The Attack on the Capitol and the Business of Capitalism

By Steve Halpern

A few days ago, the world viewed supporters of President Donald Trump invade the Capitol and overwhelm the security guards in the building. Clearly, over the past four years, we have seen Trump say and do many things that appear to be outrageous. However, Trump’s support for this racist mob has caused many of his most ardent supporters to abandon him. So, the question Marvin Gaye asked in his famous song has never been more relevant. What’s going on?

While I read the newspapers every day, I’ve found that the media’s view of the world is extremely jaded. When we look at their view of the attack on the capitol, all news outlets appear to be in basic agreement. 

This is their explanation of the event. A racist mob that supported the President’s attempt to decertify the election stormed the Capitol. About 147 Congresspeople also supported Trump’s effort to “Stop the steal” of the election. All of this was about the idea that the President of the United States has serious problems, and next week he will no longer be the commander and chief. 

Well, this point of view also has some serious problems. Throughout the world, many elected governments have been overthrown. Francisco Franco didn’t like the Spanish government. German fascists supported his war to overthrow the elected Spanish government. In Iran mobs supported by the United States government overthrew the government of Mohammed Mossadegh. In the Congo, mobs overthrew the elected government of Patrice Lumumba. In Chile, the military overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende. In Venezuela, mobs attempted to overthrow the elected governments, of both Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro.

We might also think about a quotation by former President Dwight Eisenhower on the war against Vietnam. Eisenhower argued that if there had been a national election in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh would have won that election by a margin of 90%. As we know, the puppet regime the United States government installed did not allow that election to take place. As a result, millions of people died in a war aimed at preventing the Vietnamese people from deciding their own fate. 

So, attempts to overthrow elected governments aren’t new in the world. The question is, why would mobs want to overthrow governments that won majorities in elections? A better question to be asked is: Why would people who have immense wealth organize to overthrow elected governments. One would think that they might be satisfied with the opulent lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to. In order to answer that question, I believe we need to take a look at how the system known as capitalism works.

The reality of capitalism

In Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels’ 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party, they argued that in the capitalist system, the government is a “support committee” of the bourgeoisie. Today, the bourgeoisie consists of some of the most affluent people in the world. These are the people who’s enormous wealth is totally dependent on the labor of workers in literally every country. 

So, here we see a problem the news media rarely if ever mentions. While the working class of the world produces all wealth, a tiny minority has control over the wealth we produce.

In their manifesto, Marx and Engels identified a basic problem of capitalism. Before capitalism came into being, when there was an overabundance of goods, those were the good times and the people celebrated. However, with capitalism Marx and Engels argued that there is a disease in capitalism known as overproduction. So, when there are more commodities on the market than people will buy, capitalists have been known to close down factories. This creates the contradiction that one source of scarcity for workers is the overproduction of the system.

Why would overproduction create an economic crisis? Because of the nature of capitalism, the people who control the means of production need to be obsessed with two tasks. They need to sell more and more commodities, and the need to cut costs. So, when workers in this country organized unions that forced employers to give up significant concessions, capitalists invested huge amounts of money to move their factories to other countries. In those countries, wages range between one and ten dollars per day.  

The response of capitalists to the pandemic has put a spotlight in this insanity. For a very long time, the resources have been available to eliminate poverty in the world. Yet, when the pandemic struck, corporations laid off tens of millions of workers. As a result, today there might be about twenty-million apartment dwellers who could be evicted from their homes because they don’t have the money to pay rent.

The government responded to this state of affairs by giving corporations trillions of dollars. As a result, some of the most affluent people in the world became even richer. This happened while hospitals lacked in protective equipment and ventilators. This happened while about fifty-million people in this country don’t have enough food to eat. 

Capitalists and government officials expected workers to accept this madness quietly. However, something happened that they didn’t expect. 

