Ann Telnaes drew the other cartoon a week ago. Five media billionaires (Post owner Jeff Bezos, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, artificial intelligence wheeler-dealer Sam Altman, and the Disney Corporation) offer bags of money to Donald Trump. Telnaes had been a Post editorial-page cartoonist since 2008, but when her editor refused to publish this cartoon, she resigned.
The visual contrast is obvious. In Heartfield’s montage, big fatcats hand what for them is petty cash to a small Hitler. In Telnaes’ cartoon, bowing little figures press big bags of cash on a huge Donald Trump mounted on a pedestal.
Is one of these more true to life? If so, which one?
Telnaes was motivated when she read “multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-Lago.” The capitalists in her cartoon own online media among their holdings. They see that Donald Trump is fixated on his public image, that he talks of dismantling all kinds of regulations, and that among the regulators is the Federal Communications Commission. Post owner Bezos got most of his unearned wealth from Amazon; it is under heavy antitrust scrutiny (not for gouging consumers but because Amazon’s online retail monopoly sucks the profits away from sellers of shoes, books, electronics, etc.).
In short, these particular capitalists’ corporate interests could prosper or suffer at Trump’s hand.
Heartfield brings out something more fundamental about class rule. After World War One German capitalism lurched from one crisis to the next. Hyperinflation in 1923 made the German Mark worthless, wiping out the savings of petty bourgeois. By 1932, unemployment rose to six million, a jobless rate of 24 percent. Real GDP hit an annual decline of 8.3 percent.
Millions of workers began voting for the Communist Party. The capitalist class decided that brutal repression was the only way to keep their economic system and their riches. They installed chancellor Hitler. It worked for twelve years until a global alliance defeated the Nazis. That happened primarily because the Soviet Union had foreseen war in 1931 when Joseph Stalin predicted they had ten years to get ready. Soviet sacrifice won World War Two.
The two pictures both shine light on relations between capital and the state. Telnaes dramatizes that individual business owners may need to safeguard their corporate or industrial sector interest. Heartfield recognizes that a class rules:
Lenin: “If we are not to mock at common sense and history, it is obvious that we cannot speak of ‘pure democracy’ as long as different classes exist; we can only speak of class democracy.” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky)
Marx: “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (Manifesto of the Communist Party)
We wish Telnaes well in her career – but we march with Heartfield in a revolutionary party that will overthrow capitalism and take the socialist-communist road.
* The article was published on 7 January under the title "Two Popular Artists Draw Capitalist Money and Capitalist Rule" on newworker.us.
Charles Andrews / New Worker