
Nuevo Peru on the New Government of United States
We hereby share an article published by the Nuevo Peru.
CURRENT SITUATION: NOTES ON THE GLOBAL CRISIS (34. BIDEN AND TRUMP: REPRESENTATIVES OF THE YANKEE FINANCIAL OLIGARCHY)
In this section, we begin to write about the new government of the United States, the second government of the ultra-reactionary Donald Trump, and we will do so in the usual way, with notes and comments on his own statements and speeches, as well as those of other members of his government and more diverse representatives that will serve us for our analysis and conclusions on the matter. It is important to address this issue, because Yankee imperialism, despite going through the long process of its irremediable collapse, is still the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower and the main enemy of the peoples of the world. To get into the subject, let us begin with the statement of the former president, the genocidal Joe Biden, a few days before leaving office to the current Trump, on the 20th of this month.
The major world media, regarding the statement, reported something similar to the following note:
“The president of the United States, Joe Biden, warned that a dangerous oligarchy is being created in his country, during the farewell speech he offered this Wednesday.”
“Today, an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power and influence is taking shape in the United States that really threatens all of our democracy, our basic rights and our freedom”, said Biden, who will leave office on January 20, the day Donald Trump takes office.
Biden, 82, also denounced that there is an “ultra-rich technological industrial complex” that, he said, could gain unchecked power over Americans” (BBC News World, January 16, 2025).
The next day, January 17, 2025, in the “phoenix persönlich” broadcast, journalist Theo Koll spoke with Thomas Enders, president of the German Society for Foreign Policy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, DGAP), on the topic: what can be expected in a second Donald Trump government, how is Germany prepared for it and what challenges are ahead for Europe? In response to the interviewer’s question about the danger of an oligarchy for the United States, as expressed by Biden, Enders commented that this is nothing new in the United States, but let us remember Henry Ford, etc., in any case it is a change from one oligarchic group to another.
It should be noted in relation to the president of the DGAP, that although he declares himself independent, his closeness to the candidate for Chancellor Merz (CDU) in the next elections scheduled for the end of February is known. Merz is linked to Yankee financial capital, and was CEO of Black Rock.
In his own way, this reactionary is right when he points out that what is happening is not new in the United States, it is a generational or group change in economic and political predominance. Among the political representatives of the US financial oligarchy there are differences in particular interests according to the faction of this oligarchy and even the groups they serve. But these, beginning with the President, despite their differences in many cases, are only of degree or style, serve the overall interests of the bourgeois dictatorship of the Yankee imperialist state, headed by the financial oligarchy. The struggle between these factions and groups is reflected as a struggle for political principles and is so distorted that one must be patient to unravel its secret.
It is necessary to see how the interaction between the political representatives of Yankee imperialism and the interests of those who employ them, the factions and groups, has taken place. In the superstructure of monopoly capitalism or imperialism, this interaction has been modified with the transition to State monopoly capitalism, around the First World War, with the union of the immense power of the large private monopolies with the immense power of the imperialist State, giving rise to the two factions in the different imperialist countries. In the USA, these two factions are politically represented by the two Party mafias: the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, the same ones that take turns in the presidency and in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Marx and Engels referred to the two bourgeois factions that existed in the bourgeois State in the stage of free competition capitalism, in the 19th century, as government and opposition, a liberal faction and a conservative faction. In the bourgeois State, as the political superstructure of this first stage of capitalism, the division of labor between those who dedicate themselves to the political function and those who dedicate themselves to the economy is expressed most clearly.
In the imperialist stage, with the fusion of the immense power of private monopolies and the great power of the State (State monopoly capitalism), there is also the personal union of political representatives with the monopolies, which is expressed on the political level as the so-called revolving door; that is, in one way or another, the high officials of the State and the leaders of the monopolies (boards of directors and supervisors of the large monopolies) pass from a public function to an economic function in the large companies or conglomerates and vice versa.
It is a fact that the development of imperialism has its phases; we are in its third phase, that of its greatest decomposition and of being swept away by world revolution. At this stage, this relative independence of the political function from the economic function becomes increasingly blurred by the contrary tendency, to the ever-decreasing relative independence between the representatives of politics and the economy, until this indirect domination appears more and more clearly as governments of one or another faction or group of financial capital or financial oligarchy. As Chairman Gonzalo pointed out on one occasion, now these prominent members of the financial oligarchy are serving themselves directly from the pot. We noted this in a note at the beginning of the first government of the genocidal Donald Trump.
