Tony, you make the rule of Louis Napoleon sound rather benign. In the US, your application of the concept seems to rest on the fact that the society is highly polarized and is reflected on the political level in the inability of either party to effectively govern the bourgeois democratic system in the interest of the ruling class. Trump is evidently dictating policy or is poised to do so above the two class fractions much as the French bourgeoisie accepted Napoleon Bonaparte in that role - with the added touch that the Trump model is extraordinary corrupt, hence the “patrimonial” adjective. Congress and the courts are or are becoming but shell institutions and the masses are as defeated as was the French proletariat in 1848.
I’ve suggested with some skepticism that it remains to be seen whether Trump will, in fact, steal the midterms and install a new regime in the US quite unlike the two party system which has served US capitalism very well since the American Revolution. Much the same gloomy prognosis was offered regarding the "Bonapartist" Bolsinaro and Orban regimes before they were replaced, and the opposition in Turkey and India still has its own media, parties, trade unions, and other independent institutions with which to protest and assemble and potentially to remove their governments by electoral means as in the US. BTW, it's an exaggeration to state that the French working class was “crushed" in 1848 and that the red spectre was invoked but “faced not at all" when Louis Napoleon crowned himself emperor three years later. Throughout the industrialized world the workers' movement was just beginning its rise and French workers were to again mount the Paris barricades during LNB's lifetime. The spectre of Communism was to haunt capitalism from the Paris Commune through the end of the Cold War in the imperialist core and for somewhat longer in the global south before it disappeared from view. The long dureé roughly between 1870 and 1970 was marked by intense class struggle and, in reaction to it, the appearance of military dictatorships and one party states identifying as fascist or representing a less vicious variant reminiscent of 19th century Bonapartism. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43333): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43333 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120796980/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
