Trump the Bordigist

[Note: The following article is entirely satirical. We were inspired to write the following article after realizing that a misunderstanding of Bordiga’s theory that a communist revolution must increase the cost of production could be crudely equated to the consequences of Trump’s trade policy. Our intrusive thoughts then got the better of us and we ended up cherrypicking and deliberately misinterpreting other examples to support this article’s absurd premise. We do not seriously believe that Trump is a communist of any kind. His administration is one of extreme reaction, but we have a tendency use humor as a means of coping with bad situations such as the one the US currently finds itself in. — Bluebird, September 2025]

Much has been made of the second Trump Administration since Trump took office. In the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, we were one of many voices on the left of the political spectrum warning that the second Trump Administration presented a Bonapartist, if not fully fascist threat. Since taking office however, Trump has also attracted criticism from the right of the political spectrum, who see some of his administration’s economic policies as socialistic, if not communistic.

Now that Trump has held office for several months, we believe that the true nature of his administration can be clearly observed. Trump’s right wing critics have grasped the kernel of the truth when they ridicule him as a communist. We believe that Trump is not only a communist, but that Trump’s communism displays several telltale characteristics of the specific interpretation of Marxism associated with the great and authentic Italian Marxist Amadeo Bordiga.

The first general indication of Trump’s covert communism can be seen in his administration taking a 10% stake in Intel under the pretext of “economic recovery and national security.”1 With this small, but unmistakably symbolic action, Trump has covertly begun the expropriation of the expropriators, the conversion of the private property of individuals into the collective property of all society. Though this action only applies to 10% of a single company, it sets a precedent which can be used to legitimate future expropriations. The communist Trump has opened the Pandora’s box of revolution under the noses of the American bourgeoisie.

Trump’s second communistic action as president was his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.2 In doing so, Trump dealt a preemptive death blow to the nascent Mexican nationalist movement developing under the Bonapartist Claudia Sheinbaum. The internationalist content of this action by the Trump administration is unmistakable. After all, the Gulf of America does not solely border Mexico, but several countries, and encompasses many island nations as well. By renaming the Gulf, Trump has symbolically declared that it is the common territory of all American countries. The call for the international cooperation of peoples is clear.

The first specifically Bordigist flavor of the Trump administration can be seen in his economic policy. Bordiga believed that it was necessary to increase the cost of production and reduce the hours worked by the proletariat. Bordiga stated this much explicitly in Dialogue with Stalin when he wrote,

“Plans aside: The capitalist states make plans, the proletarian dictatorship will make plans. But the first true socialist plan (which must be understood as an immediate despotic inroad, see the ‘Manifesto’) will eventually be a plan to the increase of the costs of production, shortening of the work day, divestment of capital, quantitative and especially qualitative levelling of consumption (which is under capitalist anarchy to nine tenths an absurd waste of product), because only in this way it will be possible to cope with ‘business profitability’ and ‘profitable prices.’”3

Such formulas have been all but achieved by Trump’s tariff policies, which have indisputably increased the costs of production,4 disincentivizing capital investment into the US economy.5 Americans are consuming6 and working7 less due to the tariffs. And this is all prescribed by the Bordigist interpretation of Marx.

The final proof of Trump’s Bordigist policy program came with his designation of “antifa”—short for anti-fascism and anti-fascist—as a domestic terrorist organization,8 despite the fact that there is no organization known as “antifa.” The content of this action clearly expresses the longheld sentiment of the Communist Left that the worst product of fascism is anti-fascism,9 because anti-fascism has a historical tendency to dilute the proletarian political line through collaboration with bourgeois-democratic forces.

What’s most impressive about the second Trump administration is that the great and authentic revolutionary Trump has begun carrying out this revolutionary program under the noses of the ideologically fascist Republican Party, who naively see their own policy programs reflected in the actions of the administration. We, however, are not fooled. Even Trump’s clearly-declining health is likely the product of excessive amounts of lasagna consumed in imitation of the great Bordiga.

But on the possibility that we are mistaken, and our original assessment of Trump as an ordinary Bonapartist whose reaction will engender revolutionary sentiments in the proletariat was correct, we say long live the butcher Trump! May he work in spite of himself to bring about proletarian revolution!

Bluebird,

September, 2025