Will the US go to war? Trumpism unravelling — AGAINST THE STREAM

Against The Stream · 2025-06-19

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the escalating Israeli-Iranian conflict, with the US now poised to join directly, is not an aberration or the product of individual madness but the logical outcome of the insoluble contradictions of global capitalism. The episode argues that Netanyahu's personal survival interests, the Israeli ruling class's strategic need to prevent Iran from consolidating as a regional industrial and military power, and the crisis of US imperialism's declining hegemony have converged to produce a war that serves no one's long-term interests — not even those of the ruling classes waging it.

The argument has three interlocking claims:

1. Netanyahu is holding Israeli society hostage to his own survival. His government was facing collapse and legal jeopardy; war is the only mechanism keeping him in power.

2. The Israeli ruling class has an objective interest in preventing Iranian development. Iran is ten times Israel's size, has an industrial base, and could emerge as a major capitalist power in the region. This is an existential threat to Israeli imperialism — its ability to act with impunity — not to the Israeli state as such.

3. Trump is painted into a corner. He was elected on an anti-war platform but is now being dragged toward a conflict that will unravel his coalition, expose the hollowness of his promises, and potentially trigger a global economic crisis through the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

The episode's deeper claim is that this is not a crisis of bad leadership but of a system in decay. The "unravelling of Trumpism" is the surface expression of a deeper crisis of US capitalism — astronomical debt, the exhaustion of credit-fuelled growth, and the impossibility of satisfying both the capitalist class's demand for austerity and the working class's demand for material security.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in the classical Marxist tradition of imperialism theory, drawing on Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and Trotsky's understanding of combined and uneven development. The key theoretical moves are:

The primacy of class interest over national interest. The episode refuses to take any ruling class at its word. Israeli, American, and Iranian ruling classes are all presented as defending their class interests within the framework of competing imperialist projects. There is no "good" imperialism — not Russian, not Chinese, not Iranian.

The concept of imperialism as a world system. The analysis treats capitalism as an integrated global system dominated by US imperialism. The crisis of the US is therefore the crisis of the world system as a whole. This is a classical Leninist position: the contradiction between the imperialist powers is not a secondary feature but a structural necessity of the system.

The dialectic of the general and the particular. The episode explicitly defends its method: it is not enough to recite abstract laws of capitalist development. Marxism must be applied to concrete, weekly events — the specific behaviour of Netanyahu, the tactical dilemmas of Trump, the material constraints on Iranian missile production. This is a tradition that runs from Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire through Trotsky's war commentaries to the best of contemporary Marxist journalism.

The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not invoked directly, but the analysis of debt and credit-fuelled growth points toward it. The episode describes how the capitalist class has "kicked the can down the road" through massive credit expansion since the 1980s, creating an unsustainable debt burden that now forces austerity — which in turn threatens the electoral base of bourgeois politicians.

The rejection of "multipolarity" as progressive. The episode explicitly warns against the illusion that a multipolar world — with Russia and China as counterweights to US imperialism — would be more just. These are competing imperialist powers, not allies of the working class.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode is set in a very specific moment: late July 2025, immediately following a major Israeli bombing campaign against Iran that began in the previous week. The specific conjunctural features are:

Military facts on the ground: - Over 1,000 targets hit in Iran, including nuclear facilities, oil and gas installations, and densely populated areas of Tehran - The leader of the Revolutionary Guards and the head of the Iranian army killed - Dozens of nuclear scientists reportedly assassinated - 585 people killed in Iran, 239 of them civilians - Iran retaliated with hundreds of missiles, some penetrating Israeli defences - 24 people reportedly killed in Israel

The political dilemma: - Trump has approved plans for a US strike but not given the final go-ahead - He is caught between the neoconservative wing (demanding action to demonstrate credibility) and the isolationist wing (Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard) warning against a quagmire - 60% of Americans oppose the war; only 16% support it - Trump was elected on a platform of "no more forever wars" and has already failed to deliver on Ukraine and Gaza

The economic time bomb: - Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil passes - The Houthis could re-enter the conflict, disrupting the Red Sea and Suez Canal - Oil price spikes would feed inflation, hitting transport, food, and everything else — precisely the opposite of Trump's promises - Israel's air defence costs $280 million per night; the war costs $700 million per day

The domestic crisis: - The "no kings" marches over the weekend drew millions in 2,000 cities - ICE raids have failed to deliver politically; they are "good politics, bad economics" - The contradiction between the capitalist class's demand for austerity (Musk) and the working class's expectations (jobs, healthcare, no inflation) is becoming unmanageable - The Revolutionary Communist International reports 580 contacts, $4,400 raised, and 678 papers sold during weekend interventions

Where the Argument Continues

The episode is deliberately open-ended about the immediate outcome — "we don't know which way things are going to go" — but points to several continuations:

The Spectre of Communism podcast is explicitly referenced as the theoretical companion to Against the Stream, where the general laws of capitalist development are explored in more depth.

Alan Woods' article on the RCI website is referenced and will be linked in the episode description. This article apparently develops the analysis of Trump's dilemma and the mood among his base.

The Revolutionary Communist International's World Congress at the end of July 2025 is presented as the forum where the political conclusions of this analysis will be developed and codified.

The broader corpus of RCI analysis on the weakening of US imperialism and the rise of secondary imperialist powers (Israel, Turkey, India) is referenced as having been developed in previous episodes and articles.

Connections

Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism — The theoretical foundation for the analysis of inter-imperialist rivalry and the impossibility of peaceful capitalist development.

Trotsky's war commentaries — The method of applying Marxist analysis to rapidly unfolding events, treating each development as a concrete expression of deeper contradictions.

Alan Woods, The Unravelling of Trumpism (referenced article) — The immediate textual companion, developing the analysis of Trump's domestic crisis.

The Spectre of Communism podcast — The theoretical counterpart, where the general laws of capitalist development are examined.

Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte — The classic text on how individual actors (Netanyahu, Trump) are driven by structural forces they do not fully control, yet their specific decisions matter enormously.

Engels' military writings — Referenced in the episode's defence of concrete analysis: even tactical details matter for educating the movement.

Key Quotes

1. On the nature of the war:

   "There's always an interest behind each war. And because capitalism is a system based on classes with a privileged class at the top that owns and controls the mass media, what you can expect from them in times of war is not an objective explanation of what is happening, but what they want people to think."

2. On the structural logic of Israeli aggression:

   "Iran is 10 times the size of Israel. It has an industrial base. It has a working class. It has raw materials... you leave Iran to develop for a period of time, it could emerge as a major capitalist industrial power in the region... Israel is really, they talk about Iran being the destabilising element. Actually, the destabilising element in the Middle East is Israel. Israel has no interest in peaceful relations with Iran, which would allow Iran to develop its economy."

3. On Trump's dilemma:

   "The problem is the insoluble contradictions of American capitalism... The hawks are saying we must attack otherwise we're going to lose face. The isolationists are saying if we attack, we're going to be dragged into a quagmire. They're both right. Actually, they're both right and they're both wrong."

4. On the method of the podcast:

   "The purpose of a podcast like this is to apply the method of Marxism. It's a weekly podcast. You can't generalise simply every week. You've also got to go into the concrete events that are taking place... There's not a disconnect between the general and the particular. The particular can be explained through the general, but the general also has to be applied to the particular, otherwise it becomes abstract and disconnected from what's actually happening around us."

5. On the task of the working class:

   "The root cause of the problem is capitalism and the massive imperialist powers that dominate, and the first main one is American imperialism with their smaller friends that collaborate with them. The task is to build a political force that explains all this and build a party and a movement which can put an end to this system."