In issue 9 of Communist Revolution, the editorial spoke of the decline of the Liberal Party of Canada. But the rejection of liberalism is a phenomenon that goes beyond Canada’s borders. President Macron’s unpopularity and the crisis in the French government are a case in point. Then more recently, liberalism has just suffered a devastating blow with the election of Trump in the United States.
One can sense a certain panic and demoralization on the left in the face of Trump’s election and the rise of right-wing populist copycats like Pierre Poilievre in Canada. All this could give the impression that there is a shift to the right in society in general. That would be to misunderstand the situation.
The popularity of Trumpism right now doesn’t represent deep support for his reactionary bourgeois agenda, but a generalized disgust with the liberal bourgeois agenda.
Trudeau here, and Obama and then Biden in the U.S., have presided over a devastating decline in workers’ living conditions. As a result, liberalism has been massively discredited.
But above all, what infuriates people is the stinking hypocrisy of these Jesuits of capital. They constantly present themselves as paragons of morality, decency, respect for human rights and the rights of minorities, before turning around and trampling all those principles in full public view.
Liberals weep for poor little Ukraine, but support the mass murder of Palestinians; call their enemies dictators but systematically violate workers’ rights, pay lip service to oppressed groups but refuse to do anything beyond symbolic measures.
The contempt these rich suits have for ordinary people is revolting, and they can’t hide it. While working people are struggling to make ends meet, the Democrats have stubbornly insisted that the economy is fine and that it’s only in their heads that there’s an economic crisis! They speak of a “vibecession”, a term that Canada’s ex-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland picked up on while trying to bribe voters by sending them $250 cheques.
While the Democrats have spent the last eight years portraying Trump as a crook who uses the state for his own personal gain (which is not wrong, of course), Biden took advantage of his last moments in office to grant a presidential pardon to his own son!
And since they commit all their crimes under the flag of “progressivism”, they’re provoking a reactionary backlash. It must be said: liberals have no one to blame but themselves for the rise of Trumpism.
But the rise of Trumpism wasn’t inevitable. It’s because no political force on the left opposes the hated status quo and the corrupt elites who defend it that the right is able to channel anti-establishment sentiment.
If the Left had adopted a class-based anti-establishment rhetoric, blaming the bosses for the crisis of capitalism, with a program offering bold solutions to the pressing needs of working people, it would have taken the wind out of Trumpism’s sails. Just think of Bernie Sanders’ enormous popularity in 2016, which was greater than Trump’s.
Instead, the reformists and “social democrats” of the NDP, Québec solidaire and the “left” of the Democrats (Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and co.) have done their utmost to appear more liberal than liberals. They are incapable of proposing anything inspiring for working people.
The NDP entered into a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Trudeau Liberals, climbing aboard a sinking ship. It is constantly making sure that the small reforms it proposes fit comfortably into Trudeau’s budgetary framework.
Québec solidaire is constantly trying to be seen as “a party like any other” that doesn’t make any waves. Its leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is visibly terrified of being the subject of a negative column in a major bourgeois newspaper.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez slavishly support the Democratic establishment and have essentially been absorbed by it.
For all practical purposes, social democrats are liberals: the smiling face of rotting, exploitative, oppressive capitalism, with all its hypocrisy. They are just as responsible for the popularity of right-wing populists.
This bankruptcy of the Social Democrats is due to the very nature of reformism under capitalism in crisis. Capitalism cannot afford any significant reforms.
The only way to win the reforms needed to save the health system, tackle the climate crisis, and provide quality housing and jobs for all is to engage in direct struggle against the capitalists who cling to their wealth with all their might. The only way to achieve reform is through revolutionary class struggle.
And because these reformist politicians are afraid of waging class struggle, they find themselves accepting the system and becoming indistinguishable from the hated liberals. They become associated with the status quo and the establishment, and can easily be swept aside by right-wing populists who claim to oppose the establishment. This means that neither liberals nor reformists can defeat the Trumps of this world.
But Trumpism has no more solution to the crisis of capitalism than liberalism. Right-wing populism, which raises so many people’s hopes, will produce deep disappointment.
Far from improving matters, Trump will only accelerate the crisis. For example, the high tariffs he is threatening to impose are above all likely to trigger a global depression by rolling back world trade and triggering inflation.
The millions of Trump voters convinced by his grandiose promises could quickly turn against him, with the anger of the betrayed.
The period ahead is likely to be marked by political and economic crises, disillusionment and rapid changes in consciousness.
The anti-establishment sentiment that inhabits the masses will be made to grow by the deepening of the capitalist crisis. To channel this mood and defeat Trumpism, we need to build a revolutionary communist alternative. It’s also the only solution to get us out of the impasse of capitalism in crisis.
This article is the editorial for issue #11 of Communist Revolution. Subscribe here!
