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Something wicked this way comes

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

Roberts argues that beneath the superficial partisan differences between Republicans and Democrats in the US (and Labour and Tories in the UK), a deeper economic logic is at work. The post-2001 spending spree — fuelled by military expenditure, tax cuts for the rich, and ballooning debt — has merely postponed a crisis. Once the electoral cycle is over, regardless of which party wins, the bill will be presented to the working class in the form of draconian cuts to social spending, higher taxes on ordinary households, and intensified attacks on wages and public services. The central thesis is that capitalist states, having exhausted the space for deficit-financed stimulus without resolving the underlying contradictions, must make workers pay for the accumulated debt and military adventures.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the Marxist theory of the capitalist state as an instrument of class rule, not a neutral arbiter between parties. Roberts implicitly deploys the concept of the state's fiscal crisis under capitalism: the state must simultaneously legitimise itself through social provision and accumulate on behalf of capital, but when profitability falters, the latter imperative trumps the former. The piece also reflects the Marxist understanding that military spending is unproductive expenditure — it creates demand but not new value, and thus cannot resolve the underlying crisis of accumulation. The argument that "the UK capitalist economy is not creating enough new value to justify any more increased spending" gestures toward the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as the ultimate driver of fiscal constraint, though this is not developed explicitly. The analysis sits firmly in the tradition of Marxist political economy that treats electoral politics as a surface phenomenon beneath which class interests and accumulation imperatives operate.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written in July 2005, looking back at the Bush presidency and forward to the post-election period. Roberts identifies several concrete features of the conjuncture:

  • US government debt at $7 trillion (70% of GDP), a deficit of 5% of GDP, with $160bn spent on Iraq
  • 2.5 million jobs lost under Bush, mainly manufacturing, with wage stagnation and benefit cuts
  • Household borrowing up 42%, corporate debt up 20%, unemployment up 45%
  • The dollar down 20%, the trade deficit up 40%
  • UK government spending at 42% of GDP (back to pre-Thatcher levels), with tax revenues growing slower than spending

These figures are used to demonstrate that both economies are living on borrowed time — not just financially, but in terms of class relations. The coming cuts are not a policy choice but an economic necessity imposed by the logic of capitalist accumulation. The article correctly anticipates the austerity drive that would follow the 2008 crash, though it could not have predicted the scale or timing.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is an early statement of a theme Roberts would develop extensively over the following decades. The argument continues in:

  • Roberts' blog "The Next Recession" (and his later book of the same title), where the fiscal crisis of the state is linked more systematically to the long downturn and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall
  • IDOM articles on austerity (e.g., "Austerity: the new normal?" and "The return of the debt crisis") which trace the same dynamic through the post-2008 period
  • Against the Stream episodes on US and UK fiscal policy, where the electoral cycle and the inevitability of working-class sacrifice are recurrent themes
  • Roberts' later work on "monopoly capital" and "fictitious capital" which deepens the theoretical apparatus only hinted at here

The article leaves underdeveloped the question of working-class resistance — it identifies the attack but does not analyse the forms of struggle that might meet it. That gap is filled by other IDOM pieces on strike waves, social movements, and the political strategy of the RCI.

Connections

  • Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" — for the method of treating electoral politics as a surface expression of class struggle
  • James O'Connor, "The Fiscal Crisis of the State" — for the theoretical framework linking state spending to accumulation and legitimation
  • Ernest Mandel, "Late Capitalism" — for the analysis of military spending as unproductive expenditure
  • Roberts' own "The Long Depression" (2016) — for the fuller development of the profit rate analysis that underpins the fiscal constraints described here
  • IDOM articles on the 2008 crash — to see how the contradictions identified in 2005 exploded three years later

Key Quotes

  1. "The present level of indebtedness cannot be maintained for ever. Sooner or later the capitalists will make the workers pay."

  2. "All this spending has stopped the US economy slipping into a major economic recession, up to now."

  3. "The US economy is living on borrowed time (literally). Household borrowing is up 42% since Bush came into office, corporate debt is up 20% and unemployment is up 45%."

  4. "Either taxes will have to be raised or spending on transport, social services, environment etc will have to slashed. We shall probably get both once the general election is over."

  5. "The UK capitalist economy is not creating enough new value to justify any more increased spending."

  6. "Either side of the transatlantic pond, over the next few years, the average working household is set to pay heavily for the tanks, planes and bombs used in Iraq and around the world to preserve 'our way of life'."