The US election: How can we move forward while staring negativity in its face?

First published at The International Marxist-Humanist.

The second election of Donald Trump to the US presidency and of the Trumpist Republican Party on November 5 represents nothing less than a new era of fascism. We may not be in 1933, but we are certainly in something similar to the 1920s after Mussolini seized power and the concomitant rise of fascist movements at a global level. At present, the neofascist National Rally in France has been receiving over 30% of the vote, the further-to-the-right Alternative for Germany well over 20%, and even in places like Brazil, where the moderate left has won recent elections (or California in the US), a turn toward the right in public opinion is evident.

Many sectors of global capitalism are joining in or at least accommodating themselves to the fascist turn, as seen not only in individual figures like Elon Musk but in global phenomena like the surge in financial markets on the day Trump’s election became apparent. Over the months preceding the US election, many key players decided to remain neutral in the face of Trumpism, from media like Facebook, the LA Times, and the storied Washington Post, to universities like Harvard declaring themselves neutral in social justice matters,

Causes and context

Since Trumpism’s rise in 2015, the US and global left have been discussing its causes, most of which have become too well known to detail too much here. But here is a basic list. 

First comes the wrenching economic crisis of 2008 and nearly 50 years of economic stagnation, which has left the working people in the broadest sense facing worsening conditions of life and labor. 

Second, comes the exhaustion of US imperialism and its allies after more than two decades of war in the Middle East with no end in sight, while on the other hand, some sectors are now under the illusion of an opening for Israel and the US against the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Iran that could spark a regional conflagration. 

Third, we have seen the rise, often manipulated by powerful forces, of anti-immigrant xenophobia, racist appeals over crime, and perceived disorder, all amid the demagoguery of Trump and his ilk. 

Fourth, we have witnessed the most virulent misogyny, both in political rhetoric and policy, from a stream of demeaning statements against women and sexual minorities to actions like abortion and transgender bans. 

Fifth, we are probably underestimating the ongoing effects of the COVID pandemic, not only in how its necessary “social distancing” tore at social solidarity, but also in how neofascists developed a whole new ideology of “freedom” around attacks on science in general, on vaccines in particular, and the closing down of schools and workplaces in the name of return to the “normal” capital accumulation regime as quickly as possible. These events have seemed to spur some leading capitalists (Musk et al.), public figures (Robert Kennedy, Jr.), and intellectuals (Giorgio Agamben, Carl Boggs) to shift way to the right on a “libertarian” basis. 

Sixth, we have experienced unprecedented attacks on environmental science and policy, as seen in expressions like “punitive ecology” even amid the floods and fires of the 2020s. 

Finally, the liberal and slightly anti-racist and anti-sexist wing of the dominant classes has over the past year forged a new type of unity with the far right in their joint and unstinting support for Israel’s genocide and, inside the US, repression of the student movement against that genocide.

Beyond mere causality: What to do?

The dialectical concept of second negativity teaches us never to stop at the analysis of the gravity of a new form of reaction and retrogression, but to go also the subjective level, to the state of the forces of liberation and opposition, and how to move them forward.

First and foremost, here is to avoid denial, to stare negativity in the face as the young Hegel once articulated, and to consider with utmost soberness the gravity of our situation. The world’s largest economic and military power, to a great extent because of its relative decline, has embarked upon the reckless path of neofascism. It appears at this writing that the Trumpists will control not only the presidency but also both chambers of the legislative branch, while they will continue to control the third branch of government via the Supreme Court. We should also be under no illusions about “constitutionally” minded military officers being willing to carry out Trump’s orders.

But it is equally important to avoid despair and especially to forget that a real alternative to capitalism exists: a society based upon the elimination of value production and freely associated labor as articulated by Marx over a century ago and put forward as a core concept for the global left by Marxist-Humanists over the past decade. Such concepts of the alternative are deeply practical. As reported recently by the sociologist Edgar Morin, who joined the French resistance to the Nazi occupation in his youth, what was lacking above all in 1940 was not so much left-wing organization or support for resistance among some sectors of the population, but any sense that an alternative to the new fascist order existed. People would not risk their lives merely to restore the corrupt, Nazi-appeasing Third French Republic.

Thus, while we need to defend the democratic republic everywhere versus neofascism, campism, and the like, and this is no small matter amid a plethora of ultra-leftist sects, we need to be utterly merciless in our critique of the centrist and slightly left-of-center forces that have brought us the Gaza genocide, larger military and police budgets, already draconian restrictions on immigration, burgeoning economic inequality, and now an ignominious defeat in the 2024 US election that has allowed a neofascist triumph.

To help us grasp what has happened and where to go from here, we need to reorganize our thinking at a theoretical and philosophical level. We need to dive once again and with new energy and creativity into the dialectic, into the concept of the alternative to capitalism, and into the dialectics of class, race, and gender in the form of an intersectional, liberationist, and humanist Marxism. Here we can of course draw on the writings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Frantz Fanon, Raya Dunayevskaya, and our own studies of their writings over the past decade, which have become widely recognized far outside our immediate circle as major contributions to revolutionary thought.

In the coming weeks, we must hit the streets to mount the largest and strongest popular resistance we can muster. To this end, we need also to form coalitions of the type of left that opposes all forms of capitalism, imperialism, and sub-imperialism, from the US to Russia to Israel, while also recognizing the racist, sexist, heteronormative, and climate-destructive nature of the present global capitalist order in ways that both unite with the working class while also opposing any form of class reductionism. Specifically, we need to defend both Palestine and Ukraine. Such a left pole can form a vital part of the anti-fascist resistance to Trumpism and its counterparts all over the world.