It should by now have become clear from the first months of the Trump Government, that the political split between the radical Republican populists of the Trump/Musk and the neo-liberal populists of the current Democratic Party in the USA, has nothing to do with the future welfare of the vast majority of the American population. The invitation to ordinary working people by the media and each political side, to take up the cudgel for one elite side or the other in this political war of words, is merely the continuation of decades old manoeuvres against the working people.

The intellectual focus on who fired the first shot of the military confrontation in Ukraine, is also a well known tactic of elite distraction from examining the underlying and ongoing elite class wars against their own citizens and against the elites and citizens of rival elites. So what is being omitted in such invitations to choose a side is that prior to military wars there are the ongoing economic wars between state elites for increased resources and markets often known as trade wars. Also prior to military wars, there are the recurrent class wars within every country to raise or lower (by various means) the annual value going to the working classes.

The elite, by means of state control have many more direct ways of lowering the value of labour going to the working people from the combined annual production. The ruling elites can outlaw strikes, pass laws, devalue currencies etc. The working classes only have one direct, but seriously flawed, form of resisting the lowering of the value of their wages or salaries or raising them and that is by striking. However, striking mostly punishes the workers (and other workers) far more than their employers. So this is often a lose lose tactic for working people and only rarely, in exceptional circumstances, amounts to a win win result.

In fact in all civil and military wars, working people comprise of the majority of the victims. This is because they are both the most numerous and also the least able to protect themselves from the perpetrators of civil and military wars. The elite initiators and perpetrators of these wars are able to avoid the the military and civilian consequencies of the civil and military wars they initiate. Indeed, at the moment, both types ot war are being expedited simultaneously and are being openly justified by Trump and Musk (and others). With regard to the class war, Trump and Musk are already attempting to make even more US working class citizens unemployed and thus closer to relative and absolute poverty, than their predecessors in the Biden administration felt able to achieve. Plus Trump has also opportunistically located two sources of potential profits in the two current military wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Trump, no doubt with guidance from Musk, has looked at the disastrous multiple ruins of hospitals, schools, homes and power supplies in the Gaza strip and the similar destroyed homes, villages, schools, hospitals and power supplies in Ukraine and does not consider what any normal human being would consider. The utter inhumane destruction of millions of human lives, communities and the infrastructures built by them would move all but the hardest most socially or psychologically damaged individuals. Instead, of horror and compassion, as is the case with many previous elites, Trump sees only opportunities to make money and prestige.

He therefore, offers to 1. organise the rebuilding of Gaza as a holiday seaside village plus a golf course for the rich and powerful. And 2, to get hold of a long term contract from the ruling elite in Ukraine to extract as much of the inorganic materials and rare metals, (oil and other materials) that can be salvaged, from their depleted communities. Whatever, other reconstruction ‘deals’ will be made later, will depend on whatever boundary lines remain to Ukraine when the Putin elites, the Ukrainian elites and the American elites get round a table to sign a contract to finally end the military stage of war. This will then free them to continue with their class wars against the working and redundant classes.

In none of these elite negotiations will the surviving victims of any war torn region, get to have a say about reconstruction or relocation of decimated communities, everything will be stitched up according to how the elites round a table decide they should be. The lack of embarrassment and sheer inhumanity of this rampant elite oportunism is breathtaking. It indicates the mentality of the US elites, in particular, who have funded and supported wars, in which many thousands of their human counterparts will die or be seriously injured, and they have done so from ultra safe locations, with their investment portfolios in warfare and rebuilding companies and products, safely protected.

It should be crystal clear that in inter-state wars, two forms of elite enrichment are extracted from one huge catastrophic experience suffered by ordinary working and middle-class  citizens. It is often said that nothing good comes from wars, but that is only true from the working and lower middle class perspective. The elite strata frequently gain status, wealth and privilege from participating in wars and the inevitable profitable reconstructions that follow. As is historically usual, it’s the cannon fodder masses who get decimated physically before, during and after wars.

Elite instigated wars are so bad for ordinary people that they ought to shunned by them like the plague and this is why much effort is put into trying to persuade people to support one side or another either practically or intellectually, supposedly for their own good, before, during and after. For example, there is currently an invitation by left or right wing supporters of either side of the military war in Ukraine and Gaza war, to now focus upon who started these particular military conflicts. This invitation, even when coming from the so-called radical left, deliberately avoids mentioning the fact that both sides elites are daily engaged in exploiting the earth’s natural resources and ruthlessly exploiting the labour power of working people, before, during and after such conflicts. Ordinary working people are currently being persuaded to back one side or the other, when whichever elite-led side wins, their respective elites will insist that all the working people left alive will have to work hard for low pay to reconstruct the infrastructure damage caused by the elite instigated conflict and which will further enrich the rich.

Moreover, in reality, the essence of this split among the US elite, over who bags the benefits, is not restricted to the USA and has everything to do with how modern hierarchical mass society elites in the 21st century, wish to govern those hierarchical mass societies when the economic basis is dominated by the capitalist mode of production. The contradictions inherent in both the hierarchical form and the socio-economic structure of capitalism have become so intense that it has caused this fundamental split within the ruling elite classes, in US, UK, Europe and elsewhere.

