Surprise surprise Governments dont rule the world Goldman Sachs rules the world
Core Argument¶
The central thesis is that the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath have stripped away the ideological veil of bourgeois democracy, revealing the real relationship of power: not governments ruling in the interests of the people, but finance capital ruling through governments. The article uses the candid remarks of trader Alessio Rastani — who openly admitted to dreaming of recession and declared that "Goldman Sachs rules the world" — as a moment of truth-telling that confirms what Marxists have always argued. The crisis is not a temporary malfunction but a systemic one; governments cannot and will not resolve it in the interests of working people because their function is to manage capitalism, not transcend it. The task for Marxists is to translate this growing popular disillusionment into a conscious struggle for socialism.
Theoretical Grounding¶
The analysis draws directly on the classical Marxist theory of the state, citing Marx and Engels' formulation from the Communist Manifesto that the executive of the modern state is "but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie." This is not a crude instrumentalism — the state does not simply do the bidding of individual bankers — but a structural argument: whatever the party in office, the state's function under capitalism is to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation, and in a crisis that means making the working class pay. The article also invokes Marx's description of finance capital as "the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling," situating the 2008 crash and its aftermath within the long Marxist tradition of analysing fictitious capital and the parasitic character of the financial sector. The piece sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition's insistence that the state remains a class state even under bourgeois democracy, and that reformist illusions in the ability of governments to manage capitalism humanely are shattered by crises.
Conjunctural Relevance¶
The article was written in September 2011, a moment of acute crisis and political volatility. The Eurozone sovereign debt crisis was at its peak, with Greece on the verge of default and the "rescue plan" being negotiated between European governments and the Troika. The article cites an ILO report warning that 20 million jobs had already been lost in the G20 since 2008, with another 20 million at risk. This was also the period of the global Occupy movement — Occupy Wall Street had begun just days earlier, on 17 September 2011 — and the article captures the mood of popular anger at bankers and the political establishment. Rastani's interview went viral precisely because it articulated what millions suspected: that the system was rigged, that the crisis was being managed for the benefit of finance capital, and that no political party of the mainstream offered a way out. The article's conjunctural insight is that this moment of disillusionment is the raw material for class consciousness — but only if Marxists provide a clear alternative.
Where the Argument Continues¶
The article is a short polemic, not a developed analysis, and it leaves several questions open. It does not explain why the crisis is structural — what underlying tendencies of capitalism produce such recurrent financial crashes. That argument is developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus, particularly in articles on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the theory of overaccumulation. The article also gestures towards the need for a socialist alternative but does not elaborate on what that means in practice — the programme of revolutionary socialism, the need for a workers' state, and the question of transitional demands are taken up in other IDOM pieces and in the broader theoretical work of the RCI, including the Marxist journal and the Against the Stream podcast series. The specific question of the European Union and the euro — which Rastani predicted would crash — is dealt with at length in IDOM's analysis of the Eurozone crisis and the need for a revolutionary break with the EU.
Connections¶
This article should be read alongside Marx's analysis of the credit system in Volume 3 of Capital, particularly the chapters on fictitious capital and the role of the banking system. It also connects to Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which analyses the dominance of finance capital and the fusion of industrial and banking capital. Within the IDOM corpus, the article is complemented by longer analyses of the 2008 crash and its aftermath, such as "The Global Economic Crisis: A Marxist Analysis" and pieces on the Eurozone debt crisis. The theoretical tradition of the state as a class committee is developed further in the writings of the early Trotskyist movement and in the work of the International Marxist Tendency (the predecessor organisation of the RCI). For readers wanting to follow the argument about consciousness and crisis, the article connects to Gramsci's concept of "organic crisis" — the moment when the old is dying and the new cannot be born — though the article does not use that language.
Key Quotes¶
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"On the other hand, of course, governments are not the expression of the will of the people, but, in the words of Marx and Engels, are 'but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.'"
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"The pretence of bourgeois 'democracy' is fully exposed in times like this, of a deep economic crisis, when governments, of whatever political persuasion, are all left with no other alternative than to implement policies that will make workers pay for the crisis of capitalism."
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"Marx described it as 'the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling.'"
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"They are starting to realise that the capitalist system is in crisis and that this crisis is not going to go away any time soon. They are starting to realise how capitalism really works (or rather, how it doesn't work)."
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"This is a system in which a handful of unelected bankers, capitalists, speculators and thieves are the ones taking decisions affecting the livelihoods and jobs of hundreds of millions, who are left having no say in the matter."
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"It is the task of Marxists to provide a clear analysis of the reasons for the crisis of capitalism and above all to offer an alternative: the struggle for a socialist society."