The Ruling Class Has No Answer Does the Left AGAINST THE STREAM

Against The Stream · 2026-06-04

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the capitalist system has exhausted its capacity to offer a viable way forward for humanity. The Iran war is not the cause of the current crisis but a catalyst that has accelerated contradictions already present since 2008. The episode systematically examines four alternatives — the liberal world order, protectionist nationalism, Modern Monetary Theory, and a planned economy — and argues that only the last represents a genuine solution. The ruling class has no answer because the system's internal logic, particularly the tendency toward crisis of overproduction and the reliance on ever-increasing debt, has reached its terminal phase. The argument is that capitalism has become a fetter on the productive forces it once developed, and that every attempted fix merely prepares a deeper crisis.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in classical Marxist political economy, drawing on Marx's critique of political economy and Engels's writings on free trade and protectionism. The episode deploys the concept of crisis of overproduction as the fundamental contradiction: capital produces for a market limited by the purchasing power of the working class, leading to excess capacity that cannot be absorbed. This is connected to the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall implicitly — the German car industry's inability to invest in EVs because it would cannibalise existing profits is a concrete expression of this dynamic.

The discussion of Friedrich List and Marx's critique of him situates the episode within the Marxist tradition's long-standing rejection of economic nationalism. Marx's point — that protectionism is about the national capitalist class reserving the right to be the sole exploiter of its own working class — is deployed directly. The critique of MMT draws on Marx's polemic against Proudhon and the utopian socialists who believed "tricks of circulation" could resolve contradictions rooted in production. The episode explicitly cites Marx's argument that changing the instrument of circulation cannot transform the relations of production.

The planned economy alternative is grounded in the Soviet experience and the theoretical tradition of workers' democracy and planning, while acknowledging the historical problem of bureaucracy. The argument that capitalism has already demonstrated the feasibility of planning through firms like Walmart and Amazon is a contemporary restatement of Engels's point in Anti-Dühring about the socialisation of production within the capitalist enterprise.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode is set in a specific conjuncture: the Iran war has triggered cascading effects through the world economy. Oil prices hovering around $100 per barrel, strategic reserves at 20-year lows, and the depletion of NAFTA and helium supplies are creating supply chain disruptions that compound existing overcapacity. The OECD's "dark scenario" projection of 1.5% growth — comparable to 2008 — is cited alongside the EU Commission's warning of 1.3 million industrial jobs at risk.

The analysis identifies a dual crisis: on one hand, overcapacity in EVs, steel, and solar panels; on the other, acute shortages of raw materials and components due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. This contradictory dynamic — too much and too little simultaneously — is presented as the hallmark of capitalism's terminal irrationality. The debt mountain of $350 trillion, with the US needing to refinance $10 trillion in a single year at higher interest rates, is the accumulated weight of 18 years of crisis management through state borrowing.

The geopolitical dimension is explicit: the Ukraine war and the Iran war are not conflicts between nations but wars between imperialist powers — particularly US imperialism — trying to carve up the world market into spheres of influence. Trump's demand that Latin American raw materials and markets be reserved for the US, and the EU's tariff barriers on Chinese EVs, are presented as the logical outcome of a system where free trade only functions when the dominant power can outcompete everyone else.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode deliberately leaves open several threads. The question of workers' democracy in a planned economy is acknowledged as "far too big a topic to go into" and deferred to future episodes. The historical failure of the Soviet Union — bureaucracy, plan distortions, lack of democratic control — is mentioned but not developed. This suggests the argument continues in episodes dealing with the Soviet experience and the question of socialist democracy.

The critique of MMT is positioned within a broader polemic against reformism that runs through the Against the Stream corpus. The episode references previous discussions of MMT and implies a sustained engagement with left Keynesian and reformist currents. The connection between the current conjuncture and the 2008 crisis — the claim that the world economy "never got out" of that crisis — is a recurring theme that links to earlier episodes on the long depression and the nature of the 2008-2009 crash.

The argument about automation and crisis — that under capitalism, automation destroys markets by firing workers, while under planning it would reduce working hours — is flagged for future development, particularly in relation to AI and the data centre boom.

Connections

• Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy — the critique of Proudhon's "tricks of circulation" is directly referenced in the MMT section.
• Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto — the argument that the working class has no nation and that workers' interests are global is implicit throughout.
• Marx, Speech on the Question of Free Trade — the critique of List and the argument that free trade and protectionism are both bourgeois policies is central.
• Engels, Anti-Dühring — the discussion of the socialisation of production within the capitalist firm and the necessity of planning.
• Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism — the analysis of inter-imperialist rivalry and the carving up of the world is structurally present, though not cited.
• Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed — the question of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union is gestured toward but not developed.
• Other Against the Stream episodes — particularly those on the 2008 crisis, the nature of the Iran war, and the critique of MMT and reformism.

Key Quotes

1. "Capitalism is an anarchic system, but it doesn't mean that it's lawless. It means that it is ungovernable."

2. "The way they overcome the crisis inevitably prepares, as Marx and Engels explained, for bigger and deeper crises further down the road."

3. "This is not about the nation's sovereignty. This is about the national capitalist class reserving the right to be the sole exploiter of its own working class."

4. "The idea that you can avoid a big revolution or you can avoid big social convulsions merely by tricks in circulation — Marx criticises this as impossible."

5. "In a capitalist economy, every development leads to disruption. In a planned economy, development leads to more harmony."