Translated from GegenStandpunkt 3-19
What a surprise
The President of the world power
praises the proletariat!But that doesn’t really exist anymore. The industrial worker is a dying breed: isn’t that one of the achievements specific to modern capitalism, that it long ago, starting in America, reorganized the world of work into clean services as its actual money maker, and that Silicon Valley has reinvented to this effect anyway? Of all people, the President of the USA sees this completely differently. On long barnstorming campaigns, he brings the receipts for the intolerable economic decline of the country he wants to govern and connects the poverty in its balance sheet to the disappearance of jobs for America’s incomparably capable workers in such great industries as coal mining and steel production; squandered, recklessly or maliciously, to rival countries by unpatriotic bureaucrats and technocrats. And conversely, in the third year of his presidency, he puts forward a record of national success primarily in bringing back jobs for America’s proletarian heroes of production, to whom no Chinese or Mexican worker can hold a candle.[1]
Whether all the figures in the balance sheet are correct – that’s not what really matters. Rather, it’s the fact that the leader of the world power equates its global economic success entirely with one message: the good news about the renaissance of the incomparable American proletariat. The accuracy of this doesn’t depend on any statistics. Trump’s proof is moral in nature. The president guides it with the moral dismissal of any doubts: anyone who thinks of the American proletariat as anything but in every respect the most capable, best positioned, and consequently most successful proletariat in the world is guilty of contempt for this human breed and its incomparable qualities. Anyone who wants to know anything about it other than it has no competitors in its greatness is demeaning it and thus convicting himself of the crime of anti-patriotic malevolence. Anyone who discovers anything like misery in the sense of a need for help in America’s working class in Year 3 of Trump’s reign is disqualified as a traitor. Because – this is the core of the message that raises the president’s track record above any doubt – in a country as great as the United States of America that he governs, there really can’t be any natives other than an equally great people of natives who have the unconditional right, and who also joyfully exercise this right, to see themselves as the greatest people in the world and their country as the most incomparable country of all.
The renaissance of the American proletariat is an ideal class struggle from above: a ruler’s moral gift to all those who are willing to receive it. Jobs are included, yes, insofar as they exist, and in reality simply the ones that do exist; but especially those that the patriotic American believes in and indeed believes in deeply because nobody less than the President of the one nation “under God” has granted those who need a job the unquestionable right to consider themselves to be what he certifies them to be in the name of the nation: great!
This is a real gift because it comes from the right messenger: the top boss who ultimately must know. From a President who, firstly, commands the by far most strategically, politically, militarily, economically, morally – ok, generally – powerful state in the world; and secondly, who, as a person, not only represents the unconditional primacy of this power with a extremism hardly seen before, but rather thrills in it and lives it out as if it were his private possession and personal means of enjoyment. The latter is therefore crucial because it turns what otherwise would only be a compliment to the people into a personal gift to all those who are willing to accept it: every follower, every supporter is invited to identify directly with Trump’s pride in himself and his power through their enthusiasm for the man. Those who applaud him thereby take part in the greatness of the nation which takes shape in the person of the leader, in his hubris that rises above any criticism and any challenge, above any defeat and especially above any irony. Trump’s offensive audacity, made directly public and palpable via Twitter, does not simply reveal his private character, it is his political character strength: with his appearances, he proves that there is actually nothing that America could be embarrassed by, about which any real American might be ashamed – which is why all fake Americans, namely those whose patriotic hearts do not beat faster at Trump’s appearances, must be ashamed of themselves.
This gift – so that it is perceived and received as a beautiful thing at all – has one prerequisite and also obviously meets this one necessary prerequisite: Trump attends to – thus builds on – a deep need to be able to feel pride in the greatness of the nation, but especially in oneself as part of this nation. The patriotic audience is not told that it will be content, happy, have a decent life, or anything like that, but that they will have made a contribution to America’s greatness which, if nobody else notices, then they will notice even more, one which is now at last being appreciated from the very top as a contribution to the great patriotic cause. This is the proletarian human dignity that Trump gives his supporters. Not success, but struggle in the everyday world of competition with all the effects that go with it; un-discouraged or even discouraged, but therefore trying even more intensively for success; amazing, naturally, in life, which is a battle for which one not only has a gun, but the right to a weapon; a toughness proven in practice in life: that’s how life is and sums up the vital self-confidence that Trump’s offer to share in the enjoyment of America’s greatness aims at. Or the other way around: to be a great American with a right to be proud is no walk in the park, but hard work; work that nothing and nobody embodies as directly and vividly as the nostalgic ideal figure of the tough coal miner or steel worker; class militant curios almost out of a real socialist picture book on the cult of the proletariat: that is the content of the moral renaissance that the President gives to the proletariat of his country. It is the harshness of its struggle for survival, distorted into a kitschy, ideal image of productive work activity, that allows the patriotic American worker in one and the same act of false consciousness to feel the greatness of his nation and to experience the greatness of his contribution to it, one in turn always through the other, and to find this confirmed by Trump as a legal title to pride.
This is what the boss of the world power swears to when he swears by the American proletarian: It is the stupidity of pride in getting screwed in capitalistic business competition, of being appreciated by the commander of the superpower of the competition as a feeling of identity with its global success, staged and conveyed to supporters as an unconditional right to patriotic impudence.
[1]Exemplified by Trump’s speech in Orlando:
“Since the election, we have created six million new jobs. Nobody thought that would be possible... We have lifted more than six million Americans off of food stamps and we’re getting off of welfare and back into the workforce and they’re so happy... The unemployment rate is the lowest rate it’s been in over 51 years, think of that... These are incredible numbers. And today, right now, as we speak, almost 160 million people are working, that’s more than ever before, it’s the first time ever, the number of people is almost 160 million and we’re going to be breaking that number soon. Women filled 60 % of the new jobs created last year and women’s unemployment is now the lowest it’s been in 74 years. Wages are rising at the fastest rate in many decades, and really what’s nice is they’re rising the fastest for the lowest income Americans... It’s been an incredible story... Great job. To get relief to working families, we passed the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history, the largest... Our record-breaking regulatory reduction campaign has saved every American household an average of $3,000 per year, and we’ve ended the last administration’s cruel and heartless law on American energy... The United States is now the No.1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world...We are reversing decades of calamitous trade policies. When I came into office, we inherited one of the worst trade deals ever negotiated, the Trans-Pacific Partnership... TPP would have dealt the death blow to the US auto industry, which, by the way is doing great. Many, many plants are now under construction in Michigan and Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Ca- Carolina, Florida, they hadn’t built one in decades and now they’re all over the place... And we’re replacing the NAFTA disaster with the brand new USMCA... That will create at least 75,000 new jobs for American auto workers and give a massive boost to our farmers and ranchers, and growers all across the Sunshine State... Thanks to our tariffs, American steel mills are roaring back to life... In the eight years before I took office, on average, we lost two thousand manufacturing jobs a month. Since my inauguration, we’ve added 16,000 manufacturing jobs a month. That didn’t happen by accident. Remember the statement from the previous administration you’d need a magic wand to bring back manufacturing. Well, we’ll tell sleepy Joe that we found the magic wand.“