By Geraldina Colotti on May 4, 2021
In the first hundred days of the Biden administration, international media saw the emergence of a “new New Deal” reminiscent of the style of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who governed during four terms as president from 1933 to 1945, when he died suddenly. Ever since the days of Roosevelt, people in the U.S. have considered the first hundred days as a sort of entrance exam to evaluate the credibility of new administrations.
In his first hundred days in office, Obama had convinced Congress to adopt his recovery plan for the financial crisis of 2008, one more chapter in the structural crisis of capitalism. Trump had marked out his xenophobic ideological spin, with authoritarian security measures and anti-globalization. Just as Roosevelt did, Biden began with a series of executive orders, although much less than the 32nd president, who presented 76 new laws to Congress for approval and issued 99 executive orders.
His Keynesian-style speech has fascinated those who are fans of U.S. progressiveness. They envisioned policies of economic reform of the same magnitude as the plans adopted by Roosevelt to bring the country out of the Great Depression that followed the 1929 crisis, with the ability for a renewal of capitalism and restoration of the economy of a great power in decline. It was a plan that would initiate a new cycle similar to the new course that lasted from the 1930s to the mid 1970s.
But neither the international context nor the economic phase is similar to that of 1933; the economic crisis is characterized by being in a more advanced state of capitalist systemic crisis and the power relationships of the Biden administration are not in a state that safely allows planning for long-term projects, taking into consideration the power of the Republicans in Congress and the waves of powerful lobbies which also involve the pressures of the so-called Deep State. Certainly, just as in the Roosevelt era, Biden will gain the support of the military-industrial complex, since the war economy is essential to capitalism in all its manifestations.
Certainly, there will be an attempt to prevent societal explosions in the most unequal country in the world, which Trump was able to keep in line with the slogan of America First. This line was taken apart by the crisis of the pandemic, which is truly comparable to that of 1929 in magnitude. And certainly the argument can be offered that, just as the Soviet Union was demonstrating to the masses of people that it was possible to break their chains in the past century, today the presence of China exists, showing the superiority and efficacy of socialism, under different conditions.
And so, then as now, U.S. capitalism wishes to incorporate some elements of socialism within its own scheme, in order to go on to a new phase of capitalist accumulation. In this context, the supposed New Deal of Biden is set up as an enormous containment operation, as well as a cover-up, with the goal of co opting sectors of popular movements toward a renewed adherence to the business model philosophy, even while it is evident that it is intrinsically flawed.
Beyond rhetoric, in fact, this new operation will have the war economy as a motivating force – in old or new forms – directed principally at the countries of the Global South, and towards the readjustment of the consensus around a society ruled by authoritarian discipline. There will be a new pumping up of the financialization of the economy – in which financial institutions and financial capital attain even more control – and more monopoly consolidation, to the detriment of small enterprises, with the fiscalization of the huge fortunes picking up even the smallest crumbs.
In capitalist globalization, where the cost of labor is determined in an asymmetrical and unequal manner at the international level, the Pentagon’s plans foresee a future with imperialist control of the economies of the vassal countries. This will occur through the great international financial institutions and by means of the economic- financial institution interconnections that constantly center the interests of the military-industrial complex, allowing the unfolding of more development in those areas where it is easier to install factories with maximum exploitation of workers and in those places where special economic zones without legal controls exist, such as Colombia and Honduras.
However, it is necessary to point out that in this area, the vassal countries follow the lead of the U.S. only at the time of making war or exploiting the people, but not at the time of putting into practice something that re-establishes, at least in part, all the guarantees that have been taken away from the workers in the first place, with the massive surplus value obtained in recent years by the corporations and the massive theft of enormous tax evasion.
A striking example is the tax reform proposed by the Duque government in Colombia, which, yet again, robs the poor to give to the rich, under a pretense of attempting to balance public finances; this, in spite of the fact that the working class people receive no return in terms of public services. Instead of eliminating the exemptions that allowed the financial sector to pay only a 1.9% tax on their earnings in 2020 (the equivalent of 32 billion dollars), they have increased the Value Added Tax (VAT – a regressive tax) for the poor and the working class and middle class.
This decision set off a general strike with political ramifications- a protest against the Colombian system, that acts as the puppet of the U.S. in the region, carrying on a dual battle both against socialist and progressive governments in other countries, and, internally, against peoples’ movements and class warfare. There is a NATO base in the enclave of Colombia. The Duque government has been an open supporter of Trump, but whatever political character of the U.S. government, the Colombian government will follow the orders of the U.S. president, just as the Italian government does.
In any case, regardless of the style of the U.S. government, their foreign policy will not change in any essentials, especially toward Latin America. The countries rich in strategic resources for the new phase of capitalist accumulation characterized by so-called “ecological transition” will in fact be even greater targets. The countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, that attempt to achieve a multi-lateral relationship that is not asymmetrical, will be increasingly in the gun sights of the U.S. empire in the renewed pushes for hegemony and domination.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation Resumen – English