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So why did they win?
(lemmy.sdf.org)
The majority of Americans who voted, at least in the swing states, have voted for the republicans. Why? Do the republican policies reflect popular opinion? Or is it that their vibes are more aligned with the public? Or maybe people are worse off now than they were 4 years ago and are hoping to turn back time? As a non-american I don't quite get it. People must think their lives will materially improve under the republicans, but why?
The tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
I mean, yeah, it looks like Kamala didn’t get the dem base out to vote for her because no one wants “more of the same” when following an incredibly unpopular president. Kamala was very openly telling the base to fuck off, and made her race singularly about attracting white, upper middle class suburban women at the cost of everyone else.
But that’s the micro view. In the macro view, Michael Roberts’ analysis of rates of profit shows it’s been falling for a while now. Capitalism was in crisis during the Great Depression, only to be “saved” by WW2. The reconstruction of the industrial world led to good times for a couple decades until there was a profitability crisis in the 1970s. Capital’s response starting the 80s was offshoring, privatization, and financialization - neoliberalism in other words. But the gains from that was only able to keep things going until 2009 or so. Since then profitability has been shit. Capital has no answers beyond just tightening the screws (austerity at home and imperialism abroad). Just increasing misery in order to slow the decline of the rate of profit.
The US needs that surplus value extracted primarily from the global south to keep running. That surplus value is how capital is able to buy off the domestic working class. But that slice of the pie keeps shrinking, i.e. material conditions keep worsening. Things are getting worse as every year goes by and everyone knows it, even if they don’t understand it. That’s why we keep bouncing between parties every four years instead of the steady 2 term presidents we had in the era of neoliberalism. Most people are not doing in depth political analysis. They are just seeing their situation get worse and blaming whoever is in charge.
Of course the economy won’t recover under Trump. It will almost certainly get worse, and I happen to think the odds of a major economic crisis are pretty high. I would bet everything we get a dem president in 2028. Things just get worse and people are fumbling around for a solution.
And that’s where we come in. WE HAVE THE ANSWERS. It’s our job to bring the light of Marxism to the world. I’m not even gonna pretend we can make much of a dent in 4 years but this is a multi-generational project.
Thank you for that. Makes too much sense and feels like the big picture to put these things in context.
Would you be and to share some resources which helped you to this conclusion? No pressure if not!
Would be cool to see this on a graph somewhere (although I can imagine we can see the correlated variables react in kind). That's the problem of trying to sell the future and having the "promise" of future value. Seems with Trump in power, corporations will eat but since that value has to come from somewhere. Like you alluded, from the global South or from tightening the working conditions of the workers. And it probably still not be enough to "fix the economy". There is serious cost to inaction on our part that the future will pay.