Trumpism: A patrimonial Bonapartism regime
By Anthony Teso
Published 5 June, 2026
To understand Trumpism, we need to look at its political form and not just its ideas. Mixing up form and content, or focusing only on surface-level beliefs, has led to years of alarm that miss the real problem and how to address it. (Sotiris 2017)
I want to propose the idea of patrimonial Bonapartism to clarify things, as past confusions had real political costs. This approach does more than explain how Trumpism works; it points toward what organisers and the left must do differently in response. These strategic lessons will be laid out in later sections, directly linking analysis to what can and should be done.
Bonapartism: An exception form of class rule
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Karl Marx explains that Bonapartism arises from certain class conditions. Louis Napoleon’s coup was not due to his personality but the balance of class forces. The ruling class could not govern directly without risking conflict, so it gave up some power to protect its position. When classes are stuck, the executive becomes more independent. Bonaparte did not directly represent the ruling class, but the situation allowed them to keep power when they could not rule themselves.
Bonapartism is not a return to normal capitalist rule, but a possible form it can take under certain conditions. These include a deep leadership crisis, a divided ruling class, the mobilisation of the petty bourgeoisie and marginalised groups, and a breakdown of the usual parliamentary ways of managing class conflict. When these factors are present, the executive can gain some independence while reshaping the conditions for capital accumulation.
Nicos Poulantzas points out a long-term trend that helps explain modern Bonapartism: authoritarian statism. This means more power goes to the executive, parliaments matter less, and lower class groups are pulled into the state. This is not just a reaction to crisis, but part of how monopoly capitalism works. (Gorriti 2024, 1-20) Trumpism did not start this trend. It made it move faster, building on things such as the PATRIOT Act, more executive control over war, and the state taking over civil society groups.
The Weber insertion: Patrimonialism as operational form
Marx’s idea of Bonapartism explains the big picture but not how things work day to day. Max Weber’s idea of patrimonialism helps here.
Weber says rational-legal authority is when officials follow rules and are picked for their skills. Patrimonial authority is a form of power in which it is treated as personal property. In patrimonial systems, staff are picked for loyalty, jobs are given as favours and resources are handed out to friends. The line between public and private interests gets blurry. (“The Role of Bureaucracy in Rational-Legal Authority: A Weberian Analysis” 2025)
Weber thought patrimonialism was part of old-style politics, not modern rule-based states. Many people think it does not apply today. But the main idea — running the state as a personal business based on loyalty — still holds true. (Lachmann 2011, 1-22) What matters is how it works, not where it started.
Patrimonial Bonapartism is not just a mix of ideas. It is a clear way to look at things. Bonapartism explains the key conditions: crisis, class deadlock and executive independence. Patrimonialism explains how things work in practice: loyalty tests, putting family in power, using the law for personal gain, and having personal networks run things. You need both to see the full picture. Without patrimonialism, we miss why the executive acts as it does. Without Bonapartism, we miss why this is possible.
Patrimonial Bonapartism is possible because neoliberalism has lost its dominance as the primary mode of rule. Antonio Gramsci called this an organic crisis. It means the ruling class can no longer lead by consent and must resort to force. Lower classes have lost trust in their old groups but have not built new ones. Consent has turned into coercion. The old system is ending, but nothing new has taken its place. (Sau 2024)
The growth of war powers, the 2008 financial crisis and the loss of public goods are real signs of this crisis. Neoliberalism maintained consent by offering material benefits, such as easy credit in place of wage growth and rising asset values rather than social programs. After 2008, this stopped working, leaving the system with only force. (Chwieroth and Walter 2019, 1-27)
Trumpism did not cause this crisis; it is the political result. The traditional base of Bonapartist movements — the petty bourgeoisie and middle layers squeezed between big capital and labour — provides the mass support. This includes small business owners, independent workers and lower-level managers who feel economic pressure and culturally alienated from the professional-managerial class. The MAGA movement gives these groups a political identity by turning their class issues into nationalist-populist feelings, framing the struggle as “the people” versus “the elite,” instead of focusing on the social relations behind their insecurity. (Meckler 2022, 1-17)
The working-class part of the Trump coalition is real (despite what some liberals claim), but it needs a different explanation. It is not mainly about false consciousness, racism or cultural backwardness. Instead, it demonstrates the collapse of the Democratic Party as a voice for workers, the lack of a labour-based political alternative and the real economic problems caused by decades of neoliberal austerity. Working-class support for right-wing populism is first and foremost a political issue, stemming from the lack of strong left organisations, rather than cultural or psychological factors. (Apostolidis 2021) This diagnosis leads to very different strategic conclusions than the false-consciousness approach.
