US imperialism does not use AK-47s. It does not need them. It has B-1s, F-16s, helicopter gunships, “smart” bombs and cluster bombs. It has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

But imperialism is increasingly desperate. The profits of the Fortune Global 500, the world’s 500 largest corporations, dropped 54 percent in 2001. In 2002, they fell another 56 percent. Their profit margins on sales dived between 2000 and 2002, from 4.7 percent to 0.97 percent. Bad debts and corporate bankruptcies broke records in Japan and Germany. Even business journals admit that “overproduction” is slamming profits. There can be famine, but the capitalists will only see “overproduction” if there is not enough paying demand for their productive capacity.

With profits tanking in late 2000, it was no surprise that the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush, and that he started beating the drums of war so loudly. There is a history. It was not long after the crisis of 1893 that a young US imperialism went to war over Cuba, the Philippines and China. It was not long after the crisis of 1907 that imperialist powers took the path to World War I. It was not long after the crash of 1929 that a desperate Japanese imperialism began its brutal invasions of China and Korea, setting the stage for World War II.

Had 9/11 not happened, Bush would have had to invent it. Within weeks, the US moved into former Soviet republics. NATO spread into former Warsaw Pact states. Unions came under attack. And after threatening war for a year, Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, using specious evidence.

Now there are signs of a rebound for US (and some Japanese) monopolies. Not a recovery for workers, not a recovery for the unemployed, not even for smaller capitalists.

But first quarter 2003 profits rose 33 percent from a year-earlier for the Business Week 900, which include the largest US monopolies. Second quarter profits rose 31 percent. And many of Japan’s largest industrial corporations are showing gains, or smaller losses.

There are two sources for this rebound. The first is the rapid growth of China and Vietnam, states created by socialist revolutions. China’s purchases (imports) from capitalist countries have been growing at double-digit rates. These are critically important to world capitalism drowning in “overproduction.” China’s purchases from Japan were up 50 percent in January-April of this year compared to the same period in 2002, and are at the base of Japanese companies’ rebound.

Bush’s cruise missiles and gunships are the other factor. For one thing, Wall Street/Washington has learned that wars “flush” capital into the US from the rest of the world. Thus, after the US began bombing Yugoslavia in March 1999, US “net acquisition of financial assets from the rest of the world” jumped from $492 billion (at an annual rate) in the first quarter of 1999, to $1,109 billion in the second quarter. Similarly, the assault on Iraq coincided with US net acquisition of financial assets rising from $542 billion (annual rate) in the last quarter of 2002, to $866 billion the next quarter.

Washington’s war talk also brought a sharp rise in oil prices. Oil is still essential in modern societies – and monopolized in all aspects (exploration, production, etc.) by Wall Street, even when the companies have British or Dutch origins.

The owners of the oil monopolies and Wall Street banks have a profound interest in “expensive oil,” not cheap oil. “Expensive oil” cheapens labor and loots smaller capitalists worldwide. Expensive oil is a direct source of profits for the oil monopolies. But in addition, Wall Street grabs most of Mexico’s, Angola’s, etc. revenues from oil sales to service debt.

In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin identified two dominant Wall Street families: the Morgans and Rockefellers. Only one achieved dominance in both oil and banking. And only one took great care in marriage and procreation; the line of Morgan began to dissipate with J.P. Morgan, Jr.’s death in 1943.

In the pioneering 1957 book, Empire of High Finance, Victor Perlo provides the necessary material to see the present-day dominance of one group, the Rockefellers. Perlo’s 1971 column on the Rockefeller agent, Henry Kissinger (reprinted in the recently published book, People vs. Profits), refers to the Rockefeller group as “the most influential single force in the Wall Street Establishment these days.”

The Rockefellers long ago learned to drop to the background and use a stable of agents in business and politics. Fore example, George Shultz headed both Bechtel, the Rockefeller-affiliated construction company, and the State Department. As Perlo showed, every US Secretary of State in the decades after World War II was tied to the Rockefellers.

Coinciding with war-induced oil gouging, US energy monopolies’ profits jumped 296 percent in the first quarter of 2003, compared to a year earlier. ExxonMobil topped all companies with $7 billion in profits, up 237 percent. ChevronTexaco recorded $2.1 billion, up 192 percent.

Citigroup trailed only Exxon in first-quarter profits. J.P. Morgan Chase – the old Chase Manhattan that absorbed the Morgan bank three years ago – was not far behind. But even more important than the banks’ profits is that there was no significant increase in the bad debts held by the six US “money-center” banks. (So where are the huge bad debts from the massive bankruptcies of Enron, WorldCom and other stalwarts of the 1990s bubble? The indications are that Chase and co. pushed them off onto pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies and smaller banks, both in the US and abroad.)

ExxonMobil is the combination of the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of NY Chevron is the old Standard Oil of California. Citigroup is the old First National City Bank, dominated by the Rockefellers after the Morgans fell behind. Chase is the historic flagship of Rockefeller finance.

Now the US proconsul overseeing the destruction of Iraq is Paul Bremer. Who is he? The long-time protégé of Henry Kissinger, serving first as Kissinger’s aide in the Nixon days, then heading Kissinger’s consulting business.

And who is winning the contracts in occupied Iraq? Bechtel – the Rockefeller-dominated construction company; Halliburton, the Rockefeller-dominated oil-services (and now also war-services) corporation. Most recently, Bremer awarded Chase management of the new “Trade Bank of Iraq,” which the Wall Street Journal described “as a lucrative job.”

On the night of August 14, power was out in both Baghdad and New York. Power outages in Baghdad are common and severe. But what caused the US grid failure? Many sources have pointed to Enron’s efforts to deregulate the US electricity market as a factor.

Two weeks before the grid failure, Chase and Citi agreed to pay nearly $300 million to settle government charges they helped Enron manipulate its financial statements and mislead investors. Chase and Citi “weren’t just at the edge of the Enron deception but central to it,” Fortune reported. And in a remarkable review of the findings of the Enron bankruptcy examiner, the Wall Street Journal pronounced the two banks “Guilty!” of being the real force behind Enron’s machinations. (The author, Susan Lee, condemned the US government as “enablers” in the Chase-Citi debacle.) Enron of course was a player in California’s rolling blackouts, and the looting of its treasury. It is evident that the Rockefeller group is seeking to monopolize the US electricity market.

Profits of US energy monopolies rose 296 percent in the first quarter. Profits of US monopolies as a group rose “just” 33 percent in the same quarter. And all US corporate profits rose only 4 percent in the same quarter, according to the Commerce Department. That indicates that corporations other than those most dominated by the Rockefellers are stagnating, or suffering setbacks. George W. Bush has served one family well with the destruction of Iraq.

But the looting of the rest of the world economy, and the growing “overproduction,” debt loads and speculation worldwide, increase the likelihood of an economic heart attack. The Rockefellers’ gains are setting the stage for greater wars and crises.

On the night of August 14, power was out in both Baghdad and New York. The immediate reasons for the two failures differ. But behind both we can see the hands of one desperate family, and the decay, the poverty, the bankruptcy of their entire social system. It will take the work of the international working class to make sure the lights go on and stay on worldwide.