Trump shows up divisions within the American bourgeoisie

[Stirnerian]

I thought this article in the New York Times is a helpful reminder that, however hegemonic they are, the bourgeois are far less capable of acting coherently than we are.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/31/us/politics/donald-trump-republican-national-convention.html?referer=


...

An array of activist groups is organizing a campaign to pressure the companies to refuse to sponsor the gathering, which many of the corporations have done for the Republican and the Democratic Parties for decades.

The pressure is emerging as some businesses and trade groups are privately debating whether to scale back their participation, according to interviews with more than a dozen lobbyists, consultants and fund-raisers directly involved in the conversations.

Apple, Google and Walmart are among the companies assessing their plans for the convention, which will be held July 18 to 21 in Cleveland.

...

“I have talked to several people at companies who have said, ‘I’ve always gone to the convention, I’ve always participated at some level, but this year we’re not putting it in our budget, we’re not going, we’re not going to sponsor any of the events going on,’ ” said Carla Eudy, a Republican fund-raising consultant.

Walmart, which contributed $150,000 to the Republican convention in 2012, has yet to commit to contributing this year. “We haven’t made any decisions,” said Dan Bartlett, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Walmart, who emphasized that even before Mr. Trump’s rise, the company had been discussing reducing its involvement.

...

Kent Landers, a Coca-Cola spokesman, declined to explain the reduction in support. But officials at the company are trying to quietly defuse a campaign organized by the civil rights advocacy group Color of Change, which says it has collected more than 100,000 signatures on a petition demanding that Coca-Cola and other companies decline to sponsor the convention. Donating to the event, the petition states, is akin to endorsing Mr. Trump’s “hateful and racist rhetoric.”

“These companies have a choice right now, a history-making choice,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change. “Do they want riots brought to us by Coca-Cola?”

The situation is especially delicate for Coca-Cola, which is based in Atlanta and has devoted significant resources for decades to appeal to minority groups.

In the company’s Washington office, executives have been locked in conversations about how to handle the convention, according to two people directly involved in the discussions. In addition to donating cash, the beverage giant usually provides in-kind contributions, including sodas and other drinks.

In a statement, Mr. Landers, the Coca-Cola spokesman, said the company had also provided $75,000 to the 2016 Democratic convention, adding, “The Coca-Cola Company is a nonpartisan business and does not endorse presidential candidates or nominees, nor do we endorse any specific party.”

This wouldn't be an option for them if they didn't have the Democratic Party to fall back on, of course.

Based on pure gut instinct, my guess is that "universal" American corporations (like Coca-Cola) and agribusiness directly dependent on migrant labor will be the most hostile to Trump, while the "national bourgeoisie" of the smokestack factories will be most welcoming.

[ComradeAllende]

I don't think the bourgeoisie are very much in favor of Trump, at least from what I'm hearing. Most of them seem (especially agri-business and industrial corporations) seem to be alienated by his statements on free trade and immigration, and who can blame them? Modern capitalist production processes are global (or regional) in nature, and major formal and informal sectors of the American economy (trades, domestic labor, agriculture, etc) rely on cheap migrant labor. Plus his bombastic and volatile behavior might be a liability for the stock and bond markets; a few speeches of his could easily rattle the financial industry. I think he's mostly appealing to the "petite bourgeoisie" and elements of the white working and lower-middle classes; both of these elements tend to feed off of populist rhetoric against "do-nothing politicians" as well as the specter of Big Money and Big Finance, and neither have any major ideological ties to the free-market orthodoxy of the upper-middle classes.

The upper echelons of the bourgeoisie would only favor Trump if there was a vibrant working-class movement threatening the capitalist system. Major capitalists like Thyssen and Krupp sided with the Nazis in Weimar Germany in order to crush the Communist/Social Democrats as well as to eliminate opposition from the trade unions. I don't have to tell you that there is no such movement nowadays, in the US or elsewhere.