Patrimonialism in operation
The first Trump administration was Bonapartism with patrimonial tendencies constrained by institutional friction. It had Bonapartist features and some patrimonial tendencies, but these were held back by existing institutions. The “adults in the room” — independent military and intelligence leaders, career civil servants and a partly independent judiciary — acted as checks on full patrimonial control.
These limits are largely gone in his second administration, letting patrimonial Bonapartism take full shape. This is not about reforming bureaucracy. It is about building a staff where jobs are given as personal rewards for loyalty, not skill. The line between being good at your job and being loyal is erased. This is what it means to patrimonialise the law.
For left strategy, this shift raises the stakes and urgency of organisational questions. As the constraints on patrimonialism fall away, the state apparatus itself becomes an instrument for consolidating personal power and dismantling institutional footholds that have historically provided openings for reform or resistance. Traditional tactics that relied on bureaucratic friction or legal autonomy are increasingly ineffective.
Instead, the priority shifts to building independent organisations outside the state, capable of surviving in a hostile environment marked by patronage, politicised enforcement and a shrinking space for dissent. The left’s organisational tasks are not simply about contesting policy outcomes but constructing durable infrastructure, internal discipline and working class roots that can resist — not accommodate — the state’s transformation into an engine of personal rule.
Regulatory capture through personal deals, such as trading tariff exemptions for investment promises or handling trade policy through one-on-one talks instead of set rules, is what Weber called political capitalism. Political power is used to make profit, not just to follow market rules. This is more than normal crony capitalism. In the patrimonial form, power is personal. Companies have to win the leader’s favour, and benefits depend on personal ties rather than official roles or rules. (Laffont and Tirole 1991)
It is important to remember that patrimonial Bonapartism is not just Trump acting on behalf of capital. This approach creates real conflicts with some sections of capital. For example, finance and tech firms that need global talent, as well as global companies, all face real costs from this system, even if they gain in other ways. The state is not just a tool for the ruling class. It reflects a balance of forces. This independence is limited, but it is real.
The imperial dimension: Hub-and-spoke bilateralism
The domestic patrimonial form cannot be separate from the transformation of US imperial strategy. The multilateral frameworks that constituted the institutional architecture of post-war US hegemony — the WTO’s trade rules, NATO’s burden-sharing arrangements and the Bretton Woods institutional complex — represent what Gramsci called the consensual moment of domination extended to the international level.
Robert Cox’s Gramscian framework captures this: hegemony in the international order is not simply the dominance of the most powerful state, but the organisation of that dominance through institutions and norms that achieve a degree of genuine consent from subordinate states. The rules-based international order, for all its ideological mystification, was a real institutional form with real functional content. (Cox 1983, 162-175)
The move to hub-and-spoke bilateralism in Trump-era foreign policy is not just a shift from working with many countries to going it alone. It is a new way of running the empire, as the US can no longer rely on consent and must use more direct power. Bilateral talks let the US use its strength, without being held back by group rules. Each deal is made to fit the other country’s weak spots, and not as part of a shared system.
The same patrimonial logic at home shapes US actions abroad. Trade deals become personal bargains, tariffs are used to get concessions, and alliances are managed as tribute based on personal ties to the leader. The link between how things work at home and the shift to bilateral deals abroad is no accident. Both show the same logic of personal power.
What the framework does and does not do
The idea of patrimonial Bonapartism is helpful because it avoids two common mistakes in the left’s analysis of Trumpism.
The first mistake is to see Trumpism as a total break from democracy and focus only on defending current institutions. This is wrong because real fascism needs a mass movement that destroys working-class groups. This has not happened. This approach is also misleading because it puts working-class politics behind the goal of bringing back the old liberal order. That same order made Trumpism possible. Restoring it only sets up the next wave.
The second mistake is to see Trumpism as just another way for the ruling class to get what it wants, only less polished. This view overlooks the real conflicts between patrimonialism and certain segments of capital. It cannot explain why the executive acts on its own, or how political groups and ideas shape class conflict. Patrimonial Bonapartism is not just a tool for the ruling class; it is not free of class limits either. It is a temporary form, not a permanent one. The real question is whether its own problems, ruling class splits, overreach abroad and working-class anger will lead it to break down — and who will shape what comes next.
