This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1348181
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1348181
I’ve been calling the folks besotted with Trump here in the social bubbles of the Right “the Trumpenproliteriat” for some time now…
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The US is now embarked on a great (or not-so-great) experiment in trans-Marxian political theory, the dictatorship of the lumpenproletariat at the national level. My home state of Louisiana led the way here, but it is only a state, so the thing could not reach full flower there.
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This is spot on. When you have an elected class that is more concerned with lowering corporate tax rates and thinks that tax deductions and credits are the answer to all ills this is what you get.
Capitalism has one goal…profit
Profit above people
Profit above the environment
Profit above the Truth
Profit above country
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I do not know what Marx envisioned as the future of the lumpenproletariat, but it seems to me that, at least in this country, they can be safely ignored, in political terms. Since they are passive, liberals don’t have to worry about them, while authoritarians can use them as reliable television props when they need them. Both ways, the lumpen lose because no one cares, and they won’t force political caring.
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I believe it is worse than the author describes. The Republican base is now comprised of the people left behind by the agricultural, industrial, and information revolutions. While the proletariat might move to the city to find employment in the next revolution (industrial, after being left behind by the agricultural), the current Republican base is comprised of the people that were left behind and didn’t have the personal drive to move to a place where the jobs were. So we have a large, white, uneducated class of people who really are literally being left behind by the economy.
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It’s been going on in the rest of the world for a long time. Read Planet of Slums (2005) by Mike Davis, to witness an orthodox marxist losing his shite over the lumpen’s rise to social dominance.
And yes, politically this class tends toward the notoriously volatile. Socially it is unconnected to social organization, alienated, atomized, resentful, and opportunistic.
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“For me, the answer is clear. . . . [Fails to provide answer.]”
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That is Trump did nothing but sell White Americans what they wanted to buy.
The problem with this article is that Trump voters are just not in that desperate of shape due to progressive/Democrat policies that prevent Americans from becoming Lumpenproletariats. That is if you really do destroy “The safety net”, unions and all Government labor, wealth care to include Medicare and other Government programs like Social Security and regulation that protects citizens from business to include environment, then you would have a large White Lumpenproletariat. So well Republican policy may one day get us there, this does not explain today’s political situation.
Paul Krugman explained it this way:
"How did we get here? The core story of U.S. politics over the past four decades is that wealthy elites weaponized white racism to gain political power, which they used to pursue policies that enriched the already wealthy at workers’ expense.
Until Trump’s rise it was possible — barely — for people to deny this reality with a straight face. At this point, however, it requires willful blindness not to see what’s going on."
The above explains why the Republican rank and file refusal to accept Trump’s loss. To Republican rank and file the winner of the election is whoever got the most votes from White people. All Trump did was capitalize on this belief from White Americans not by creating a new product but rather by telling them what they were already telling each other, that the only real Americans are by definition White.
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Trump didn’t ignore them, some adore him, and they are a force. The anger is sabotaging the election with crackpot legal efforts but all too real threats of violence, and the anger of the dispossessed is attacking public health efforts and aiding the spread of corona.
So I don’t see any way to safely ignore them.
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I’m with you, Mr. Russo. I don’t mind in the slightest being taxed to help others around me. Just as America benefits more with globalization (fewer wars, more trade, etc. (although that sort of goes against the de-industrialization and globalization points of the article)), I benefit knowing that the needs of the less fortunate are being met.
The de-industrialization era would not have resulted in so much inequality if politicians with foresight would have prepared us for it better. But here we are.
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The trumpenproletariat
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“So, what form of government do we want?
For me, the answer is clear.”
It doesn’t seem his answer is clear at all, except for what he doesn’t want, which is the easy part.
How about highly-regulated capitalism? Easy to say, tough to implement.
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Maybe it doesn’t matter so much as to the kind of shape the Trump supporters are actually in, but the kind of shape they perceive themselves to be in. In general, Trump supporters are less tech-savvy and less aligned with how the rest of the world functions outside their own self-contained bubbles.
That may breed resentment, even if it’s unconscious resentment.
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Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? 
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I think we did pretty well with corporate regulations from the 50’s through the 70’s. The oil shocks of the 70’s were used to portray regulations as bad, when in fact, most were not. In any government you can find stupid or silly regulations…the right used these one offs, and Reagan sealed the deal. The problems we have today are directly the result of the Reagan Revolution
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capitalism, with its infernal need for profit,… FIFY
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Trump is certainly not the first major world or US leader to exploit and rally supporters on ethnic, racial, national, cultural, religious, ideological and economic grievances, but he’s certainly the one to take it the farthest in the US, or in any major western country for a very long time. When he’s gone, they’ll still be here, looking for and ready to be conned and exploited by the next mega-demagogue, who probably won’t be as stupid and lazy as Trump. We can’t prevent the emergence of such a leader, but we might be able to do something about these peoples’ anger, resentment and paranoia. Fascism can’t take hold where there isn’t fertile ground or a sufficiently willing and large populace.
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This guy doesn’t know the first thing about Marx or Marxism, and he is appropriating its terminology for his liberal ends. The lumpen proletariat, as well as the marginally and irregularly employed above them, are an inherent part of capitalism. Labor power is a commodity, subject to the laws of supply and demand, and structurally these lowest class sectors are part of the reserve army of capitalism, used to help hold or drive down wages, and at times mobilized as a quasi-military force against labor, such as against strikers or as strike breaker, or as the storm troops by outright fascists. Of course there hasn’t been a socalist revolution in the U.S., so how could these lower classes have been eliminated (through full employment)?
Trump’s mass support doesn’t come from the lumpen — they don’t vote, unless paid to — but from sections of the working class and middle strata, yes, some of whose income and lives have been driven down by the de-industrialization and de-unionization of America, with jobs sent to low wage bastions in other countries around the world. And yes, some of them are racist, although very many voted for Obama. At the same time, Trump represents and is supported by a major sections of large and small capitalists who wish to drive America back to the days of the late-19th, early 20th century, that is, prior to the times of the Russian Revolution and Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that followed.
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Meanwhile, Melania explores post-White House grifting opportunities…
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