[Stirnerian]

Indeed.

I'm not well-educated enough to conduct such an analysis, but it would be worthwhile (and probably inevitable, at some point) for a Marxist to analyze the class composition of the Trump phenomenon. I agree with you almost completely - in the main it will consist of the petit-bourgeois, except where they rely on migrant consumers (gas station owners selling burner phones to them and the like), national bourgeois, and my own lumpenproletariat.

Accordingly, I don't think there's much to fear from Trump. Without the support of the power players in the capitalist economy, he can accomplish precisely nothing.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I think he's mostly appealing to the "petite bourgeoisie" and elements of the white working and lower-middle classes
I agree, they seem to be the bulk of his base. They're the ones fueling his popularity, and pushing him past the "establishment" conservative candidates.

[Stirnerian]

If it were purely a lumpenproletarian phenomenon, however (and I admit to being a little defensive on the subject, as I'm essentially part of that "class"), why would the bourgeois pay Trump any mind, other than the fact that he's one of their own?

[Prof. Oblivion]

Not sure how this is news. Obviously the "bourgeoisie is divided". That's why there are multiple parties/candidates.

[Edelweiss]

And also quiet obviously "we" are not capable of "acting coherently" at all neither.

[Verneinung]

They are about as divided as the NBA. Or maybe, in Trump's case, the WWE. Of course, by the nature of the game, there are different interests and competition; however, the game is still rigged, the fans still take it seriously and the owners, big players and special interests, have created a sort of win, win, win or win big, scenario.

But, with Trump, I think it is hard to see all of these people being deluded and diverted away from the issues with him. I mean: we all get that Trump is just a smoke-screen, right? He has a function in this race, which is obvious from what is actually happening. Now this doesn't necessarily have to be intentional (like a backroom conspiracy), but it is occurring, nonetheless.

[Prof. Oblivion]

They are about as divided as the NBA. Or maybe, in Trump's case, the WWE. Of course, by the nature of the game, there are different interests and competition; however, the game is still rigged, the fans still take it seriously and the owners, big players and special interests, have created a sort of win, win, win or win big, scenario.

But, with Trump, I think it is hard to see all of these people being deluded and diverted away from the issues with him. I mean: we all get that Trump is just a smoke-screen, right? He has a function in this race, which is obvious from what is actually happening. Now this doesn't necessarily have to be intentional (like a backroom conspiracy), but it is occurring, nonetheless.

No, he's not a smoke screen. He's a real candidate. One that establishment republicans don't support and the people do.

[Verneinung]

No, he's not a smoke screen. He's a real candidate. One that establishment republicans don't support and the people do.

Don't troll, this is serious.

Those things are not mutually exclusive. He is obviously a real candidate - he isn't like Deez Nuts.

But, regardless, he is (and like I said, not necessarily intentionally) a smoke-screen that is extremely beneficial and successful at this function.

[Sewer Socialist]

The bourgeoisie has never consolidated their support for a single presidential candidate in the USA

How is Trump a smoke screen

What are you talking about

Has RevLeft moved on from shitty critical support to shitty conspiracy theories

[Verneinung]

The bourgeoisie has never consolidated their support for a single presidential candidate in the USA

How is Trump a smoke screen

What are you talking about

Has RevLeft moved on from shitty critical support to shitty conspiracy theories

LOL. There are a vast number or reasons why it would be in their best interest, and simply natural, to not consolidate behind a candidate. They have different personal and business interests, different personal beliefs, different ideas on the most stable strategy for the economy, keeping people in their place, etc.; they must perpetuate the illusion of choice/democracy, etc. Like when you chalk up the basics, it is bourgeoisie vs proletariat. The general population, regardless of their background, don't consolidate over which bourgeois candidate, who is completely against the main part of their best interest, they will support. But, that latter, is the point of the system: to give the fundamental illusion of choice to "democracy".

What is almost everyone fixated on (including this thread) right now: Trump. What are the legit issues: everything but Trump.

