Ayatollah Trump's Murderous Regime - Part 2 of 4

As I have described previously, the last 40 years has seen a large rise in the numbers of the petty-bourgeoisie. It has grown by 50%, and its social and political weight has grown accordingly. In many ways, it has parallels with the growth of the industrial working-class at the end of the 19th century. In Britain, which was the classic example, the working-class, after 1848, aligned with the industrial bourgeoisie, represented by the Liberal Party that itself emerged out of the struggle over the Repeal of The Corn Laws. The organised workers, via their trades unions, sat in parliament as Lib-Lab MP's. But, the rapid expansion of the working-class, and particularly its consequence in the development of mass trades unions of unskilled workers “New Unionism”, increasingly made that untenable, and the trades unions split to create the Labour Party.

The petty-bourgeoisie has always formed the mass base of the Conservative Party, and the core of its vote. But, as with the Labour Party as a party of workers, the Conservative Party, as a party of the petty-bourgeoisie, never pursued those interests. It was always, like the Labour and Liberal Parties, forced to represent the interests of the ruling class, i.e. of large-scale industrial capital. The petty-bourgeois, Tory wing of the Conservative Party, having won control only to face that same reality in the face of the disaster of Brexit, and, its farcical culmination in the shape of the Truss government, have tried to reconcile their fantasy with reality, via a typical “stab in the back narrative”, and the creation of their own independent “Brexit” party, now rebranded in its more honest, racist and jingoist livery.

Trump represents the same development in the US Republican Party. The huge economic power of the US means that the contradiction between illusion and reality takes longer to assert itself, and the huge military/strategic power of the US enables Trump to support his regime by leaning on the allies of US imperialism in Europe and Asia to bear the cost, which is now becoming manifest as Trump attacks those allies in Europe, but the process will play out all the same. What is being demonstrated at the same time is the thoroughly corrupt and decadent nature of the ruling-class itself, in the face of these attacks by Trump's petty-bourgeois regime, in pursuit not merely of the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, but just of his own personal interests, and narcissistic psychology.

The ordinary citizens of the US, still without any adequate political leadership of their own, have shown more backbone, principle and strength of character than all of the bourgeois politicians and their institutions combined. As a consequence, Ayatollah Trump has unleashed his own, newly recruited, fascist thugs, many of them ones he pardoned, after they had been found guilty of insurrection on January 6th 2021, kitted up with the military equipment of ICE, to kill and terrorise them, in the manner of the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is a clerical-fascist political regime, that of Ayatollah Trump a comical-fascist regime, marked by its farcical coup attempt 5 years ago, and by the demented, moronic rants of Trump and his sycophants, today, that simply bring the US itself into disrepute, across the globe. But, as Austin Powers noted, even clowns and carnies can be frightening, as well as nuclear weapons. Trump embodies both, a demented clown with his finger on the nuclear button.

In the past, we saw moralists, third-campists, and other social-imperialists justify the role of US imperialism and its allies in acting as some kind of “lesser-evil”, on the world stage. The Zionists and pro-imperialists of the AWL, for example, sought to justify an attack by the Zionist regime on Iran's nuclear facilities, by pointing to precisely this kind of irrational zealotry of the mullahs that might lead it to use nuclear weapons. So, who do they now want to bomb the US, given the irrational Trump has his finger on the button?

Similarly, having sent his fascist goons to murder innocent civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, Trump's regime follows the play book of the Zionists, by simply lying, and claiming that Rene Good was a terrorist!. Clearly absurd, but no more absurd than the same claims made by his predecessor Biden that the students on campuses across the US protesting against genocide in Gaza, were all, also, anti-Semitic supporters of Hamas, nor the claims of Starmer's Blue Labour government that the supporters of Palestine Action are members of a terrorist organisation!!

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Ayatollah Trump's Murderous Regime - Part 1 of 4

Over the last few weeks, Iran has experienced the latest round of mass protests against the reactionary regime of the Ayatollahs that have broken out, sporadically, ever since they seized power, in 1979, following the overthrow of the equally vicious regime of the Pahlavi's, installed by US imperialism, as it overthrew the elected government of Mossadegh in 1953. As in the past, those protests have been met by severe repression and violence by the regime. During the same period, the regime of Ayatollah Trump, in the US, has been similarly murdering and attacking innocent civilians on the streets of Democrat controlled cities.

The political regime of the Ayatollahs, in both cases, Iran and the US, is a regime resting upon a large petty-bourgeoisie. The same has been true in Britain, for the last 15 years, and in Russia, as well as in China. These political regimes, as with all political regimes that rest upon the petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry, are Bonapartist, taking advantage of the weakness of the ruling-class. Marx analysed these relations and phenomena in relation to Bonapartism in France, and Trotsky updated that analysis to respond to the particular form of Bonapartism that is fascism and Stalinism. Trotsky, also, made the point that, in terms of the political regime, as against the state itself, the political regime of Stalin was distinguished from that of Hitler, only by the greater brutality of the former.

Fascism, as Trotsky describes, is not a description of the class nature of the state, but is a description of the form of political regime/government, just as is bourgeois democracy, or proletarian democracy. The political regime is merely a superficial appearance, whereas it is the objective material reality of social relations, i.e. the dominant forms of property, themselves based upon the dominant forms of production, that determine the class nature of the state. Fascism is the ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie, and like the petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry itself, it is necessarily wracked by contradictions, because the petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry is far from being an heterogeneous class. It is why, as Marx explained, the petty-bourgeoisie/peasantry can never itself become the ruling-class.

To the extent it ever seizes control of the political regime, it does so as a result of the weakness of the main classes of modern society – bourgeoisie and proletariat – and, even then, can only do so by lining up behind a “strong man” who imposes some kind of order upon them. But, as I set out in relation to the Chinese Revolution of 1949, which was really a Peasant War, led by Mao Zedong, control of the political regime does not change the fundamental laws of society and history. Such regimes are forced, in the end, to choose between bourgeois property or proletarian property forms (even in grossly deformed manifestations), or else, as with Pol Pot, to become failed states, as with many across the globe, in poorly developed countries. As long ago, as Engels “The Peasant War in Germany”, Marxists understood this distinction, and reality.

The peasantry, in the past, when it rose up against its rulers, typically used acts of terrorism, sabotage and wanton destruction, burning buildings and so on. As Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky described, such methods go nowhere, despite what the Anarchists and Populists proclaim. It is only when a large-disciplined and clear sighted industrial proletariat acts as the vanguard that these disparate, heterogenous and disorganised forces of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, can be drawn in behind it. The Bolshevik formula of Lenin and Trotsky of “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat Leading The Peasantry”, summed it up.

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Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 3 - Inflation Returns - Part 5 of 7

What has changed, and characterises the conditions of the last 40 years, is that the ruling-class, as a global class of rentiers, has become dependent upon speculative capital gains on its assets. In the 1980's, the huge rise in productivity from the microchip revolution, led to a massive rise in the rate of relative surplus value, and simultaneously slashed the value of constant capital, both circulating constant capital (materials/components/energy) and notably of fixed capital. That created a huge rise in the rate of profit, but the same factors meant that, as in past such periods, it was followed by a period of stagnation, as the corollary of higher productivity was a slower growth of employment to achieve any given increase in output. In addition, as Marx sets out in Capital III, and in Theories of Surplus Value, this rise in productivity means that even where the physical mass of capital rises, the value of this capital rises much more slowly, or even falls.

