Trumps Pro-natalist Delusion

In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky critiques Stalin's deployment of Stakhanovism—a campaign to boost productivity by glorifying “model workers”—as a bureaucratic illusion of progress. While it yielded short-term gains, Trotsky emphasized that it obscured deeper structural inefficiencies, such as inadequate housing, shortages of consumer goods, and rigid planning systems. Stalin, he said, regarded inflation as “superfluous” in a command economy, ignoring how the disparity between wages and real goods availability bred social tension.

This critique resonates with Donald Trump's current pro-natalist project. While Trump proposes bonuses for childbirth, IVF access, and even awards for large families, these inducements fail to address the underlying structural obstacles that suppress birth rates: stagnant wages, high housing costs, insecure employment, and poor childcare infrastructure. Just as Stalin's bureaucratic optimism couldn't overcome the lack of material provision for workers, Trump's vision assumes cultural or moral incentives can reverse demographic decline—without tackling the material conditions that deter family formation.

In both cases, political leaders respond to crises—in productivity or birth rates—not with systemic reform, but with ideologically-driven campaigns that externalize blame (on "lazy workers" or "childless women") and mask the state's failure to meet people's needs. Just as Trotsky warned that glorifying individual sacrifice in a structurally dysfunctional system leads to degeneration, so too does the U.S. face the limits of cultural paternalism in the absence of real social investment.