By John Pickard
The election of such a man as Donald Trump as US president is a measure of the profound moral and political crisis within the capitalist system. But cause and effect are interlinked here, and it looks like his actions in appointing so many mavericks to high office, will further accelerate disintegration, decay and crisis within the US political establishment.
Commentators had suggested that Trump will have learned from his previous administration, between 2017 and 2020, but it seems he has learnt the wrong lessons. In his first cabinet, there were some “adults in the room” who could act as a counterweight to Trump’s tendency to be erratic, although many of these soon departed.
This time, his selections for key leadership positions, based purely on their loyalty and subservience to the Trump brand of Republicanism, seem designed to create the maximum possible distruption of the civil service, the military, the internal security apparatus and the judicial system. As the Financial Times editorial put it, “…it is hard to know which [appointment] is the most dumbfounding.” These are a few of the people Trump has picked for key appointments:
Mike Gaetz – appointed Attorney General. Gaetz has been the subject of an investigation by the justice department – the department he will lead – into allegations of sex trafficking, and ethical breaches including sexual misconduct, drug use and the acceptance of gifts. It is almost certain that the report on this investigation will be leaked or published before he takes office.
Referring to the FBI and the Department of Justice at a meeting of right wing activists last year, Gaetz wowed his audience by promising to bring them both to heel. “We either get this government back on our side”, he said, “or we defund, and get rid, abolish . . . every last one of them,” If Trump is able to use the judicial system to “go after” his political opponents, Gaetz will be the principal attack-dog.
Pete Hegseth – appointed Secretary of Defense. Apart from a brief spell in the US army and National Guard, Hegseth’s only qualification to manage the humungous US arms budget – $800bn – as well as 2.3m civilian and active sercie personnel, is to be a presenter for Fox News.
Hegseth too has also faced allegations of sexual assault. He has intimated in the past that the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, General Charles Brown, only got his appointment because he is Black and accused him of “pursuing the radical positions of leftwing politicians”. (Guardian, November 13)
The Wall Street Journal has reported on a draft executive order of Trump’s to the effect that he might appoint a special ‘board’ of retired senior officers, which would be able to ‘purge’ unsuitable generals and admirals. Hegseth would no doubt be in charge of that.
Hegseth’s nomination, the Guardian reports, is also a boost for the far right in Israel, as he has “shown support for territorial expansion and suggested that Jews could build a new temple on the sacred compound around al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount”. How that would go down with two of the most important Arab allies of the US – Egypt and Saudi Arabia – remains to be seen.
Robert F Kennedy Junior – appointed as Health Secretary, in charge of a $1.7tn health budget. Kennedy is a vaccine sceptic and an intervention of his in Samoa, promoting suspicion about immunisations, led to an outbreak of measles that resulted in scores of child deaths.
Kennedy’s nomination as the country’s top health official will alarm public health experts across the USA. The Financial Times reports that “He has described the Covid-19 jab as “the deadliest vaccine ever made” and last year said the virus was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people”.
Public Citizen, a progressive nonprofit organisation, told the Guardian “Robert F Kennedy Jr is a clear and present danger to the nation’s health. He shouldn’t be allowed in the building at the department of health and human services (HHS), let alone be placed in charge of the nation’s public health agency.”
Tulsi Gabbard – appointed as director of national intelligence, she apparently shares the enthusiasm of other Trump acolytes about the need to get rid of the “woke shit” such as “diversity, equity and inclusion programmes”. (Financial Times editorial) that they claim have weakened the military.
It is possible that some of these appointments may yet be blocked. Trump seems to feel that his control of the presidency, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court enable him to do whatever he wishes. But events will prove more complex. Even some Republicans, are aghast at his selections and some may vote with the Democrat senators to block one or two.
Some Republican senators have already raised questions about his nomination in no uncertain terms. One of them, Susan Collins of Maine, told reporters she was “shocked” by the appointment of Gaetz as attorney general and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska further added that he was “not a serious nomination” for the post. “I’m looking forward,” she added, “to the opportunity to consider somebody that is serious. This one was not on my bingo card.”
Trump, on the other hand, may try to find alternative legal processes to confirm his appointments without Senate approval, for example through so-called “recess appointments”. Either way, Trump’s appointments are a recipe for political turbulence on a scale not seen in US politics since the Civil War, in the mid-nineteenth century.
Trump’s selections for cabinet posts can also be interpreted as a shift in the direction of authoritarian government, as he has hinted in several rambling election speeches. But, again, real life is more complex. As much as Trump would like to govern the US much like an absolutist medieval king, he does not have the power to do so.
Most workers did not vote or voted against Trump
His ‘maga’ movement achieved widespread electoral support, overwhelmingly based on economic discontent. But this was still based on a minority of the population, because most workers either did not vote, or voted against him. Trump’s movement is not the kind of mass-based ‘fascist’ movement that can extensively penetrate the armed forces, the police and the state apparatus, as the Nazi Party did in Germany in the 1930s.
For all his bluster, Trump will be largely working against the millions of personnel in the civil service and the state. To use a metaphor, it takes an ocean-going tanker five miles to stop or turn around: it is not something that can be done by a handful of swimmers. The juggernaut that is US civil service, health system and military apparatus, will not be turned by these Trump appointments. But, on the other hand, their capacity for injecting chaos, conflict and crises should not be underestimated.
Why is this important? It is because capitalist ‘democracy’ – such as it is – can only be maintained by a stable and relatively broadly-based bureaucracy. How could it be otherwise, when the real ruling class – the property-owning capitalists – are a vanishingly small proportion of the population, far less than the 1% figure in popular culture?
The only way the capitalists can preserve their power and control is by drawing into their embrace and sharing a (small) part of their ill-gotten gains with an upper social layer, who are bribed by higher salaries and positions of power and influence, so they have a ‘stake’ in the system.
These people – and they number several millions – are found in the media, in the civil service and in the armed apparatus of the state, the police and the military. Above all, their positions are based on continuity and stability, both of which are now being threatened by Trump’s appointees.
Sabotage, non-cooperation and non-compliance
What will happen when Gaetz begins to tamper with judical processes at state and federal level? What will happen when the overwhelming majority of Kennedy’s employees in the health sector disagree fundamentally with his ludicrous anti-science outlook? What will happen when Hegseth attempts to bump dozens of top generals and navy personnel?
The short answer is there is likely to be sabotage, non-cooperation and non–compliance. But there will also be an increasing tendency towards chaos and dislocation in government departments, like health, education, transport, environmental protection, and in all of the other functions of the state.
We should be clear that socialists do not support the huge apparatus of coercion upon which capitalism rests, in terms of the police and the military…what Engels meant when the described the state fundamentally as “armed bodies of men”. But neither should we ignore the political significance of the event, when someone like Trump throws a spanner in the works to introduce a new level of pandemonium in the functioning of the capitalist system.
What will undermine Trump and his political support will fundamentally be economic factors. His cabinet will be composed entirely of extremely wealthy people, including several billionaires, like Elon Musk. Proposed tax increases and tariffs on imports will do nothing to alleviate the insecurities facing ordinary working class households. On the contrary, for the latter, life will become more precarious and uncertain in the coming months and years.
We can expect bigger struggles than ever before in defence of living standards, wages, women’s rights and on other issues. The USA is entering a period of storms and stresses, of sharp polarisation and class conflict. Adding to the mixture, as it were ‘over the heads’ of workers, is the mayhem that Trump is going to unleash at government level.
Top picture shows the relatively modest scale of Trump rallies – and not a Black face in sight.
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