The technical composition of capital, as Marx describes, in these conditions, rises but the value composition may fall, meaning a fall in the organic composition of capital. Not only, then, does the rate of profit rise, but it creates a huge release of capital, which may, also, persist year on year for several years, as the new technologies bring above average, year on year rises in productivity, reducing the unit values of the commodities that physically constitute capital. That is what happened in the 1980's and 90's, causing interest rates to fall, and asset prices to rise. The Dow Jones rose by 1300% between 1980 and 2000, whilst US GDP rose by only 256% in that period. The ruling-class, as well as states became dependent on these capital gains on assets, as they basically asset stripped their economies, realising a portion of these capital gains to supplement their revenues.

In addition, a large part of the expansion of industrial capital, in the developed economies, became an expansion of commercial capital, rather than productive-capital. Surplus-value was increasingly produced by low paid labour in newly industrialising economies in Asia, but was realised by commercial capital in the developed western economies, as large areas of previous urban, and industrial land saw coal mines, steel works, tyre manufacture, pottery manufacture and so on, disappear, and be replaced by new retail parks.

The asset stripping of real industrial capital was manifest in the fact that, as the growth in the mass of surplus value/profit eventually slowed, because capital itself was being accumulated more slowly – and more slowly in the developed economies, as it accumulated faster in the developing economies – in order to maintain, revenues from the ownership of assets (rent on land/property, interest/dividends on financial assets, as well as taxes to the capitalist state) the proportion of these, relative to profits, grew whilst the proportion of profit of enterprise/retained profits available for investment, fell. Haldane noted that dividends rose from 10% of profits in the 1970's, to 70% of profits by the early 2000's.

It was the explosion of this contradiction that spelled the end of the delusion that real wealth could be created by continual asset price gains. But, appearance and reality can diverge for a long time, especially where a ruling class, and its state have become fixated upon the delusion, and use their power to cling to it by all means, even as doing so undermines their position even more. So, when reality began to impose itself, and capital continued to accumulate, and interest rates began to rise, causing asset prices to crash, the ruling-class and its state, sought to simply inflate them once more.

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Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 3 - Inflation Returns - Part 4 of 7

The 2008 global financial crash showed that the limiting role of surplus-value on the continued expansion of revenues derived from assets had asserted itself. In Capital III, Marx notes,

“It would be still more absurd to presume that capital would yield interest on the basis of capitalist production without performing any productive function, i.e., without creating surplus-value, of which interest is just a part; that the capitalist mode of production would run its course without capitalist production. If an untowardly large section of capitalists were to convert their capital into money-capital, the result would be a frightful depreciation of money-capital and a frightful fall in the rate of interest; many would at once face the impossibility of living on their interest, and would hence be compelled to reconvert into industrial capitalists.” (p 378)

Marx and Engels noted that a social revolution had already occurred by the latter part of the 19th century. Private ownership of industrial capital had already become an anachronism. Capital was, even by then, socialised capital, the collective property of the “associated producers” within each large company, be it a cooperative or a joint stock company.

“This result of the ultimate development of capitalist production is a necessary transitional phase towards the reconversion of capital into the property of producers, although no longer as the private property of the individual producers, but rather as the property of associated producers, as outright social property. On the other hand, the stock company is a transition toward the conversion of all functions in the reproduction process which still remain linked with capitalist property, into mere functions of associated producers, into social functions...

This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property...

The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”

(Capital III, Chapter 27)

When Marx and Engels say that socialism is inevitable, this is not a prediction of the future, but a statement of the facts that already existed at the time they said it. This social revolution had already occurred. Production had been socialised, and industrial-capital had, then, been socialised along with it. The collective owners of industrial-capital – at least of large-scale industrial capital, monopoly-capital – were the workers (associated producers), but they did not yet exert control over their own property. The ruling-class, had become a class of rentiers, owners of fictitious-capital, not industrial capital, and they, now, obtained their revenues, not from profits but from interest/dividends as well as rents from the ownership of financial and property assets.

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Forward To Part 5

SNNS 26

 

Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 3 - Inflation Returns - Part 3 of 7

This long period in which Keynesian economics seemed to work, led to ideas about a crisis-free capitalism, which many on the Left, also, adopted at about the time that the conditions which made it possible came to an end. That was the period of the end of the long-wave uptrend around 1974, as a crisis of overproduction of capital set in. The indications of that had been apparent for some time, though are easier to see with hindsight. The more the 1960's progressed, the more it was clear that capital was expanding at a faster pace than the labour supply. All of the productivity gains from the previous Innovation Cycle, which peaked in 1935, and created large surplus populations, had waned. Capital accumulation, which was intensive during the 1940's and 50's, based on the application of that new technology, became extensive, thereby using up labour supplies at a faster pace. It was the other side of slowing productivity growth.

A feature discussed by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, became manifest. As capital accumulated extensively, and the demand for labour rose relative to its supply, workers not only demanded enhanced rates for overtime work, but also, began to demand shorter hours, and longer holidays etc., thereby, reducing the scope for expanding the social working-day, and absolute surplus-value. On the contrary, that began to fall, and was no longer compensated by rising levels of relative surplus-value from rising productivity. As capital competed for scarce labour, relative wages also rose, as Glyn & Sutcliffe described, leading to a squeeze on profits, which reaches a crescendo, and crisis of overproduction of capital in the mid-70's. It was this, and the failure of both neoclassical and Keynesian economics to understand the difference between these two types of crisis (overproduction of commodities and overproduction of capital), as well as their failure to understand the difference between money and money-capital, which characterised the period between 1974 and 1987.

There is a commonality in the analysis of both the neoclassical/Austrian School economists and the Keynesian/post-Keynesian economists. It is the failure to understand the nature of money and of capital. The neoclassical/Austrian School economists believed that all that was required was to increase profits. That could be done by reducing wages, or reducing taxes, or interest rates. But, as previous similar periods showed, if their goal was to bring to an end a crisis of overproduction of commodities, and persistent stagnation of the economy, that would not work, basically for the reasons Sismondi had set out, and which Ricardo, Mill, Say et al had rejected.

Falling wages means that a large part of aggregate demand is undermined, and, although, in periods of frantic economic activity – booms – firms might use higher profits to invest in expansion speculatively, they do not do so in conditions of economic stagnation. Similarly, in such conditions, if the rate of interest is reduced by central banks with the intention of stimulating investment, it becomes, as Keynes noted, following also Marx's analysis set out in Capital III, like pushing on a piece of string. Nor does cutting aggregate demand by cutting state spending, so as to cut taxes work, in such conditions.

Firms rather than using increased profits for expansion, increase their holdings of money-capital. Of itself, this increase in the supply of money-capital from realised profits, relative to the demand for that money-capital for investment (investment/real capital accumulation not acquisition of fictitious-capital/speculation) causes interest rates to fall, and so causes asset prices to rise (capitalisation), which gives an incentive for such speculation. In previous long-wave cycles, such periods of stagnation, are also characterised by intensive rather than extensive capital accumulation.

For the Keynesians, they believed that if the state intervened, as it had done repeatedly after WWII, to stimulate aggregate demand, then, firms would respond to the rising demand, invest in new capital, and so the economy would rebound. The post-Keynesians, and supporters of MMT, basically see this operating not by the state raising taxes or borrowing, but by creating money out of thin air, by increasing liquidity, monetising the debt of the state used to expand the economy. They see this as no different to what the state did using QE, to bail-out the banks. The refrain being if the central banks could “print money” to bail out the bankers, why not to finance capital investment in infrastructure and so on. In the post-war period, when Keynesian state spending expanded massively, and huge amounts of infrastructure as well as welfare states were created, that is exactly what they did, just as similarly happened at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But, assuming that can happen now fails to understand the nature of capital, and the role of the capitalist state, including its central banks.

