Red flag flies over the Nazi Reichstag, May Day, 1945
Letter: The Answer to Trump is Communism
Many comrades are confused about Trump. His actions are so erratic that people speculate that he has mental issues. What is he up to?
Let me recommend a book that will help us understand. It’s The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze (Penguin UK, 2007).an economic history of German fascism from Hitler’s takeover in 1933 to its defeat in WWII in 1945.
Germany before WWI was economically very successful. German technology was the best in the world, German universities dominated academia, and German was the language of science and technology. Germany was a rising imperialist power.
However, the other imperialist powers (including Britain, France and the US) would not put up with the German competition and went to war with Germany in 1914.
Germany’s defeat in WWI in 1918 destroyed all their success. In the post-war Weimar Republic Germany began to crawl back but then the massive overproduction crisis of 1929 hit and once again Germany’s position was destroyed.
Tooze explains that by 1933 the German imperialist bosses had given up on their old approach of cultivating German science and technology and decided on a different strategy. That strategy was war.
All their resources were devoted to armaments and war preparations. Germany ran out of foreign exchange in 1939, and attacked Poland, launching WWII.
The rest of the book is fascinating but it’s the above part that helps explain Trump.
The US bosses, like the German bosses, have given up on their peaceful strategy because it’s just not working any more. In the case of the US bosses, their peaceful strategy is liberalism.
Liberalism basically supported US domination by supporting US science, industry, and social ideology. They spent a lot of resources doing good things like USAID to convince people that the US bosses are nice guys who care. Liberalism worked for a long time but with the current US decline has run out of steam.
A faction of the ruling class has given up on liberalism and has decided to dismantle it and redirect the resources that are currently devoted to maintaining liberalism.
Liberalism is so entrenched that dismantling it cannot be done through the usual channels, legally and constitutionally. You need someone who is willing to “move fast and break things.” Hence Trump.
And what happens to the resources saved? There are no signs yet of a crash rearmament effort. Instead, the resources will go to subsidizing US industry—and tax cuts for the wealthy.
We must not fall into the trap of fighting Trump’s fascism by joining with the liberals. The answer to Trump is communism. Forward to communism, not backward to liberalism.
–West Coast Comrade