The western Bourgeois classes flummoxed by Trump’s Imperialism

 So Trump, the US president, jealous at Putin’s imperialism, starts his own adventure in his own ‘back yard’ (as the press call it) in South America, as US armed forces kidnap president Maduro of socialist Venezuela, strangely meeting little resistance, according to reports. After this, we again find the US president threatening to take over Greenland, possibly even forcibly. This now has a new significance for other western leaders. They were generally quiet or supportive on Trump’s illegal action in Venezuela, but the Greenland threat got them worked up a bit more. Greenland, belonging to Denmark, a Nato member. Nato, a military alliance, has a pledge to defend any member against external threats, but now the threat is the biggest member of Nato, its de facto ruler. What would they say now?

Well, at least a few half-hearted comments about Greenland meant they did not have to remark all that much about Venezuela. But now of course Putin in Ukraine is not so morally different to Trump in South America. Clearly the liberal western press was having an awkward moment finding its ethical high ground. Still, the bottom line, the standard frame, was to support the US, the leader of the Free World. They look for excuses for the leader of the Free World to be so obviously outright authoritarian and imperialist.

Putin in fact has more and better excuses for imperialism in Ukraine, given what happened in WWII and the millions of Russians who were killed by the German Nazis, the invasions of Russia usually being via Ukraine with assistance from some Ukrainians. So, we see that what interests the bourgeois classes and its western media is not really some special democratically based morality, but the interests of its bourgeois class owned corporations who are helped to global success by the force of the US military. In a sense what this means is a return to the capitalist normality of imperial competition, which was only interrupted a little bit by the post world war consensus that such wars should never happen again.

And so, what does this mean? It means we are heading towards another world war; this is always where imperialism ends up, as we should know by now. However, knowing this and doing something real about it are two different things. Our politicians act as if they are living on a different astral plane, their morality and arguments are from an earlier time, outdated as soon as they utter their well-worn phrases, and otherwise quite bizarre, they do not face up to what is happening. But they cannot, not because they do not have this knowledge, but because they are embedded in a system where they depend on the corporations and the military who are pushers of imperialist conquest. They are not in fact our elected representatives, even though of course they act out this role, they are really members of the media state apparatus of the bourgeois class, their job is to perform for this class, to play the role of democratic freedom, a kind of covering up of imperialism with a sugar coating.

 

To Whom is State or Government Debt Owed?

The state, for example, of Britain or France or the USA, to function and govern, needs to have money, it needs financing.

You might think that the state need not owe anybody, since it holds the power of the land, but this is not the case.

Where does is get its money?

It gets it from the public and public/private entities.

In a capitalist economy the state acts like a regular private enterprise, it must have an income, revenue, accounts, and it can and does borrow money and lend or give financing for projects.

The state borrows money from the private sector. The state usually raises money by issuing kinds of debt, government bonds or promissory notes, to investors who buy these to store and increase the value of their wealth over time in this usually safe manner.

The government of the day therefore becomes like a bank manager and the administration like a bank (hence the department of the Treasury), which must itself borrow money from larger banks.

You can see from this that the state and government is embedded thoroughly in the capitalist economic system and is not a distinct entity.

It is, however, rare that the state makes a profit on its social investments.

This is because for politicians and media commentators the ideal state is one that balances its books or is in debt to a manageable extent, so has a ‘deficit’.

Why? – Well, a deficit means safe long-term payments on the debt to some big bourgeois entities, so an income. It also implies some control by these enterprises over the government.

If on the contrary the government made a profit, a surplus, this would belong theoretically to the system chosen by the voters, so will be seen as a loss to private wealth and considered unfair competition and an example of socialism.

Considered as an enterprise, the state is of course unique in that it can make and repeal the laws of the land. So, the potential obviously exists for the state to create an uneven and biased market for itself or for certain enterprises.

But this does not usually happen. It tends instead to denegate its own authority. The politicians do not usually drastically change the financial laws which also set the limit on its own actions as an enterprise.

Why? It is partly because the government is, as said already, fundamentally a capitalist enterprise, not a socialist entity, but the government can always be threatened by the broader capitalist economy if it does not act in the interest of the capitalist class in general.

A state that is capitalist thus has a kind of dual personality. It is a state and therefore a social entity but is capitalist and therefore must act like a private entity.

The social nature of the state is why many elected administrations can be heard wanting to reduce the government and state powers, like Musk’s current 2025 Doge, for whom these powers are characterized as socialist and against free enterprise.

Ironically, this can often be the stated government policy, a policy of the state to dismantle the state. At the same time, this same state rarely reduces its police or military, its basis of state authority. On the contrary, it usually wants to extend this strength, a hard shell over civil society, and it claims that it needs it to make its reforms. This can become corrupt and end up supporting certain enterprises over others.

This kind of state, in extreme circumstances, always requires enemies to fight against who oppose it and seek a socialist state. It becomes an aggressive overbearing authoritarian state, a fascist state, even while posing itself as dissolving the state.