On Trump and Trumpism: Inventory versus state form
“Trumpism and the state form” by Anthony Teso, is appearing simultaneously on LINKS and Communis. In this reply, Teso critically engages with Le Blanc's article “Defining Trumpism, defeating Trump,” which appeared, also simultaneously, on LINKS and Communis.
Paul Le Blanc’s “Defining Trumpism, defeating Trump” is a significant contribution from a committed comrade, and I want to start by outlining our substantial areas of agreement. Le Blanc and I agree that Trump is a symptom rather than a disease, that Trumpism will outlast the man, and that the regime is not yet a fascist one in any rigorous sense. We agree the Democratic Party helped bring Trump into being through its decades-long abandonment of the working-class base to which it stakes a claim and that liberal co-belligerents in the anti-Trump resistance become, at a certain point, part of the problem rather than the solution. We agree that the radicalizing layer is a precarious and expanding working class and that the “mandate” Trump claims to have is a razor-thin fiction. On the conjuncture, Le Blanc and I are largely on the same side of the barricade.
My disagreement is not with his conclusions. The focus is on the method he uses to reach them, and on its limitations. My argument is simple: because Le Blanc works at the level of inventory rather than state form, he can gesture toward the right answers without fully grounding his diagnosis of the regime or his account of how it might be defeated. He poses the decisive question of our moment — what kind of regime is this? — and then answers it by enumeration. He gives us a list: the January 6 paramilitaries, Christian nationalism, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and the captured Republican Party. “Several essential elements help define Trumpism,” he writes, and proceeds to name them. But a list of elements is not a definition. It is an inventory. And an inventory, however accurate, operates at the wrong level of abstraction to answer the question Le Blanc himself has raised.
The hole where the state should be
I have argued elsewhere that the Trump regime is best grasped as patrimonial Bonapartism: a personalist executive that has acquired relative autonomy from the class it nonetheless serves, ruling through loyalty rather than legality, balancing fractions of capital against one another and commanding a mass movement it cannot fully discipline. The point of the concept is not terminological elegance. It is to identify the regime’s concrete vulnerabilities: the brittleness of a personalist rule, the instability of a mass base that cannot be fully commanded, and the conditional character of elite support. I will not rehearse that argument in full here. I raise it because Le Blanc’s own essay assembles, almost despite itself, the raw materials the concept is built from and then leaves them lying unassembled on the floor.
Consider his own account. One section of the ruling class has concluded that Trump’s authoritarianism can stabilize a system whose instability threatens profits. At the same time, the MAGA movement is, by Le Blanc’s own description, only loosely under Trump’s control; “as a whole,” he writes, it “cannot be understood as being under his control.” These are the defining features of a Bonapartist configuration: an executive that serves capital without directly expressing the rule of any single faction, and a mass base mobilized from above that retains an autonomy its sponsor cannot fully command. Marx described this relation in 1852, when he showed how Louis Bonaparte could represent a class precisely by seeming to stand above all classes.
Le Blanc has the data. What he lacks is a clear concept of how the state should be structured to organize the data into a coherent explanation. And so the analysis, having gestured at structure, slides back into the register it claimed to be leaving behind: the psychology of the man. We are told at length that Trump is arrogant, bigoted, dishonest, a bully, a braggart and an ignorant self-promoter who glorifies his ignorance. All true, no doubt. But Le Blanc opened by insisting we look past the headlines to “the underlying ideology and social forces.” The catalog of Trump’s vices is the headline. It is precisely the level of abstraction at which liberal commentary has been stranded for a decade and which a Marxist account exists to transcend.
Why ‘not yet fascism’ is a right answer reached the wrong way
Le Blanc’s treatment of the question of fascism illustrates the cost. His conclusion is accurate: this is not a consolidated fascist regime, there is still room for protest and organization, and the apparatus has yet to be seized in the manner that fascism typically necessitates. I hold the same position. But look at how he arrives there. He writes that “we are dealing with something that is not yet a fascist regime.” The work in that sentence is done by the word “yet.” It is a temporal hedge, not a structural determination. It tells us where we are on a timeline without telling us what kind of thing is moving along it.
This matters strategically, not merely terminologically. If the reason Trumpism is considered “not yet” fascism is that it has not progressed far enough, then the implied politics suggest a need for vigilance against a critical threshold: monitor the moment of crossing and intensify resistance as it approaches. But if the regime has a determinate present form — a patrimonial Bonapartism with its laws of motion and its own characteristic instabilities — then the strategic question changes. We are not waiting at a gate. We are confronting a specific structure with specific vulnerabilities, as previously stated: the brittleness of a personalistic rule, the fractiousness of a base that cannot be commanded, and the conditional and revocable character of the capital fraction’s support. Naming the form tells us where to push. The timeline metaphor only tells us to brace.
Nicos Poulantzas understood that the authoritarian restructuring of the capitalist state was not a rest stop on the road to fascism but a distinct configuration of the state form under conditions of crisis. In other words, the question is not simply how far a regime has advanced along a single continuum but what kind of structure it presently is. To collapse that distinction into a question of degree, of how close we are to Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler, is to lose exactly what is analytically and strategically usable. Le Blanc raises the comparison to Mussolini and Hitler and then sensibly declines it. But declining a bad comparison is not the same as offering a good concept.
