The Weekly Marxist: Ketch-ing Up

(Opening Applause, Augustus takes his seat)

Oh boy folks do we have some work to do! Unfortunately I don't recall any topics being sent in, but that allows us to get straight to the points I had outlined a few days ago. Let's get going, I do have to be somewhere in a little while against my will, but I was told there would be Rimskayan Chocolate-Chip Cookies so I won't disagree.

 

 

 

Getting started, the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and subsequent takeover of Signature Bank by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (F.D.I.C.) earlier this week. 

One of Signature's board members was Barney Frank, a former House of Representatives member and co-sponsor of the Dodd-Frank legislation, which was enacted following the 2008 financial crisis, and was supposed to prevent a repetition of this event, despite such being regular recurrences under the capitalist system.

The collapse of Silicon led to around $10 billion being withdrawn from Signature, causing the takeover, but since then, The Biden Administration has declared to do "whatever is needed" , justifying the takeover on the grounds of "systemic risk", which has amounted to massive bailouts and increased liquidity provisions for the banks.

If that is the case, then it means that all the regulations and measures introduced after the 2008 crash, listed mainly in the Dodd-Frank Act, aren't worth the paper they are written on.

There were divisions in the bourgeoisie about the response by Washington, some calling it an attack on the Free Market and sign of capitalism's decline, others stating it was necessary in order to defend American economic power from that of places like China.

The SVB crash was triggered by two interconnected processes, set into motion by the Fed’s interest rate hikes over the past year, as it seeks to batter down the wages upsurge of the working class in response to the highest inflation rate in four decades.

Going past all the further economic calamity, the collapse also has political consequences. It has completely exposed the Biden administration as the bagman for the wealthy, the super-rich and financial speculators, prepared to belch out money, in whatever quantity necessary, to protect their interests.

This deepening rot and decay of capitalism in and out of the United States, constitutes the underlying driving force of two interconnected developments in US and world politics: the rapid escalation towards a Third World War and the ongoing and intensifying assault on the working class in the US and internationally, as the ruling classes seek to make it pay for the existential crisis of their outmoded and reactionary private profit system.

The commitment by the Biden administration to do “whatever is needed” to protect the money and wealth of financial investors, speculators, and the wealthy, has again laid bare the real nature of capitalist governments as the executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeois financial oligarchy.

There is no money for the vital health, education and other social needs of the working class now being battered by the worst inflation in more than four decades, but billions, trillions, can be found overnight to defend the wealth of the financial oligarchy.

At the same time, no expense is being spared in the development of the means necessary for the prosecution of war—the US-NATO war in Ukraine, the ultimate goal of which is the balkanization of Russia and exploitation of her vast natural resources, and supporting the war drive against China, which the US regards as its chief global rival.

Ever since President Nixon took the U.S. off the Gold Standard, all capital has been based off a speculatory, imaginary value, a bubble that has continued expanding and clouding, resulting in financial crises such as those of 1987 and 2008. As the Fed bailed out banks with values in the billions, conditions for working class families tanked, both at home and in the workplace. Therefrom, by channeling billions more into the speculatory system, the Fed only fueled the crises further.

This meant that when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, the Trump administration, supported by the Democrats, refused to institute the necessary public health measures, fearing they would pop the speculative bubble, which had become even more fragile due to the global market fallout resulting from the Pandemic.

The refusal to eliminate COVID, the injection of $4 trillion into the financial system, rampant speculation and profit gouging by major commodity traders and giant food corporations, together with the military offensive against Russia in Ukraine, combined to set off the highest rate of inflation in four decades.

Fearing the consequences of a wages upsurge by the proletariat—the arch nemesis of the financial system—the Fed then changed course and started the steepest rate hikes since the early 1980s to try to crush it, a course that has ultimately resulted in the bank collapses.

These banks and corporations have become so reliant on the cheap money pumped in from the government, that once it has to stop or be altered by things such as the interest hike, their organizations completely implode. And what follows? The "creation" of more imaginary capital to stabilize the economy.

Finance capital does not create additional or new value. In the final analysis, it is a claim on the surplus value extracted from the working class in the process of capitalist production. This system, and desire to turn money into more money, implies exploitation of the working class on ever increasing scales, and stripping of social spending in favor of military budgets and bailouts.

In every crisis, the two main classes of society align themselves and more and more directly on their fundamental material interests. The program of the ruling class will develop accordingly: rescue operations for the financial oligarchy combined with war and social counterrevolution.

The working class is therefore driven onto a collision course with the entire apparatus of the capitalist system, continuously racing towards the point of no return where the anger and exploitation of the proletariat will boil over into conflict with the bourgeoisie and capitalist system worldwide.

 

 

 

After that long slew of sections, let's hit the next section, shall we? 

The incursion of the U.S. drone in the Black Sea, represents another of countless escalations of the Ukraine Proxy War by the U.S. and her NATO puppet states. The Pentagon has neglected to release any information of the drone's purpose, what it was doing being shot down near the Russian coastline 6000 miles away from U.S. territory, and did not deny that the drone was approaching Russian air space with the intent on spying, or worse, had it been armed.