It also misunderstands what has happened in the last 40 years, in the developed western economies, in which the ruling-class has become characterised not just by its ownership of fictitious-capital (shares, bonds, derivatives) but by its reliance for its wealth and power on speculative gains on those assets, rather than on the revenues accruing to them, as interest/dividends. The scope for increased interest/dividends (and rents) is limited by the accumulation of industrial capital, and so on the expansion of surplus value/profit. In other words, if the rate of surplus value is constant, the mass of surplus value, out of which interest/dividends, as well as rents and taxes are paid can only increase if the mass of capital employed, itself increases.  But, any increase in capital accumulation threatens rising interest rates, from still historically very low levels, and a consequent crash in asset prices.

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Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 3 - Inflation Returns - Part 2 of 7

Keynes failed to recognise what Marx had recognised, and set out in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, which is the difference between a crisis of overproduction of commodities, and a crisis of overproduction of capital. Engels, even before Marx, had written about the operation of the market continually resulting in an overproduction and underproduction of commodities. It can never be the case that, particularly with a plethora of small capitals, still less of smaller independent commodity producers, supply exactly corresponds with demand for any commodity at its market value. Indeed, as Marx notes, its this very fact that inevitably leads to the least efficient independent commodity producers failing, and ultimately, them being turned into wage labourers, employed by other producers, and their means of production, thus being turned into capital. These repeated overproductions of commodities, are not an overproduction of capital, during all of that time when capital itself did not exist! They create part of the required conditions for industrial capital to come into existence – i.e. they create a supply of free labourers, and the centralisation of the means of production.

In Capital II, in particular, Marx sets out a series of scenarios in which such crises of overproduction of commodities can arise, which amounts to a break in the circuit of industrial capital. I have discussed them in my book, Marx and Engels Theories of Crisis. These breaks in the circuit of capital have nothing to do with an overproduction of capital itself. An overproduction of capital, as Marx sets out, in Capital III, Chapter 15, as well as in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, is an overproduction of capital relative to labour, such that any increase in capital results in a fall in the rate of surplus value, and consequent sharp fall in the rate of profit. An overproduction of commodities can, and often does, arise when the rate and mass of profit is high or rising. Consequently, when there is no overproduction of capital.

In Theories of Surplus Value III, Marx quotes a supporter of Ricardo,

“...I can only answer, that glut […] is synonymous with high profits…” (op. cit., p. 59).”

Marx comments,

“This is indeed the secret basis of glut.” (p 121)

An overproduction of capital, by contrast, arises when, after a long period of economic expansion, and rising consumption (both personal and productive) no further such expansion is possible on the basis of capitalist production, because neither absolute nor relative surplus value can be expanded, and capitalist production only takes place if the additional capital produces additional surplus-value/profit.

As Marx notes, in Theories of Surplus Value, Capital and elsewhere, a crisis of overproduction of capital, inevitably means, also, a consequent overproduction of commodities, because capital, is itself composed of commodities. Marx's point, here, was to set out the way that the Ricardians were inconsistent in recognising the possibility of an overproduction of capital, whilst clinging to Say's Law, and its claim that supply creates its own demand, so that there can never be a generalised overproduction of commodities. It does not mean the latter cannot exist without the former.

In the post-war period, the global rate of profit was high, and yet there were several global cycles in which commodities were overproduced. As Mandel notes, in The Second Slump, Keynesian intervention was able, during this period, to cut these crises short, and did so in the context of a continuation of the post-war, long wave boom. Keynesian state intervention raised aggregate demand, and prevented capital and labour from being unemployed. In the context of a continuation of economic growth, it was able to do so by not even increasing the proportional deduction of tax from surplus-value, which would have reduced future capital accumulation.

As Marx sets out in Capital III, if the average rate of profit is 30%, a capital of £1 billion implies surplus-value of £300 million. But, rents might amount to £50 million (5%), interest/dividends £50 million (5%) taxes £50 million (5%), leaving profit of enterprise of £150 million (15%).  So, if the economy continues to grow, rather than contracting due to a recession, so that capital expands to £1.5 billion, suppose this required the state to spend £20 million to stimulate demand. The total surplus-value grows to £450 million. Of this, rent increases to £75 million (5%), interest to £75 million (5%), whilst taxes would only have needed to rise to £70 million, or 4.7%, down from 5%. Profit of enterprise rises from £150 million (15%) to £230 million (15.3%). Even if the state kept the rate of tax at its previous level of 5%, so that taxes rose to £75 million, thus increasing its additional spending by £5 million as well as paying back the £20 billion of borrowing used to stimulate demand, the burden of taxation would not have risen, and the mass of profit of enterprise available for capital accumulation would have grown from £150 million to £225 million.

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Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 3 – Inflation Returns - Part 1 of 7

Prediction 3 – Inflation Returns

As Marx sets out, in "A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy", “Capital”, “Theories of Surplus Value”, and “Anti-Duhring”, inflation is a monetary phenomena. It is a consequence of a reduction in the value of the standard of prices, relative to the unit value of commodities. Its result is a rise in unit prices relative to their unit value. The fall in the value of the standard of prices, Marx notes can result from a fall in the value of the money commodity, for example gold, upon which the standard is based, or from a fall in the amount of the money commodity that the standard represents. In both cases, this requires more money tokens to be put into circulation to represent the same amount of value. In monetary systems where the currency is redeemable for a stated amount of gold – or silver – this means that the monetary authority/state cannot simply increase the currency supply/liquidity, faster than the growth in the total value of commodities to be circulated, without it causing a rise in unit prices, including the price of the money commodity/gold, which, then, results in the currency being redeemed for gold, and a reduction in liquidity.

In fiat money systems, this reduction in liquidity, as money tokens are redeemed for gold, cannot happen. The tokens remain in circulation, and each falls in value, causing unit prices of commodities to rise, which is what is, then, seen as inflation, but is, in fact, the consequence of, the manifestation of the inflation of the currency supply. This confusion of rising levels of unit prices with inflation provides a basis for all sorts of false theories about the cause of those rising prices, as Marx set out in the above works, as well as in his polemics with the likes of the Proudhonists, for example, in The Poverty of Philosophy, and in Value, Price and Profit, and Wage-Labour and Capital. These false theories, which basically come down to the claim that the value of commodities is resolvable, in the end, to wages, also provided the basis of the theories of the social-democrats/Keynesians and post-Keynesians.

Their argument amounts to the claim that the value of commodities is resolvable entirely into revenues (wages, profit, rent, interest, taxes), which is the cost of production theory advanced by Adam Smith, and adopted by Say and others, which provides the basis of Say's Law. As I noted in past articles, although Keynes rejected the claim by neoclassical economists that a general overproduction of commodities was not possible, if the market operated freely, because Say's Law says that supply creates its own demand, he did not reject this overall assumption. Keynes was simply forced to recognise the obvious reality, set out by Marx nearly a century earlier, that, in a money economy, money can be saved rather than spent on consumption (personal or productive consumption). Keynes simply adjusted Say's Law to account for saving, whilst maintaining its overall equation of aggregate supply and aggregate demand.

