Nobody is quite sure how to understand Donald Trump.

A group of twenty-seven American psychiatrists and mental health experts made a long list of personality disorders — narcissism, delusional disorder, paranoia, unbridled and extreme present hedonism, and more — shortly after he came into office. Some might be accurate. But psychological designations aren’t the best way to wrap your mind around Trump. To fully examine him as a political actor, we must root his personal characteristics in the US social structure.

Trump is a capitalist. That isn’t a surprise to anyone. But he is a particular kind of capitalist: a lumpen capitalist.