With the development of class society, the division of labor between the political and economic functions is expressed in the political superstructure, where the political function, with the development of the State, gains relative independence. In capitalism, wealth exercises its power indirectly but more securely, according to Engels in a letter to Konrad Schmidt, London, October 27, 1890, and see the quote from Lenin, which we cite at the end. Then, Lenin said, “the indirect domination of the absolute power of capital”, with imperialism the immense power of financial capital is exercised by any republic.
Therefore, the statement of the genocidal Joe Biden is false, when he “warned that a dangerous oligarchy is being created in his country (…) that threatens all democracy”, it is as false as it is cynical, since both he and his government, as well as Donald Trump and his new government are political representatives of the financial oligarchy. It is not a danger as this genocidal wants to make it seem, but a reality since Yankee imperialism is imperialism. The bourgeois State of the USA, founded on a slave-owning basis as a slave-owning democracy, retains that mark to this day. Then, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, it became an imperialist bourgeois State, under the direction of the big monopolistic bourgeoisie, a handful of the most powerful members of financial capital, that is, what is called the financial oligarchy.
Let us recall:
The members of the financial oligarchy change from the Rockefellers, Mellons, DuPonts, Cleveland and other financial groups closely connected to the weapons industry. The power of the Kuhn-Loeb and Boston financial groups, whose main strength lay in railways and light industry, declined, while the California financial group, developing aircraft, space, electronics and other military supply industries, and the First National City Bank financial group, controlling guided missiles and related military industries, rose in influence – to mention a few, until the 1970s of the last century. In this century, there are those of the Magnificent Seven who received large subsidies from the Pentagon at the beginning of their activities and, recently, in the Biden period with the “big financial package” they have received great support from the State, some of them have had great prominence and supported the Biden government and the Democrats in the elections. And, now, there is Musk and others.
Read the following quote:
“… words of Engels in reference to the democratic republic. Can wealth dominate under this form of government? The question concerns the “contradiction” between economics and politics. Engels replies: “The democratic republic officially knows nothing any more of property distinctions [between citizens]. In it, wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely. On the one hand, in the form of the direct corruption of officials, of which America provides the classical example; on the other hand, in the form of an alliance between government and stock exchange …. “
There you have an excellent example of economic analysis on the question of the “achievability” of democracy under capitalism. And the “achievability” of self-determination under imperialism is part of that question.
The democratic republic “logically” contradicts capitalism, because “officially” it puts the rich and the poor on an equal footing. That is a contradiction between the economic system and the political superstructure. There is the same contradiction between imperialism and the republic, deepened or aggravated by the fact that the change-over from free competition to monopoly makes the realisation of political freedoms even more “difficult”.
How, then, is capitalism reconciled with democracy? By indirect implementation of the omnipotence of capital. There are two economic means for that: (1) direct bribery; (2) alliance of government and stock exchange. (That is stated in our theses-under a bourgeois system finance capital “can freely bribe and buy any government and any official”.)
Once we have the dominance of commodity production, of the bourgeoisie, of the power of money-bribery (direct or through the stock exchange) is “achievable” under any form of government and under any kind of democracy.
What, it can be asked, is altered in this respect when capitalism gives way to imperialism, i.e., when pre-monopoly capitalism is replaced by monopoly capitalism?
Only that the power of the stock exchange increases. For finance capital is industrial capital at its highest, monopoly level which has merged with banking capital. The big banks merge with and absorb the stock exchange. (The literature on imperialism speaks of the declining role of the stock exchange, but only in the sense that every giant bank is itself virtually a stock exchange).
Further. If “wealth” in general is fully capable of achieving domination over any democratic republic by bribery and through the stock exchange, then how can Kievsky maintain, without lapsing into a very curious “logical contradiction”, that the immense wealth of the trusts and the banks, which have thousands of millions at their command, cannot “achieve” the domination of finance capital over a foreign, i.e., politically independent, republic??
Well? Bribery of officials is “unachievable” in a foreign state? Or the “alliance of government and stock exchange” applies only to one’s own government?” (LENIN, “A CARICATURE OF MARXISM AND IMPERIALIST ECONOMISM”)