2018 the world turned upside down

Marxist Perspectives · 2018-01-05

Core Argument

The central thesis of Alan Woods' 2018 assessment is that the cascade of political earthquakes across the globe — from Trump's election to Corbyn's surge, from Catalan separatism to the Iranian protests — are not discrete national anomalies but surface expressions of a single underlying phenomenon: the general crisis of world capitalism. The article argues that the bourgeoisie has failed to resolve the economic contradictions exposed by the 2008 financial collapse, and that this failure is now destroying the social and political equilibrium that previously stabilised bourgeois democratic institutions. The "collapse of the centre" — the disappearance of the political middle ground that once mediated class antagonisms — is presented as the key political symptom of a system in structural crisis. Woods insists that these upheavals represent both danger and opportunity: danger of reaction and authoritarianism, but opportunity for revolutionary leadership if Marxists can build the subjective factor — a revolutionary party — before the window closes.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in classical Marxist method, specifically the distinction between surface phenomena and underlying economic laws of motion. Woods draws directly on Marx's theory of capital concentration and the polarisation of wealth, citing Credit Suisse data on the top 1% owning half the world's wealth as empirical confirmation of predictions made in Capital. The article also deploys the Marxist understanding of the relationship between base and superstructure: political instability is treated as a necessary expression of unresolved economic contradictions, not as an autonomous sphere.

Trotsky's formulation — "theory is the superiority of foresight over astonishment" — provides the methodological thread. Woods uses this to critique both bourgeois analysts (who are astonished by events they failed to predict) and sectarian leftists (who deny the possibility of mass movements). The article also draws on Trotsky's 1938 analysis of the crisis of humanity as a crisis of proletarian leadership, which becomes the framework for understanding why revolutionary moments in Egypt (2011), Turkey (2013), and Iran (2017-18) have so far been defeated.

The piece sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition's emphasis on the subjective factor — the necessity of a revolutionary party — while rejecting the ultra-left pessimism that dismisses mass movements as inherently reformist or doomed. It also contains an implicit polemic against Stalinist and reformist conceptions of gradual change, using the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the betrayal of the Catalan movement as a case study in how reformist leadership demobilises and defeats mass movements.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in January 2018, ten years after the 2008 financial crisis and at a moment when the political aftershocks of that crisis were still unfolding. Woods identifies several concrete conjunctural features:

Economic polarisation: The article cites Credit Suisse data showing that the world's richest 1% increased their share of global wealth from 42% at the height of the 2008 crisis to 50.1% in 2017 — $140 trillion. Simultaneously, 83 million people across 45 countries required emergency food assistance in 2017, a 70% increase from 2015.

Geopolitical disintegration: The "America First" doctrine under Trump is analysed not as a personal eccentricity but as a new phase of inter-imperialist rivalry, accelerating the unravelling of the post-war liberal order. The Eurasia Group's warning of a "geopolitical depression" is cited as evidence that even bourgeois strategists recognise the system's fragility.

Collapse of traditional party systems: The article catalogues the destruction of established political alignments — the French two-party system eliminated in a single election, the British Conservatives losing a 20-point lead, the US Republicans losing Alabama, the ANC losing control in South Africa. These are treated as symptoms of a general delegitimisation of bourgeois democratic institutions.

Regional flashpoints: The analysis covers Catalonia (where the Spanish state's use of Article 155 and police violence against voters is presented as the logical outcome of the unreformed Francoist constitution), Iran (where the December 2017 protests marked a qualitative shift from student-led to working-class and youth movements), and the broader Middle East (where Egypt, Turkey, and Iran are identified as the strategic keys due to their strong proletariat and revolutionary traditions).

Where the Argument Continues

The article's central claim — that the crisis of capitalism manifests as political instability and that the missing element is revolutionary leadership — is a recurring theme across the In Defence of Marxism corpus. Several specific threads are left open:

The Iranian protests: The article was written as the December 2017 protests were unfolding and explicitly notes that their outcome is uncertain. Subsequent IDOM articles tracked the regime's response, the movement's ebb and flow, and the lessons for revolutionary organisation in the region.

The Corbyn phenomenon: Woods notes that the British Marxist Tendency alone understood the Corbyn surge, in contrast to "pseudo-Trotskyist sects" that had denied it for decades. This argument is developed in multiple later articles examining Corbyn's limits, the Labour right's sabotage, and the question of whether Corbynism represents a genuine leftward shift or a dead end within the framework of bourgeois parliamentarism.

Trump's survival: The article asks "how long Trump can survive" and identifies his support as resting on "the bankruptcy of the Democrats and the delay in a significant movement of the working class." Later IDOM analysis tracks the Trump presidency through impeachment attempts, the 2020 election, and the January 6 insurrection as further evidence of the ruling class's inability to stabilise the political situation.

The Catalan crisis: The article ends with the observation that "nothing will ever be the same either in Catalonia or in Spain." Subsequent coverage on marxist.com follows the Spanish state's continued repression, the fragmentation of the independence bloc, and the broader crisis of the Spanish monarchy and constitution.

Connections

This article should be read alongside:

• Trotsky's "The Crisis of Humanity and the Tasks of the Fourth International" (1938) — the theoretical source for the argument about the subjective factor and revolutionary leadership.

• Alan Woods' "The History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective" — for the methodological grounding in the relationship between individual agency and historical necessity, which the article deploys in its discussion of Trump.

• IDOM's annual world perspectives articles — this piece is part of a series; the 2017, 2019, and 2020 assessments provide the before-and-after context for the claims made here.

• The writings of the British Marxist Tendency on Corbynism — collected on marxist.com, these develop the argument that the Corbyn surge represented a genuine radicalisation that the pseudo-left failed to understand or support.

• Against the Stream episodes from early 2018 — the RCI's weekly analysis programme covered the Iranian protests, the Catalan elections, and the Alabama special election in real time, providing the tactical detail that the article's strategic framework requires.

Key Quotes

1. "The attempt to explain great historical processes in terms of the individual is a trivialisation of history that does not stand even the most superficial scrutiny. Marxism seeks the mainsprings of human history in the deeper processes that unfold far beneath the surface and constitute the fundamental framework upon which human actors play out their roles."

2. "The political centre is a fiction. Society is increasingly divided between a small group of people who control the system and the overwhelming majority who are getting poorer and are in open rebellion against the system."

3. "The concentration of Capital has taken place in a laboratory fashion. Fewer than 200 giant corporations now control world trade. Obscene wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. In 2017 alone the world's billionaires increased their combined global wealth by a fifth."

4. "The Egyptian masses did everything in their power to change society. It was the absence of leadership – and that alone – that led the magnificent 2011 movement into a blind alley. And since nature abhors a vacuum, the vacant space was filled by Sisi and the other reactionary army generals."

5. "In 1938 Leon Trotsky wrote that one could reduce the crisis of humanity to the crisis of leadership of the proletariat. There have been many revolutionary movements in the recent past: in Egypt, in Turkey, in Iran, in Greece. But in every case the masses were thwarted by the lack of the subjective factor: a revolutionary party and leadership."

6. "As to the cowards, apostates and sceptics who deny the perspective of revolution, we can only shrug our shoulders and repeat the defiant words uttered by Galileo Galilei: Eppur si muove — And yet it moves."