this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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I'm listening to Hell of Presidents again and it's always incredibly refreshing to hear such a materialist framing for the early days of the US. Like understanding why the goal of not forming parties immediately failed because of conflicts between different factions of capital (e.g. southern slavers vs. northern bankers).

But then what do Republicans and Democrats represent today? I understand they are historical holdovers from over a century ago, so they have have metastasized into a whole lot more than just representing one or two factions of capital, but there must be some materialist divide between them? Or maybe during the neoliberal turn it was recognized by capital to set aside differences and ultimately control both to give the working class even less power than they already had. But now it seems like the tech fascists are trying to coalesce into the Republicans, and I guess that's what the Republicans are atm, just a more openly fascistic bourgeois party than the democrats?

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[–] Chana@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago

They aren't distinct capitalist camps that only slot cleanly into dem vs gop. There are biases and trends but as you might expect from what results the political class actually achieve capital at large just uses whoever is in power and if that isn't working they push towards the other side. As @LittleFellaNamedBoof@hexbear.net said, individual lobbyists make this chaotic.

But also there are some faction aspects. Tech finance was (maybe still is?) more Dem-adjacent, they work more in concert than financialized tech and the GOP. Straight-up military contractors are biased towards Republicans, they do more direct funding and destruction work on average. But if course these are biases, because in both cases you have plenty of tendencies for the exact reversal of party.

I'm not convinced that the major capital factions are generally favor one of two parties. Maybe someone has examples. I think finance capital simply dominates and this is bipartisan.