Trump's disparate, petty-bourgeois base was already fracturing under the inevitable contradictions that such movements entail, as described by Marx and Trotsky, set out earlier. Moreover, the simple reality of the way the world works means that when some political regime, based on such a movement, does seize power, as with Mussolini, Hitler, and also, with the examples of Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, or Castro, it is faced with having to act not in the interests of that petty-bourgeois mass, but of one of the two main classes in society, the bourgeoisie or the working-class. In both cases, for the reasons Lenin set out as against the Narodniks, it must defend and promote the interests of large-scale, socialised capital. The only question becomes whether it does so, by also being set on a course of doing so in the name of the working-class, or in the name of capital (usually framed in the terms of “the nation”, or “society”, or “the people”.
Mussolini and Hitler seized power in conditions where the ruling class was fearful of a rising revolutionary working-class, and so allied its state with the paramilitary forces of the petty-bourgeoisie. Stalin, Mao, Minh and Castro seized power in conditions where the existing ruling classes of landlords and bourgeoisie had been overthrown, but where the working-class was very small and weak. But, the ruling-class, today, faces no challenge from the working-class, which, although it has grown, on a global scale, at the expense of the peasantry, as globalisation has developed the world economy, is very weak organisationally and ideologically, as a result of a century of mis-leadership by Stalinism and social-democracy, and by a reactionary, petty-bourgeois socialism that has passed itself off as “Marxism”. The biggest challenge to the ruling-class has come, not from the workers, but from that reactionary, petty-bourgeoisie. It has no desire, let alone need to ally with it.
Instead, the ruling-class has simply used its state apparatus to absorb the political representatives of that reactionary petty-bourgeois mass, like a great sponge. It is what the likes of Rees-Mogg complained about as the civil service, the courts and so on acted to frustrate their Brexit plans, and it is what MAGA describe as “the deep state”. But, the ruling class, and its state has that other even greater power on its side – the reality of the economic relations that exist in the age of imperialism, of the domination of production and distribution, by large-scale, socialised, multinational, industrial capital. It means that, however rich maybe a handful of tech bros, able to engage in their various fantasies, even they cannot outweigh the vast capital flows of the global financial markets, nor the laws of economics specific to capitalism.
Neither Trump nor Farage can create a nationalistic, autarky, in the interests of national capitalists, let alone those petty-bourgeois, and small-scale capitalists attracted into their base, any more than Pol Pot could turn Cambodia back to being a peasant economy, or the Kim Dynasty, in North Korea could isolate it. As Marx and Engels noted, it is
“always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.”
Trump's first term was a mitigated disaster, only because the US state contained him, and the power and size of the US economy, has great inertia. But, in his second term, he has removed many of those who would have acted to limit the damage he would do. Instead, reality has filled that role. Trump threatened his tariffs, markets responded, by selling the Dollar, and pushing US interest rates higher, whilst other countries, shrugged at Trump's threats, and so Trump scrapped the proposed tariffs, because Trump Always Chickens Out.
So, what is different about the strike on Iran? The strike on Iran is not simply a question of Trump. It is a question of Trump acting consistent with the interests, also, of US imperialism, and the US state. It is a continuation of the policy of US imperialism pursued by Biden and Harris. Indeed, as Hegseth has let slip, the details of the plan to bomb Iran were drawn up months ago, whether that was during the Biden/Harris regime, or after, is not clear. But, what is clear is that for the last year and a half, Biden/Harris' regime stood shoulder to shoulder with Netanyahu and the Zionist state in Israel, providing it with all of the heavy munitions it demanded to carry out its genocide against Palestinians; it supported the Zionist state when it extended its war of annexation to Lebanon and Syria, when it undertook terrorist attacks, via pagers, and attacked the sovereign territory of Iran, in the Embassy in Damascus, and when it undertook assassinations in Tehran. When Iran responded to those attacks, the US and its allies used their military to provide a shield for the Zionist state so that it could be free to engage in further such attacks. The US and Britain, openly engaged in military attacks on the Houthis in Yemen. So, Trump has simply inherited those policies, and that agenda of Biden/Harris, just as he has inherited their authoritarian attacks on free speech and protest in the US, against the genocide of Zionism, as it “does their dirty work for them”.
What Trump, of course, was not doing, was carrying out the policies of US imperialism, by continuing the measures of Biden/Harris, in relation to the imperialist war against Russia, in Ukraine. But, by drawing the US into a new forever war in the Middle-East, what the US state has done, is to ensure that Iran is limited in its provision of missiles to Russia to use in Ukraine. If US imperialism is lucky, Trump's new forever war against Iran, might even be a means of having Russia divert some of its own military resources to Iran, with which it has a strategic partnership. Either way, its obvious why Trump's MAGA base is unhappy, as he goes the way of all his predecessors, and gets captured by the huge US permanent state.
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