Trump is the least important phenomena within this cycle, yet he is getting 24/7 mainstream media coverage, coverage from alternative media, social media posts, forum threads, etc., majority of which cannot even give (or in the mainstream case, happily refuse to give) a proper analysis of Trump or the situation/climate within which we are in today politically (either in reference to the Trump phenomena or the whole, more important, picture).

Reality is not a conspiracy theory. Trump, as a diversion, is giving more benefits to power than I can even count . If I was giving the conspiracy theory, which I went out of my way not to give (because it is nonsense), I would have done that. What I did, however, do was repeat, multiple times, that it is not/doesn't have to be intentional.

But, the "conspiracy", if you want it, is that Trump ran for the Clintons. But, just like the conspiracy of Iran-Contra, 9/11, or any thing else, all that matters is the events and results (actuality) not what is, or is not, the "conspiracy". Who really cares if 9/11 was done by Muslims or was an inside job, when, regardless, it was used as an excuse for perpetual war and the stripping of every single civil liberty, as well as the justification for almost every single, previously illegal, anti-radical/revolutionary, tactic on the books. So, I don't care if Trump ran because he is just a megalomaniac or because the Clintons encouraged him to run, I really just care about the fact that people can't tell right from left with regard to him, and his diversions and delusions on the population are working better than a person, likely, could have ever imagined (or planned out).

[Stirnerian]

For all the handwringing over Trump as the Next Hitler, he reminds me of nothing so much as the next Alfred Hugenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hugenberg)- a bourgeois media magnate who tried to parlay his omnipresence in the cultural milieu of Germany into politics, through an appeal to the protectionist inclinations of the petit-bourgeois and the labor aristocracy.

Of course, where Hugenberg shows himself, Hitler isn't far behind. I can easily imagine a more competent, more ideological figure using the Trump formula more successfully in the next downturn. That's a genie that isn't going back in the bottle.

[Luís Henrique]

For all the handwringing over Trump as the Next Hitler, he reminds me of nothing so much as the next Alfred Hugenberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hugenberg)- a bourgeois media magnate who tried to parlay his omnipresence in the cultural milieu of Germany into politics, through an appeal to the protectionist inclinations of the petit-bourgeois and the labor aristocracy.

Of course fascism without grandiose claims against plutocracy isn't fascism, and Trump is a plutocrat himself, so, as far as fascism is concerned, he can at the very maximum be a precursor. But I would make a different analogy: Trump is much more similar to Berlusconi than to Hugenberg. And in that, he is possibly even more dangerous than a "next Hugenberg", for he could signal a widespread tendency to emptying democracy from any content, and reducing elections to pageant contests in which we measure not who is more beautiful, but who is more rich.


Of course, where Hugenberg shows himself, Hitler isn't far behind. I can easily imagine a more competent, more ideological figure using the Trump formula more successfully in the next downturn. That's a genie that isn't going back in the bottle.

An American Hitler must be far behind: there is no fascist party there, no street struggle against the organised working class (and indeed no organised working class to be fought at the streets), so, at least in the immediate future, a violent breach and suppression of democracy is to be less feared than a debasing and rot of democracy from the inside, via purely liberal democratic methods.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Not sure how this is news. Obviously the "bourgeoisie is divided". That's why there are multiple parties/candidates.

The bourgeosie is always divided, but the division is not always of the same importance.

At times there is a division between cliques that compete for public office and will implement roughly the same program if any of them win. They may make generic ideological claims and appeal to different sectors of the "donor class", but everybody knows it is going to be business as usual regardless of which clique wins.

And at other times these generic ideological claims get flesh, blood and bones, become rooted in actual movements and groups of people and sectors of capital, and are played in serious, even to death, in the political arena.

What it might be happening is that the US is transitioning from one kind of division to the other (and those, like the mainstream GOP, who don't understand it, are poised to very disagreeable surprises).

Luís Henrique