Gramsci’s distinction between progressive and regressive Caesarism is relevant. Progressive Caesarism resolves the organic crisis by reorganising the hegemonic bloc on new terms: a passive revolution that achieves genuine stabilisation, incorporating subaltern demands while preventing independent subaltern agency. Regressive Caesarism manages crisis without resolving it, perpetuating organic crisis under a new political form. (Thomas 2018)
The Trumpist formation appears structurally incapable of the former: its patrimonial logic is incompatible with the programmatic coherence that passive revolution requires; its social base lacks the material interests that could underwrite a genuine reorganisation of accumulation. Regressive Caesarism — indefinite crisis management rather than resolution — seems the more likely trajectory. But this assessment has strategic implications that must be drawn out.
Strategic implications: Against passive revolution
This analysis is not just about describing what is happening. It also points to clear strategic tasks and rules out approaches that do not fit the current situation.
If the current crisis is being managed but not solved by regressive Caesarism, the left’s main job is to stop things from settling into this pattern. The goal is to challenge the reasons why crisis management replaces real solutions, not just to fight authoritarianism or defend democracy. These are two different strategies.
The anti-authoritarian approach defends current institutions and works with liberals, often putting working-class politics second. The other approach holds that restoring the old order only sets the stage for the next wave of right-wing populism. It argues that the left should challenge these conditions, not defend and present the previous status quo as the democratic answer to Bonapartism.
The Democratic Party’s structure — focused on candidates, reliant on donors, run by professionals and lacking real membership or discipline — means it cannot do the long-term class-based organising needed to address the crisis. It can win elections, but it cannot build real working-class independence. When the left joins this project, it ends up sidelined, doing the work that helps restore the old order.
The second strategic implication concerns the demobilising function of protest cycles under Bonapartist conditions. The airport occupations of the first term, the Women’s March, the George Floyd uprising and the “No Kings” protests all demonstrated genuine mobilising capacity, but none produced durable organisational power. This was not due to a failure of commitment or imagination; rather, it represents a structural problem.
Bonapartism, unlike fascism, does not need to destroy opposition physically; it just needs to render it ineffective. Episodic mobilisation without organisational consolidation ultimately dissipates. These protests showed real energy but did not build lasting organisations. Protest cycles that do not build lasting groups help Bonapartist stability, even if they cause short-term problems. The lack of a party is not just a choice; it helps the regime. (Girod, Stewart, and Walters 2018, 537-550) Concrete steps for channeling protest energy into durable organisations are necessary.
Efforts should focus on recruiting directly from protest mobilisations into existing membership-based organisations: for example, organising onboarding meetings after major actions and providing clear pathways from demonstrations to structured participation. Setting up issue-based working groups or committees that emerge from protest demands can also help preserve networks and focus ongoing activity. Examples are forming tenants’ unions from housing justice protests or creating workplace committees emerging from labour-focused demonstrations. The point is to turn ephemeral mobilisation into ongoing organisational forms — membership rosters, regular meeting structures, defined campaigns — that allow protest energy to consolidate rather than fade.
Logistic workers have a structural power that exceeds their numerical proportion of the workforce. Workers in the healthcare sector — another industry where organising activity is underway — show a similar concentration. The left’s relationship to labour is not just one terrain among many; it conditions the possibilities for the others. An independent left politics that is not embedded in ongoing labour struggle is not independent working-class politics; it is radical commentary.
The organisational form question
Patrimonial Bonapartism creates specific conditions for left organisations that compound the already difficult problem of building amid the wreckage of neoliberalism’s organisation. Authorities are selectively closing and weaponising institutional channels through which reformist pressure-group politics operates.
Federal regulatory levers, legislative incrementalism, the lobbyist-and-endorsement circuit — these are increasingly inoperative terrains. This is not uniform: subnational governments retain real space, the judiciary maintains partial independence, and ruling class contradictions create occasional openings at the federal level. But the overall trajectory is toward a political environment in which organisations that have bet their strategy on pressure-group tactics within the Democratic coalition will find those levers progressively disabled. (“Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Executive Order 14147)” 2025)
The organisational form must be built for a more hostile terrain. The case for independent left political action outside the Democratic Party follows from the conjunctural analysis , not merely from principled anti-lesser-evilism.
