The Economy

[MajorRewrite]

‘The Trump government operates as a criminal conspiracy against the democratic rights of the people. In justifying ICE murders, the Trump regime has declared the state’s unlimited right to kill. Vice President JD Vance stated this explicitly after Good’s killing, saying that the agent who shot her was “protected by absolute immunity … he was doing his job.” The principles invoked by Vance derive from the jurisprudence of fascism.’

‘The drive to dictatorship is inseparable from the staggering levels of social inequality in the United States. Trump speaks and acts as the political representative of the capitalist oligarchy, which, faced with growing economic, social and political crises, is abandoning all democratic norms to maintain its wealth and power.’

In the face of this … the Democratic Party response is . . .

How is that appropriate for inclusion in the economics thread?

 

[Holy_Seduction]

How is that appropriate . . .

Sorry! My bad! Thought that was clear. As the last lines indicate ..

The abandonment of all democratic norms arises from the ruling class intention to maintain its wealth and power in the face of growing economic, social and political crises.

In other words, extremes of socioeconomic inequalities under late stage Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with [lowercase ‘d’] democratic norms.

 

[Wilson23]

Sorry! My bad! Thought that was clear. As the last lines indicate ..

The abandonment of all democratic norms arises from the ruling class intention to maintain its wealth and power in the face of growing economic, social and political crises.

In other words, extremes of socioeconomic inequalities under late stage Capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with [lowercase ‘d’] democratic norms.

What makes you think capitalism HAS stages?

 

[MajorRewrite]

Trump’s brags about foreign investment in the US that is largely fictional. The Cato Institute has the details:

Trump’s Eighteen Trillion Dollar Hoax

No matter how often Trump minions keep repeating it, this hyperbolic $18 trillion number is still as unfathomable to everyone who has tried to explain or find it. Not one of the several hundred economists in the White House and Cabinet agencies has even tried to explain what the number is supposed to measure or how it was fabricated.

There was more foreign investment during the Biden years …

the St. Louis Fed reveals that foreign direct investment grew 23% more rapidly during the Biden years, 2021–24, than it did in the first three quarters of 2025.

Donnie always doubles down on…

At some point, by the art of doubling down on meaningless nonsense, the $9.6 trillion statistical fraud somehow became magically transformed into the even more unfathomable number of $18 trillion—a figure not one of the hundreds of economists employed by the White House, Treasury, and Commerce Departments ever attempted to validate. Yet this totally imaginary $18 trillion political talking point continues to be repeated endlessly in the hope that nobody in the public or press would ever be brave enough to rudely ask for some explanation or shred of evidence.

Totally Fact Free Trump!

 

[Lazaran]

Trump’s brags about foreign investment in the US that is largely fictional. The Cato Institute has the details:

Trump’s Eighteen Trillion Dollar Hoax



There was more foreign investment during the Biden years …


Donnie always doubles down on…


Totally Fact Free Trump!

That ^tracks nicely with DonOld’s vaporware manufacturing boom in the U.S. right now…



We. Told. Them. So.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

What makes you think capitalism HAS stages?

‘Stages’ refer to historical types, grounded in changing modes of production and international capital. Moral judgments don’t enter the picture.

They are derived from material conditions — productive forces, relations of production, and global economic linkages.

Later stages often intensify attacks on workers, but the decisive factor is the underlying contradiction between socialized production and private appropriation.

Trotskyists use the idea critically, stressing uneven/combined development, and the international character of revolution. We reject rigid two-stage dogmas snd favor a strategy that links present struggles to the conquest of power.

Understanding stages scientifically equips workers to see where capitalist limits lie and how to connect daily struggles to the historic task of building an independent proletarian leadership capable of carrying the struggle to socialist transformation.

Edit: Ammended for more direct reply.

It may help to say that the language derives from observable changes in the organization of production, concentration and socialization of the means of production, the emergence of monopolies and finance capital, the international integration of markets, and corresponding shifts in class composition and politics.

These concrete transformations generate new objective conditions, and new contradictions between socialized production and private appropriation. That is how each ‘stage’ is defined by our movement.

Marx’s analysis of capitalism’s tendencies toward crisis and its creation of socialized productive forces underpins this staging.

 

[Wilson23]

‘Stages’ refer to historical types, grounded in changing modes of production and international capital. Moral judgments don’t enter the picture.

They are derived from material conditions — productive forces, relations of production, and global economic linkages.

Later stages often intensify attacks on workers, but the decisive factor is the underlying contradiction between socialized production and private appropriation.

Trotskyists use the idea critically, stressing uneven/combined development, and the international character of revolution. We reject rigid two-stage dogmas snd favor a strategy that links present struggles to the conquest of power.

Understanding stages scientifically equips workers to see where capitalist limits lie and how to connect daily struggles to the historic task of building an independent proletarian leadership capable of carrying the struggle to socialist transformation.

When Marx described the proletarian revolution he wrote in the present tense -- as if describing a process that had been seen many times before and was familiar to all.

I detect similar hubris and presumption and dishonesty in your assumption that capitalism has stages you can understand and identify scientifically -- implying that one of them must be the LAST stage preceding collapse.

 

[Holy_Seduction]

When Marx described the proletarian revolution he wrote in the present tense -- as if describing a process that had been seen many times before and was familiar to all.

I detect similar hubris and presumption and dishonesty in your assumption that capitalism has stages you can understand and identify scientifically -- implying that one of them must be the LAST stage preceding collapse.

Your critique mistakes a method for arrogance. Marx’ use of the present tense was a rhetorical form for a scientific method: he described living, recurring processes to extract their regularities. That is not hubris; it’s the business of historical materialism. One analyzes concrete social relations, shows how they reproduce themselves, and makes some general observations about tendencies.

Saying capitalism has historically distinct forms or ‘stages’ is a scientific abstraction from repeated, observable changes in the organization of productive means, the concentration of capital, finance, imperialist relations, and their class structure. No responsible Marxist prophetically insists that collapse is imminent on a such and so date.

Far from claiming a single infallible chronicle, Marxists use stages as analytic tools to understand tendencies and limits of capitalist development. Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development and his insistence that revolutions are world-historic processes demonstrate precisely this humility before empirical complexity.

The language of ‘stages’ indicates dominant tendencies [ex: monopoly/finance capitalism and imperialism], and their systemic contradictions. But they don’t abolish contingency, unevenness or the decisive role of class struggle and political leadership.