The choice of which party or president takes the reins of government is a false choice that cannot turn capitalist civilisation away from the path towards catastrophe. This applies to the coming US elections as much as to any other electoral circus. 

Last year, the ruling “elites” of world capitalism were shocked by the outcome of the referendum in the United Kingdom about British membership in the European Union (“Brexit”), and by the result of the presidential elections in the United States (President Trump). In both cases, the results obtained did not correspond to the intentions or the interests of leading factions of the bourgeois class. We are therefore embarking on a series of interconnected pieces which will aim at making an initial balance sheet of the political situation in the United States and Britain in the aftermath of these events. To widen the scope of our examination, we will also develop an analysis of the politics of the ruling class in the two main countries of continental Europe, France and Germany. In France, presidential and parliamentary elections took place in the early summer of this year. In Germany, the general elections to the Bundestag took place in September. The bourgeoisie of both countries is obliged to react to what has taken place in Britain and the USA – and they have reacted.

In the twilight of ancient Rome, the madness of emperors was more the rule than the exception. In the days after Trump's election victory, it could be hard to tell whether we were in 2016 or in Ancient Rome.

The political instability created in Britain by the "Leave" vote in the Brexit referendum, and in the USA by the Donald Trump presidential candidacy, provide graphic illustrations of the ruling class' loss of control of its own political apparatus.