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How can Trumpism be explained? Trump’s policies have shattered all conventional norms of the capitalist world, and much of his stance – especially his economic policies- clearly contradicts the interests of the capitalist class, even in the United States itself. Yet, the Trump administration insists on implementing these policies. Why? What are the causes and contexts behind Trump’s rise and consolidation of power? Is the world facing an irrational and insane President? Is Trump merely an accidental anomaly in the capitalist system? I don’t think so. Trumpism has emerged from the crisis, contradictions, and dead-ends of 21st-century capitalism.
If there is any irrationality or madness, it belongs to a system that can no longer sustain itself through its usual and conventional policies and is about to drag the world into destruction with the system itself.
Project 2025: A Tailored Suit for Trump
First of all, Trump’s current policies are not spontaneous or off-the-cuff. In April 2023, a comprehensive plan called Project 2025 was published by far-right theorists at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This 900-page document, drafted with the expectation of Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, lays out the roadmap for his potential future administration. Trump’s current policies— mass purging of officials and replacing them with personal “loyalists,” absolute presidential control over the executive branch, undermining the judiciary and legislature, dismantling the Department of Education, cutting climate change research funding, injecting Christian values into the government and society, banning abortion, denying LGBTQ identities, slashing healthcare programs (Medicare and Medicaid), criminalizing contraceptives, persecuting “anti-white racists,” deporting “illegal” immigrants using the military and detainment camps, economic protectionism—are all based on this plan.
On the international stage, Trump’s abandonment of liberal democracy includes confronting Europe and traditional U.S. allies, withdrawing from the Paris Accord, denying climate change, leaving the WHO and the UN Human Rights Council, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, threatening Greenland’s sovereignty, proposing Canada’s annexation as the 51st U.S. state, suggesting Gaza become a tourist resort by expelling Palestinians, and imposing tariffs on almost all imports.
During his campaign, Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 under criticism, even from conservatives, who argued it violated the rule of law, separation of powers, church-state separation, and civil rights. But in practice, he followed its recommendations after taking office. One of the main architects of this project, Russell Vought—a fervent Christian who identifies as a nationalist-Christian—is a key figure in both Trump’s former and current cabinets.
Thus, it is clear that the line that Trump is following is a thought-out and worked-out direction and not the result of his personal madness. At the same time, it should be noted that Project 2025 has been tailored to Trump. Trump’s unexpected success in his first term as president has pushed the most right wing and theorists of the American ruling establishment to formulate such a project.
But this scheming of Trumpism still does not answer our main question. What is the origin of Trumpism and its ultra-right project? What are the grounds for the rise to power of Trump, a president whose policies are considered by almost all experts and governments to be harmful to global capitalism?
From Thatcherism to Trumpism
Trumpism is the product of a regressive trend that began after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Politically, in the last two decades of the 20th century, abandoning the welfare state—achieved through the labor and civil rights movements following the October Revolution—became the mainstream tendency of the global bourgeoisie. Scandinavian social democracy and socialist parties in Germany and France were marginalized as the most right-wing factions of the bourgeoisie took over. The rise of Thatcherism and Reaganism laid the groundwork for this shift (the Heritage Foundation was founded during Reagan’s presidency). The emergence of political Islam in the Middle East was one consequence of this rightward turn in global politics.
Thatcher and Reagan were pioneers of a political doctrine that, under the banners of neoliberalism and neo-conservatism, dominated global post-Soviet capitalism. Economically, Milton Friedman’s theories formed the foundation of this ideology.
Today, this tendency has logically led to a total rejection of liberal democracy. At the core of this tendency lies the complete failure of Friedman’s economic school, whose collapse in the economic crises of 2008 shook the foundations of the “free market capitalism” and its doctrine. Post-2008 capitalism has lost its ideological and political direction. The bourgeois notions of freedom, democracy, and human rights have vanished, leaving only the sanctification of profit for an ever-shrinking minority of the ultra-wealthy.
The post-Soviet “New World Order,” America’s military effort to gain hegemony, and free-market euphoria had already run their course before 2008. The failures of Bushism and its “shock and awe” campaigns had led Obama to retreat from leading the capitalist world and take a back seat as a passive “force on the right side of history.” This period of limbo was dubbed “the illness of democracy” by strategic publications like The Economist. Today, that patient is dead—and Trumpism is overseeing its funeral. After neo-liberalism buried liberalism, now it is time for fascism to bury neo-liberalism. Every pillar of liberal democracy, from the separation of powers to free trade, from women’s freedom to human rights, are officially and openly denied so that the capitalist order can survive.
