Trump is "bringing a brand of folk Marxism to an entirely new audience."

Please tell me this is sarcasm… otherwise it is so off the mark it isn’t even wrong.

Trump and his supporters aren’t folk-Marxists, they are authoritarians. They don’t see a class dialectic, they just see the political class as being totally incompetent. In fact, I wish they saw the greed of the rich more, but they don’t. To Trumpsters the problem is the politicians don’t know how to negotiate foreign business deals or control businesses. They have no problem with the rich being rich, as long as they get some too.

Mark, the distinguishing mark of history as analyzed from a Marxist perspective is that history, and human action, is described in terms of class struggle. Now while Drumpf doesn’t plausibly fit in as a blue collar guy any more than Marx or Lenin did (all are firmly bourgeois), the fact remains that he’s using the same basic tactic of playing “the proletariat” against the current aristocracy and bourgeoisie as did Marx and Lenin.

More or less, “the political class as it exists is incompetent” (which you concede is Drumpf’s point) is in itself the Hegelian dialectic Marx and Lenin used. Given the results when Lenin and his followers used it, I think any supporter of Mr. Drumpf ought to be sobered. Class warfare always works out worst for the proletariat.

3 areas where Trump resonates:

• Trade agreements (I favor “free trade”). Many feel the free trade agreements are really not fair and that these agreements (think NAFTA) have devastated US manufacturing. Consider the recent news about UTX-Carrier moving manufacturing to Mexico)
• Immigration: EG IT jobs to Indians w visas . Our immigration policy is a complete mess.
• Currency manipulation

These three areas are JOBS, JOBS, JOBS