A widening conflagration in the Middle East. Jitters in the financial markets. And governments across the western world lining up to slash welfare in order to pay for welfare.
It seems like the whole of society – the whole capitalist system – is on the brink. Everywhere we look, conflict, chaos, and cuts are on the order of the day.
This is no mere accident, but the product of capitalism’s impasse.
That is why we, the communists of the RCP, are fighting for revolution against the billionaires.
Only a root-and-branch transformation can put an end to the war, crisis, and austerity that is inflicting so much pain and misery on our lives.
Into the abyss
An unfathomable amount of contradictions and combustible material has accumulated within the capitalist system over the years and decades
Uncle Sam’s ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East have destabilised the entire region. An unsustainable mountain of debt has built up in the global economy, due to repeated bailouts of the banks and big business. And across the world, imperialist tensions are heightening, as the major capitalist powers compete for markets, resources, and spheres of influence, leading to a rush for rearmament.
The ever-erratic Donald Trump is pouring petrol on the flames: throwing US imperialism’s support behind Netanyahu’s war on Iran; provoking economic panic with his reckless trade and budgetary measures; and demanding that America’s NATO allies pull their weight when it comes to military spending.
The US President, in this respect, is not the primary cause of all this instability. Rather, his capricious behaviour is a reflection of the volatility and turbulence inherent within the situation. His rash decisions, in turn, serve to amplify the turmoil.
Trump likes to paint himself as a master in the ‘art of the deal’; as an unstoppable force, able to bend reality to his will through his power of persuasion and personality.
In reality, however, he is no puppetmaster. Instead of exerting control over events, the property-mogal-turned-president is increasingly a prisoner to them: pulled along by the inextricable logic of the capitalist system; tugged in this direction and then that – and ultimately down into an abyss of neverending crises.
All roads lead to ruin
In his masterpiece The History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky compares the downfall of the ancien régimes of 18th century France and 1917 Tsarist Russia.
Defenestrated French King Louis XVI and Tsar Alexander III both seemed to be plagued by misfortune; unable to do anything right.
Trotsky explained, however, that their “ill-luck flowed from the contradictions between those old aims that they inherited from their ancestors and the new historic conditions in which they were placed”.
Those who preside over a dying system, in other words, will necessarily appear like gamblers playing with a deck that is stacked against them.
Accident and chance certainly play a role in determining the course and outcome of dramatic events. But the dice of history are loaded.
As far as these hapless historical figures “had any choice left”, Trotsky remarks, “it was only between different roads to ruin”.
Hence the ancient proverb that the great Russian revolutionary and theoretician quotes: “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
The role of the individual
Such an outlook – based on the Marxist view of history, known as historical materialism – allows us to understand and explain the chaotic, seemingly unpredictable processes taking place around us.
In turn, as Marx outlined, it is through understanding the world that we can begin to change it.
In particular, the Marxist method helps us make sense of the individual actions of those actors currently playing their parts on the world’s stage: whether it be the orange-hued maverick in the White House, or the forlorn knight of the realm who resides in 10 Downing Street.
“We do not at all pretend to deny the significance of the personal in the mechanics of the historic process, nor the significance in the personal of the accidental,” Trotsky states, discussing the role of the individual in history.
“We only demand that a historic personality, with all its peculiarities, should not be taken as a bare list of psychological traits, but as a living reality grown out of definite social conditions and reacting upon them.”
Or, as Marx succinctly put it: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
Authority shattered
Enter ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, Britain’s luckless Prime Minister.
The Labour leader is in the midst of a potentially career-ending political crisis.
Due to a threatened rebellion by backbench Labour MPs, Starmer’s government has been forced to drop a number of key measures from its welfare bill, which sought to butcher the benefits that pensioners and disabled people receive.
Although the legislation technically passed, it was gutted by amendments and concessions to the point of being completely hollow.
The government may have ‘won’ the vote in the House of Commons. But this was a Pyrrhic victory.
Under pressure from their constituents, even loyalist Labour MPs have lost their patience with the party’s leadership. At the same time, the country’s creditors have lost faith that this government can implement the cuts needed to ensure that investors get their pound of flesh.
After just one year in office, Starmer’s authority lies shattered.
Doom and demise
The financial markets are now demanding that Starmer’s government balance its books through other cuts. At the same time, discipline has broken down within the Parliamentary Labour Party, making further revolts against austerity all the more likely.
This demonstrates the insoluble contradiction gripping Starmer and his government. It is not a question of the Labour leaders deploying better ‘communication’ and ‘management’. Whatever they do will be wrong.
Either they renege on their austerity agenda, triggering a backlash from the bankers and big business. Or they push on with these attacks, and risk sparking a social explosion and a political implosion.
The latter, in turn, would only boost the appeal of Reform UK to disenchanted working-class voters. Increasingly, Nigel Farage and his populist party are gaining support by outflanking Labour on the left when it comes to economic questions. This includes opportunistic opposition to Starmer’s welfare cuts.
This demonstrates the equal-and-opposite pressures that the Labour leaders are under: ground between the twin millstones of the dictatorship of capital, on one side, and an enraged, radicalised working class on the other.
One way or another, like his recent predecessors in Number 10, Britain’s latest Prime Minister is doomed – set to be crushed as the roof caves in, whilst he seeks to uphold capitalism’s crumbling status quo.
The task of the left and the labour movement must be to accelerate this demise. This means organising and mobilising to bring down the entire rotten capitalist system, and all those who defend it.
Topple their system
Unfortunately, such a revolutionary perspective is not held by the leaders of the ‘left’. In relation to them, Marx’s words ring true: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
In short, those at the top of the trade unions – and of the movements against war and austerity – are stuck firmly in the past.
They believe that the wheel of history can be rolled back to a time when the NHS and the welfare state were being created, not destroyed, by a Labour government; to a period when a liberal postwar order, forged in the interests of Washington and Wall Street, seemingly bestowed peace and prosperity upon society.
To return to this golden age, the ‘left’ leaders assert, all we need to do is appeal to those in Westminster to ‘tax the rich’ and fund ‘welfare not warfare’.
Such milk and honey demands, however, fall far short of what is required. The world is on fire. And a water pistol of wealth redistribution will not put out the inferno.
Capitalism breeds conflict and crisis. It is an intrinsically anarchic, dog-eat-dog system, based on the drive for profit and a competitive race to the bottom. It cannot be patched up, or made ‘nicer’ and ‘kinder’. It must be overthrown.
At the same time, trying to convince establishment politicians to act in the interests of the exploited and oppressed is like asking an arsonist to extinguish a burning blaze.
Whether it be Starmer’s Labour, the Tories, or Farage’s Reform: none of these capitalist parties stand for the interests of ordinary people. We can have no trust in any of them.
Instead, workers and youth must organise to sweep out all these warmongers, crooks, and racists – and the billionaire class that they represent.
Join the communists today to topple their system.
