Skip to content

Analytical Summary: Against the Stream — "The implications of Trump's victory, the Ukraine war and protests in Spain" (15 November 2024)

Against The Stream · 2024-11-15

Core Argument

The central thesis of this episode is that the election of Donald Trump represents not a rightward shift in popular consciousness but a profound crisis of legitimacy for the entire US political establishment, driven by the deteriorating material conditions of the American working class. The hosts argue that Trump's victory is best understood as a symptom of capitalist decay rather than its cause — a bonapartist figure who has positioned himself against the Washington establishment, exposing the class nature of the state in the process. The episode contends that Trump's coalition is inherently unstable, uniting billionaires, evangelical reactionaries, and a significant section of the working class whose interests are fundamentally irreconcilable. When Trump inevitably fails to deliver on his promises to working people, the same class anger that propelled him to power will turn leftwards, creating the conditions for a new force on the American left.

The episode extends this analysis to two other conjunctures: the deteriorating military situation in Ukraine, where the episode argues that Russian industrial and demographic superiority has decisively defeated the Ukrainian project, and the mass protests in Valencia, Spain, where the failure of bourgeois institutions to respond to natural disaster has triggered an explosion of class anger that the ruling class is desperately trying to contain through appeals to "national unity."

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on several classical Marxist concepts, deployed with a light touch appropriate to the podcast format:

Bonapartism is the most significant theoretical reference point. The hosts explicitly invoke the concept to describe Trump's position as a figure who rises above the contending classes at a moment of stalemate, leaning on the working class demagogically while serving the interests of capital. The comparison to Erdogan's rise in Turkey is instructive — a figure who appears as an outsider, capitalises on the discrediting of the entire political establishment, and then engages in a protracted internal struggle within the state apparatus.

The class character of the capitalist state is a recurring theme. The episode emphasises that 99.99% of state officials are never elected, that the state is a "dictatorship of capital," and that Trump's conflict with the "Deep State" reveals the truth that bourgeois democracy is a mechanism for class rule. The hosts note that a radical left-wing president would face the same structural obstacles Trump encountered in his first term.

Creative destruction — borrowed from the conservative columnist Daniel McCarthy but given a Marxist inflection — is used to describe how Trump's victory has broken up the political cartel of the two parties, creating space for a future left-wing challenge. The hosts approvingly cite McCarthy's conclusion that if Trump fails, "a new Force for Creative destruction will emerge, possibly on the American left."

The dialectic of war is deployed through Clausewitz (via Alan Woods) to argue that the Russian strategy in Ukraine has been one of attrition — the destruction of enemy forces rather than the conquest of territory — and that this has succeeded because of Russia's superior industrial base and demographic weight.

The superiority of planning over the market emerges in the discussion of Western arms production, where the hosts note that Russian nationalised industry can direct production for war while Western manufacturers demand 15-20 year contracts before investing in capacity.

Conjunctural Relevance

The US election: The episode provides specific data points to support its analysis. The Democrats lost 8.5 million votes compared to 2020; Trump's vote share increased only marginally. In states where Trump won, ballot initiatives to enshrine abortion rights passed by large margins — in Montana, 54% for abortion (20 points more than Harris); in Nebraska, 52% (8 points more than Harris); in Arizona, 63% for abortion where Trump won by a big majority. 38% of Trump voters supported expanding abortion rights. This data is used to argue that the election was not a rightward shift on social issues but a vote against the establishment on economic grounds.

Ukraine: The episode cites an Economist report that Ukraine suffered its worst month of territorial losses since 2022 (620 square kilometres in October 2024), that conscription is hitting only two-thirds of its target, that nearly 20% of soldiers have gone AWOL, and that the average age of soldiers is above 40. The Financial Times is quoted reporting that some units are staffed to only a third of what is needed, with cooks, engineers and medical staff being sent to the front. The hosts note that Russia is replacing losses through recruitment with lucrative contracts without mass mobilisation, while Ukraine's "Victory Plan" essentially proposes selling off the country's natural resources and turning the Ukrainian army into NATO's mercenary force.

Spain: The Valencia floods killed over 220 people. The regional president, Mazón, was having a three-hour dinner with a journalist during the emergency, lied about it, and delayed the mobile phone warning system by 45 minutes because his representative didn't understand how it worked. The demonstration on 9 November drew 130,000 (official) to 250,000 (participant estimates). The King and Queen were pelted with mud when they visited. The Socialist Party and the conservative Popular Party have formed a de facto alliance to protect the regime, with the Socialists refusing to demand Mazón's resignation and voting for his regional budget. The main trade unions (UGT and Workers' Commissions) called a 10-minute protest in unity with the bosses, and were absent from the main demonstration.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode explicitly references Alan Woods' article from April 2022 on the Ukraine war, which develops the Clausewitzian analysis of attrition warfare in greater theoretical depth. The hosts indicate that the question of bonapartism in the US context will be developed in a future programme. The broader analysis of the crisis of US imperialism and the relative decline of American power is a recurring theme across the Against the Stream corpus, and listeners are directed to previous episodes on the 2008 crisis, COVID-19, and Black Lives Matter for the longer arc of delegitimisation of US institutions.

The Spanish comrades' article "Massive protests against the crimes of the Valencian bourgeoisie: For a general strike to bring down Mazón" (published on marxist.com, 12 November 2024) provides the detailed account of the Valencia situation. The comparison to the 2004 Madrid bombings and the subsequent political crisis is developed there.

Connections

  • Alan Woods, "The War in Ukraine: A Marxist Analysis" (April 2022) — the theoretical foundation for the Clausewitzian analysis of attrition warfare
  • Daniel McCarthy, "This Is Why Trump Won" (New York Times, 6 November 2024) — the conservative article that the hosts use as their hook, which reaches conclusions about the instability of Trump's coalition that converge with Marxist analysis
  • Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution — the hosts reference Trotsky's observation about how different classes react under extreme pressure ("everyone reacts the same if you put a red hot iron on their hands")
  • Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — the classical text on bonapartism, though not explicitly cited
  • Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution — relevant to the discussion of the class character of the state
  • Clausewitz, On War — the military-strategic framework for understanding the Ukraine war as a war of attrition
  • Gore Vidal's observation that the US has "only one party, the party of property, with two right wings" — cited to contrast the pre-Trump era with the current rupture

Key Quotes

  1. "What they cannot forgive him is that one, he exposes the whole system... he shows that no, the state is not a neutral body... American democracy what it really is is being exposed to everyone as being a dictatorship of capital essentially."

  2. "If Mr Trump and his Coalition fail to create something better than what they have replaced, they will suffer the same fate they inflicted on the fallen Bush, Clinton and Cheney dynasties — a new Force for Creative destruction will emerge, possibly on the American left." (quoting Daniel McCarthy)

  3. "The aim of war is not the conquest of territory and cities but the destruction of the enemy forces... direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration." (quoting Clausewitz via Alan Woods)

  4. "A lot of guys now see mobilization as a death sentence... some units are currently staffed to about a third of what is needed." (quoting the Financial Times on Ukraine)

  5. "Trotsky said... everyone reacts differently if you tickle them, but everyone reacts the same if you put a red hot iron on their hands... under immense pressures the class nature of society reveals itself."