Werner Rügemer, Köln/Cologne/Germany
Werner Rügemer’s book “The Capitalists of the 21st Century. A comprehensive outline of the rise of the new financial players”, first published in 2018, has become an international standard work. First published in German, it has since gone through English, French, Italian, Russian and Chinese editions. The author wrote the following foreword for the 4th edition in Germany, which has now become necessary.
Ukraine: “Beacon of capitalism”
“New values” of capital democracy
Tame US-led war and poverty capitalism!
In the fall of 2022, it was announced that BlackRock would be “leading” the “reconstruction” of Ukraine. Modernized, de-bureaucratized, digitalized – Ukraine is to become a “beacon of hope for the power of capitalism”, according to BlackRock CEO Lawrence Fink.[1]
For this beacon, US-led war capitalism is delivering Ukraine, causing an unknown number of Ukrainian soldiers to die invisible deaths. And the more that is destroyed before the reconstruction, the more lucrative the reconstruction shines there, such as a new tank factory for Rheinmetall on site. Incidentally, nine of the ten largest shareholders of the “German” armaments company come from the USA, BlackRock, Vanguard & Co.
This proxy war not only brings new profits for US shareholders from the arms business, but also for the US fracking industry: it not only poisons soil, plants, water and air, but also brings early death to residents and workers at the millions of drilling sites in the USA.[2]
The US government has cut the EU off from Russian gas. So German “environmental” preachers are not only accepting the four times higher price when buying US fracking gas, but also the destruction of the environment and the death of people in the „friendly“ USA.
De- and re-industrialization in US hands
Not only the de-industrialization, but also the re-industrialization of EU member states like Germany, France and Great Britain is in the hands of US corporations in particular, such as the highly subsidized new large datacenters of Amazon, Google, Apple and their leading shareholder groups BlackRock, Vanguard & Co.
The increasing of the military budgets of the european „friends“ are dismantling, privatizing and increasing the cost of infrastructure for the majority of the population in the EU states, and jobs are being relocated. Other US capital players such as hedge funds and “locust” investors and their civilian private army of US consultants are also playing a leading role in this.
As US President Obama, always in a good mood, had imposed this on the European NATO members: Increase defense budgets to two percent of GDP! Now his successors Biden and Trump are demanding it: Two percent is not enough! Three percent! Five perscent! New NATO members, new special forces, new US military bases are part of the capital beacon in Europe that is being carried further towards Russia – as in Asia against China.
The systemic crisis of capital-democracy and its “new values”
Free market economy at an end: the new oligarchs BlackRock & Co. are driving countries even deeper into over-indebtedness. Pharmaceutical companies are selling drugs and vaccines that have not been tested. Private companies are only founded or set up if the state subsidizes them. The corridor of published opinion and the “sayable” is becoming ever narrower. BlackRock & Co. are making multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires even richer and driving the majority of the population, including the once praised middle class, into poverty – working poor, working sick, especially for women, rising infant mortality, homelessness, racism, falling life expectancy, self-destruction through alcohol, drugs, suicide, amok – the USA is leading the way here and spreading this way of life in Europe, which has been cuddled up to now.[3]
The multiple crises with climate, storms, energy and wars as well as a particularly hyped “refugee crisis” are intended to cover it up: Western capitalist democracy is in a systemic crisis, first and foremost in the USA, but also in particularly US-dependent states such as Israel and the UK, as well as in EU states such as Germany, France, Poland and Italy: the dying, capital-financed “people’s” parties are promoting even more open right-wing radicalism through their anti-social, anti-democratic policies.
Democratic alternatives that inspire millions – including young people – to get involved and represent the interests of dependent employees, such as Bernie Sanders in the US, are mercilessly prevented from achieving (electoral) success by the “Democratic” establishment around Obama and the Clintons.[4] In France, the authoritarian banker president Macron brutally crushed the democratic movement of millions of yellow vests and the protests against BlackRock’s private pension plans.
The environment is supposed to be saved – but since President Clinton, the military with its bases, maneuvers and wars has been removed from the environmental balance sheets under pressure from the USA. Global production chains in the „fabric Asia“ and the „fabric Africa“ are being made invisible for CO2-free e-mobility and the latest Apple smartphones. Digital and platform companies are organizing racist low-wage work that violates human rights.[5] Sexualized violence against women is rightly denounced: But economic violence against young women is practiced millions of times, with labor exploitation and poverty in old age.
The international legal and human rights world order
The capitalist democracies have their systemic crisis, also because China, as the most dynamic economy, is practicing an alternative development logic, both nationally and globally: anti-colonial, at the same time open to Western companies, hundreds of millions of people are being lifted out of poverty, infrastructure is being expanded, young women and men are founding start-ups, economic criminals are being punished. There is more of a market economy in China than in the West – without military expansion, without the almost one thousand military bases operated by the USA on all continents and annexed territories such as Guantanamo and Guam.
The US-sponsored wars, most recently in Ukraine and the Middle East, have accelerated the distancing from the “only world power”, but also the self-organization of the “rest” of the world. The alliances co-organized by China, such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, are expanding, and commodity-linked currencies are breaking away from the US Dollar. In Africa, Latin America and worldwide, further alliances are rapidly forming in the form of parties, initiatives and media.
Under Obama, the declaration of hostility towards Russia and China has been intensified into a systemic conflict and the US doctrine of a nuclear first strike has been renewed. The US leadership is capable of any brutality.[6] The confrontation in Ukraine, which entered a new phase in February 2022, was joined by an explosion of violence in the Middle East in October 2023. The USA blocked a resolution for an all-round ceasefire adopted by Brazil and by a large majority in the UN Security Council – nothing new, as the USA had blocked dozens of resolutions critical of Israel or merely restricting the country’s occupation regime since 1972: This is another way of promoting the permanent violation of international law and human rights.
And yet something is in motion: A majority of states, which moreover make up the vast majority of the world’s population, are preparing to name this deadly logic and fall into the arms of the practice of capital-democracies. The US-defined “rules-based international order” – in 2026 cenceled by US president Trump anyway – must be completely replaced by UN international law and UN human rights, including labor and social rights – and the path to a systemic alternative must be opened.
[1] The trillion-euro plan for Ukraine, Wirtschaftswoche 21.6.2023
[2] Longxiang Li et.al.: Exposure to Unconventional Oil and Gas Development and All-Cause Mortality in Medicare Beneficiaries, Nat Energy 2022 Feb; 7(2): 177-185, doi: 10.1038/s41560-021-00970-y
[3] Anne Case/Angus Deaton: Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, Princeton University Press 2020
[4] Bernie Sanders: It’s Okay To Be Angry About Capitalism, New York 2023
[5] Sophie Bernard: #UberUsés. Le Capitalisme Racial de Platforme, Paris 2023
[6] Werner Rügemer: Fatal friendship. How the USA conquered Europe. First stage: From World War 1 to World War 2, Cologne 2023