The patrimonial moment Le Blanc names but does not theorize
One more thing in Le Blanc’s inventory deserves to be highlighted, as his method underuses it the most. He quotes ex-Republican operative Tim Miller on a party that advanced arguments its own apparatus did not believe in, and Stuart Stevens on Trump as “the logical conclusion” of fifty years of Republican degeneration. This is excellent material. But Le Blanc reads it mainly as a story about cynicism and racism, moral categories, when it is also, and more usefully, a story about the hollowing-out of legal-rational party structures and their replacement by relations of personal fealty.
That replacement has a name in the Weberian vocabulary: it is the displacement of bureaucratic-legal authority by patrimonial authority, a rule organized around the household and the loyalty of retainers rather than around office and rule. The purges of the disloyal, the elevation of family and courtiers, and the treatment of the state apparatus as a personal possession to be staffed by clients: these are not merely the vices of a “mediocrity,” as Le Blanc has it. They are the operating principles of a determinate mode of rule. Calling Trump a mediocrity is satisfying and accurate, but this judgment focuses on the individual rather than providing an analysis of the system. The patrimonial logic does not depend on Trump being clever. It depends on the prior decay of the institutions Trumpism colonizes, which is precisely what Miller and Stevens, read structurally, describe.
This theoretical issue matters because it bears directly on strategy. If we misidentify the form of rule, we also misidentify where its weak points lie and what kind of political organization is required to exploit them.
From resistance to breakthrough: The missing vehicle
The essay’s strategic section is where Le Blanc’s enumerative method exacts its highest price. Le Blanc walks us through the mass mobilizations (“Hands Off,” May Day, the “No Kings” demonstrations) and the electoral expressions of the socialist revival: Bernie Sanders, the Squad, and, most dramatically, Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York. He rightly concedes that these figures define socialism vaguely and compromise too far with the establishment and capitalist system. He then closes by saying a “revolutionary breakthrough becomes possible,” but “will depend… on the ability of left-wing and socialist forces to grow and mature in ways that help make this happen.”
That sentence should be the beginning of an argument, not the end of one. The maturation of socialist forces is cited as the key factor for a breakthrough to happen, but there is no consideration of the organizational structure that transforms scattered protests into lasting power. This is the mirror image of a tendency I have criticized at length on the contemporary left: the habit of naming a party into existence, of mistaking the declaration of an organization for its construction. Le Blanc does the inverse. Rather than prematurely declaring the vehicle, he defers it to a future “maturation” whose mechanism remains unspecified. Both moves avoid the hard part, which is the actual problem of organization: what relation between mass struggle, electoral intervention, and a disciplined political nucleus could convert the energy of “No Kings” into something that survives the next demobilization.
And here the evasion has a precise location. Le Blanc tells us the organized left was “absorbed into the Democratic Party.” Yet, in the same essay, he celebrates Mamdani’s victory, won on the Democratic ballot line, inside the party he has just diagnosed as the graveyard of the left. That tension does not invalidate his point, but it does create a strategic problem the essay leaves unaddressed. The question of the ballot line, of the clean break, the dirty break and the dirty stay, of whether socialists can use the Democratic ballot without being used by it, is the central strategic question that the Mamdani campaign poses. An essay that raises Mamdani as its most dramatic evidence and then leaves the ballot-line question untouched stops short of the decisive problem.
What is at stake in the level of abstraction?
None of this is a charge of bad faith or bad politics. Le Blanc’s instincts are sound, and his broad strokes of conjunctural reading align with mine. The argument I am making is narrower and, I think, more useful for that. The method of enumeration, which involves listing the elements of Trumpism and the moments of resistance, cannot adequately address either question. Le Blanc himself highlights the type of regime that confronts us and the means by which it can be defeated. An inventory of features will never yield a concept of form, and an inventory of protests will never yield a theory of organization.
We agree the regime is not fascist, but we disagree that you can establish this without a theory of the state form; the enumerative method guarantees this is necessary. We do not disagree that the Democrats are part of the problem; we disagree with celebrating Mamdani while leaving the ballot-line question untouched. We agree that a revolutionary breakthrough depends on the maturation of socialist forces, but we disagree that “maturation” means anything until the organizational problem is posed concretely.
Defining Trumpism and defeating Trump (Le Blanc’s own program, a beneficial one) requires raising the analysis a level: from the elements to the form, from the moments to the vehicle. Patrimonial Bonapartism is my proposal for a definition of Trumpism. The party’s unresolved problem is the name with which I would frame the problem of defeating Trump. I offer both as the work his essay leaves undone — and that the moment will not let us defer — rather than as a rebuke to a comrade whose conclusions I largely share. Socialist analysis must identify both the structure it faces and the organization capable of acting on that knowledge; otherwise, it will merely register dangers and applaud resistance.
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.
