Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster was recently interviewed on Italy’s OttolinaTV. Read the accompanying note below, and watch a video of the conversation here.
In this first part of a two-part interview with Prof. John Bellamy Foster, we analyze the MAGA phenomenon from a materialist perspective, highlighting the main social composition of the classes that form the base of support for the trumpian regime. John Bellamy Foster begins by rejecting the idealist categories through which, in the West, the concept of fascism has come to be analyzed—referring back to another video we published on the channel during the Fest8lina event in July ’25, where we addressed the topic with prof. Gabriel Rockhill. Instead, Foster proposes a classical analysis of the fascist phenomenon, locating its nature in the social composition of the classes that constitute its foundation. In the current historical period, this consists of an alliance between monopoly capital (including the decisive role of Big Tech) and what Foster calls the “lower middle class.” This class is marked by contradictory elements and has historically been used by ruling classes for reactionary purposes. However, Foster avoids what we might call a reductionist economic determinism: the task of an emancipatory political subject would be to develop a mass line capable of speaking, on the one hand, to the working classes and, on the other, to this increasingly impoverished lower middle class, in order to pull it away from the hegemonic project of big capital. The complexity of this task is evident, yet it becomes possible insofar as one works on the internal contradictions of this class. The interview ends with a brief analysis of Zohran Mamdani’s success in the New York City mayoral elections. Regardless of debates concerning the actual authenticity of Mamdani as a figure (Foster seems to regard him as genuine), the fact that the capital of the empire can be won on a platform centered on the material demands of ordinary people shows that a return to materialism is a necessary—if not sufficient— condition for the victory of a truly emancipatory political project.
