In this work, using Mocombe’s structurationist theory of phenomenological tructuralism, I argue that the supporters of Donald Trump (the clowns of I am with him) and those of Kamala Harris (the clowns of I am with her) are representatives of a uniparty in American politics created by their relations to two distinct modes of capitalist production (industrial and postindustrial production) and the rentier oligarchical class in control of the political economy of the American nation-state. Be that as it may, the differences of the supporters are ideologies associated with the differentiating modes of production and their ideological apparatuses, which will ultimately undergo superstructural changes to support the postindustrial mode of production, as opposed to any substantive differences, which warrants two distinct political parties representing a left and right politics on the political spectrum.

Keywords: ideological domination, intersectionality, embourgeoisement, black underclass, black bourgeoisie, social class language game, dialectic, antidialectic

Following the peaceful coup d’ état of the American democratic party, which appointed Kamala Harris as the democratic nominee to replace President Joe Biden for the 2024 American presidential elections, the internet was buzzing with memes stating either “I stand with her,” i.e., those who support Harris, or “I stand with him,” those who support Donald Trump. These two memes were supplemented by others, which pejoratively referred to both candidates and their supporters as clowns, “the clowns of I am with him,” and “the clowns of I am with her” both bamboozled by the American oligarchical class. In this work, using Mocombe’s structurationist theory of phenomenological structuralism, I provide context to the latter two memes by arguing that the supporters of Donald Trump (“the clowns of I am with him”) and those of Kamala Harris (“the clowns of I am with her”) are representatives of a uniparty in American politics created by their relations to two distinct modes of capitalist production (industrial and postindustrial production) and the rentier oligarchical class, i.e., the upper-class of owners and high-level executives, in control of the “Deep-State” of the American nation-state. Be that as it may, the differences of the supporters are ideologies associated with the differentiating modes of production and their ideological apparatuses, which will ultimately undergo super structural changes to support the postindustrial mode of production, which constitutes over sixty-five percent of the American economy, as opposed to any substantive differences, which warrants two antagonistically distinct political parties representing a left and right politics on the American political spectrum.

The end of history thesis as adopted in the dialectical works of Hegel proposes a denouement of reason in the world culminating in the endpoint of humanity’s sociopolitical and economic evolution and development through the synthesis of contradictions over time.^1,2 At which point, ideological history would end. For many post-Hegel scholars, the French Revolution and the regime of Napoleon represented that endpoint synthesis of equal rights and recognition touted by the values, ideas, and ideals of the Enlightenment. Contemporarily, made famous by postmodern thinkers, Alexandre Kojève,¹ and Francis Fukuyama,⁴ the thesis, in the postmodern position, signifies the end to the modernist emphasis on linear history, grand metanarratives, and universal truth in favor of what is contemporarily known as neoliberal identity politics. In the Kojèveian,³ sense, the move is away from the French Revolution and Napoleon’s regime to emphasize the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Kojève posits that the capitalism of the United States represented right-Hegelianism while the state-socialism of the Soviet Union represented left-Hegelianism.⁵

The end of history for Kojève is not the triumph of the latter over the former; instead, it is a triumph of a socialist-capitalist synthesis. For Fukuyama,⁶ the triumph of liberal capitalism over state-socialism, right-Hegelianism over left-Hegelianism, as highlighted by the postmodernist identity politics under neoliberal capitalism of the United States of America represents the endpoint of human ideological history where the regimes of rights and equal recognition has finally been established.⁷ In this work, using Mocombe’s structurationist theory of phenomenological structuralism in refutation to Fukuyama’s (right-Hegelian) position, I want to argue that the contemporary American liberal democratic order is a regression back to the stages of ideological history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for their transition to a (neo) liberal postindustrial (service) economy, where identity politics (recognition of equal rights) is fostered for their postindustrial (financialized) diversified consumerism. Hence the struggles between Trump supporters, created by their relations to the industrial mode of production, and Harris supporters created by their relations to the post-industrialization and financialization of the American economy seeking to displace the (ideologies of) traditionalism and nationalism of the former with the (ideologies of) identity politics and diversified consumerism of the latter.⁸

Building on Mocombe’s,⁹ structuration theory, phenomenological structuralism, which views society and human social action as a duality and dualism tied to those who control the resources of a material resource framework through five systems, the mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse, which constitute a social structure (social class language game), the (reified) contents or social facts, whose ideas, mores, values, and ideals (disseminated through the five systems for social and system integration) human actors internalize and recursively organize and reproduce as their practical consciousness for their ontological security, the argument here is that the contemporary (neo) liberal democratic order represents capitalist and liberal fascism in the form of neoliberal capitalism and identity politics of American rentier oligarchs.¹⁰ The left/right distinction, guised under their two political parties (democrats and republicans) is not a reflection of the political spectrum; instead, it is a uniparty of the rentier oligarchs of the American economy. The distinctions and conflicts between the two parties backed by the oligarchical class rest on the lag between their transition of the American economy from an industrial based to a postindustrial (neoliberal) economy.¹¹

