Across the planet, right-wing ‘populists’ are on the rise, as workers’ anger bubbles over.
In the USA, Donald Trump is using his second stint in the White House to take a wrecking ball to all the institutions of bourgeois democracy and the liberal world order. In Germany, the AfD has come in second in the country’s recent federal elections. And in Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is now topping the polls, ahead of Labour and the Tories.
By contrast, all those seen as defending the broken status quo are taking a battering.
Biden, Harris, and the Democrats are licking their wounds. In France, Emmanuel Macron – the poster boy of liberalism – is straining to form a stable government. ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, meanwhile, the coiffured champion of the establishment, has been thrown from pillar to post during his brief tenure in office.
This is not a case of ill fortune. Anyone who rests upon a rotten system will find themselves covered in muck. As the ancient Greek proverb states: whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
Earthquakes and explosions
We are living through epoch-making events. The tectonic plates are shifting beneath our feet, producing imperialist tensions, social explosions, and political earthquakes.
As Marx once described: all that was solid is now melting into air; all that is holy is profaned. Or, in the words of Hegel, reason has become unreason.
The pillars that have upheld the edifice of western imperialism since the end of WW2 – already cracking and crumbling – are being further eroded and undermined. And by putting Trump back in the Oval Office, American voters have effectively lobbed a stick of dynamite under capitalism’s fragile foundations.
The reality of the 47th President’s America First agenda is rapidly dawning on other world leaders. MAGA mavericks are leaving traditional allies of Washington in the lurch, dismantling US imperialism’s instruments of soft power, and threatening tariffs and annexations against ‘friends’ and foes alike.
At the same time, the once-dominant ideas of the liberal establishment, such as identity politics, have become discredited and been dealt a deadly blow.
The representatives and mouthpieces of liberalism are shell shocked – but also impotent, like King Canute, to turn back the tide.
Guns before butter
By effectively consigning NATO to the dustbin, Trump has revealed how naked and feeble Britain and Europe really are.
For decades, these declining, second-rate powers hid behind the military protection provided by US imperialism. But now these ailing nations have been abandoned by Uncle Sam. And Starmer, Macron, Merz and co. are waking up to the stark reality of Trump’s brave new world.
The US-UK ‘special relationship’ was always an entirely subservient one. The British establishment has consistently and dutifully acted as a loyal lapdog to its American master. Any independence or ‘sovereignty’ when it came to matters of foreign policy and diplomacy was nothing but a well-rehearsed pretence.
Now, in regards to Ukraine, Trump is telling European leaders to jump, and Starmer is obediently asking ‘how high?’
The sight of ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer licking the boots of the new boss in Washington this week was nauseating. And yet what does Britain’s premier have to show for all his fawning and obsequiousness? Nothing – only some vague talk about a possible Anglo-American trade deal, and not even a hint of any US security guarantee for Kyiv.
Undeterred by America’s desertion, our quixotic knight is soldiering on. Unlike British youth, you see, the Prime Minister is a proud patriot. And what could be more patriotic than pouring billions of taxpayers’ money – in the form of arms and ammunition – down the drain in Ukraine?
Nevermind that hospitals and schools are collapsing, that household utility bills are soaring, or that the economy is stagnating. A respectable and responsible statesman like Starmer must prove his fealty to the ruling class in a language they understand: by prioritising guns before butter, and promising to increase ‘defence’ spending even further.
Rejection of the establishment
None of this has endeared the Labour leader to voters back home. Instead, support for Starmer and his government has slumped. The party’s parliamentary ‘supermajority’ has proven to be a sandcastle, vulnerable to incoming waves of discontent.
It is not the Tories that are benefitting from Labour’s downfall, however. Rather, it is the self-declared “real opposition” of Farage and Reform that have gained, with the latest surveys putting the right-populist party in the lead.
This does not represent a ‘shift to the right’ in society, but a rejection of the political establishment, and of the social decay and secular decline that they have presided over.
As one think-tank director noted, speaking to the Financial Times, “disenchanted and distrusting voters want to see them [Labour] visibly and vocally standing up for their interests”. Instead, to most ordinary folk, Starmer and his ministers look “like progressives elsewhere, defending a failing status quo”.
If politicians do not take on “rigged institutions”, the same article emphasises, quoting one Labour strategist, “voters will turn to parties that promise to smash them up”. And in Britain, that means Reform UK.
No trust in Starmer
In reality, Nigel Farage is a reactionary demagogue and opportunist, who would do nothing to further the interests of the working class. Nevertheless, he has a knack for tapping into workers’ anger and grievances.
Labour has positioned itself as a party of austerity, big business, and militarism. Reform, meanwhile, is picking up support from those who think that “that the working class do not get a fair share of the nation’s wealth”; who are strongly in favour of nationalising parasitic private profiteers; and who oppose further imperialist meddling in Ukraine.
Trying to ape and outflank Reform on questions of migration and crime will do Labour no good. Only a clear class alternative can cut across the culture war. But ‘Sir’ Starmer – the embodiment of the establishment, and a devoted representative of British capitalism – will never put forward such a programme.
Workers and youth must have no trust in Starmer and his cronies. The left and the labour movement need to fight for an independent class position, and prepare the working class for the sharp battles that loom.
Instead, however, the trade union leaders are clinging to Starmer, begging for scraps – precisely at a time when Labour is looking to imitate all the worst aspects of the Tories and Reform.
Death agony of capitalism
The chaos taking place on either side of the Atlantic has understandably left many concerned; fearful and anxious about what may come next.
In uncertain times like this, it is vital to maintain a sober perspective. This is the purpose of Marxism: in the words of Leon Trotsky, to provide “foresight over astonishment”.
A similar mood of pessimism and despair permeated the left in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum, which many falsely concluded was also a sign of a rightward shift. Yet a year later, Jeremy Corbyn almost gained the keys to Number 10, on one of the most left-wing electoral platforms in British history.
This demonstrates the inherent volatility within the situation. As capitalism plunges ever-deeper into crisis, and the liberal ‘centre ground’ disintegrates, the political landscape is fracturing and polarising. Sharp swings to the right and the left are on the order of the day.
What we are witnessing is the death agony of the old system, and the new society struggling to be born. In the absence of a bold, determined, revolutionary leadership, this process will necessarily be protracted and painful; accompanied by all manner of birth pangs, distortions, and unsightly symptoms.
That is why we must redouble our efforts to build the revolutionary party – the proverbial gravedigger of capitalism and midwife of history.
