Autonomies

If Trump’s electoral success is due in part to the far right’s ability to create a lifeworld shaped around his persona, the left must pursue a countervailing project. Its aim should be to transform the world people organically experience through mediating institutions: at work, at school, in their neighbourhoods. They should be contesting reality on this basic level.

The leftist critique of social democracy – leaving aside the historical complexity of the ideology and movement, social democracy was and remains essentially the view “that originally advocated a peaceful evolutionary transition of society from capitalism to socialism using established political processes” (Britannica) – may be summarised in the idea that only a radical transformation can bring capitalist social relations to an end. Whether in its Bolshevik or anarchist guise, “revolution” is opposed to what is disparagingly referred as “reformism”.

The critique is complex, citing citing historical example – the effort to reform capitalism, pushing it towards some form of socialism, has universally failed – and theoretical elaboration. And yet, the “revolution”/”reformism” opposition has perhaps never been so unclear, if it ever was. The historical socialist revolutions have, it can be argued, also universally failed and many of the state-government “reforms” of the last century and a half – pushed and forced by mass working class movements, women’s movements, anti-colonial liberation movements, civil rights movements, that altered capitalist social relations, to some extent “socialising” them – have been “revolutionary”.

Where we fall in this debate has less to do with clearly identifying who is in the right – social life over time permits no such omniscience -, but with endeavouring to understand what can and should be done in the here and now, with a universal justice as the horizon of our political imaginary and practice, which for the anarchist necessarily involves creating “institutions” which permit the greatest degree of freedom and equality possible.

With this cautionary note, we share a finely argued essay on the politics of Donald Trump’s government.

Constitutional Collapse

Aziz Rana (Sidecar – New Left Review, 21/03/2025)

For constitutional lawyers, Trump’s return to power has been a vertiginous experience. The systematic violation of legal process and longstanding constitutional norms has proceeded faster than one can keep up with, resulting in over a hundred lawsuits and counting. Trump has issued a flood of executive orders that explicitly violate congressional law as well as the written text of the Constitution, on everything from the denial of birthright citizenship, to crackdowns on efforts at racial, gender and sexual orientation-based inclusion, to the destruction of legislatively authorized government agencies. At the same time, Elon Musk has boasted that he is pursuing a ‘corporate takeover’ of the federal government, aiming – through mass firing, the selling off of government assets (including ‘443 federal properties’, potentially along with countless works of public art) and the dismantling of vital services – to privatize ‘anything that can reasonably be privatized’: all in violation of congressional and constitutional prohibitions on private citizens, unconfirmed by the Senate, carrying out the work of senior government officials.