US election A tipping point

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the 2004 US presidential election was structurally irrelevant to the trajectory of American capitalism. Roberts argues that whoever occupied the White House — Bush or Kerry — would preside over the same fundamental process: the long-term economic decline of US imperialism. The election was a "tipping point" not because of the candidates' differences, but because US capitalism had reached its historical zenith and entered a period of irreversible decay. The article claims that the extreme similarity between the two candidates, both bound to defend corporate profit, explains why Kerry could not defeat Bush: no meaningful alternative was on offer. The only genuine opposition, Roberts concludes, would require a party of the American working class.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on the Marxist theory of imperialism, particularly Lenin's characterisation of finance capital as the highest stage of capitalism. Roberts deploys a classical Marxist framework that treats the state as an executive committee of the bourgeoisie, arguing that electoral politics within a capitalist framework cannot produce fundamental change. The article also invokes the Marxist concept of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, though implicitly: the long-term decline in US manufacturing share, the shift toward parasitic finance capital, and the growing reliance on debt are all presented as symptoms of overaccumulation and the search for fictitious capital as a substitute for productive investment.

The historical comparison to the Roman Empire is a deliberate rhetorical device, but it rests on a recognisably Marxist periodisation: empires rise through productive superiority, then decay as their economic foundations shift toward extraction and parasitism. The article sits within the tradition of Marxist analyses of US decline that emerged after the end of the post-war boom, particularly the work of Ernest Mandel and later writers associated with the International Marxist Tendency.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in July 2005, reflecting on the 2004 election. At that conjuncture, the US economy was still recovering from the 2001 recession and the dot-com crash. The data Roberts cites — US manufacturing share of world output falling from 40% after 1945 to 11%, finance sector profits rising from 4% to 38% of total corporate profits between 1982 and 2005 — are specific and striking. The US was running a current account deficit of over 25% of GDP, financed by foreign dollar holdings. The Iraq War was ongoing, and the neoconservative project of unilateral military dominance was visibly failing.

Roberts correctly identifies that the post-1990s "new economy" boom had already collapsed, and that the apparent recovery under Bush was built on debt, housing speculation, and financialisation. This analysis anticipated the 2008 financial crisis, though it does not predict it explicitly. The geopolitical point — that China was fast closing the gap in manufacturing — was prescient, though the article underestimates the resilience of US financial hegemony in the subsequent decade.

Where the Argument Continues

This article is an early statement of a theme that runs through Michael Roberts' subsequent work, both on marxist.com and in his blog The Next Recession. The argument about the long-term decline of US imperialism is developed more systematically in his later articles on the rate of profit, particularly his empirical work on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in the US economy. The comparison between US imperialism and the Roman Empire is revisited in later IDOM pieces on imperial decline. The call for a party of the American working class remains a consistent political line of the Revolutionary Communist International, developed in articles on the need for a revolutionary workers' party in the US and in Against the Stream episodes analysing the Democratic Party's role as a graveyard of working-class movements.

Connections

• Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism — the theoretical foundation for the argument about finance capital and imperial decline.
• Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism — the periodisation of post-war capitalism and the analysis of the long downturn.
• Michael Roberts' later work on the rate of profit — for the empirical substantiation of the claim that US profitability has been in secular decline.
• IDOM articles on the 2008 financial crisis — which confirm the trajectory Roberts identifies here.
• Against the Stream episodes on US elections — which consistently argue that the Democratic Party cannot offer a working-class alternative.

Key Quotes

1. "Whether Bush or Kerry had won it would not have made a fundamental difference. They both defend US imperialism. They could not come out with fundamentally different policies for they are tied to the same basic economic interests."

2. "US imperialism is now in huge debt to the rest of the world. It owes more than 25% of its annual output to other capitalist nations in borrowing it has run up to buy the goods and services it needs and no longer makes itself."

3. "Whereas in 1982, only 4% of the profits made by American corporations came from the finance sector, it is now 38%! All the profits of the labour of Americans are less and less appropriated by the productive sectors of American capitalism to invest in innovation, new products and machines and more and more are captured by the banks, investment houses, insurance companies and mortgage lenders."

4. "American capitalism is now a casino economy of speculators, a rentier economy of bankers living off interest and a consumer economy importing from abroad."

5. "The irony of the fall of the Stalinist powers at the end of the 1980s is that this final victory of US imperialism over all opposing powers heralds the nexus of US imperialism and the beginning of its decline and fall."

6. "To defeat Bush something else is needed – a party of the American working class."