The Democratic Party, as currently constituted, is a vehicle for passive revolution. Subordination to it reproduces the conditions for the next Bonapartist upsurge. Second, patrimonial Bonapartism’s instability creates genuine openings that an electorally present left can contest, but only if it has already built the organisational infrastructure — cadre, discipline, labour embeddedness, demonstrated capacity — to do so. Third, the Democratic Party’s organisational form actively dissolves the conditions for cadre formation and sustained political development that independent working-class politics requires.
What does it mean to take the first steps toward independent left action? The initial moves must be concrete and rooted in existing struggles. This includes launching local electoral campaigns backed by ongoing organising, forging durable alliances with unions and worker centres, building tenant and community organisations, and establishing democratic membership structures that enable collective decision-making and accountability.
Examples of early, winnable initiatives that build momentum and experience are: starting with city council or school board races; organising workplace committees in key sectors; or supporting labour struggles at the shop-floor level. These efforts aim to demonstrate that left organisations can deliver material gains, develop local leadership, and grow out of real relationships to working-class communities, rather than seek shortcuts through national prestige races. The goal is to anchor independent left politics in visible, durable forms that lay the groundwork for broader challenges ahead.
Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign is an instructive test case. The analytical significance is not primarily electoral but organisational: a candidacy with genuine organisational backing, running on a program that names class interests and contests the terrain of populist grievance from the left, demonstrates that this terrain is not the exclusive property of right-wing populism. It forces a legibility problem for the Bonapartist interpellation, making visible the class content that the nationalist-populist framework dissolves. It need not win to matter; it just needs to demonstrate that the contest is possible and specify the organisational conditions under which it can be sustained.
The 2028 left-labour presidential candidacy debate — along the lines of proposals by Democratic Socialists of America co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer and other similar variants — falls into a substitutionist trap that the conjunctural analysis illuminates. A presidential campaign, as the leading organisational form, puts the cart before the horse: it requires organisational resources it cannot produce itself.
A presidential candidacy that expresses accumulated organisational power is strategically coherent. A presidential candidacy that is supposed to generate that power reverses the sequence and reproduces the celebrity politics the left criticises. The sequence matters: cadre formation, local organisational density, labour embeddedness and demonstrated capacity at lower electoral levels, then the presidential candidacy as an expression of accumulated power, not its substitute. The leading link is not the campaign form; it is the organisational work that makes campaigns mean something.
The core strategic wager
Patrimonial Bonapartism names a conjuncture, not a permanent condition. It names the specific form that capitalist political rule has taken under conditions of organic crisis, ruling-class fragmentation and hegemonic exhaustion.
As a conjunctural form, it has conditions of possibility and dissolution. The left’s task is to work on those conditions of dissolution — to contest the terrain that patrimonial Bonapartism requires for its reproduction — while building the organisational capacity to be able to genuinely resolve the organic crisis in the working-class’ interests.
Against both the “defend democracy” liberal absorption strategy and the “mass movement without party” activist cycle, the conjunctural analysis points toward a specific strategic wager: build a disciplined, multi-tendency socialist organisation with genuine labour roots, capable of independent electoral intervention at the level where it can actually contest terrain, and treating the Bonapartist crisis as an opening for working-class political independence rather than a reason to subordinate to the Democratic Party’s reconstitution project.
What does this mean in practice? Discipline refers to clear membership criteria, structures that ensure accountability and the ability to debate strategy internally and then act collectively. A multi-tendency organisation welcomes different socialist currents but requires unity in action and internal forums for comradely disagreement that does not paralyse decision-making. Labour-rooted means more than supporting unions from outside. It requires a base of active members embedded in key workplaces and sectors, prioritising organising, leadership development and ongoing engagement with rank-and-file struggles.
The structure must combine local chapters with national coordination, democratic decision-making bodies and specific mechanisms for linking electoral work to ongoing labour and community organising. Membership is active and participatory, not just formal affiliation. Only a group with this kind of organisational infrastructure can seize the strategic opportunities presented by the current crisis.
This is not a comfortable position. It accepts near-term marginalisation — real electoral costs, organisational difficulties and the isolation that comes from refusing the lesser evil logic — in exchange for the organisational capacity that enables long-term relevance. However, the alternative does not constitute a viable strategy.
Repeated subordination to lesser-evil politics, followed by the next organic crisis and the next right-wing populist capture of working-class grievance, is a cycle — one this essay has been at pains to name and interrupt. The fully worked-out patrimonial Bonapartist diagnosis is an argument for organisational seriousness above all else.
