Contrary
to some superficial interpretations Trumpism represents an
intensification of neoliberalism in the United States
by
William I. Robinson
There is
more than meets the eye in President-elect Trump’s pick to head the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma
attorney general, is a notorious climate change denier. He is part of
a coalition of public figures suing over EPA programs to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and boasts that he is “a leading
advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” A Trump press
release railed against the EPA’s “out of control anti-energy
agenda” and promised that Pruitt would “reverse the trend”
towards measures to reduce global warming.
Contrary to
some superficial interpretations, Trumpism represents an
intensification of neoliberalism in the United States. His incoming
regime’s far-right agenda constitutes a deepening, not a reversal,
of the program of capitalist globalization pursued by the Obama
administration and every U.S. administration since Ronald Reagan. The
crisis of global capitalism has become more acute in the face of
economic stagnation and the rise of anti-globalization populism on
both the left and the right of the political spectrum. Trumpism does
not represent a break with capitalist globalization but rather the
recomposition of political forces and ideological discourse as the
crisis deepens.
But if
Trumpism is an incarnation of an emerging dictatorship of the
transnational capitalist class, what does this have to do with
climate denial?
As Noemi
Klein points out in This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The
Climate, it is not just the fossil fuel industry that has funded the
climate change denial movement and worked to undermine efforts in the
United States and worldwide to fight global warming. Tackling the
root causes of climate change means challenging the fundamental class
interests of the transnational capitalist class, or TCC.
This TCC has
imposed since the 1980s the neo-liberal program of trade
liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and austerity for the
working majority. Neo-liberalism has unleashed corporations to
plunder the environment the world over. The urgent measures necessary
to prevent a catastrophic overheating of the planet require major
government intervention to reign in on the corporate free-for-all and
to regulate the global economy – precisely the measures that would
reverse neo-liberalism and place public restraint on unbridled TCC
profit-making. The “inconvenient truth” is that climate justice
and capitalist globalization are not compatible. It is time to talk
about ecosocialism.
Moreover,
neo-liberal capitalist globalization has resulted in a grotesque
global inequality. The 1% now controls more wealth than half of
humanity and 20% of the world population monopolizes 94% of the
world’s wealth while the remaining 80% has to make do with just 6%.
The majority of humanity does not have the income to consume all that
the global economy churns out. Consequently, the TCC has turned to
making wars and deploying new systems of mass social control
repression, what I call militarized accumulation, as a way to throw
firewood on the smoldering embers of a stagnant global economy. We
are living in a global war economy. In addition, the TCC has engaged
in mind-boggling levels of financial speculation and in the plunder
of public budgets and social spending cutbacks to keep profits
pouring into corporate coffers.
But none of
this has done the trick: the global economy remains mired in
stagnation. A new financial collapse is likely, almost inevitable.
Meanwhile, the system has faced a crisis of legitimacy as people
around the world search for a way out of displacement, economic
decline and social decomposition.
Enter
Trumpism. Trump’s economic program is to intensify neo-liberalism,
especially privatization and deregulation. We can expect under the
Trump regime an effort to further privatize what remains of a public
sector, including schools, veterans affairs, and possibly social
security, along with the drive to further transfer wealth from labor
to capital through corporate tax cuts and austerity.
His proposal
for massive investment in infrastructure is an effort to privatize
public infrastructure and to build new infrastructure through steep
corporate tax reductions and credits and public subsidies. He picked
Ben Carson, who has opposed social safety net programs, public
housing and fair housing programs, to head the Department of Housing
and Urban Development. Expect attempts to privatize urban social and
housing programs. Trump chose as education secretary Betsy DeVos, a
champion of private school vouchers that undercut public school
systems. Expect an escalation of the push to privatize education.
Trump’s likely picks for Veterans affairs (Pete Hegseth is the
leading candidate) will pursue the privation of veteran services.
Meanwhile,
Trump is filling military posts – homeland security, defense,
national security advisor – with politicized generals and retired
military officers. Expect a hike in the military budget at the
expense of social programs, new round of militarized accumulation
worldwide, and an expanded police state at home and abroad to repress
the social uprisings and political explosions that are already
unfolding. There will be an increasing influence of the military in
civilian affairs and the structures of political power. This fusion
of military and civilian power is a telltale sign of 21st century
fascism.
Trumpism
appears to be an extreme right-wing program because it is. In the
21st century extreme right-wing means extreme global capitalism. The
liberal variant of capitalist globalization – a “kindler,
gentler” capitalist globalization through a liberal/multicultural
discourse as distinct from neo-fascist discourse – cannot resolve
the system’s crisis of legitimacy. If Trump’s economic program is
neo-liberalism unleashed from any constraint, his political and
ideological program involves populist promises that will be
impossible to keep, a racist mobilization against scapegoats, and an
expansion of the police state.
But the
Obama administration has been far from a champion of climate justice
or an opponent of the neo-liberal agenda. To the contrary, it has
simply been a “kinder, gentler” agent of the fossil fuel industry
and at the same time has rigorously promoted neo-liberalism,
capitalist globalization, war and militarization around the world.
Indeed, there is a near-straight line from Obama to Trump. It was the
Obama government that more fully opened the Pandora’s box of
Trumpism and 21st century fascism.
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