It seems the infighting within the bourgeoisie has ramped up in recent years.
Different factions at play.
What are they?
Are they segmented based on industry and sectors and geography as usual?
Or different boundaries altogether?
What infighting? In the western bloc the banking-industrial capital is reaching new heights of consolidation but the only manufacturing that it can’t outsource over to SEA sweatshops is the arms industry because it’s all protected knowhow and technologies that can’t be outsourced. This constantly causes issues because outsourcing to neo-colonial hellholes with zero working rights is the preferred method of preventing a declining profit rate, and we’re talking about an industry that requires a unique form of government sponsored oligopoly - monopsony Frankenstein market so it’s basically massively artificial and kept afloat by constant military engagements to create more market activity otherwise production dies out. Competing geopolitical adversaries drive up continuous R&D so that throws a necessary lifeline to this monster.
There’s some removed due to banking-industrial consolidation and conglomeration because it erodes the mid-upper middle class of millionaires and millionaire wannabe investor/hustler ancap types that want to become Elon Musks with daddy’s 400k which all manifests in mass media noise because that’s the most important voting group (as the influencing class of everyone below and the default “voice of society”, the upper middle class is the class overlord of journalism, PMC, the academia, career politicians etc). But that’s just hyenas fighting over getting scraps from the big boss table, not a sign of infighting at the actual big boss table. Petite bourgeois infighting.
And internationally there are peripheral capitalist nationalisms plus geopolitical forced alliances to prevent global domination by the West. That could be legitimate infighting but it’s also artificial, without bougie capitalist states forcing their industries to act as national enterprises and not proceed to multinational expansion and merging with western multinationals (the consolidation I mentioned above) they’d also be peachy with international-western capital. All capital is by definition a future traitor of national projects and the ultimate doom of bougie politics.
It’s a huge shame that for some reason it’s just conspiracy theorists that mention Vanguard, State Str., BlackRock and Blackstone because they’re exactly the predicted consolidated-conglomerated mega-capital appearing at the height of capitalist historical development. Not abnormal at all, not a conspiracy, not a secret cabal, just fully predicted capital consolidation. The various primadonnas like Musk and Bezos are in the news because they’re thirsty for publicity, exposure and showing off but they don’t represent global capitalism. It’s these asset management companies that are the real core.
One of the best developments in decades was the West (through France) losing their neo-colonies in central-west Africa because it hurt western capital’s cheap resource extraction. The entire system is incredibly precarious and rests upon the periphery not turning socialist and cutting off cheap SEA labour and African/S. American/Asian resource plunder. Which is also lowkey why western media barely reported on Burkina Faso kicking out the French. If that holds, expands and turns meaningfully socialist it’s game over for capitalism.
Otherwise there are market fluctuations due to technological disruptions and market share redistribution but it’s just noise and mainly relevant to investors.
I’ll copy-paste here a comment I made earlier (it’s limited to the US situation, and I don’t claim it’s the definitive analysis):
Today you have on one side finance capital, the big oil companies like Exon Mobile, and “legacy” capitalists, all of whom sit in the highest halls of power. They are allied with the Democrats and the intelligence agencies. On the other you have low-level capitalists like Trump and Betsy DeVos, and the world of tech startups in Silicon valley. They are allied with the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, and what drives them is a kind of resentment about being controlled, regulated, and generally shut out from the upper echelons of political power. The Trumps and DeVoses of the world have obviously long been at the beck and call of upper-level capital in the US, but the tech companies are shut out as well: Silicon Valley was set up as a tech monopoly by the US government, and the newcomers on the scene have to play by rules which favor Google, Apple, and Microsoft. Trump and the tech startups are right now trying to throw off the yoke of finance capital and the oil companies. I do not expect them to succeed, and if they do it will likely destroy the petrodollar; which event, insofar as it would effectively end US global dominance, would end up destroying them as well. The good news is that a conflict within the ruling class is very often the prelude to the working class itself taking power. “All is in chaos on heaven and earth; the situation is excellent.”
There are other factions and industries you leave out.
Hmmm
It’s not a bad assessment, but I dig some of it; just that the other side aren 't “low-level capitalists” except maybe Trump, who is a career politician at this point, and figure-head of the movement.
Edit: I agree with the usage of Mao’s adage here, btw.
I disagree with this assessment, tbh
Not a problem; I’m open to other interpretations. Honestly, the political situation in the US is complicated, and I’m still trying to get some kind of theoretical handle on it.
Alright, let me collect my thoughts. I will go to sleep soon but answer later.