The organic crisis will not be resolved by better messaging, more authentic candidates or the discovery of the correct electoral vehicle for a left-labour presidential run. This issue is resolved — if at all — by organisations that can contest the class content of populist grievance, embed themselves in strategic labour sectors and sustain political development through the defeats and partial victories that such work necessarily entails.
The task is not to find the shortcut. The task is to do the work.
References
Sotiris, Panagiotis. “Althusser and Poulantzas: Hegemony and the State.” Materialismo Storico — Rivista di Filosofia 2, no. 1 (2017). https://doi.org/10.14276/2531-9582.1012 Accessed May 29, 2026
Gorriti, Jacinta. “Internacionalización del capital y crisis del Estado en la teoría de Nicos Poulantzas: El concepto de estatismo autoritario.” Argumentos 30 (2024): 1-20. https://doi.org/10.62174/arg.2024.9946 Accessed May 29, 2026
“The Role of Bureaucracy in Rational-Legal Authority: A Weberian Analysis.” Sociology Institute (2025). https://sociology.institute/political-sociology/role-bureaucracy-rational-legal-authority-weberian-analysis/ Accessed May 29, 2026
Lachmann, Richard. “Coda: American Patrimonialism: The Return of the Repressed.” American Sociological Review 76, no. 1 (2011): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716210396814 Accessed May 29, 2026
Sau, Andrea. “Hegemony and crisis: An analysis of habit and ideology as mechanisms for achieving ‘consent’.” Capital & Class 49, no. 1 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1177/03098168241268031 Accessed May 29, 2026
Chwieroth, Jeffrey M., and Andrew Walter. “The financialization of mass wealth, banking crises and politics over the long run.” Review of International Political Economy 25, no. 4 (2019): 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066119843319 Accessed May 29, 2026
Meckler, Jeremy. “Marx America Gramsci Again: Understanding Trumpism through Bonapartism and Caesarism.” Populism 5, no. 1 (2022): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1163/25888072-bja10031 Accessed May 29, 2026
Apostolidis, Paul. “Desperate Responsibility: Precarity and Right-Wing Populism.” American Sociological Review 50, no. 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720985770 Accessed May 29, 2026
Laffont, Jean-Jacques, and Jean Tirole. “The Politics of Government Decision-Making: A Theory of Regulatory Capture.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, no. 4 (1991). https://doi.org/10.2307/2937958 Accessed May 29, 2026
Cox, Robert W. “Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 12, no. 2 (1983): 162-175. https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298830120020701 Accessed May 29, 2026
Thomas, Peter D. “Gramsci's Revolutions: Passive and Permanent.” Modern Intellectual History (2018). https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2018.15 Accessed May 29, 2026
Girod, Desha M., Megan A. Stewart, and Meir R. Walters. “Mass protests and the resource curse: The politics of demobilization in rentier autocracies.” International Studies Quarterly 62, no. 3 (2018): 537-550. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqy019 Accessed May 29, 2026
“Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Executive Order 14147).” Executive Order 14147, January 19, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ending_the_Weaponization_of_the_Federal_Government_%28Executive_Order_14147%29
Defining Trumpism, defeating Trump
“Defining Trumpism, defeating Trump” is based on talks given by Paul Le Blanc in Potsdam, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Mannheim, during a May speaking tour in Germany. It is appearing simultaneously on LINKS and Communis.
I will begin this presentation with a brief overview of the global context. I will then offer some comments about the Donald Trump phenomenon and what I call “Trumpism.” I will also briefly touch on the debate of whether we are dealing here with fascism. Finally, I will conclude with comments on the upsurge against Trump and Trumpism, some strengths and limitations of this resistance, and what the future may bring.
Three snapshots of the overall context
But first, let me sketch out three snapshots of the overall context.
1. We are in a period of transition
Just as three decades ago we transitioned from the Cold War era to the age of globalization, we have now entered an age of crisis, chaos and unraveling. The structure and dynamics of the global economy generate deepening inequalities, instabilities and destructiveness, which throw into question the future of human civilization.
This has been accompanied by a sharp tilt to the right by a significant section of the ruling class but also within the larger population, even if this is fiercely resisted by many others. Trump’s right-wing extremism is only one manifestation of a larger, deeper trend. The eroding quality of life for more and more of the world’s laboring majorities is being matched by growing authoritarianism, irrationality and imperialist violence.
Most serious of all, however, is the imminent threat to humanity’s survival: a voracious market economy designed to further enrich incredibly wealthy elites is intimately connected with the immense environmental destruction engulfing our world with cascading floods, wildfires, pollution, climate change, and more.
