the imperatives of capital.
Trump, the ostensible “outsider” who campaigned on ‘Draining the Swamp’, the excess of Government, and the idea of ‘Us not Them’ has proven himself wholly an insider to the bourgeois order, accelerating the expropriation of nature and labour alike.
The rhetoric of “America First” hides the reality of the class struggle. While the administration touts the idea of economic growth, the benefits are disproportionately reaped by the capitalist elite, while workers face stagnant wages and rising living costs. Any promise of tax cuts for workers such as exempting tips – the scraps left by the wealthy for the working poor to subsidize employers’ poverty level wages – will only be overshadowed by the spectre of cuts to social programs, education and substandard housing, further entrenching inequality.
Simply stated, the task for the proletariat remains unchanged: to organize, to educate, and to overturn the ‘relations of production’ which consign the many to serve the profit of the few.
Workers of the World rise up, the struggle continues—one hundred days have passed, but the revolution beckons.
