[Edited Message Follows] [Reason: Missed nuances of Farber's argument in original.]
For those who have not seen it, I recommend Samuel Farber’s piece in the March/April issue of Against the Current: https://againstthecurrent.org/atc241/on-donald-trump-the-u-s-ruling-class-bonapartism-in-america/ Farber refers to other contributions to the debate on the left which are worth consulting dating back to Trump’s first term. They include Sam Young's “Is Donald Trump the New Louis Bonaparte?” (Medium, November 6, 2025), Peter Gordon's “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald J. Trump,” (Boston Review, Nov. 8, 2024), Wolfgang Streeck’s “Trump and the Trumpists” (Inference, April 2017), and Dylan Riley’s “American Brumaire?” (New Left Review, Jan-Feb 2017). Farber not only rejects the characterization of the Trump administration as Bonapartist, but also rejects as I do the more widespread misconception that other autocrats like Modi, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, and Orban represent the authentic model. He notes that even were "a fully authoritarian system” to take root in the US, “it would be unlikely to take the form of Bonapartism for the reasons discussed above, but rather that of a Hungarian type of regime under Viktor Orban, where the content of political democracy has been entirely emptied out and only the outer shell or appearance remains.” I’ve previously argued on the list (have unfortunately lost the link) that so long as opposition parties and protest movements endure even in a very weakened state in such systems, the potential for their revival and the electoral removal of authoritarian governments is everpresent. I noted this prior to the defeat of Bolsinaro in Brazil in 2022 and it was confirmed again two months ago with the defeat of Orban in Hungary. The potential for electoral change is what differentiates these states from Bonapartist and Fascist regimes where not even the "shell or appearance" of bourgeois democracy remains. Absent is this distinction in Farber’s article, who did not take into account the possiblity of Orban's defeat, published on the very eve of the Hungarian election. Those who go beyond Farber and argue that the Trump regime is already “fully authoritarian" or even Bonapartist, where the "content of political democracy has been entirely emptied out and only the outer shell or appearance remains”, might want to revisit their assumptions in light of the past experience in Brazil and Hungary which may find similar expression in the upcoming election cycle in the US. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42063): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42063 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/119773879/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