Like Sismondi, whose work was plagiarised by Malthus, and like Attwood and the Birmingham Little Shilling Men, Keynes, therefore, saw such crises of overproduction of commodities as simply a consequence of under-consumption, which could be remedied by increasing consumption. Malthus, as paid advocate of the old landlord class, argued the solution was to increase the rents paid to the landlords, and other unproductive classes, so that they could spend more to provide the additional consumption. Keynes offered up the capitalist state instead as the means of increasing that consumption. The neoclassical and Austrian School economists argued that such crises were a consequence of the market not being allowed to operate freely – although, the founders of the Austrian School, such as Bohm-Bawerk, had themselves warned against an unfettered free-market leading to chaos – whereas Keynes argued the need to intervene in the operation of the market, during such crises. Keynes view held sway for more than 30 years after the end of WWII, and the entire global economic structure was based upon it, with a series of global para state bodies established such as the IMF,GATT/WTO, World Bank and so on to regulate its operation.

Indeed, even before WWII, Keynes ideas had wide currency. They were adopted by the various national socialist regimes, such as Nazi Germany, and some Nordic states. They formed the basis of the economic nationalist programme of other national socialist parties, including the Mosley Memorandum, put forward by Oswald Mosley and eulogised by the likes of Nye Bevan and others. It shows the superficiality and light-mindedness of equating increased spending and investment by the capitalist state with any kind of left-wing or socialist programme. Another example of that was the huge bail-out and nationalisation of the banks by the capitalist state after 2008.

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Forward To Part 2

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 12

The lifting of restrictions on the rate of interest, and on the ability to borrow and lend, was essential for an expansion of industrial capital, as happened in the Industrial revolution. Engels quotes Duhring further,

“Many businessmen thought the same” (as Locke) “on free play for the rate of interest, and the developing situation also produced the tendency to regard restrictions on interest as ineffective. At a period when a Dudley North could write his Discourses upon Trade in the direction of free trade, a great deal must already have been in the air, as it were, which made the theoretical opposition to restrictions on interest rates seem something not at all extraordinary”. (p 300-301)

In fact, the position put forward by Locke, in 1691, had already been elaborated by Petty, in 1662, in his Treatise on Taxes and Contributions, in which he contrasted the rent on land (ground-rent), and the rent on money (interest).

“In his Quantulumcunque (1682) he therefore declared that the legal regulation of the rate of interest was as stupid as the regulation of the export of precious metals or of the exchange rate. In the same work he made definitive statements on the “raising of money” (for example, the attempt to call sixpence a shilling by doubling the number of shillings coined from one ounce of silver).” (p 301)

As Marx sets out, in Capital III, the same is seen in attempts by central banks to fix the rate of interest. They cannot do so, because the rate of interest is a function of the demand for and supply of money-capital. Whilst a central bank can, like Law, or the Birmingham Little Shilling-Men, depreciate the currency, and throw more of it into circulation, they cannot, thereby, increase the supply of money-capital. The inflation of the currency supply causes prices to rise, so that the nominal level of demand for money-capital rises accordingly.

Central banks can reduce their policy rates, which basically means they increase the availability of credit to commercial banks, who can then increase the amount of bank credit in circulation, but this has the same effect as devaluing the currency and throwing more of it into circulation. As Marx says, in Capital III, the real measure of the rate of interest is not these manipulated central bank, short-term policy rates, or bond yields, but the rate that, for example, equipment lenders charge to other firms.

“For instance, if we wish to compare the English interest rate with the Indian, we should not take the interest rate of the Bank of England, but rather, e.g., that charged by lenders of small machinery to small producers in domestic industry.”

(Capital III, Chapter 36)

As Marx sets out, in Capital III, in fact, the laws relating to the rent on land (ground-rent), are not the same as those relating to the rent on money (interest). The rent on land is determined by surplus profits, i.e. profit over and above the average industrial rate of profit. But, interest is a deduction from the average profit.

Locke and North copied Petty's position, in respect of the idea that money could be raised by simply devaluing the currency and issuing more of it.

“With regard to interest, however, Locke followed Petty’s parallel between interest on money and rent of land, while North goes further and opposes interest as “rent of stock” to rent of land, and the stocklords to the landlords. While free play for the rate of interest as demanded by Petty is accepted by Locke, only with reservations, North accepts it unconditionally. (p 301)

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SNNS 25

 

Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 2 – Support for Reform Stalls

Prediction 2 – Support for Reform Stalls

Analysing the rise of fascism in Germany, in the 1930's, Trotsky noted,

"It is stupid to believe that the Nazis would grow uninterruptedly, as they do now, for an unlimited period of time. Sooner or later they will drain their social reservoir. Fascism has introduced into its own ranks such dreadful contradictions, that the moment must come in which the flow will cease to replace the ebb. The moment can arrive long before the Fascists will have united about them even half of the votes. They will not be able to halt, for they will have nothing more to expect here. They will be forced to resort to an overthrow."

(For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism)

As Trotsky also notes, and as every sociological study shows, fascism is a movement of the petty-bourgeoisie. As Trotsky also notes,

“the main strength of the fascists is their strength in numbers. Yes, they have received many votes. But in the social struggle, votes are not decisive. The main army of fascism still consists of the petty bourgeoisie and the new middle class: the small artisans and shopkeepers of the cities, the petty officials, the employees, the technical personnel, the intelligentsia, the impoverished peasantry. On the scales of election statistics, a thousand fascist votes weigh as much as a thousand Communist votes. But on the scales of the revolutionary struggle, a thousand workers in one big factory represent a force a hundred times greater than a thousand petty officials, clerks, their wives, and their mothers-in-law. The great bulk of the fascists consists of human dust.”

(Trotsky – Germany Is The Key To The International Situation)

In Britain, the peasantry disappeared two centuries ago, with the closest, to it, now, being those small, inefficient private family farmers, that seek tax concessions and so on.  Today, the new professional middle-class, itself organised in trades unions, particularly within the public sector, is more likely attracted to progressive social-democracy than to the fascists. In normal times, even these numbers of the petty-bourgeoisie are inadequate. They constitute around 25-30% of the electorate. They are forced to find expression in the petty-bourgeois wing of conservative parties, e.g.. the Tories in Britain. Many of them, and particularly their associated elements from the lowest social layers of society do not even bother to vote or engage in political activity. Mostly, their influence on even the conservative parties is limited, being used as simply voting fodder, whilst those parties in government, pursue the interests not of the petty-bourgeoisie, but of the ruling-class. Again, as Trotsky put it, in relation to the Chinese Revolution in 1927,

“Before these collisions develop to the point of becoming an open revolutionary struggle, they will pass, from all the available facts, through a “constitutional” stage. The conflicts between the bourgeoisie and its own military cliques will inevitably draw in the upper layer of the petty-bourgeois masses, through the medium of a “third party” or by other means. From the standpoint of economics and of culture, the former are extraordinarily feeble. Their political strength lies in their numbers. Therefore, the slogans of formal democracy win over, or are capable of winning over, not only the petty-bourgeois masses but also the broad working masses, precisely because they reveal to them the possibility, which is essentially illusory, of opposing their will to that of the generals, the country squires and the capitalists. The proletarian vanguard educates the masses by using this experience, and leads them forward.”

Only when the ruling-class is fearful of its own rule, as it is challenged by a revolutionary working-class, does it ally with the petty-bourgeoisie, and its fascist parties. But, no such situation exists, today, the ability of the petty-bourgeoisie to utilise its one strength – its numbers – in elections, to capture political regimes/governments, as witnessed in the form of Brexit/Reform, or, in the US, Trump, is not a consequence of the support given to it by a fearful ruling-class, but, the tiny size – in numbers – of the ruling class, and the disorganised, weak state of the working-class. The ruling class, in so far as it feels seriously threatened by these petty-bourgeois political regimes, rather than being able to adapt to them, has used its main strength which is not its power at the ballot box, but is its ownership of property – today its ownership of fictitious-capital – and so its economic and financial power, as well as its continued control of the state.