A police officer murdered George Floyd by placing he knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes. Before the murder of George Floyd, the police had murdered thousands of Black people. However, as they say, the times are a-changing.

In the past, tens of millions of people took advantage of the so-called “American Dream.” They endured the humiliation of what it means to work for a living, but managed to get homes in the suburbs, as well as cars, and college education for their children. While tens of millions took advantage of this economic climate, the majority experienced a stagnating or deteriorating standard of living.

This has all changed. Today, young people are experiencing astronomical educational, housing, and health care expenses. Most young people see the future as uncertain. Then, there was the pandemic.

Back in 1967, I was fourteen years old, and lived in Newark, New Jersey. The Black people who lived in Newark and hundreds of other cities endured routine police brutality. Then, in the years 1966 through 1968 Black communities throughout the country erupted in open rebellion. In Newark, the governor ordered the National Guard to attack the Black community. As a result, the National Guard murdered about twenty-one people in the city.

So, many young people in this country started to think for themselves. They looked at their lives and the world around them. They see that the future is precarious. They see that racist discrimination is routine and has been institutionalized in this country. Many feel that they no longer had a good reason to sit back and allow this madness to continue, while they remained quiet. So, millions of young people demonstrated in the streets demanding justice for George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and many others who had been murdered by the police.

The capitalists respond

The people who have power in this country were challenged by the entirety of these events. While they need the economy to continually grow, the massive numbers of layoffs caused the economy to shrink. The enormous financial aid packages of the government failed to reverse the crisis in the economy. Many corporations have gone out of business. Others are only in business because of government assistance, and are now labelled as the walking dead, or “zombie corporations.” 

Some capitalists supported Joseph Biden for President. Others supported Donald Trump. Many of those who have power opposed Trump’s argument that the election was fraudulent. However, as I said, about 147 congresspeople supported Trump’s effort to decertify the election. 

We might consider that congresspeople and senators routinely talk on telephones for hours every day asking for money for their campaigns. Clearly, most of those phone calls are not to working people. No, politicians routinely ask capitalists for support, and some of those capitalists support Donald Trump.

Anyone who has been following the news knows that many of Donald Trump’s statements are bold-faced lies. Aside from arguing that the election was fraudulent, Trump has argued that immigrants bring crime to this country and have taken jobs away from workers who were born here. 

Back in 1989, Trump called for the execution for five Black teenagers in New York City. After having served up to seven years in prison, the Central Park Five were declared not guilty. They eventually received about $40 million for being wrongfully incarcerated. Yet, Donald Trump continues to argue that they are guilty. 

However, when we look at the reality of capitalism, we see that dishonesty in the government is routine. My opinion is that politicians are paid considerable amounts of money to routinely lie. 

What would it mean to tell the truth? That would mean that politicians would argue that we all need to spend out entire lives working alienating jobs, so a tiny minority can maximize profits on their investments. Telling the truth would mean that all the wars since the Civil War were about were about defending the immense wealth of the most affluent people in the world. We can see this hypocrisy clearly in the policies of former President Barack Obama.

Imagine for a moment, that a politician adopted a policy that meant that you would never see your parents or children ever again. Certainly, few if any people would support that politician. 

Now, think about the fact that no one has control over where we are born. Yet, President Obama separated thousands of parents from their children because their parents were immigrants, and the children were born here. It is possible that those parents might never be able to see their children again.

Now, think about what it would mean to be hungry, not just once and a while, but every day. Think about what it would mean if your children were crying because they don’t have enough food. Think about what it would mean for millions of people in this country who don’t have proper access to health care. According to the Department of Agriculture, there are about fifty million people in this country who don’t have enough nutritious food to eat. Certainly, these people find it challenging to access the health care system.

President Obama signed his Affordable Health Care Act. This act required those fifty million hungry people to come up with about $1,500 to pay for health care. However, even before Obama adopted this plan, health care expenditures for every person in this country were significantly more than in any other nation in the world. Much of that $1,500 dollars went to the pharmaceutical and insurance companies. 