The Transitional Economy toward Fascism
Unlike Hitler’s fascism or Thatcherism, Trumpism offers no economic solution to the ruling class’s multi-faceted crisis. Hitler revived Germany’s shattered post-WWI economy. Thatcher and Reagan implemented Friedmanite policies tailored to post-Cold War finance capital. Trump’s economic protectionism, on the other hand, directly contradicts the necessities of 21st-century capitalism. Modern capitalism cannot be confined to national markets. Globalization isn’t an economic doctrine like Friedmanism—it’s a functional necessity for capitalism, which now operates on a global scale.
Even early European capitalism in the 17th century was based on global trade and conquest, which led to the discovery of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Colonialism, domination of other countries’ lands and resources, and the export of goods and capital to all corners of the world, were the lifeblood of capitalist growth. Today, this has evolved into a global division of labour. Multinational financial capital relies on cheap labour in China, Bangladesh, and India; the productivity boom driven by computerization and Industrial revolution 4.0; and the dominance of international institutions like the IMF and World Bank over the functioning and appropriateness of capital in the four corners of the world. Twenty-first century capitalism knows no borders. And if it faces a chronic crisis, it is not because of globalization, but because of a crisis that can only be resolved by going beyond globalization and the global division of labour of capital. And this going beyond is only possible by transitioning from capitalist relations.
Thus, Trumpism’s obsession with borders and restoring American “greatness” is not an economic solution, but rather an attempt to align America’s political superstructure with the economic power of a handful of American multi-billionaires.
Shock and Awe, Trump-Style
Trumpism replaces traditional capitalist politicians with the capitalists themselves.
The unspoken logic is this: if three billionaires in the U.S. control as much wealth as 50% of the population, why shouldn’t they represent society politically—either directly or through like-minded and loyalist politicians who were not elected, but bought?
After all, buying elections can be a very profitable investment, even in the short term. Ten of America’s richest billionaires who funded Trump’s campaign made $64 billion in profit from his election. Elon Musk, who contributed $290 million, saw his wealth increase by $30 billion. Not a bad deal! And of course, this sweet deal doesn’t end there. This is a long-term investment in a government that has been bought to serve the 1% directly for at least four years.
This entire electoral business unfolds in front of a people who are dissatisfied with the status quo. Multi-billionaires who have taken control of affairs themselves are blaming their traditional politicians by telling them “you are responsible for our problems.” This is why these billionaires are attracting the votes of the masses of the people who are suffering from economic insecurity and difficult living conditions and who are disappointed with the politicians of the traditional parties from the left and the right. But Multi-billionaires build their own government to solve their own, and not people’s, problems.
The Trump administration is not run by traditional parties or politicians—it’s run by billionaires themselves. The Democrats are busy soul-searching, while Republican legislators—holding the majority in Congress—act like obedient serfs of Master Trump, bowing their heads and rubber-stamping his executive orders.
But Trumpism has not only abandoned traditional politicians, but also the traditional structure of government. Trump calls himself a king, posts images of himself with a crown. A sultan who, by issuing executive orders in front of cameras, limits or closes government agencies whose mission is to improve people’s lives, from education to health care and social services, withdraws from international treaties, violates customs and laws, and replaces all values and claims with a single slogan: “Make America Great Again!”In fact the MAGA movement opposes every policy and value associated with social responsibility. “America” in this slogan is a code for its billionaire elite.
But aren’t Trump’s protectionist policies even against those billionaires’ own interests?
All governments and global economists agree that Trump’s tariffs risk triggering a worldwide recession. Trump claims tariffs will force companies to reinvest in America! That’s a delusion. Investment follows profit, not patriotic sentiment. Microsoft, Apple, GM, Ford, and other giants invest abroad because of better returns. Forcing them back to the U.S. would endanger their profitability—and ultimately, their survival in the global market. Far from restoring American greatness, this path weakens it. Indeed, just two days after Trump’s tariff announcements on April 2, 2025 (“Liberation Day”), $6.6 trillion was wiped off the U.S. stock market.
