To understand Trump and his politics and what we have to do to stop it, we must recognize that he is ultimately a threat to the central idea of human political and social achievement, that human beings do better when everyone is included and our aim is the collective good of all.
Let me start with one example, and then return to this general point.
There is an interesting and complicated discussion in Machiavelli’s Discourses about whether it is better, when one is in a conflict with another state, to fight abroad or at home.
There is a lot to be said on both sides when it comes to conventional war.
But when it comes to dealing with infectious disease, isn’t it obvious that it’s better to fight abroad?
That is, we protect our own citizens from infectious diseases by helping other countries contain outbreaks of them in their own country. That way, there is some hope reduce the risk of those infectious diseases spreading so widely that it they come to the US faster and harder than they otherwise would.
But that’s not how Trump see is. And he has withdrawn the US from the WHO which works to, among other things, stop the spread of infectious disease in developing countries.
This is only one way in which Trump’s penchant for seeing every conflict as a zero-sum game in which one side wins and the other side loses is ill-suited for the modern world.
There are benefits to cooperation with others, whether it is working together to combat infectious disease or in an international economy in which different countries specialize in producing goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage.
Of course, there is also the possibility of conflict in distributing the costs and benefits of cooperation. Every country has to be smart in ensuring that they do not bear all the costs while getting limited benefit.
But when one country is a colossus in the world as the US is, it will no doubt have to pay a large share of the cost of cooperative activity–simply because without its substantial contribution there will not be not enough resources for the collective work. But it will also secure a great deal of the benefit.
Because of our wealth, we pay a large share of the costs of the WHO as well as of other cooperative international endeavors. But given our large population, and tight integration with the world economy which makes us vulnerable to infectious disease spreading, we get a lot of the benefit as well.
Trump’s atavistic mind only sees conflict in which we win or lose where there is also potential for cooperation in which we all do better.
And as a result, we are all going to do worse under Trump.
The US, as well as other countries, are going to suffer from the spread of infectious disease
The US, as well as other countries, are going to suffer from the productivity and other losses that result from the reduction in international trade.
And much the same is true in other areas as well. And they apply not just in international politics but in domestic politics as well.
One of the great achievements of the middle of the twentieth century–our shape rise in economic growth after WW II–was a product of the entry of women and Black people into the work force. Even the incomplete efforts to break down the barriers of race and class enable our economy, for the first time, to take full advantage of the natural talents and abilities of Black people and women.
So ending the cooperative effort of DEI to ensure that everyone can overcome barriers getting ahead, will harm our economy.
So will cutting funding for public eduction. So will reducing efforts to protect us from climate change.
One of the great collective achievement of human beings is recognizing that cooperative activity can lift us all up, bring prosperity to all, and in doing so reduce the temptation for some people to get ahead at the expense of others, which leads to destructive conflicts that harm everyone.
It’s not a new idea. The Ancient Greeks and Jews got it.
Plato’s Republic is about the tension between Thrasymachus view that justice is helping friends and harming enemies and Socrates view that everyone in a community benefits from justice.
The story of the Hebrew Bible is the construction of a just political community that is strong because it serves everyone.
Since those ancient times, we have gone even farther in realizing that ideal of justice. The potential for economic growth, which was unknown to the ancient Greeks and Jews, has enabled us to extend the idea of the mutual benefit of cooperative activity first to everyone in our own community and then to every in the world. The potential for economic growth–which itself is a product of cooperative economic activity and public investment–makes it possible to eliminate unfree labor in the modern world. And then it makes it possible to take the next step–which we have barely begun–to lift up every people and country so that we can all benefit from the immense array of talents and abilities of as well as the cultural genius of every people.
Despite our beginnings in slavery and the oppression of women, the US was a progressive force in our early years. For, as Toqueville pointed out, our capacity for “self-interest right understood” we were able, through democratic means, to turn from an individualistic understanding of self-interest to one that recongize how much we could attain through cooperative activity. That’s why 19th century America led the world in educating everyone and in using our collective resources to build huge public works including road and bridges, canals, railroads, and universities.
Fascism has always rejected this account of human life. From Schmidt to Gentile, fascist thinkers rejected the idea that human life is best served by cooperation. Instead they have held that human life is always a struggle between one person and another or one people and another. They have, often quite explicitly returned to Thrasymachus’ notion of justice.
Trump fully embraces the primitive idea that justice is helping friends and harming enemies. And he demonstrates in his own life and career what Book I of the Republic teaches us, the instability of that notion of justice.
While his supporters may think that they are Trump’s friends, they find out that ultimately he has no friends. If justice as helping friends and harming enemies ultimately leads to tyranny because the political leader only friend is himself.
We have to stop Trump’s destruction of everything we have accomplished as as country–and everything we still hope to accomplish–by rejecting his primitive understanding of political and social life.
We are to reassert the central turn of human history that justice is engaging in cooperative activity in which we everyone is included and, as a result, we all benefit.