So the ‘isolationist’ section of the ruling class has won control of political power in the United States. This was one of those rare elections under capitalism where the choice was not simply between two different management teams to implement the same basic policy. It was one, as over Brexit here, where there were real policy differences between two sections of the ruling class and where the issue was put to the mainly working class electorate to decide. As in Britain, the dominant section of the ruling class was outvoted.
‘Isolationism’ has been defined as ‘a political philosophy that advocates for a nation to avoid involvement in the affairs of other countries, especially in their wars, and only engaging in wars if attacked’. It has always been a trend in US history, explaining their late intervention in both the last century’s world wars. Since the end of the second of these, which resulted in the US becoming the dominant world power at the expense of Britain and France and their empires, ‘interventionism’ as the ‘world’s policeman’ has been the main feature of US foreign policy.
Will Trump end this? He has made it clear that he is not interested in continuing the war in Ukraine — a European war — but he still sees Iran and China as threats, to US commercial interests, respectively in the middle and far east. So, we can’t expect a complete retreat from the unashamed ‘American imperialism’ favoured by the Democratic Party and until recently by the Republicans too.
‘America First’ will have implications on relations between the capitalist states and trading blocs into which the world is divided. If Trump goes ahead with imposing tariffs on all imports, including from the EU, Japan and Britain, this would unleash a world trade war. If he puts US interests as a fossil-fuel producer ahead of the general world capitalist interest to try to do something about climate change this will hinder the already feeble international measures to deal with it.
What about the working class? Properly defined not just, as in American usage, those without a college degree but all those economically obliged to try to find an employer to get an income. They will remain in this same basic position and will still face the problems that the politicians on both sides promised to solve.
Why, then, did so many vote for him? It will have been, in the words of one of Bill Clinton’s advisers, ‘the economy, stupid’. Workers in the US, as elsewhere, have been experiencing the effects of more rapidly rising prices than in the past few decades and voted against the incumbent government which they mistakenly blamed for this (rather than capitalism). There will also have been the mistaken belief that Trump, as a perceived successful and tough businessman, was a good person to deal with it.
Mistaken they were, but they weren’t one reactionary mass voting for a supposed would-be dictator. They were voting for the price of groceries to come down. They will be disappointed in that Trump won’t be able to make them ‘prosperous again’. No government can make capitalism work for the benefit of the working class.
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