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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