My Conversation With Karl Marx About Donald Trump by Norman Solomon
July 8, 2026 My Conversation With Karl Marx About Donald Trump Norman Solomon Facebook Twitter Reddit Bluesky Email Karl Marx, photograph by John Mayall, circa 1870. The following has been edited for clarity and length. Norman Solomon: You’ve downplayed the importance of the individual in history. But the United States now has as president an individual who transformed power relations and the political landscape. Karl Marx: I can assure you that he did not do that by himself. Power relations are class relations. And by the way, I never said individuals are irrelevant to history. I exhorted individuals to get involved in changing history. NS: President Trump has rolled back gains from the last hundred years and more. Also, he’s mentally unstable, to put it mildly. KM: The basics still hold. As I wrote in 1869 about a situation in France where a cult existed around a tyrant, the class struggle “created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesqu...