In my opinion, asking hungry people to give up $1,500 is not something they might view as “affordable.” To make his policies clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, President Obama cut the food stamps program by $8.7 billion. While he cut aid to hungry people, President Obama doled out trillions of dollars to corporations in his so-called quantitative easing plan.

We also might consider, that for all of his efforts, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The attack on the capitol

So, when media pundits like Trudy Rubin argue that the Congresspeople who supported President Trump’s effort to decertify the election are “brain dead” we also might consider who is making that statement. While President Trump’s dishonesty is out in the open, the routine dishonesty of pro-capitalist politicians is routine.  

The late capitalist Sheldon Adelson was an ardent supporter of Donald Trump. Before his death Adelson contributed $75 million to a political action committee supporting Trump’s reelection.

In Philadelphia, Comcast is the largest corporation and Brian Roberts is the CEO. Roberts cut all funding to the 147 Congresspeople who supported Trump’s efforts to decertify the election. While Roberts normally supports the Democrats, capitalists oftentimes finance the campaigns of opposing candidates. Clearly, they continue to gouge out profits no matter who is in office.

James Baldwin understood where the attitudes of racist mobs come from. In his book The Price of the Ticket he argued:

“A mob cannot afford to doubt: that the Jews killed Christ or that 'n—words' want to rape their sisters or that anyone who fails to make it in the land of the free and the home of the brave deserves to be wretched.  But these ideas do not come from the mob.  They come from the state, which creates and manipulates the mob.  The idea of black persons as property, for example, does not come from the mob.  It is not a spontaneous idea.  It does not come from the people, who knew better, who thought nothing of intermarriage until they were penalized for it: this idea comes from the architects of the American States.  These architects decided that the concept of Property was more important––more real––than the possibilities of the human being.”

We can also see a similar reality with respect to the massive support Adolph Hitler received from German capitalists. This has been documented in Daniel Guerin’s Fascism and Big Business, and in William Manchester’s Arms of Krupp. While we don’[t have that kind of fascist movement in this country today, we see similar forces at work. 

Today we are experiencing a political and economic crisis. The many examples I’ve used in this blog point to the fact that capitalists will not hesitate to support politicians who operate outside the borders of the law.

Donald Trump argued that he wants to, “Make America Great Again.” As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once argued, the capitalist state is a “special instrument of repression.” There was a time in the history of this country when the Jim Crow laws legalized the discrimination against African Americans. Malcolm X talked about how that repression also existed outside the Jim Crow states with the following words: “Stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.” 

Capitalist governments use this repression to extract the enormous wealth workers create. They then support the system that gives this wealth to the most affluent people in the world. As many people already know, Trump’s statement about “Making America Great Again” is absurd.

However, when we look at history, we see how history rarely goes backward, and when it does, this becomes a disaster. The Nazis openly acknowledged that they wanted to go back to the times when, in effect, royal families ruled in the feudal system. In those times, the decisions of feudal monarchs were the law. As we have seen, when the fascists had absolute power, their crimes were significantly worse than the most diabolical feudal monarchs.  

As of this writing, the Congress has impeached Donald Trump for a second time. The aftermath of the attack on the capitol demonstrates that the ruling powers in this country are unwilling to overthrow the elected government in this country. However, when we look at the world, we see that there are times when ruling powers will not hesitate to push aside elected governments.

The economic and political crisis in this country will continue. Because of this reality, it is entirely possible that the next four years will be even worse than the last four. However, while there hasn’t been a mass movement of the working class in over fifty years, that doesn’t mean the working class will continue to be relatively quiescent. 

The attack on the capitol gives us an idea of the racist forces that will organize to take power. The working class has a tremendous potential to prevent that from happening. When we look at the history of struggle of the working class in the world, we see that we indeed have the potential to transform the world into a place where human needs are seen as more important than profits.