So long as the ruling-class does not feel threatened by the working-class, and no such threat looks likely in the foreseeable future, it has no need of fascism, and the existence of increasingly fascistic regimes such as those of Trump, Le Pen, Starmer and potentially Farage, geared to the needs of the petty-bourgeoisie, pose a threat to it. In the end, the capitalist state acts as the instrument of the ruling-class, and that state, if the interests of that ruling class are seriously challenged by these petty-bourgeois regimes will assert itself against them. In most cases, it is even sufficient for the state to simply abstain from the fray, when the fascists take to the field of battle, on the streets. The ruling class and its state asserts itself against the petty-bourgeoisie and its reactionary governments, via the financial markets, the courts and so on.

Trumpf's petty-bourgeois nationalist regime has far more scope given the size and power of the US economy to engage in its nationalist delusions than does Farage in Brexit Britain. Yet, the contradictions of Trumpf's petty-bourgeois nationalist regime have already exploded, within months of his returning to the White House. His support has plummeted within his petty-bourgeois MAGA base, for all of the reasons that Trotsky noted above in relation to the Nazis in the 1930's. The difference is that this is not the 1930's, the ruling-class is not fearful of a revolutionary proletariat, and its interests are more threatened by the pursuit of the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, by the likes of Trumpf, Le Pen, Starmer, or Farage. Unlike the 1930's, the ruling-class has no desire to ally with fascists, when those fascists, having reached the limits of their popular support, are led to turn to a violent overturn. Fascism extracted a heavy toll on the ruling-class, in the 1930's, as its price for saving it from the revolutionary workers.

Already, the contradictions of the petty-bourgeois agenda of Reform have been exposed. As the likes of James O'Brien regularly describe, it is somewhat surreal that Farage, having been the architect of the disaster that is Brexit, continues to spout the same idiocies, and supported by the Tory media outlets that seek to bolster and retain their reader/viewer numbers by appealing to all of those same prejudices of that same petty-bourgeoisie, presents himself, and his Reform company as the answer to all of those problems that his own Brexit agenda created in the first place! Trumpf 2.0 showed that, in the absence of a credible alternative, i.e. an alternative not itself undermined by its own previous failures, whilst appealing to voters to vote for it, as purely a “lesser-evil”, the petty-bourgeois demagogues are given the best possible opportunity to win elections.

Trumpf's support has cratered even more quickly than during his first term of office, but a craven ruling-class has sat by whilst he undermines its state apparatus, creating his own paramilitary force of blackshirts, as he recruits assorted criminals, racists and fascists into the ranks of ICE, which he is using on the streets of US cities. Farage and his Reform company have attempted something similar as they encouraged gangs to riot across Britain on the basis of lies about refugee hostels. And, acting as a further outrider to the constitutional forces of Farage has been the mobilisation of outright fascist thugs by the likes of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, backed by Elon Musk.

Sections of the ruling-class and its state seem to be waking up. In the US several weeks ago, we had some former generals speaking out, and saying to troops they not only had a right, but a duty to disobey unlawful orders given to them by Trumpf and his regime. For that, Trumpf accused them of treason. But, as Trotsky pointed out, in the 1930's, what would be the worst possible thing for the working-class to do would be to simply rely on an electoral/constitutional response to Trumpf, allowing his criminal gangs of ICE thugs to be rampaging through the streets. By all means, as he noted, ally with the masses that continue to be deluded by the formalities of bourgeois-democracy, on the streets, to confront those fascistic forces, but do not confine yourself to passive electoral blocks with them.

The same is true with Farage and his Reform company. A look at even the polling numbers shows the point. Farage pushed through Brexit in 2016, by a demagogic appeal to that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, many of whom turned out to vote for the first time in their lives, whilst the lacklustre offering of the likes of Cameron did nothing to stir the enthusiasm of progressive voters. Many of those that voted for Brexit did so as a proxy vote against Cameron, and as a proxy for voting against immigration. The Leave voters were overwhelmingly Tory, and overwhelmingly old. They were part of a pre-war generation that grew up when the British Empire held millions of colonial slaves in chains, and who looked back with nostalgia to those days. It was a total delusion that it could return, let alone that anyone should want it to return.

Even in the referendum, and despite all of those formerly apathetic voters turning out, it secured the support of only 37% of the electorate. Never has support for leaving obtained a majority in the polls, and today, the majority recognising that Brexit is a disaster and seeking to reverse it grows by the day. The reality is that the support for Farage and his Reform company has not grown, since the Referendum, it has just been relabelled as it split from the Conservative Party. The 2024 General Election, in which Starmer won a majority of seats only because of the fraudulent nature of the electoral system, and the division of the petty-bourgeois vote between Reform and Tories, showed to them why they had to ditch the Tories and consolidate under Reform. The fruits of that were seen in the 2025 local elections when the situation was reversed and the petty-bourgeois vote was united behind Reform, whilst the working-class vote split between Labour, Liberals, Greens, Plaid and SNP. Labour now faces the same fate as the Conservatives as, Caerphilly showed, because, even where it was the governing party, it loses to more progressive parties, seeking to consolidate that progressive vote.

Reform having consolidated its vote will not fall substantially, but the much heralded advances are likely not to materialise either. That is because Blue Labour's ability to claim to be the only choice to oppose it will have been shown to be false, and the progressive working-class vote will consolidate behind Greens, Plaid, SNP and Liberals. For Reform, the conditions that made the Brexit vote possible have gone forever. The large majority of that vote was from the elderly, but ten years on, most of them have now died. That is why Farage has to switch to the focus on overt racism, and the scapegoating of migrants. As net migration is also collapsing, and as the consequence is again not what he promised, but is instead a further stagnation of the economy, and collapsing public services and NHS, as it cannot recruit the required workers, the contradictions of its agenda will once again explode its base.

Back To Prediction 1

Forward To Prediction 3

Predictions For 2026 - Prediction 1 – Trump Annexes Greenland

Predictions For 2026

Prediction 1 – Trump Annexes Greenland

Trump has made such a furore about his plans to annex Greenland that he will be unable to back down, despite his reputation – TACO – for always chickening out. Trump 2.0 is all about Trump seeking to secure his place in history, as well as his unending attempts to secure his and his family's wealth, during the time he has in office. To the extent that does not seriously conflict with the interests of the ruling class, in the US, he will be allowed to do so. As I have set out before, it is in the interests of US imperialism to create a larger single market/state, just as it is in the interests of every imperialism to do so. In that respect, such development is progressive. As Trotsky put it a century ago,

“Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers...

From which flows the perennial conflict between the principle of national self-determination, which in many cases leads to state and economic decentralization (dismemberment, separation), and the powerful centralist tendencies of imperialism which has at its disposal the state organization and the military power. True, a national-separatist movement frequently finds support in the imperialist intrigues of a neighbouring state. This support, however, can become decisive only through the application of military force. And as soon as matters reach an armed conflict between two imperialist organizations, the new state boundaries will not be decided on the basis of the national principle, but on the basis of the reciprocal relation of military forces...

The right of national self-determination cannot he excluded from the proletarian peace programme; but it cannot claim absolute importance. On the contrary, it is delimited for us by the converging, profoundly progressive tendencies of historical development. If this “right” must be – through revolutionary force – counter-posed to the imperialist methods of centralization which enslave weak and backward peoples and mush the hearths of national culture, then on the other hand the proletariat cannot allow the “national principle” to get in the way of the irresistible and deeply progressive tendency of modern economic life towards a planned organization throughout our continent, and further, all over the globe. Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle.”