For example, the liberal democratic wing of the ruling elite in the USA still wishes to govern the entire system and conduct its civil war against it’s own working population, in the way it has done for the last 80 years or so. That is to say by maintaining what still remains of the post 1945 welfare-state, socio-economic settlement between the masses of those governed and the relative few of those who actually govern, whilst they slowly and creatively dismantle it.

In contrast, the Trump MAGA Republican tendency wishes to institute an even sharper civil war to create a quicker alternative settlement with working people to the current one based on welfarism. A similar situation exists in the UK between Conservatives and Labour and also in every country in Europe. The basic dispute arises because on the one hand, these welfare systems rely upon a system of progressive taxation based upon income levels to fund it, and on the other, upon state monitored and enforced regulatory restrictions. The latter state funded regulatory system was needed to ensure the safety and quality of the food, water, clothing, shelter and the production of commodities and services offered to their citizens, after the Second World War. Regulation  was needed because private enterprise could not be relied upon to ensure safety or healthiness in their products.

From the elite perspective, this progressive taxation and the costs of these regulatory bodies has two consequences. First they negatively affect the profitability of those engaged in the socio-economic system of capitalist production of these essential and non-essential commodities. Second, they have increased the state debts to unprecedented levels which are approaching a level that technically could equate to bankruptcy. Currently the interest on this debt is being met out of taxation, leaving little left over to fund welfare benefits and lucrative deals for private companies.

This welfare-state version of the capitalist system of hierarchical governance has long been resented by most, if not all, of those involved in capitalist based productive activity, whether producing commodities or services. Eventually in the post-Second World War period, this resentful tendency among the elite found champions in in the Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher generation of political puppets, who pioneered privatisation of public services and reductions in the relative purchasing power of wages and salaries, by various means.

This same neo-liberal political tendency also promoted the relaxing or removal of business regulations and restrictions both nationally and locally. Consequently, after the initial post war expansion of the state’s public services, the neo-liberal wing of the elite (in their alternating Democratic and Republican disguises) have simultaneously managed a gradual reduction in the economic and welfare benefits going to the middle and working classes and a rapid expansion of the economic and wealth benefits accruing to the top elites.

This process, in essence was repeated – although unevenly – throughout the global capitalist economic and financial system during 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, and ever since. In general these measures boosted the mass of profits for those directly engaged in the capitalist mode of production and increased the numbers of the successful mega rich. This enrichment of the millionaire and now billionaire class has continued into the 21st century.

However, having become accustomed to reductions and restrictions on their profits and taxes, this emboldened elite class nevertheless still resented the paying of these reduced taxes and continued campaigning (and lobbying) for even less taxation and even less restrictions on their freedom to produce commodities, services and to increase profits. It is a section of this top tier of economic and financial elites that have long been dissatisfied by the the taxation system and by the slowness of removing the remaining restrictions to their insatiable desires for wealth accumulation.

That is the real substance of their class war aims, it is not the prevention of state bankruptcy as Musk and Trump in the US, and Starma and Reeves in the UK pretend. States are merely a linguistic abstraction and can do nothing. However, top ministers of them have the power to cancel debts, print money or devalue it in order to pay debts and additionally sequester funds from their citizens as the Argentina government did in 2001.

The essence of the republican ideas of, and attempts at, a radical draining of what Donald Trump and his supporters classify as ‘the swamp, is an intensification of the class war against the working classes in the public sector in order to free up and accumulate public funds for themselves and their wealthy cronies. Incidentally, this was the motive behind why Trump Presidency 1 reduced taxation for the super rich and the reason why in Trump Presidency 2, the supposedly dynamic duo, of Trump and Musk have initiated their attempted sackings and reductions in state expenditure and state regulatory bodies.

These radical right wing reform initiatives have been selectively and advantageously aimed at people working in the public services for obvious reasons. Public service workers are relatively powerless to practically resist their sacking and their written and vocal complaints will fall on deaf ears, and any legal actions may be too costly. These ‘drain the swamp’ measures have been primarily targetted at reducing those state expenditures on wages and salaries which, on the one hand, will now (and they hope later) free up substantial government funds to allow Musk and the growing tech billionaire oligarchies to continue to gain huge government contracts, research grant’s and negotiate generous profit guarantees and to offset any required tax payments.

And on the other hand, these attempts also include the aim of reducing or removing the regulatory bodies which might enforce restrictions on their ability to make profits on the production of any future shoddy goods and exploitative services they create. Thus they will be able to continue to milk the hierarchical mass society system to their hearts content. Although often presenting themselves as cartoon type characters, and intellectually challenged in speech and image, as Trump and Vance demonstrated in their recent public harranging of Zelensky at the oval office, they and Musk and many others of their clique know exactly what they are doing. They craftily know that they need to conjour up additional and plausible alternative explanations, for public consumption.

Roy Ratcliffe (February 2025)

Part 2 (to follow) will briefly consider the historical precedents for these elite war and civil war tactics and strategies.