Financial oligarchy

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Financial oligarchy refers to an oligarchy of people from the financial sector . It is always used pejoratively , that is, the rule of the financiers whom the term describes is regarded as illegitimate. The term is mainly used in Marxism .

Marxism

In the world of Marxist theory, the financial oligarchy describes a small stratum of influential monopoly capitalists that emerges from finance capital under imperialism and who, with the help of mutual shareholdings, mostly shares , dispose of the greater part of social wealth and use it to rule the state, the economy and the entire public Would take advantage of life. This notion goes back to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , who in his 1916 book Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism assumed that a small financial oligarchy would collectively rule over the masses in capitalist societies. This emerged from the merger of finance with industrial capital. The State is therefore only the instrument of oppression of the proletariat , that in a revolution to seize power and a dictatorship of the proletariat must build.

Since the 1930s, Marxists, based on their fascism theory , suspected that National Socialism had been brought to power by the financial oligarchy in 1933 . This agent theory is now considered refuted.

The accusation of allowing American capital to penetrate Germany as the "subject of the US financial oligarchy" and of shifting German national wealth abroad played an important role in a show trial that the SED regime in the GDR in 1953 against Paul Merker prepared. Like the Soviet campaign against “rootless cosmopolitans” and an alleged medical conspiracy , these allegations were based on the conspiracy theory that agents “under the Jewish national flag” would organize espionage and sabotage against the socialist states “with the help of Zionist organizations”.

anti-Semitism

The term was also used in other contexts with an anti-Semitic thrust. The National Socialists had already polemicized against a “Jewish financial oligarchy” that Germany would supposedly suppress. In 2014, right-wing populist journalist Jürgen Elsässer polemicized against the “international financial oligarchy” at an event organized by the vigil for peace , and named several millionaires of Jewish origin as their representatives.

Individual evidence

  1. Dirk Sauerland: Monopoly Capitalism . In: Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon , accessed October 14, 2018.
  2. ^ Felix Sassmannshausen: Socialism and Communism. In: Samuel Salzborn : Handbook of Political History of Ideas. Approaches - methods - currents . JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2018, p. 189.
  3. Hans-Ulrich Thamer : Seduction and violence. Germany 1933–1945 . Siedler Verlag, Berlin 1994, p. 12 f .; Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society. Vol. 4: From the beginning of the First World War to the founding of the two German states 1914–1949. CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 293.
  4. ^ Matthias Vetter: Paul Merker case . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.) Handbook of Antisemitism , Vol. 4: Events, Decrees, Controversies . de Gruyter Saur, Berlin / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-598-24076-8 , p. 266 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  5. Avraham Barkai and Paul Mendes-Flohr: German-Jewish History in the Modern Age, Volume 4: Aufbruch und Destruction 1918–1945. CH Beck, Munich 1997, pp. 45 and 219.
  6. ^ Daniel Majic: Monday demonstrations: Elsässer's pseudo-triumph . Frankfurter Rundschau , June 10, 2014; Achim Doerfer: The A word. Anti-Semitism is more diverse than ever before, but it is difficult to call it by name . Jewish General , December 17, 2015.