Skip to content

Zarah Sultana calls to nationalise economy Trump plots coup in Venezuela AGAIN

Against The Stream · 2025-12-04

Core Argument

The central thesis of this episode is that the emerging debate within the British left — between a wealth tax strategy and the call for wholesale nationalisation — represents a fundamental dividing line between reformism and revolution. The hosts argue that Zarah Sultana's shift toward demanding the nationalisation of the entire economy, while still insufficiently developed, correctly identifies the core question: the capitalist class's ownership of the means of production. However, they insist this must be concretised into a revolutionary programme that breaks with parliamentarism entirely. The episode's secondary argument concerns Venezuela: the Wall Street Journal's open advocacy of US military intervention reveals that the Trump administration's anti-drug rhetoric is a cover for re-establishing imperial dominance over Latin America's resources, and that Trump has set in motion forces he cannot control.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on classical Marxist political economy, particularly the distinction between reform and revolution that runs from Marx through Lenin and Trotsky. The hosts deploy Marx's theory of surplus value to argue that wealth is created by the working class and appropriated by capital — therefore taxation merely maintains the exploitative relation. The Mitterrand example is used to illustrate a core Marxist insight: capital controls the state and will use economic power (capital flight, investment strikes) to discipline any government that threatens property relations. This is grounded in Engels's definition of the state as "armed bodies of men in defence of private property." The discussion of revolution draws on Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, specifically the relationship between spontaneous mass movements and the subjective factor of revolutionary leadership. The critique of the "responsible left" — Tariq Ali, Owen Jones, George Galloway — positions the episode within the Leninist tradition's long polemic against left reformism and what it terms "opportunism."

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode is set in a specific conjuncture: December 2025, with Trump in his second term. The hosts note Trump's declining popularity, his failure to deliver on economic promises, and his administration's internal contradictions — exemplified by the pardon of Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted of drug trafficking, which undermines the entire anti-drug rationale for aggression against Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal editorial of 30 November 2025 is treated as a bellwether: open advocacy of invasion by the voice of Wall Street. The Venezuela section connects to the broader geopolitical picture of US retrenchment toward its "own backyard" and the push to expel Russian and Chinese influence from Latin America.

Domestically, the episode analyses the formation of Your Party, noting that 800,000 people expressed interest but only 55,000 joined — a figure the hosts attribute to the demoralising bureaucratic infighting at the top. The Green Party's surge under Zach Polanski to 150,000 members is presented as further evidence of the vacuum on the left. The Oxfam data on wealth concentration — the top 1% appropriating 63% of all new wealth between 2020 and 2023 — grounds the argument in material reality. The 110 billion pound annual interest payment on UK state debt is cited to show that a 2% wealth tax cannot address the structural crisis.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode deliberately leaves open several threads. The hosts state that the nature of a "democratic socialist state, a Soviet state" will be discussed in future episodes. The question of how to concretise Sultana's programme — moving from rhetorical radicalism to an organised, written programme connected to every struggle — is identified as the next necessary step. The Venezuela analysis is explicitly positioned as a continuation of a previous episode, and the hosts promise to follow developments in both Venezuela and Your Party. The Spectre of Communism podcast on the failure of the Syriza government in Greece is referenced as a companion piece that develops the argument about reformism's inevitable collapse. The theoretical discussion of revolutionary consciousness and the subjective factor points toward the RCI's broader corpus on party-building and the need for a revolutionary organisation.

Connections

  • Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution — The steam/piston box analogy for the relationship between mass spontaneity and revolutionary leadership is directly cited.
  • Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State — The definition of the state as armed bodies in defence of private property underpins the analysis of state power.
  • Marx, Capital Volume 1 — The hosts reference reading it currently, specifically the chapter on concentration of capital and the distinction between declared and actual wealth.
  • Lenin, The State and Revolution — Implicit in the discussion of smashing the bourgeois state apparatus.
  • Against the Stream episodes on Venezuela — The hosts reference previous detailed analysis of the US aggression.
  • Spectre of Communism podcast on Greece — Referenced as developing the argument about Syriza's failure.
  • The New Statesman article "French Lessons" (2017) — Used as a historical case study of Mitterrand's capitulation.

Key Quotes

  1. "You cannot plan what you don't control, and you do not control what you do not own. And this is a basic principle."

  2. "As long as the capitalists own the means of production, they will use their economic power to bring any government to heel."

  3. "If you stop at [taxation], you sow illusions. You sow illusions that this system can be reformed. You sow illusions that this system can be humanised, can be brought to heels, can be tamed in one way or another."

  4. "The capitalist class does not serve any purpose in this society. They are parasites. But they have the grip around power. Two forms of power. Economic power in the big banks, in the big monopolies, in the big industries and state power."

  5. "What creates a revolution is not Communists, is not a good idea. What creates a revolution is a fundamental contradiction within a social system. A socioeconomic system that's come to the end of its line creates revolutions."