Joseph Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States and Kamala Harris as vice president on Jan. 20, 2021. But it was an inauguration unlike any other. Washington was occupied by 20,000 National Guard troops. Nobody without a pass was allowed anywhere near the ceremony. One reporter on the eve of Biden’s inauguration said something to the effect that on Jan. 20 Washington did not look anything like America. But the point is this is exactly what the United States of America looks like now. The real questions are, how did the U.S. get this way and where is it going?
Four years earlier, the capitalist ruling class looked on with a mixture of great hope and some trepidation as Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. On one hand, Trump was a brazen amateur compared to even the least prepared of his predecessors. He had never served in the armed forces or held an elective office, nor had he served in a U.S. cabinet or any other government post. Indeed, he never held any job outside his family business besides his role as a TV showman.
Once in office, Trump wasted no time in starting a trade war with China but also with the U.S.’s imperialist satellite “allies” such as Germany and the other EU countries. There were fears in the ruling circles that this was endangering the world order that had emerged out of the U.S. victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. This world “order,” which Joseph Biden is now trying to reinvigorate, was based on a compromise agreement between the victorious U.S. and its defeated imperialist rivals that emerged after World War II.
A Critique of Crisis Theory 