2025: A year of capitalist chaos

As 2025 draws to a close, workers and young people around the world will look back on a year that has starkly exposed the blind alley of world capitalism. Trump’s return to the White House has only deepened the disorder, with his administration’s foreign and economic policies causing chaos on the world stage. The recently released National Security Strategy makes one thing unmistakably clear: the United States is not in the position it used to be, no longer capable of policing the globe on its own.

This redivision of the world will not unfold calmly or peacefully – as the events of 2025 have shown. The relentless succession of crises is shaking consciousness on a mass scale, pushing hundreds of millions to question the status quo. Increasingly, people are searching for a way out of society’s dead end, and a growing layer is becoming receptive to communist ideas.

In this episode of Against the Stream, Jorge Martín and Hamid Alizadeh look back on the tumultuous year, discuss what lies ahead, and explore how communists should prepare for the struggles to come.

Against the Stream is the Marxist current-affairs podcast of the Revolutionary Communist International. New episodes air every Thursday at 6pm GMT on YouTube.

📖 RECOMMENDED READING 📖

National Security Strategy of the United States of America

🔗https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

“Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds”

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2025/dec/10/just-0001-hold-three-times-the-wealth-of-poorest-half-of-humanity-report-finds

The meaning of China’s $1tn trade surplus

🔗https://www.ft.com/content/80933ccf-a23f-43ab-b83c-1d2055e5995d

Labour is slow-marching working people to populism

🔗https://www.ft.com/content/1052957c-90ef-4e00-b599-e45643c5c8e4

How asset managers like BlackRock took over the world

🔗https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2025/06/16/how-asset-managers-like-blackrock-took-over-the-world-vulture-capitalism-extract-grace-blakeley/#:~:text=In%20this%20extract%20from%20her,concentration%20of%20money%20and%20power.

The world turned upside down – a system in crisis

🔗https://marxist.com/world-perspectives-2025.htm

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