A critique of MAGA from real socialism
Economic nationalism as constructive cooperation with the world
When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I was taught that criticism included identifying the good as well as the bad, and this is the spirit with which I undertake a critique of the MAGA Movement, a historic anti-establishment movement that prepares to take political power in the United States, with control, albeit narrow, of the three branches of the federal government.
It is not difficult for me to find good things to say about the MAGA Movement. Indeed, I have much respect for Donald Trump, for having forged a new direction in national politics based in a traditional conservative perspective and in common-sense intelligence. As I wrote in my November 19 commentary, “Can the Left recover?”:
MAGA, founded by Trump, is an anti-establishment movement that has matured to formulate a common-sense program that rejects the policies of the two political parties of the last forty-five years. The program includes: sensibly regulating and controlling immigration, and cracking down on illegal immigration; emphasizing the productivity and expansion of the American national economy, including the restoration of U.S. manufacturing; eliminating unnecessary restraints on the production of petroleum and natural gas; establishing executive and legislative control of the federal government bureaucracy, ending the capturing of agencies by the industries they are supposed to regulate; following a foreign policy of peace through strength, involving the maintenance of a strong military to protect the national territory, but using it sparingly, avoiding entanglements in costly wars with little or no benefit; recognizing the significant advancements toward the protection of the rights of racial and ethnic minorities since 1965; ceasing racial discrimination in colleges and universities and federal employment, presently implemented under the guise of equity; taking a more positive approach to American history and Western civilization in colleges and universities; placing primary and secondary school education under the control of the states, in accordance with the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution; returning to political principles that are consistent with the founding of the nation and with the Constitution, as amended; ceasing restrictions on free speech in the name of “disinformation;” and stopping the weaponization of law, in which legal processes are initiated against political enemies.
But the limitations of the MAGA Movement must be understood. Said limitations are not at all those supposed defects that are repeatedly shouted by the toxic woke Left and the biased legacy media. Rather, they are limitations that I see as a result of a thirty-year-long journey of personal encounter with real socialism in the world today, in socialism as it is actually being constructed in Cuba, China, Vietnam, and the DPRK (North Korea); including the anti-establishment people’s movements that brought socialist projects to political power.
From the vantage point of real socialism and its understanding of world affairs today, I can discern that the fundamental limitation of the MAGA Movement is its lack of anti-imperialist consciousness. As I wrote in the November 19 commentary,
The MAGA movement has a principal defect, namely, it lacks anti-imperialist consciousness. Its advocacy of peace through strength is a hopeful sign that it will leave behind the neoconservatism that has brought us wars in the Middle East and Eastern Europe as well as confrontation with China. But its critique of the foreign policy of the political establishment is not based in anti-imperialism, but in opposition to imperialist overreach. It is opposed to costly wars, but not necessarily less costly unconventional wars of an economic, financial, and ideological character against nations that defy American hegemony, especially nations constructing socialism in Latin America, which are located in what U.S. political culture traditionally conceived as its “backyard,” its own territorial area that it has a right and duty to control.
Anti-imperialist consciousness is the principal teaching of the Third World national liberation movements which emerged with much force in world affairs from the 1950s to the 1970s, and which have evolved in the twenty-first century to include the formation of numerous regional and international organizations of governments of the Global South and East. The phrase “national liberation”, the conjoining of nationalism and freedom, is significant. The Third World project discerned, from objective conditions defined by the “colonial situation”, that the key to freedom is defending the sovereignty of the nation against the imperialist designs of the European ex-colonial powers and the new hegemonic power, the USA. Rooted in an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspective, the Third World national liberation movements evolved to give increasing emphasis to the productive capacity of their national economies, seeing modern economic development as the necessary foundation for enabling a reasonably modest standard of living and a just distribution of material necessities within their nations.
The nations of the Third World, guided by exceptional leaders, understood since the beginning of the Third World project that the best road for developing the productivity of their economies involved solidarity with other nations in the common human pursuit of peace and prosperity. In practical terms, this means developing mutually beneficial trade with other nations through continuous mutually respectful dialogue and negotiation, arriving to commerce and trade agreements that are beneficial to both, which can include necessary tariffs on particular goods. And it means cooperation in science and technology, which is the key to continued economic development.
So, economic nationalism, as it came to be understood in the Global South and East, involves defending and promoting the economy of the nation, without going down the destructive path of seeking to advance the interests of the national economy by attacking the economies of other nations or interfering in the internal affairs of other nations in order to control their economies. This path is the essence of imperialism, and it necessarily provokes conflict in the world, because the nations and peoples that are targeted are not going to find it acceptable.
The lessons of the teachings of the Third World are difficult for the people of the United States to appreciate, because our nation developed a strong economy in a context fundamentally different from the colonial situation. The United States became a great nation, with the height of its power attained during the 1950s and early 1960s, by strategically inserting itself into colonial structures created by the world conquest of the European colonial powers, which occurred from 1492 to 1914; and by militarily and economically attacking other nations in the promotion of the interests of its large corporations during the course of the twentieth century.
The politically immature woke Left takes this history of colonialism and imperialism as a motive for rejecting Western civilization and American history. It overlooks the fact that the path of the USA to greatness was the normal and prevailing pattern of rising states and empires to that time, and it had been so since the agricultural revolution, which occurred independently in different regions of the world roughly 10,000 years ago. The development of the modern Western-centered world-system—based on conquest, slavery, colonial domination, and imperialism—was a modern expression of the historic human tendency of developing great civilizations on a foundation of conquest. The modern world-system is like other civilizations and world-systems in human history, except that it is the most advanced in its territorial scope and technological achievements, a reflection of continuous human advances in technology. The normality of Western colonial and neocolonial domination has been understood by the leaders of the Third World anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements, which have sought to appropriate the system’s technological and scientific advances for their own projects of social and economic development.