(The Programme of Peace)

Greenland has a population of less than 60,000. Rationally, it belongs as part of a North American, single market and state. As Marxists, as Trotsky sets out in the above work, we do not, as a result, support the forcible annexation of such small states by powerful imperialist powers, but seek a voluntary merger. As I set out last year, US imperialism could simply offer to pay every Greenlander several million dollars to agree to such a merger, just as, in the past, it would have been simpler for Argentina to have bought out a few hundred Falkland Islanders. We would then have seen whether the concern of Britain was the inalienable rights of the islanders, or its own continued imperialist interests, and similarly, now, with Denmark/EU, in relation to Greenland.

US imperialism could continue to station troops on Greenland as part of NATO, and it could buy the rights to mine the vast amount of minerals on the island. But that does not meet the needs either of Trump or of US imperialism. With a population of less than 60,000, it does not represent any significant extension of the US single market, which is the driving force of modern imperialism, based on large-scale industrial capital. However, its mineral assets are significant to US imperialism, in relation to the need for rare earths and energy. This aspect of colonialism, and the role of merchant capital remains, and, as I have pointed out, over the last year or so, the US and UK have reverted, in large part, to colonialism, in proportion as their role as modern imperialist powers has shrunk, and been overtaken by China and other industrialising economies. Its no surprise that it is the UK government that has backed Trump's colonial land grab in Gaza and Venezuela. Trump wants to be another Andrew Johnson who, in buying Alaska from Russia, massively increased the size of the United States. Remember that, at the time, despite the cheapness of the purchase, it was described as “Seward's Folly”.

As with the renaming of The Gulf Of Mexico, The Kennedy Centre, the Monroe Doctrine, and so on, Trump is focussed on making his mark. But, in respect of Greenland, that is in no way contrary to the interests of US imperialism either. He is not interested in renting land from Denmark on Greenland, but on owning it himself – both in the sense of it being part of the US, but, also, personally, as he will no doubt have an eye on the potential for his own real estate development there, just as with Gaza. As I have pointed out for many years, the EU is the biggest imperialist competitor to the US. That reality is only obscured by the post-war alliance between US and EU imperialism, in NATO, in opposition to the USSR.

In that post-war period, Western Europe was never in danger of a military incursion by the USSR/Warsaw Pact, other than as a consequence of a global war. The USSR was hard pressed to keep the population of the other Warsaw pact countries suppressed, let alone venture into western Europe. US troops more performed the role, in Europe, of being ready to suppress any internal socialist revolution.  The security of Western Europe rapidly sprung from the much higher living standards of its workers, not from its own military might, or the role of NATO. Indeed, it was those higher living standards that acted as the main factor in undermining the Stalinist regimes in the East, as their workers looked in envy at their western counterparts. As Marx had put it in The Communist Manifesto, it was the low prices that acted as the battering ram that brought down all Chinese walls.

Trump's argument that it was US military spending to finance NATO that keeps Europe safe is a fallacy. In conditions where no such military strike from the USSR was likely, where the prison house of Stalinism offered no attraction for the large majority of Western European workers, the spending by European nations on their military was more than adequate, especially in an era of nuclear weapons, where any such war in Europe would inevitably have resulted in nuclear destruction of all parties. The main role of NATO was not protecting Western Europe, but was projecting the global presence of US imperialism. In doing that, it also acted in the interests of the subordinate EU imperialism too. The consequence was that European imperialism, however, became dependent on US imperialism, and on US military production.

This too offered a quid pro quo. EU imperialism spent a much smaller proportion of its GDP on weapons, and so more on its own capital accumulation, US imperialism benefitted from the economies of scale for its arms industries, as Europe spent more than 60% of its arms budget on US supplied weapons. All fine until US hegemony falters, the global economy fragments, and the competing interests of different imperialist blocs re-emerge, including the competing interests of EU imperialism with those of US imperialism. For EU imperialism, if US imperialism is to retrench – symbolised by Trump's America First doctrine – and, if the EU is to, then, have to spend more on its own military, it may as well do so on its own terms, and to meet its own specific interests, not those of US imperialism.

That is the message of Draghi and other EU politicians as I set out last year. The inevitable imperialist logic is for the EU to further, and more rapidly consolidate itself into a centralized state, along the lines of the US. That is the means by which, also, the question asked by Kissinger, in the past of, “If I want to speak to Europe, who do I ring?”, is also answered. But, in the meantime, the EU has tied itself into a pointless, forever war against Russia in Ukraine. The EU is led, given the current continued dependence on the US to seek to cajole Trump into US military supplies for Zelensky's corrupt regime.

So, despite all of the hot air from EU and British politicians about the consequence of Trump annexing Greenland, he will do so, bloodlessly, and without any meaningful opposition from the EU. As he and his cronies have said, what would the Europeans do, go to war with the US?! Of course, not. Nor will it spell the immediate end of NATO. For so long as the EU persists in its doomed backing of Zelensky and his corrupt regime, they will continue to depend on US military support, and that means continued subordination within NATO.

For European workers, of course, we have no such interests. We have no interest in supporting the imperialist conflict being fought out in Eastern Ukraine, which is also, undermining the economy of the EU and Britain. The best means of defeating the corrupt regimes of both Zelensky and Putin, is for their workers to rise up and overthrow them, and, in that, we should seek to support those workers against their own ruling classes. We are proponents of class war, not the war of nation against nation. We certainly have no interest in a war against US imperialism to protect the interests of Danish imperialism, any more than we had any interest in supporting the war of British imperialism against Argentina over the Falklands. That does not mean we sanction the actions of Galtieri or of Trump. It is never a question of siding with one or the other, as the campists would have us believe. We are for the independent, third camp of the proletariat and its class war against the ruling class of both camps.

Another reason that Trump seeks to annex Greenland, is, also, to further encircle Canada. Canada, also, should, rationally, be a part of a single, unified North American state, but, unlike Greenland, it is not so easily resolved as by the US simply buying out its population. A military conflict to annex Canada seems unlikely, but encircling it, and pressuring it by increased tariffs and so on, could bring its leaders to the table, and, if not these leaders, then others. More likely, after Trump annexes Greenland, and invades Cuba, will be military incursions into Mexico, the pretext of drugs, again, being a convenient cover. For trump, drugs and drug smuggling, and other associated criminal gang activity is playing the same role that “anti-Semitism” played for the growing authoritarianism and Bonapartism under Biden, and Starmer et al.

Forward To Prediction 2

Trump Regime Murders Innocent US Citizen and Then Blatantly Lies To Cover It Up

Trump's brutal authoritarian regime has been unleashing its criminal gangs of ICE thugs on US communities, for most of the time since he took office.  They have been sent in a targeted manner to stir up communal violence in Democrat controlled cities.  Like the death squads in Latin American countries that Trump seems to admire, these criminal ICE thugs have acted without regard to the law to simply kidnap people from the street, many of whom are then simply disappeared.  Of course, the pathetic, and similarly increasingly authoritarian regimes in Europe, such as that of Starmer cannot even bring themselves to criticise the Trump regime for such actions, just as they could not criticise it for kidnapping Maduro, having flouted international law by invading Venezuela.  As Owen Jones noted, the British state owned propaganda machine, the BBC, has similarly instructed its reporters to avoid describing the actions of the Trump regime for what they are.

 In the US, even its media has described the actions of Trump and his goons for what they are, but the British politicians and media cannot even bring themselves to that, so suborned are they to the needs of Trump.  So much for the idea of "take back control", and national sovereignty, that the Brexiters promised.  Instead, Britain outside the EU has been shown to be the puny power it really is.   Trump will annex Greenland, and Britain will not say "boo".

