Marx America Gramsci Again: Understanding Trumpism through Bonapartism and Caesarism

In The Eighteenth Brumaire Karl Marx uses the concept of “Bonapartism” to explain the success of the “grotesque mediocrity” Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, emphasizing the farcical connection between Louis-Napoléon and his famous uncle. Antonio Gramsci reformulates this concept as “Caesarism” to describe Benito Mussolini’s rise to power, linking Mussolini’s regressive utopianism to the Roman Empire and emphasizing the mythic nature of such rhetorical strategies. Gramsci complicates and expands Marx’s Bonapartism, making it more useful for understanding Trumpism’s tactics. Make America Great Again calls for a return to a mythic glory based on nostalgia for an imagined era, and the events of January 6 demonstrate how this ideology can be weaponized. Through a close reading of Marx and Gramsci’s formulations, this paper develops a structural understanding of the necessary preconditions for Trumpist populism, but also understands Trumpism’s origins as evidence of a revolutionary mass sentiment that could be channeled in progressive directions.