2. There has been a deep erosion and partial collapse of the organized labor movement
The workers movement in the United States persists, in large measure, as a bureaucratic and largely ineffectual shell of what it once was. Related to this is a generalized disintegration and melting away of the traditional organized left. This amounts to a dramatic erosion of the organized source of practical political perspectives, accumulations of experience, and seasoned cadres and organizers.
In the late 20th century, the two major currents on the left were essentially reformist, entangled in the liberal capitalist Democratic Party. One was the social-democratic milieu, at the core of which was the Socialist Party of America. The other was the Stalinist and post-Stalinist milieu, at the core of which was the Communist Party USA. In addition, there was an array of independent Marxists, left-wing pacifists, Trotskyists and would-be Trotskyists, a temporary groundswell of Maoists, and successive waves of a very broad, vibrantly active “New Left.”
This multi-faceted array was given a coherence and weight largely because of its complex interrelationship with the larger working-class movement. With the transition from the Cold War to globalization, with the fading and erosion of the left-wing subculture, and with the aging and falling away of cadres and organizers, traditional left organizations failed to renew and replenish themselves adequately, continuing to exist only as fragmentary remnants.
3. The present age of crisis, chaos and unraveling has had a radicalizing impact on new layers of young people who are essentially part of a precarious but expanding working class
This was reflected in the Occupy Wall Street insurgency, the Black Lives Matter insurgency, a multi-faceted women’s liberation insurgency, and in new manifestations of union organizing and strike actions. It has also been reflected in the Bernie Sanders campaigns and other substantial electoral efforts to bring socialism into mainstream US politics, generally within the context of the Democratic Party.
It has furthermore been reflected in the substantial growth of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), with a paper membership now of 100,000. Although influenced by social-democratic reformism, DSA has been a magnet for a variety of radical currents.
Trump and Trumpism
Every day a cascade of news headlines tells us of new and often mismanaged developments related to the Trump regime: horrific, but often blundering, policies of imperialist expansion and overreach, from Gaza, Venezuela and the Iran fiasco, to threats against Cuba, Greenland and even Canada; intensification of vicious (but seemingly unsustainable) anti-immigrant repression; growing scandals related to the mishandled files of the late sex offender Jeffery Epstein, whom Trump — himself long embroiled in sex scandals — befriended for years; and economic policies that benefit billionaires but have devastating consequences for most Americans.
I want to focus not on the headlines, but on the underlying ideology and social forces behind the Trump regime, and explore our growing anti-Trump resistance.
Before examining the ideology sometimes labeled as Trumpism, let us pause to consider the mediocrity with whose name this “ism” is identified. Trump’s qualities certainly include arrogance and bigotry, and he is notorious for being a fundamentally dishonest person, with an inclination to be a bully and a braggart. He is a self-promoting “go-getter” who compulsively highlights his achievements but also claims to have gone further and gotten more than is the case. An ignorant man who glorifies his ignorance (with the aggressive assertion “I don’t read books!”), he claims to know far more than he does. He takes credit for accomplishments that are not his.
His billionaire status has added luster, resources and authority to the narcissistic self-construction of the person that is Trump. He is quintessentially, and very proudly, a capitalist. Some critics insist Trump is a fascist. Others question whether he is consistent and coherent enough to be even comparable to a Benito Mussolini or an Adolf Hitler. But Trumpism transcends the dysfunctionality, corruption and desperate but dangerous flailing about of this ageing individual and his regime. Several essential elements help define Trumpism.
One element is armed and dangerous; namely, the forces that came together to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which included the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, militant components of the Tea Party movement, latter-day partisans of the old Southern Confederacy, and various Nazi and white supremacist groups. These once-marginalized elements have come into the political mainstream and grown substantially, with the active encouragement of Trump and others around him. But this cunning, avaricious, profoundly limited individual and his acolytes were hardly capable of controlling them. Indeed, as a whole, the huge and diverse MAGA movement cannot be understood as being under his control.
Blended into segments of this pro-Trump constituency is something called “Christian nationalism,” which rejects the ideals of radical democracy enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Instead, it asserts that the US was founded by Christians who wanted to build a nation on the foundation of God’s will, as defined by right-wing fundamentalists who see the notion of equal-rights democracy as a heresy incompatible with Christianity.
