by Nat Winn
Everyone is familiar with Trump’s anger at what he calls the deep state. So just what is Trump talking about? Is Trump’s deep state the delusions of a lunatic, does it not exist, or does it reflect a real social phenomenon? Why does Trump see the deep state as such an obstacle to what he wants to do politically?
I would argue that Trump’s deep state does in fact represent something real, even if communists have interpreted what he is referring to somewhat differently. When Trump speaks of the deep state, he is in fact referring to the deeply entrenched bureaucracy of capitalist cadre. Individuals who are not elected, but who are appointed or hired into government departments to carry out the policies and administration of the administration at its various levels.
These capitalist cadres represent the core or vanguard of capitalist state rule. They largely see themselves as providing a public service and are beholden ideologically to bourgeois law and institutions.
Communists have always pointed out that there is a core to capitalist rule — structures of decision making and implementing cadre — that are NOT subject to the circus of electoral politics.
The courts, police, army, and a vast army of state cadre— these are designed as actors of capitalist state norms.
If a red were elected, they would immediately be trapped, set up, thwarted, and even overthrown by that state apparatus. (Meet the Allende experience.)
The MAGA fascists call this structure the “deep state.” Liberals, typically, deny it exists and ridicule the very idea. Trump sees these cadres, that he calls the deep state, as a threat because he in fact tends to implement a policy and political program that would represent a sharp departure from traditional bourgeois democratic forms and would drastically transform its institutions.
For Marxists, this feature of capitalist state structure is a long-understood feature of class dictatorship, and why the people can’t simply “lay hands on” the old ruling class state (as Marx put it).
The logic of Trump appointees
Similarly, it will not be easy for Trump to lay hands on the current state and do the things that he wants to do. The appointees to positions such as the Department of Education, The Department of Defense and the new post created for Elon Musk for “government efficiency” or even Patel to the FBI, all seem like absurd appointments, but there is a definite logic to them.
Trump has spoken about how he wants to remove long-term bureaucrats within the US government and replace them with his own loyalists. In fact, Trump and his allies intend to dismantle and reconfigure the state in a white supremacist and Christian nationalist image.
Trump and his cronies have called for removing regulatory departments like the Environmental Protection Agency. They are attempting to ban all federal funding to Planned Parenthood. They want to diminish the separation between church and state and have Christian prayer in the schools and teach creationism.
Of course, they want to unleash ICE to deport millions more of undocumented immigrants, put their own people in key intelligence positions, and reverse the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements, crushing liberal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, and what’s left of affirmative action, and even pass a national ban on abortion.
All of these things are things that many entrenched bureaucrats would resist and block Trump from doing, because they do represent a break with bourgeois democratic norms, with the traditional US jurisprudence based on precedent, and would involve a process of nullification of such legal precedent.
What this can mean for resistance
This capitalist core, whether it asked for it not, finds themselves on the front lines in the intra-ruling class struggle over how the empire will be ruled. The capitalist cadre, the government bureaucrats can either leave the state and allow Trump to wreck the traditional US institutions or it will dig in and resist the fascist policy that Trump is attempting to implement along with the more progressive sections of society.
Historically these capitalist state cadres have reacted differently to fascist attempts to impose their rule. France, for instance, when the Nazi’s first invaded, did not put up much of a fight. Other countries like Norway put up more of a concentrated effort, at the bureaucratic level, to sabotage Nazi efforts.
The reasons for the differences in the reaction by state cadres historically has to do in part with the leadership of the current governments at the time of the fascist invasion. The French did eventually evolve a resistance, for instance, however it took longer because of the friendliness and acquiescence of Vichy’s government in France. In Norway the government was immediately hostile to the Nazis and the government was able to escape into exile and resist from afar.
In the U.S. it seems clear that there will be a peaceful transition of leadership of power to Trump, however, the way that entrenched government bureaucrats beholden to the old ways will respond to Trump’s changes remains to be seen.
It is a fact, that capitalist cadres, would obstruct attempts to develop a socialist state, and that as Marx learned from the Paris Commune, it is not possible for communists to lay hands on the state machinery, as mentioned above.
The fact, however, that the fascists will attempt to dismantle the state machinery and remold them in a fascist way, creates a potential for a different alignment of forces. It is possible that the capitalist cadre who Trump understands as the deep state, will be a part of the social forces that come together to defeat fascism.
This means that bureaucrats in the EPA and the Department of Education who see themselves as protectors of the environment or attempting to provide quality education services can be encouraged to resist on the basis they know how, while alternative forces from the mass of people must also emerge to challenge a resistance meant only to restore things back to the way they were.
Obviously the alliance between the forces of state cadre and the emergence of a revolutionary people that may seek to dismantle the entire order and move on to a more egalitarian setup would be temporary and finite. The state cadre seek a return to bourgeois norms and order. We, the people that represent an opposition to the entire order, both bourgeois democratic legality and the forces of MAGA, want an end to every form of capitalist state rule and to build a new socialist system.
That is the bureaucratic capitalist cadre can play a productive role in resisting fascism, but it is also necessary for an alternative force to emerge that brings history forward to a more egalitarian future, and that such a force march at the head of the overall struggle.
This article originally appeared on Nat Winn’s Substack.