The woke leftist emphasis on bashing the West and the American Republic has misdirected its focus, blinding it to the central fact that the long historic period of economic and technological development based on conquest was coming to an end in the post-World World War II era, for two reasons. First, the modern world-system had reached and overextended the geographical and ecological limits of the earth, so it could not continue to expand and contribute to human productivity through the conquest of other lands and peoples. Secondly, the conquered and colonized peoples of the earth began to rise up, demanding their place in the human story and their fair share of the blessings of the earth and the distribution of the goods that are made through human labor.
These two new developments made necessary a new approach for the Western powers following World War II. But this need was not understood by the U.S. power elite and its allies in the political establishment. Confused by emerging events, they decided to protect themselves. They failed to formulate foreign policies that would protect the interests of the national economy in the new world situation. They failed to discern a necessary change of direction, involving the casting aside of imperialist policies and the development of mutually beneficial trade and cooperation with the emerging nations of the Global South and East. They directed their energies toward understanding how to protect the short-term profits of large corporations, giving little attention to understanding the new world context and how to promote the long-term interests of the U.S. economy in that context. They gave the nation successive waves of misguided policies, including: neoliberal economic policies at home and abroad, weakening the states and elevating the market; neoconservative foreign policies, leading to endless wars; and most recently, a new form of imperialist intervention, involving multidimensional unconventional war. The American power elite and political establishment have betrayed our nation, taking it down a road of economic decline and moral decadence.
The betrayal of the nation by the political establishment is the source of the emergence of the MAGA Movement, which seeks a renewal of the nation and a return to its former greatness. Its followers are disproportionately represented by the working class and by middle America, who have found the courage and the common-sense intelligence to reject the accusations of the woke Left and the distortions of the legacy media. Leaders have stepped forward who have been able to put forth a project of proposals that connect to the concerns and hopes of the people, as noted above.
But the consolidation of the MAGA Movement in power requires, in addition to strengthening the national economy through implementation of its announced program, an evolution in understanding, from opposition to imperialist overreach toward opposition to imperialism itself. We must leave behind the historic ideological and political practice of expanding our national economy by attacking or controlling the economies of other nations, intervening in their internal affairs to this end. We must look for creative and scientific ways to benefit our economy through mutually beneficial relations with other nations, which today are oriented to the same approach with respect to their national economies. We must recognize that imperialism is no longer a viable option in today’s world, and that a world of competing imperialisms is not sustainable in the long run.
Such an evolution from opposition to imperialist overreach toward opposition to imperialism itself could be the key to the consolidation of the MAGA movement in political power. In the first place, it would reduce confrontation between the USA and the rest of the world, thus enabling the Trump administration, and potentially subsequent MAGA governments, to negotiate mutually beneficial agreements with other nations, some of which could accelerate the revitalization of the American national economy. And in the second place, anti-imperialism would attract the (non-woke) people of the Left, who support the anti-imperialist agenda of the classic social justice Left. Such a political realignment could be the basis for ideological reconceptualization based on a synthesis of conservative cultural values, economic nationalism, anti-imperialism, and patriotism, which could provide the foundation for strong majorities in the future elections of the nation.
We in the United States have been taught a lot of nonsense about communism and socialism. During my three decades of personal encounter with real socialism in the Global South and East, I have learned that the nations constructing socialism today are developing new forms of people’s participatory democracy as well as new approaches to combining public and private enterprises in projects of national economic development. And they are oriented to win-win cooperation among nations as the necessary foundation for world peace and prosperity. They are not a threat to the national security of the United States; they are perceived as a threat only when national security is defined in imperialist terms.
If liberated from imperialist assumptions about the world, the MAGA Movement in power would find a world of emerging powers committed to cooperation and mutually beneficial trade with the United States, as the best foundation for world peace and prosperity. In this way, the MAGA movement for the restoration of American greatness, strengthened by a Right-Left ideological synthesis forged through inclusion of the non-woke anti-imperialist Left, could be a crucial part of a new stage in human history, a post-colonial and post-imperialist stage, characterized by world peace and prosperity, guaranteed in part by strong militaries among rival nations and regions, each deterring the others; but also by mutually beneficial commerce among nations, which no government would have an interest in disrupting. In this new stage, America would be great again, and its contributions to the formation of republican and democratic principles and technological progress would be universally recognized and appreciated.
Further Considerations
Why should the MAGA Movement care about the demands and hopes of the Third World? Because democracy requires it. The States of the Global South and East—today calling for an end to imperialism, for respect for their sovereignty, and for cooperation in the development of a multipolar world—represent the great majority of humanity.
America will be great again, not only when it looks with renewed respect toward its past, but also when it listens to and engages the present world, advancing forward in harmony with the peoples of the earth. America will be great again when it joins the rest of the world in appreciation for the cultural legacy of humanity, including its great religions and its modern revolutionary movements for democracy in the West and for socialism in the East and South.
See previous related commentaries:
“Factors driving the Trump phenomenon: The MAGA movement now looks to the future with hope,” November 7, 2024
“What Trump should do now: Key steps necessary for the consolidation of the MAGA revolution,” November 12, 2024
“Can the Left recover? The need to renew its historic commitment to justice for the poor of the world,” November 19, 2024
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