Trump insists the downturn is temporary and the economy will soon boom—but “economy” here means the wealth of a selected few billionaires. These people are ready to burn the world to preserve their profits. When Trump says “hold on, it’ll get better,” he means that the financial elite—like Musk and others—will eventually survive the crisis richer than ever.
The real function of Trump’s economic protectionism isn’t economic—it’s political. It is unlikely that Trump and the designers of Project 2025 are unaware of the contradictions of their economic plan with the global functioning of capital, but they continue to insist on this economic strategy because it serves a political purpose.
Bushism wanted to subjugate the world to the power of America by invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and Trump wants to achieve the same goal by attacking the globalized capitalist economy. But that key does not fit this lock. The problem for Trumpists is that Saddam Hussein could have been destroyed, but globalization cannot. Trump’s “shock and awe” will turn out to be even more futile and unsuccessful than Bushism.
However, these policies, which have no economic logic even for the capitalist class, are part of the tyranny and bullying by capitalists who want to use their economic power as political leverage. America has the strongest economy in the world, and Trump wants to put this leverage at the service of a multi-billionaire hierarchy to dictate its policies to the world and to his society.
“King” Trump wants to assert his position not in accordance with the economic imperatives of global capitalism and alongside his allies, but in opposition and despite them, and this means consolidating the bullying and power of America, which Bushism sought but failed to achieve.
Here too, the tactic of disrupting the bourgeois-liberal economic order serves the strategy of making multi-billionaires more powerful, in the hope that even if the world economy collapses, the few billionaires who rise from the ashes of the global recession will be the rulers of tomorrow’s world.
Trump’s protectionism is supposed to ensure not the prosperity of American capitalism, but the undisputed domination of the multi-billionaire 1% over the entire world. This is Trump-Project 2025’s vision of the future. Like saints waiting for the day of judgment to come so that they can be redeemed, Trumpism sets the world on fire so that the world’s multi-billionaires can become even more rich.
The Horizon of Socialism
As a consequence of Trumpism, the duty of the Left is to defend even the most obvious and elementary demands and rights of ordinary people. When Trump and his disciples call Joe Biden and Kamala Harris communists, they express their hostility to even the most moderate parties and liberal tendencies. The further the bourgeoisie turns to the right, the left’s political activity becomes wider. In “King” Trump’s view, defending the American Constitution is leftist; defending the right to birth control, separation of governmental powers, freedom of the press, collective sovereignty in any form, is leftist. Communism today should represent this “leftist” crimes! The civilized world must come out in defense of freedom and humanity and civilization, and this movement has already begun.
On Saturday April 5, 2025, over 1,200 protests took place across U.S. cities against Trump’s government. Speeches by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in various American cities against the Trumpist hierarchy are bringing more and more people to the streets every day. Elon Musk’s $20 million effort to secure the election of a Trump supporter as a judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court failed. And Trump-supporting Republicans are likely to lose their majorities in both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, but that’s not enough.
The retreat of the ruling elite of the world’s most powerful economic and military power from liberal democracy cannot be answered with the horizon of democracy. A return to traditional politicians and politics is not a solution; if there were, a phenomenon like Trumpism wouldn’t emerge in the first place.
America and the post-Trump capitalist world will face contradictions that are far more fundamental and widespread than ever before. Contradictions that will reveal more than ever the inability of the ruling 1% to provide even the most basic rights to the 99% of society.
The civilized world must get to the root—and that root is capitalism itself. A system which needs an autocratic demagogue like Trump to survive.
The only answer to the return of capital to hierarchy and the absolute power of individuals like Trump and Putin can only be the rejection of rule of the elite over people. The only answer to this situation is the involvement of all citizens in the management of society and the organization of production in order to ensure the welfare of all, and not the profitability of a minority.
The retreat from liberal democracy must be countered by moving beyond it to direct power to the people; and the denial of political and civil freedoms must be countered by the abolition of economic coercion and the true freedom and liberation of all human beings from wage slavery. The limitation of authority in the hands of a single individual must be countered by raising the flag of restoring authority to all human beings, and the existing civil society must be countered by raising the banner of human society.
The power of human production, thanks to the Industrial Revolution 4.0 and the possibility of direct communication between people around the world through the Internet, has provided, more than ever before, the objective grounds for the realization of socialism. The Trumpists swamp can and must be answered with a socialist offensive.
April 6, 2025