Another essential element of Trumpism can be found in a quite different cluster of conservative entities and individuals drawn together in The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Founded in the 1970s, the Heritage Foundation has served as a center for conservative academics, intellectuals and policymakers since the Reagan presidency.
Its most recent big effort was a 900-page, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which is meant to serve as a policy-making guide for the second Trump administration. According to its self-description:
This book is the product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from across the conservative movement and around the country. Contributors include former elected officials, world-renowned economists, and veterans from four presidential Administrations.
The bottom line of this conservative manifesto is a defense of unrestrained capitalism. The US president’s primary goal , we are told, should be to unleash “the dynamic genius of free enterprise.” This vision of capitalism dovetails with proposals to impose a centralized authoritarian regime that can enforce a wide range of right-wing policies.
Another essential element in Trumpism has been the Republican Party. Leading party figures and staffers, much like the conservative mainstream as a whole, did not start out as Trump supporters. Yet, as explained by Tim Miller, one knowledgeable ex-Republican operative, to win elections he and others like him “advanced arguments that none of us believed” and “made people feel aggrieved about issues we had no intent or ability to solve.”1
Miller confessed that a quiet and unacknowledged racism was often employed:
These tactics became not just unchecked but supercharged by a right-wing media ecosystem that we were in bed with and that had its own nefarious incentives, sucking in clicks and views through rage hustling without any intention of delivering something that might bring value to ordinary people’s lives.
Another ex-Republican operative, Stuart Stevens, insisted Trump “is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party became over the last fifty years or so,”2 a natural product of the seeds of racism, self-deception and anger that became the party’s essence.
Regardless of what happens to Trump, the larger phenomenon of Trumpism will be with us for some time. Trump is not the disease, he is the symptom of a malaise that has been prevalent within the US for many years.
This is a global phenomenon involving powerful movements — and sometimes governments — in various countries: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Norway, Russia, Turkey, the US, and more. A combination of terms is used to describe what is happening: right-wing populism, authoritarian xenophobic ultra-nationalism, etc. All seek to capture its complex content.
Sometimes the word “fascism” is applied, but we are dealing with something that is not yet a fascist regime. There is room to protest and organize against what Trump represents. There are broad forces, not just on the left, in opposition to him. Democratic Party liberals and centrists have helped organize recent protests. They see Trumpism as a threat to stability and any kind of coherent, durable system. Those of us on the left need to work with some of these forces where there is agreement. But, at a certain point, we need to go beyond what some of these people represent, because they are part of the problem. They helped to bring Trump into being through their own limitations and inadequacies.
Looking beyond Trump
To be effective in resisting Trumpism, we must understand it. But to do that adequately, we must look beyond Trumpism. From Democratic Party liberals and centrists to moderately conservative Republicans, the old political establishment has been discredited over the past several decades: facing problems, dealing with problems, failing to deal with problems, unable to deal with problems that are hurting and scaring large numbers of people. The American Dream that a majority felt they could finally start enjoying has been disrupted and seems to be fading.
Democrats and the old-line Republicans have been unable to face this. They have lied about it, saying, “Oh no, everything’s fine.” But people knew everything was not fine, and this fueled a radicalization within the US population, the US working class and the electorate. Another aspect of working-class experience is that the labor movement and trade unions tied in with the Democratic Party proved increasingly unable to help workers. Unions were progressively eliminated as a key force on the US economic and political scene.
People who are hurting and increasingly finding their lives disrupted are looking for solutions. The solutions offered by the Democratic Party and the old version of the Republican Party do not work anymore. Trump presented a new way of seeing things that was not part of the US political mainstream. He made all kinds of inflated promises while attacking and scapegoating people of color and immigrants, saying that they are the problem. Trump was projected as the kind of man who was going to “solve” the problem.
A large segment of the American people — though not a majority — have been drawn to that outlook. A segment of the US ruling class (not all of it ) has also concluded that Trump’s authoritarian policies can help maintain a certain stability. Instability is threatening their profits and system, so they are prepared to embrace his policies.
Such a situation did not exist during the Vietnam War period of the 1960s and early ’70s. Many had illusions about the system’s long-term viability, illusions that are harder to sustain today. This affects the kind of politicians people are inclined to support and the solutions they look for. It poses a more complex situation than one that could presumably be resolved simply by ending the war and providing civil rights legislation to advance equal opportunity for all. Addressing this complexity is a matter to which I will return shortly.
