When progressiveness becomes pretentiousness: Which way forward for the anti-trump movement

When I hear the now infamous refrain from anti-trump protesters, - we reject the president elect -  I have to ask myself, "where has the anti-capitalist left gone in America"?

Back in the early 2000's I remember being at protests in the United States where we were not afraid to say that we rejected capitalism with all its oppression, exploitation and tyranny. We can even look to another example of not being afraid of calling for the rejection of capitalism that was much bigger than the anti-capitalist movement in the early to mid 2000's. What would that  example be you ask? It was Occupy.

As much as you may disagree with the colonial connotations behind the name occupy, we cannot deny it's large anti-capitalist  element. Sure we may not have realized how anti-working class consensus decision making is - workers do not have time to sit around for hours to hold hands and sing kumbaya, they have to work to support their families - but we were able to hone in on the fundamental problem in our society and give it a voice with chants of, "we are the 99%."

Surplus labor that is manifested in the theft of labor power, is not used for the benefit of all in society. The modus operandi of capitalism is to monopolize wealth and power into the hands of the 1%

The theft of labor power by the 1% existed before trump and it will exist after trump, and if the anti-trump movement fails to realize that, then the big banks and corporations will continue to exploit and oppress the citizenry. When the symptom is seen as the ailment, then reform, not revolution, becomes inevitable.

The fact is, many in the anti-trump camp are reformers, not revolutionaries. It is my belief that many are actually okay with a reformed capitalism as long as they get to create the cool kids club that everybody but the deplorables can join. Many in the anti-trump camp are really safe spacer cool kid members who have failed to realize that many people in the real world do not feel safe in their safe space. There is no such thing as a safe space, only safer spaces and by inviting people in under the false pretense that a place is a safe space, we do more harm than good. What is worse is that some of these so-called safe spaces are really places of fascist conformity where you must abide by rigid rules and if you don't then you are out. What happens to you when you are out is of no concern to the safe spacers; to them you just become a deplorable on the other side of the wall that they built to keep you out.

If the anti-trump movement is to succeed then I believe it needs to acquire some of the ideas and language of Occupy. Many in Occupy understood that wage slavery exacerbates oppression and exploitation in society and that direct democracy at the workplace is key to combating sexism, racism, imperialism, oppression and exploitation. This is something the anti-trump movement needs to realize and one of the ways they can do it is by reaching out to blue collar working class folk who feel alienated, isolated and left behind by a system that  has both automated and offshored their jobs. If they don't than in all likely hood they will become insignificant in a few weeks at most.

                                                                                     Submitted by  Aaron Doncaster

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