As such, the supporters of Donald Trump, the clowns of I am with him who’s ideas stem from the industrial stage of America’s economic development, and those of Kamala Harris, the clowns of I am with her who’s ideas stem from the postindustrial stage of America’s economic development, are representatives of a uniparty in American politics created by their relations to two distinct modes of capitalist production (industrial and postindustrial production) and the rentier oligarchical class in control of the political economy of the American nation-state.¹² Contemporarily, the oligarchs seek to transition America from the former (an industrial based economy) to the latter (postindustrial base economy), which dates back to the 1980s, using the Democratic party to represent the ideas, mores, and values (identity capitalism, diversified consumerism, finance, glorification of the self, sexuality,¹³ and consumerism) of the latter while the Republican party is still steeped in the ideas, ideals, mores, and values (traditionalism, nuclear family, agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, frugality,¹⁴ patriarchy, and production) of the former, industrial economic base. Hence, the differences of the supporters of the two parties are ideologies associated with the differentiating modes of production and their ideological apparatuses, which will ultimately undergo super structural changes to support the postindustrial mode of production, as opposed to any substantive differences that warrants two distinct political parties representing a left and right politics on the political spectrum.¹⁵ Albeit the rentier oligarchs present Trump’s movement seeking, in a Polanyian sense, to protect the protectionism, traditionalism, and nationalism of the industrial base as fascists, while labeling Harris’s embourgeoised postindustrial base as progressives given their call for identity politics and diversified consumerism within the (neo) liberal globe order, which created both systems.¹⁶

Neoliberalism is not the endpoint of human history; instead, neoliberalism represents a resurgence of political economic liberalism in the Western world following the fall of global communism in the 1990s.¹⁷ Globalization (1970s-2000s) is the imperial attempt of the West, under American hegemony, to integrate and colonize the world around the juridical framework of liberalism,^18,19 which emanates out of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, at the expense of all other forms of system and social integration.²⁰ Hence, contemporary globalization represents a Durkheimian mechanicalization of the world via the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism under American (neoliberal) hegemony. The power elites, the upper-class of owners and high-level executives, rentier oligarchs, of the latter (American hegemon) serves as an imperial agent seeking to interpellate and embourgeois the masses or multitudes of the world to the juridical framework of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism,²¹ and in the age of (neoliberal) capitalist globalization and climate change this is done within the dialectical processes of two forms of fascism or system/social integration:^22,23

1) right-wing neoliberalism of the industrial age (nineteenth and twentieth centuries);

2) (neo) liberal identity politics masquerading as cosmopolitanism or hybridization “enframed” by a cashlessness pegged to the US dollar backed by Saudi Arabian oil.^24-33 Both forms of system and social integration represent two sides of the same fascistic coin in the age of (neoliberal) globalization and climate change even though proponents of the latter position view the former antagonistically. In fact, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations’ attempt to institute a multipolar world against American hegemony, under Russian and Chinese tutelage, is not a counterhegemonic move, in the socialist/economic sense, to challenge the constitution of neoliberal capitalism on a global scale; instead, it is a right-wing response, at the global level, to exercise national capitalism, traditionalism, economic autarky, against the identity politics and free-trade mantra of the left promulgated by American hegemonic forces under neoliberal globalization and identity politics. In the latter sense, it is culturally counterhegemonic but not economically. This is the same move occurring within the American nation-state.

On the one hand, in other words, (neo)liberal globalization represents the right-wing (reactionary) attempt to homogenize (converge) the nations of the globe into the overall market-orientation, i.e., private property, individual liberties, and entrepreneurial freedoms, of the capitalist world-system through the retrenchment of the nation-state system, right-wing nationalism, austerity, privatization, and protectionism. This (neo) liberalization process is usually juxtaposed, on the other hand, against the free-trade mantra, narcissistic exploration of self, sexuality, and identity of the left, which converges with the (neo) liberalizing process via the diversified consumerism of the latter groups as they seek equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with white agents of the former within their market (finance) logic. Both positions, the convergence of the right and the hybridization of the left, are (antagonistically) dialectically related in the age of neoliberal globalization under American hegemony. Private property, individual liberties, diversified consumerism, and the entrepreneurial freedoms of the so-called marketplace become the mechanisms of system and social integration for both groups even though the logic of the marketplace is exploitative, environmentally hazardous, and impacting the climate of the material resource framework, i.e., the earth, which often requires the protectionist fascists of the right of the dialectic to intervene, in keeping with the “double movement” thesis of Karl Polanyi,³⁴ against the radical (neo) liberalism of the so-called left representing freedoms to and identity politics.

In this work, I posit that the struggles between the two parties in American politics are not over the form of system and social integration, which is ideologically neoliberal democratic capitalism; instead, they are fighting, like many nations around the globe steeped in the nationalism and traditionalism of the agricultural and industrial mode of production, over the transition of the society from industrial capitalism to post-industrialism. This is a similar fight, which took place during the transition of the American economy from an agricultural base to an industrial one, which marked the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, which, eventually, led to the American Civil War. Contemporarily, both parties represent the constitution of society based on capitalist relations of production. The differences and conflicts are a result of the transition, by the rentier oligarchs, of the American economy from an industrial base with an emphasis on production, traditionalism, nationalism, and the nuclear family, to a postindustrial base, which attacks the traditionalism and nationalism of the former for the iconoclasm, i.e., identity politics, diversified consumerism, narcissism, glorification of the self, etc., of the latter (post-industrialism and financialization).The struggle is a Polanyian (cultural) counter movement against the liberal push for neoliberal globalization and identity politics, and not an international socialist (economic) movement necessary to offset its (capitalism’s) exploitative and climate change problematics, which will subsequently lead to civil wars and possibly a world war.

None.

The author has no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

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