And, as Trump's regime now blatantly murders innocent US housewives on the street, Britain's politicians are again silent, and its media looks for excuses and weasel words to defend it.

Review of Predictions For 2025 - Prediction 5 – Blair-Rights Challenge Blue Labour Leadership

Prediction 5 – Blair-Rights Challenge Blue Labour Leadership

The last year confirmed this prediction, although it did not result in an outright leadership election. It did, however, take the form of a Deputy Leadership election, in which Starmer's chosen candidate, the reactionary nationalist, Phillipson, was easily defeated by Powell, who acted as the proxy candidate for the Prince across the water, Burnham, accumulating his support, secure in the bastion of Manchester.

The answer to the question of whether Starmer is simply the dupe and prisoner of the far right, Zionist Blue Labour party within a party, or its conscious leader, was clearly answered.

The last year was marked by the repeated discussion of how long Starmer could cling to office, given the continued slide of Blue Labour in the polls, its appalling performance in the local elections, loss of Caerphilly to Plaid, in elections to the Senedd, and a string of other disasters, and continued U-Turns. If Starmer hung on, it is only because of a lack of credible alternatives within Labour, given that Burnham remains outside parliament and with the Blue Labour cabal likely to block him standing in any safe seat.

The chosen candidate of the Blair-Rights is Streeting, who at one point appeared to be on the verge of an open challenge, as the Starmer faction launched another incompetent witch hunt against him via their chosen tactic of smears, and leaks to the press. But, even with a large part of Labour's membership gutted, its unlikely that the majority of the members would be enthusiastic about Streeting, who is on the right-flank even of the Blair-Rights, has openly talked about the privatisation of the NHS, and who has continued to attack workers and their trades unions. As Labour gets smashed in the forthcoming local and regional elections, Starmer is unlikely to be able to hold on further, and the Blair-Rights and soft left will be likely to demand that Burnham take up the baton.

The question for the Blair-Rights, within Labour, at that point, as with the Left around Your Party, will be whether, it is just too late. Labour has haemorrhaged members and voters to the Greens. With Starmer prostrating himself in front of Trump, as he finds himself isolated from Europe, his belated and utopian talk of, again, striking up some kind of “Labour Brexit” deal, will fall flat, at the same time as enabling the far-right media to attack him for “betraying Brexit”. If only he were. The latest data shows that the damage done by Brexit is 50% greater than first thought, and that is only going to get worse. Even the large majority of the electorate, now, understand that and support re-joining the EU.

That problem also affects Your Party. In 2019, Corbyn, prisoner to his Stalinoid backers, and still in thrall to the petty-bourgeois, nationalist ideas he has pursued during all his political life, returned to the anti-EU politics of the 1970's that were so disastrous for the Left, and represented a total diversion from class politics, and need to build a Europe wide working-class movement. But, many of the other Left sects that have swarmed towards Your Party, also collapsed into that same petty-bourgeois nationalist, anti-EU position in the 1970's, and have failed to break from it. The former Militant, Socialist Party, for example, 20 years ago, swung behind the reactionary nationalist electoral venture “No2EU”.

Had Your Party retained even a substantial proportion of the 800 thousand people that showed an interest in it last year, that would have posed an immediate dilemma, because, as with the surge in membership of Corbyn's Labour, after 2015, the vast majority of those people oppose Brexit. And quite right too, because, even a moderately progressive social=democracy in Britain is inconceivable without Britain being inside the EU. A progressive, social-democratic government would, even more, face the problem that the reactionary nationalist governments of the Tories and Blue Labour have faced, which is that without EU membership and trade, the UK economy is on a rapidly declining trajectory, making significant growth impossible, and so making the kind of state spending on infrastructure and so on, required to repair decades of austerity, also impossible.

The fraudulent election system, when combined with the fact that the reactionary petty-bourgeois mass constitutes around 30% of the electorate, means that the main bourgeois parties have become locked by game theory into a doom loop. That doom loop has already destroyed the Conservative Party, as its Tory wing has rebranded as Reform, whilst its conservative wing has split to the Liberals. Blue Labour idiotically tried to appease that reactionary petty-bourgeois mass, concentrated in the decayed urban areas – Red Wall – only to not only fail in that endeavour, but to also lose a substantial part of its core working-class voter base to the Liberals, Greens, and in Scotland and Wales, to the SNP and Plaid.

But, that doom loop dictated by an adherence to game theory, also, affected the Liberals, and to a lesser extent the Greens. The Liberals unique selling point, for decades has been their support for the EU. That is not surprising because, they are the epitome of that representation of the interests of the ruling-class owners of fictitious-capital. It is why, in the 1980's, when the Labour Left idiotically became diverted into an internal struggle over EEC membership, the outward form, also, became manifest in the split of the overtly pro-EU, Gang of Four, to form the SDP, and its rapid merger with the Liberals. It quickly sucked huge numbers of Labour voters towards it, as it offered a progressive vision of the future in Europe. It was repeated as farce, in 2019, with the creation of Change UK.

But, in the 1980's, the split of the core working-class/professional middle-class vote simply enabled Thatcher's Tories to win. Labour was forced to abandon the reactionary, nationalist, anti-EU stance, and, in so doing, undermined the Liberals, as that vote returned to Labour as the only realistic alternative. Blair formalised that ideological trend. By that time, however, nearly twenty years of Tory rule, the process of deindustrialisation and so on, had undermined the working-class, and simultaneously led to a 50% increase in the size and social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie. Blair believed he could ignore Labour's progressive working-class voter base, and appeal to those enamoured by the prospect of getting rich on the back of ever inflating asset prices – it is the same delusion that leads others to think that you can get rich by inflating the currency to pay for government spending. The global financial crash of 2008, brought that delusion to an end, just as the global spike in inflation after 2021, shattered the delusion of MMT.

Blue Labour overtly sought to advance the ideology of reactionary nationalism, and to appeal to that petty-bourgeois mass, in the same way that Trump did in the US. Indeed, in the US, this same doom loop, based on game theory, also led Democrats to tack in the same direction. In the US, however, the continued division into two parties limits the effect. Its main manifestation, there being the low level of political involvement, and voter turnout. Its not just Biden's Democrats that tacked in that direction. Sanders represents a similar ideological trend to that of Corbyn, and also purveys a similar brand of economic nationalism, though, in the case of the huge US economy, one that is less irrational. The hyper nationalism of Trump, and pursuit of tariffs has, at least, caused progressive Democrats to be forced into the opposing camp. But, as Trump follows the inevitable rationale of imperialism, and seeks to consolidate a huge, single American market/state, including the annexation of Mexico, Canada and Greenland, the role of socialists in North America should be not to deny or oppose the progressive development of such a single market/state, but to seek to bring it about voluntarily, by their own class unity and struggle, and in so doing, to fight for a Workers state, on that basis.

The Liberals continue to argue in favour of the EU, and opposition to Brexit, but afraid that game theory predicts that such an open campaign on that basis, might lose them votes, they have kept quiet. The Greens, as well as the SNP and Plaid have carried the banner of progressive social-democracy and opposition to Brexit, and have been able to do so, because, electorally, it was a no-brainer. It demarcated them from Labour, and has slowly paid dividends to them on that basis, despite the limitations of the electoral system. Now, as Caerphilly and elsewhere showed, that same fraudulent electoral system is starting to work in their favour, just as, it turned in favour of Reform, and against the Conservative Party.