The entire war effort of the Ukrainians has been backed up by billions in spending by America and European powers, as NATO conducts exercises and provocative drills near Russian territory. To NATO, and America specifically, the Ukrainian people are nothing more than cannon fodder in the fight against Russia, a land filled with vast natural resources that could be used by the U.S. for its expanding rivalry with China.

Pentagon spokespeople responded to the crash with platitudes bordering on the farcically outrageous. The crash was the result of “juvenile,” “unsafe” and “unprofessional” action on the part of the Russian fighter crews, they claimed. The flight was “routine,” they said. As if providing targeting information for combat troops in the largest war in Europe since World War II was “routine.” These statements explain and constitute absolutely nothing to understanding why the drone was there, and why it was shot down.

The United States and NATO alike have pledged full resource and military potential not just to Ukraine's defense, as so preposterously claimed by Zelensky at the commencing of the war, but to offense against Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, which to the Kremlin, constitutes an act of war against the Russian Federation.

With hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian troops and civilians dead, Ukraine is increasingly reliant on foreign support to keep the war effort going in a conflict that, while humiliating for Moscow, will like Finland, inevitably turn in the Russians favor just because of their sheer size and industry, without support from the West.

The war is, as viewed by British Defense Minister Ben Wallace, reaching WWI levels of attrition, and is reaching a critical point where the West must either solidify its total support, or risk Ukraine ending up as another Vietnam or Afghanistan, with thousands dead and billions spent, all for nothing.

Washington's efforts to prevent the latter extend far beyond what the general public is willing to accept as true or possible, as tensions rise to the point where all the bloodshed so far will be little more than the down payment (Friendly reminder the Russians and America maintain the largest and second largest nuclear arsenals in the world respectively. If you do not believe either side is willing to use nuclear weapons, then perhaps look at their claims of the past year, supposedly not planning on escalating, to now sending the highest possible grades of weaponry to keep the war going. You should know by now not to trust these people.)

 

 

 

I will now actually divert from my originally planned talk on the Chinese-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to instead look at an occurring struggle by the people in a place where popular resistance has become part of their international and historical reputation: France.

Strikes have been occurring in France and across Europe for some time now, as the continent drops into chaos from the war, and an increasingly revolutionary temper raging amongst the populace from inflation and declining worker conditions. But in France, the right-wing government under president Macron has tilted the balance in a country that has had 3 revolutions and several more attempted ones, just in the past 200 years.

Macron has made the authoritarian decision to force through pension cuts that will divert money away from care for the people, and towards instead the French military. This reform was pushed through without approval from the National Assembly, using a constitutional article that might as well have been written by King Louis XVI himself, a clause that amounts to, "If YOU think its good for the country, then who cares what the National Assembly thinks? Unless they vote and force you to resign, it can go through no questions asked."

The response from the French people has been exactly what anyone would expect from France: Riots and protests have spontaneously erupted across the country, demanding the reforms be retracted. Macron has responded with unrestricted violence, playing the police state card, with scenes out of French cities looking like images from the reign of Donald Trump over the U.S. in the summer of 2020.

60% of the French population supports blocking the economy until the reforms are retracted, and even the reformist National Assembly has announced a No-Confidence vote to oust Macron, with the purpose of stopping absolute revolution, and cementing trade unionist, and to that extent, capitalist rule.

Macron tried to justify his actions, stating the reform was to ensure the financial viability of the pensions system. There is no other word for this but an absolute lie. The money is to be diverted into the armed forces to support France's war effort in Ukraine, and similarly fuel the financial oligarchy like in the U.S. or any other capitalist country.

The trade union alliance and pseudo-leftist parties have announced barren and one-day strikes, a dead-end, bankrupt course for the working class and French population all together. The unions and parties advocate negotiation with Macron, who has made it clear there is nothing to negotiate, and that his plans are final. Their plans amount to begging with a man who will not offer a crumb.

Action of the French people and proletariat must be yanked out of the hands of the unions and parties into independent action committees, with the sole goal of removing Macron and the capitalist classes running the state. Even if the National Assembly successfully gets rid of Macron and calls general elections, this is a trap for the working class as well, as that allots the capitalist parties control of the situation, and therefore, whomever shall come in to replace Macron, will be as much an enemy of the working class as Macron.

France, and any other state, have no solution in dismissible petitions, pitiful reforms, and parliamentary movements and deceptions. The Marxist ideology details the control of the working class, by and only by the working class. The solution to the French people, the people of Europe and of America, to avoid further financial crises and deplorable conditions of life, and the dropping of civilization into nuclear war, is global revolution of the masses.

 

Wow, even in simplification that was a lot. I understand if you did not take the time to read it all, but I hope you at least managed the key points. Hopefully next week we can get some more topics in, and we can discuss more on your terms.

And with that,

UNTIL NEXT TIME, THIS IS AUGUSTUS DEMOCRATICUS, REMINDING YOU THAT WAR CRIMES ARE A LAME AND GARBAGE META.

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(Do I even need to say this anymore?)