Trump by Alain Badiou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gangster Politics

Trump consists of two academic lectures given by Badiou in the days immediately following the US elections. Like many others, he was shocked and distressed that “the vulgar and incoherent billionaire” could become the president of the most powerful nation on the planet. And like at least a few others, he attempts to articulate the significance of this event - how it came about and what it implies.

As befits a philosopher, Badiou is not a man of statistics. But he does employ one statistic in both lectures as the factual base for his analysis: “we must recognize that, today, 264 people possess as much wealth, in inheritance and income, as the 7 billion others who make up the rest of the world!” His point is not that these 264 people, or their slightly less wealthy friends, have somehow bought the election result. Rather he uses it to point out the absolute and incontrovertible victory of global capitalism which is, he believes, the lynchpin of the Trump victory.

Badiou echoes Thomas Piketty’s 2014 Capital in the Twenty First Century when he refers to, “the fundamental law of capitalism, namely the process of capital’s concentration.” This law not only operates in every country on the planet, it is a law that the government of every one of these countries is committed to enforcing. This he describes as the context of “the politics of no alternative.” As the regime of capitalism is global, so are its effects on the global political structure. A sort of “democratic fascism” has emerged simultaneously around the world.

The commonality in the leadership as diverse as China and France, and India and Hungary, not forgetting the USA, Russia, and North Korea is that they are all thugs. This is an essential consequence for managing the severe inequalities that capitalism will continue to generate. Trump is merely the American version of Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Orban, Putin, Modi and a dozen others whose primary mission is to stave off civil war for as long as possible.

These leaders have this rather narrow role because there is literally no alternative to the capitalism that has swept all before it. Communism is dead. Even moderate Socialism is déclassé. And theoretical Marxism is a mere intellectual antique. Consequently the “great historical hope for a just society, a hope that remained steadfast from 1792 to 1976” is no more. The idea of an increasingly fair society based on private property and individual enterprise is now dead. The property and the enterprise remain; but justice is no longer their aim.

Badiou can’t suggest an alternative to the current crisis. The best he can do is to hope for some sort of revival of the historical debate. This seems to me far less likely than the civil wars from which some new form of politics might emerge. So the message implicit in these lectures seems to be: ‘If you think Trump is your worst nightmare, you ain’t seen nothing yet.’

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