Throughout much of the 20th century, the organized left was a dynamic force of considerable significance in the US. Among workers and the oppressed, it mobilized effective struggles that won genuine victories. It inspired hopes for further struggles that would advance human rights, improve the lives of the working-class majority, and bring to birth a better world. Among the wealthy and powerful, it inspired fear and rage.
By the end of the 20th century, however, the organized left had largely been absorbed into the Democratic Party. Some of its rhetoric, many of its values, and much of its reform agenda (often diluted) can now be found in that party; but a sincere and practical commitment to replace the economic dictatorship of capitalism with the economic democracy of socialism is no longer on the table.
The most powerful elements in the Democratic Party are entwined in the capitalist economy. With capitalism entering an era of disintegration and decay, they have no real solutions to offer. Campaign rhetoric aside, they are incapable of providing a durable alternative to Trumpism. They have compromised working-class interests for decades to help maintain capitalist profitability, wreaking havoc on the party’s working-class base.
Putting forward a resistance that makes possible a revolutionary breakthrough
There have been waves of protest demonstrations over the past year. The first big one was in April 2025, under the slogan of “Hands Off” — hands off the health care system, education system and various other things that are being dismantled or attacked by the Trump regime. This was followed by smaller but still huge May Day demonstrations, focusing especially on social and economic issues, but also referencing foreign policy: Palestine, Ukraine, etc.
The biggest protests of all were the “No Kings” demonstrations: a huge outpouring of anger, rage and ridicule of Trump’s pretensions of being popular and powerful. People said, “No Kings,” with many accusing him of being a fascist, a totalitarian, a dictator. There was agreement on defending principles in the revolutionary Declaration of Independence, and in the more conservative US Constitution, both of which he is walking all over. These mass actions of resistance have continued into the Spring of 2026.
Pro-Trump elements have not come close to mobilizing anything on this scale. Trump claims to have an overwhelming mandate from the people — that is a lie. He won an electoral majority, but certainly not a landslide majority. He did not get an absolute majority among the people. He was able to rack up more popular votes than his competitors in 2024, but his mandate is razor thin. And he is eroding his base of support with policies that hurt us all.
Mass mobilizations on the streets of Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and elsewhere have defeated concerted and violent efforts by Trump forces deployed to intimidate and overwhelm resistance to Trumpism’s policies. Those policies are supported by a hard core of Trump supporters, in the belief that this will Make America Great Again. But the hearts and minds of a majority cannot be found in that right-wing hard core.
Equal opportunity and a better life for all, the things that have been central to the American Dream, are not on the cards right now. Increasing numbers of people are facing this reality and thinking through their situation in new ways. There is a radicalization. Some of it has been drawn in a right-wing authoritarian direction, but there are also more left-wing ideas in circulation now than at the start of this century.
In terms of electoral efforts and educational outreach, Sanders has been putting forward socialism as a solution. So has a radical cluster in Congress, the so-called Squad. Most dramatically, Zohran Mamdani was overwhelmingly voted in as New York City mayor running as an open democratic socialist. All of this has had a big impact.
The way these figures define socialism tends to be vague and sometimes goes too far in compromising with the political establishment and capitalist system. But the idea of socialism, of economic democracy, of the economy being controlled by the majority — that is, by the working class — is part of the solution. That is a difficult thing for some people to grasp or feel comfortable with, but realities are fluid right now, and there is tremendous discontent.
As the recent demonstrations indicate, there is a growing rejection of Trump’s phony so-called solutions. The process may stop or push back some of Trump’s worst policies. But such protests and acts of resistance by themselves will not solve the underlying problems. Those problems remain. Some people involved in the protests and resistance still harbor illusions and hopes in the Democratic Party. But for significant numbers of people, it is no longer a credible solution to the problems we face.
Socialist perspectives must be put forward in a way that makes sense to people. They need to be tied to actual struggles to improve working-class people’s lives. But it must be understood that these are just initial steps; we have to go much further. The current economic system will continue to undermine improvements and protections we are fighting for. Those in control of the system will do all they can to undermine and defeat our efforts to create a decent life for all. We need an economic democracy — that is what socialism is about.
The mass protests and struggles to defend and improve people’s lives are needed , but by themselves are not enough. As more people come to understand this through their lived experience, a revolutionary breakthrough becomes possible. Such a breakthrough will depend, however, on the ability of left-wing and socialist forces to grow and mature in ways that help make this happen.
- 1
Tim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell (New York: Harper, 2022), p. xii.
- 2
Stuart Stevens, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (New York: Vintage Books, 2021), pp. xiii, 4.
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