The forces of Blairism/conservative social-democracy, will seek to demarcate themselves from the progressive social-democrats of the Greens, Plaid and SNP, because the logic of the latter's programme is, not only a return to the EU, but is also, to use that as the basis for economic growth, and real capital accumulation. These progressive social-democrats inevitably frame their vision in terms of support for small businesses, and so on, but the economic reality always drives them in the direction of the interests of large-scale, socialised capital. It is no coincidence that the Greens, under Polanski, have side-lined much of their Green agenda, in favour of promoting their progressive social-democratic agenda, because that is how they rapidly replace Labour, and win over a section of the Liberals.

The local election results of the last few years have shown the Greens, even more than the Liberals advancing at the expense of Labour. That trend will accelerate even faster come the Spring elections, and in the intervening months, the failure of Labour to ditch Starmer and Blue Labour, could mean it is too late to reverse that trend. Labour will almost certainly ditch Starmer, or he will fall or be pushed on to his sword, making way for Burnham.

Back To Review of Prediction 4

Review of Predictions For 2025 - Prediction 4 – Zelensky's Regime Falls

Prediction 4 – Zelensky's regime Falls

Zelensky's regime has not, yet, fallen, but it is like a dead man walking. To use Trump's words, at the start of the year, as he politically disembowelled Zelensky in The Oval Office, Zelensky “has no cards.” It is a repetition of many similar situations in the past, described by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky that those who fetishize the formality of national self-determination, end up simply turning weak nation states into the vassal of some other imperialist power, with its own imperialist ambitions. In essence, its no different to those petit-bourgeois nationalists that backed Brexit/Lexit on the basis of regaining British national self-determination, and taking back control, only, inevitably to see its actual sovereignty and control decimated, as on the one hand, it has to abide by the rules, regulations and conditions of the EU Single Market, to continue trading with it, whilst, on the other hand, subordinating itself to an increasingly, reactionary US imperialism, in order to retain the illusion of having some remnant of its former imperial power, or even relevance. In reality, no matter how much Starmer licks Trump's arse, Britain is sidelined, and made to look ridiculous.

Social-democrats and other social-imperialists, particularly in Europe, who hoped that Trump would be cajoled by the combined forces of western imperialism to throw off his own petty-bourgeois nationalist rhetoric, when in office, and so provide the backing for Zelensky, were inevitably and predictably disappointed. When Trump and his gang eviscerated Zelensky, in the Oval Office, what they were actually doing was, also, eviscerating the likes of Starmer, as well as EU social democrats, who only days before had feted the vulgar and narcissistic Trump, with their snivelling, gut wrenching sycophancy, their visits to the palaces and trappings of 18th century, European colonial empires, and aristocracy. Whilst, radical social-democrats in the US rallied in their millions to declare “No Kings”, European social-democrats, simply offered up to Trump, their “Daddy”, the vision of such monarchical rule, and how much they are still in thrall to it, themselves.

That Zelensky's regime has not yet fallen seems to be a consequence of a number of factors. Trump in rhetorically pulling the plug on Zelensky, gained huge leverage over EU imperialism, which remains the main competitor to US imperialism, despite the rapid development of China. Trump was able to say to the EU, if you want to continue to support Zelensky, then you fund it, and by the way, we are fine with that, so long as you continue to buy US weapons. Its not considerably different to the way, after 1939, (or indeed 1914) US imperialism verbally supported Britain and France against Germany, selling them huge amounts of arms, destroying their economies (and that of Germany), and leaving them, in massive debt to US imperialism. Only towards the end, in both cases, did US imperialism join the fray, throwing its weight behind Britain and France, who by that time were all but defeated, indeed, in the case of France, actually defeated and occupied.

The coalition of the wilting has kept the war going, like keeping a dying man alive by artificial respiration, but with absolutely no chance of changing the eventual outcome. Every month that goes by provides additional evidence of the corruption of the Zelensky regime, and repeated changes of personnel within it. But, as the saying goes a fish rots from the head, and the head in Ukraine, remains in place. As with Iraq and other such adventures, billions simply disappears. Large numbers of fighting age Ukrainians have fled to avoid the high probability of dying in the service of NATO imperialism, in a hopeless war against Russian imperialism. In part, that is only sustained on the basis of a continual repetition of the lie that Russia seeks to occupy the whole of Ukraine. If that were Russia's ambition, it would represent a huge overestimation of its own capabilities that nothing in the last few years could validate. It would simply destroy Russia. In the meantime, Trump's colonial adventure in Venezuela, and his promises of further such adventures in Colombia, Panama, Greenland, Cuba and so on, simply validate the arguments put forward by Putin (and similarly Xi) that all the claims about NATO being a purely defensive, peace-loving military alliance were bullshit, and that its expansion up to Russia's borders was far from benign.

As Irish Marxism has also rightly pointed out, the corollary of this, the creation of a multipolar world, i.e. of multiple imperialist blocs, is not any great advance for the working-class. Only if you adopt a moralistic, “lesser-evilist” approach, in which you continually hitch your wagon to some latest, new hope could you imagine that the interests of the global working-class is served by the rising power of Eurasian imperialism, or EU imperialism, as an alternative to US imperialism. The loss of hegemony for US imperialism, globally, inevitably leads to its consolidation in the Americas.

Similarly, however, Russia has been able to consolidate its position in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, the brief adventure of Ukraine into Russia, lasted all of a few months, before being rolled back, at great expense to the Ukrainian military, whilst Russia, undistracted by it, simply took advantage of Ukrainian elite forces being tied up in that adventure, to press forward towards Pokrovsk and so on. Trump seems to understand the reality in a way that social-democrats and social-imperialists do not, which, given the moronic nature of Trump, says a great deal about the intellectual inadequacy and delusional state of those social-democrats. When Trump told Zelensky, “You have no cards”, he was absolutely right. The only cards that Zelensky and Ukrainian imperialism had were those stuffed into his hands by western imperialism, and even with them, they were inadequate.

In the end, Ukrainian imperialism could only win against Russian imperialism if, in addition to the provision of those weapons, it also had the supply of soldiers to use them. It did not, but Russia, as in the past, has been able to continue to draw on its own resources, as well as drawing in forces from elsewhere. The only way that could have changed is if NATO had put large numbers of its troops into Ukraine, as well as the masses of weapons. NATO does have significant numbers of troops in Ukraine, particularly special forces, and the water is continually tested by European governments for the appetite to send openly much greater numbers of European workers to fight and die in Ukraine. So far, the working-class of Europe has shown no desire to do so, which would be an inevitable rapid march towards a new pan-European war, and inevitable descent into global thermonuclear destruction.

Trump has essentially signalled that he is reconciled to the idea of a return to the days prior to the hegemony of US imperialism on a global scale, to a multipolar world. Trump is stating openly, in what his mafia regime now describes as its “Donroe Doctrine”, that he is abandoning Europe and Ukraine, but demanding the right to exercise absolute control over the Americas, including Canada and Greenland. The EU coalition of the wilting cannot save Ukraine, even as it bankrupts itself in trying to do so. It is only a matter of time, before they openly admit that, and join with Trump in pressing Zelensky to sue for peace with Putin, on the basis of ceding Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. At that point, the “stab in the back” narrative will come to play in Ukraine, with Zelensky removed, and the likelihood of a far right, nationalistic regime based around the Right Sector/Azov Battalion seizing power. But, they have no solution either.

Ukraine, then, faces a difficult period ahead for decades, in which, to survive, it will have to cede control over much of its resources to foreign imperialist powers be that US imperialism, EU imperialism, or Chinese imperialism.

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