One would think that the Marxist / socialist left in the U.S. would be in the streets, loudly opposing Trump. After all, a corrupt racist in the White House is a perfect target for organizing. Marxists dream of such days, when millions rise up to oppose a government, because then they can interject themselves into the struggle and try to lead it, being as they fancy themselves as being a vanguard.
Yet now that we actually have such conditions, with loud and rising protests against Trump, the Marxist left is deeply preoccupied with most every issue except Trump.
Workers World has nary a peep about protesting Trump. They do mention Trump in Davos trying to get back in good with the ruling class. (Huh?) To WW, Trump’s grotesque excesses are somehow not a departure from the norm, and anyway, certainly not worth organizing against.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Democratic Socialists of America have precisely bupkus about Trump on their home pages. There are lots of impassioned articles about organizing other issues. But on Trump, it’s crickets.
The Revolutionary Communist Party does actually say Trump must go. But don’t be fooled. It’s just a come-on to get you to listen to a interminable video on the home page by their cult leader Bob Avakian. It’s 65 minutes long. Most will not be able to get through more than a few minutes of Avakian rambling about his synthesis of Marxism that will allow RCP alone to storm the citadels and smash capitalism.
What accounts for this? Some might be compromised, sure. But more likely Trump and the protest against him just makes their heads explode and they don’t know what to do. People on the right and left oppose Trump, which confuses them. The FBI, for a change, might be the good guys. How can this be? None of this computes for hardcore socialists and Marxists. The holy books say the proletariat must rise up, not the middle class, and it’s supposed to happened in the way St. Karl of Marx said. Yet it’s not. So, they are trapped by their own ideologies, even as some of them are tireless, skilled organizers with decades of experience.
(Please don’t try to explain to me that I don’t understand the far left. I was a PSL member for two years during Iraq war protests, ended up getting purged, and was walking away from it anyway. I was a terrible commie. Fell asleep in indoctrination class, questioned the sacred precepts, and was completely unable to maintain party discipline when I thought the party line was idiotic.)