Happy New Year for some

Marxist Perspectives · 2021-01-08

Core Argument

Alan Woods argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has ripped away the ideological veil from capitalism, exposing the class divisions that the slogan "we are all in this together" was designed to conceal. The central thesis is that the crisis is not a natural disaster affecting everyone equally, but a class question: while billionaires added over half a trillion dollars to their wealth in 2020, tens of millions of American workers faced hunger, eviction, and destitution. The political convulsions in Washington — Trump's refusal to sign the stimulus bill and the storming of the Capitol — are not aberrations but symptoms of a deeper breakdown in bourgeois democratic institutions, which can only function when the ruling class has enough surplus to buy social peace. The article insists that reformist dreams of a "kinder capitalism" are utopian, and that the only genuine hope lies in the working class re-entering the historical stage as a revolutionary force.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in the classical Marxist understanding of the state and bourgeois democracy as instruments of class rule, not neutral arbiters. Woods draws on the Leninist and Trotskyist tradition that formal democratic institutions rest on a material foundation — the ability of capital to make sufficient concessions to blunt class antagonisms. When that foundation cracks, the "gentleman's agreement" between the classes breaks down, and the state's coercive apparatus is forced into the open. The article also deploys the Marxist method of appearance and essence: the surface-level chaos of Trumpism and populist rage is distinguished from its underlying content as a confused, inchoate protest against the decay of the old order. The reference to the Financial Times editorial is a deliberate theoretical move — Woods treats the bourgeois press not as a source of truth but as a thermometer of ruling-class anxiety, showing that the most clear-sighted strategists of capital understand the revolutionary implications of the crisis far better than the reformist left.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written at the precise juncture between Trump's defeat and Biden's inauguration, with the pandemic at its peak and the US economy in freefall. The specific data is devastating: 40 million Americans filing for unemployment, 12 million facing the expiry of benefits on 31 December, food insecurity at its highest since records began in 1998, and a single truck driver in Florida watching his $22,000 savings evaporate while Jeff Bezos became the first person to amass $200 billion. The political conjuncture is defined by the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, which Woods interprets not as a fascist insurrection but as the desperate gambit of a bankrupt demagogue whose mass base is a symptom of the crisis, not its cause. The article correctly predicts that Biden's victory, combined with Democratic control of Congress, will rapidly disappoint those who voted for him as the "lesser evil", and that a new period of class struggle will open. The Financial Times editorial is quoted at length precisely because it confirms this prognosis from the enemy's own mouth: the bourgeoisie fears that "the pitchforks come out for capitalism itself."

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several threads that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus. The relationship between Trumpism and fascism is asserted rather than fully argued here — Woods dismisses the "superficial impressionists" who conflate the two, but does not provide the theoretical distinction between a right-wing populist movement and a genuine fascist counter-revolution. This is taken up in other articles on the site, particularly those dealing with the nature of Bonapartism and the specific conditions that produce fascist movements. The question of the "subjective factor" — the weakness of Marxist forces and the confusion of the reformist left — is stated as a premise but not elaborated; it connects to a long-running polemic in the Trotskyist tradition about the relationship between objective crisis and revolutionary consciousness. The article also gestures toward the global dimension of the crisis but focuses almost exclusively on the United States; the pandemic's uneven development across the world economy, and its implications for the international working class, are treated in other IDOM pieces from this period.

Connections

The article sits within a tradition of Marxist conjunctural analysis that runs from Trotsky's Where Is Britain Going? through to contemporary assessments of capitalist decay. The Financial Times editorial is a key interlocutor — Woods treats it as a document of ruling-class self-awareness, comparable to the way Marx used the reports of factory inspectors in Capital. The theoretical reference points are classical: the method of distinguishing appearance from essence is drawn from Marx's Capital, Volume III; the analysis of bourgeois democracy as a fragile plant requiring material nourishment echoes Engels's Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; and the insistence on optimism despite the bleakness of the conjuncture is a hallmark of the Trotskyist tradition, captured in the epigraph from Marx about the "old mole" of revolution. Readers should also consult the IDOM articles on the Capitol riot itself, the nature of Bonapartism, and the pandemic as a class question, all of which were published in the same period.

Key Quotes

1. "We are constantly being told that we must unite to face a common enemy – a pitiless, inexorable and invisible enemy called COVID-19. 'We are all in this together' – that is the false and hypocritical slogan, by which the rich and powerful seek to divert our attention from the obvious fact that the present pandemic is also a class question."

2. "Bourgeois democracy is a very fragile plant, which can only flourish in certain well-nourished soils. It is historically a privilege held only by the most advanced and prosperous capitalist nations, where the ruling class possesses sufficient surplus wealth to make concessions to the working class, thereby blunting the sharp edges of the class struggle."

3. "The sharp and growing divide between rich and poor has led to a breakdown of the old consensus. Everywhere, beneath the apparent surface calm, there is a seething discontent, which reveals itself in periodic outbreaks of popular rage against the old order, its institutions, its political parties, its leaders, its morality and values."

4. "The serious bourgeois strategists understand the revolutionary implications far better than the myopic reformists. They can see that the violent swings of public opinion to the right can very easily be the preparation of even more violent swings to the left, that the discontented masses can turn in an anti-capitalist direction."

5. "After a long period of relative inactivity, the working class is stretching its limbs, like an athlete who is preparing to enter into a decisive contest. That, and that alone, gives us hope and optimism in the future of humanity."