Has Trump changed the nature of the state?

Protest against Trump and Musk’s cuts in the United States (Photo: flickr/ Geoff Livingston)

After Donald Trump’s White House takeover, can we still describe the state as “a committee for managing the common affairs of the ruling class”, as Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did in The Communist Manifesto?

Trump certainly has a plan. He promised his billionaire allies tax cuts of £4 trillion. Now Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is slashing tens of thousands of jobs across federal government departments.

Musk is set to target Medicaid, which gives 20 percent of Americans access to healthcare. Trump is also cutting the defence budget, but only to “cut the fat at HQ and grow the muscle—war fighters”, as defence secretary Pete Hegseth claims.

Decades of neoliberalism have seen cuts to government welfare systems across the globe. Back in the 1980s, then Republican president Ronald Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem— government is the problem”.

But today across Europe, governments are not shrinking spending—they are diverting billions from welfare to weapons.

Trump is going even further. He is unravelling the key mechanisms by which the state has protected the interests of US capital. But the US state is bigger than Trump.

The state developed as society divided into different classes and those who controlled the wealth needed to protect themselves.

The essence of the state, Vladimir Lenin observed, is the “apparatus of violence, armed contingents of troops, prisons and other means of subjugating the will of others by force”.

The state developed to protect the ruling class—and the ruling class has a monopoly over the state. That doesn’t mean the ruling class is a homogenous class. It is divided by conflicting interests and ideas which can play out as fierce arguments within state institutions.

Modern states depend on the accumulated wealth of the capitalist class, which it collects through taxes and revenues. They must ensure that the capitalists within their geographical area are protected and supported.

This protection can take the form of economic policies, such as tariffs. Or it can take the form of negotiations which rest on US military might, such as grabbing Ukraine’s resources or threatening Greenland.

Strategic alliances against rival imperialisms depend on squandering vast resources on so-called “defence” spending.

The state also protects capital by using force to crush any working class resistance that becomes too threatening by using the police, the courts and, if necessary, the army.

But the state does not have to rely only on force. States can claim legitimacy by appearing to be neutral bodies which enforce laws that maintain stability.

For most of the 20th century, many states expanded their activities from repression and imperialist war to welfare. They ensured the supply of educated and healthy workers, invested in research and development, maintained transport infrastructure and guaranteed basic services.

The expansion of welfare was also a response to the pressure exerted by the working class for public provision for those unable to work and for care for the young, old and sick.

As the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote, “The state is the entire complex of practical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules.”

The prolonged crisis of profitability in the world economy has prompted a restructuring of welfare and care-giving. But the state isn’t shrinking its militarism or incarceration.

Trump is posing as the master of the US state rather than its servant. But US corporations might find they miss disaster management and education. And many ageing Maga Trump supporters rely on Medicaid and social security.

Trump will not rise or fall on Musk’s ability to take a chainsaw to the federal budget. Much more fundamental is the ability of US capital to compete with its Chinese rivals and the strength of the resistance waged by US workers.