Early Notes on National Capitalism

Trump is a nationalist.  He’s urging his folks to use that word.  His nationalism is a response to a notion of ‘globalism,’ or ‘globalization.’  Back in the early 2000s globalization was the enemy of the radical Left.  Globalization and the neoliberal, state-sponsored capitalism that was engulfing the globe in multinational corporate expansion.  Globalization was what every mass protest from Seattle to Miami was rallying against.  The anti-globalization movement didn’t want US companies moving production overseas to exploit the global poor.  The anti-globalization movement didn’t want predatory banks and international lenders doing the same to poor countries as the predatory lenders were doing to poor homeowners in the US before the bubble burst.  The anti-globalization movement of yesteryear wanted international solidarity, environmental regulations to stave off mining, foresting, drilling, and other Earth-destroying activities, and the end to multi-national predatory capitalism and finance.  

Now Trump is a nationalist because ‘globalism’ is bad.  Somehow the moderate and radical Right have co-opted the global economic justice movement of the Left and turned it into the momentum behind national capitalism. 

I don’t use that term lightly.  I also recognize the contradictions when the president of the US espousing an ideology of nationalism since the US (including its multinational affiliates) is the economic and political empire of the day.  How can the US power structures believe in nationalism when it’s the exploitation of the entire planet that has provided this country with so much wealth throughout the last 500 years?

The anti-globalization movement hoped for another world, a world where wealth and power were distributed equally across the globe and across local communities in order to combat the ever-increasing centralization of wealth and power in the hands of the few.  The anti-globalization movement valued the diversity of local communities and sought to empower their unique solutions to problems facing us as humans.  The anti-globalization movement recognized the contradiction that multi-national corporations had access to move capital and production centers across borders, but poor people of the world were not allowed the same freedom of movement.  But Trump and the radical Right have now co-opted the discontent with the world we live in and are offering a terrifying, authoritarian solution in the form of national capitalism.

We can identify some of the tenants of Trump’s national capitalism in a few broad strokes: 1) the vilification and inhuman treatment of migrants, 2) the deregulation of environmental policies, 3) the consistent reliance on the war manufacturing sector of the US economy, 4) the continued structuring of wealth and power in the hands of a few, and 5) the sinister motto of “profit above all else.”

Trump was a capitalist.  Now he’s a proud national capitalist.  Let’s do ourselves a favor and not call the American fascists "nazis" (national socialists), but the more apt term "national capitalists."  Once we recognize this threat facing humanity we can begin to talk about constructive and creative ways to empower democracy, ensure the dignity of all people, and redistribute wealth and power in the world.  Or at the very least resist fascism in the USA.