The author says the U.S. is crony capitalism, not a free market: big firms chase state privilege (barriers, subsidies, exclusive grants) because true monopoly cannot last under open competition. Rothbard and Mises are the cited contrast—pleasing customers vs. extracting via government.

Drawing on Antony Sutton’s Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution (State Department files), the piece claims Morgan/Rockefeller-centered firms helped the Bolsheviks for a captive Russian market, not Marxist faith—sometimes funding both sides. Named snapshots: aid for Trotsky’s 1917 return after a Halifax detention; a 1917 Red Cross mission heavy with financiers; a 1919 Soviet Bureau raid; Guaranty Trust and Bolshevik gold, plus Max May at Ruskombank in 1922. A Scotland Yard note flagged the Guaranty link. Those links are Sutton’s and the author’s reading, not a settled court record.

Same interests, the writer says, pushed the Federal Reserve as a domestic banking monopoly. The close judges the financiers for the Soviet body count. That last judgment is the author’s.

The United States is not a free-market or true “capitalist” society but rather a crony capitalist/welfare-state society. That is, many big businesses don’t compete to please the consumer but instead for coercive government privilege.

It is well documented that monopoly can’t exist in a free-market society; the forces of competition will always introduce new competitors to any particular field, especially when there is large amounts of money to be acquired. However, some astute businessmen notice that they can strangle their competition in the womb through government. They lobby for legislation that creates artificial barriers to entry, insane regulations for how productive processes must be run, subsidies, special taxes, or other inventive hurdles. It is far easier to “go political” and join the government in its parasitic extraction of wealth from the economy. A monopolist’s dream is to have a government grant it an exclusive monopoly over an industry.

There are many examples of crony capitalism in action. However, one historical example proves particularly interesting, for it shines a light on just how far monopolists are willing to go to acquire such government privilege. The event in question is the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Much evidence points to the fact that big business firms in the US—centered around the J. D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan conglomerates—helped bankroll the Bolsheviks using their massive funds and influence. While the jury is out whether the Bolsheviks would have succeeded in their takeover of Russia and the subsequent creation of the Soviet Union without this assistance, these big business firms absolutely played a part.

Why would these “capitalist” business firms help fund the Marxist Bolshevik revolutionaries? Were they secretly wooed by the false promises of communism? Most likely, no; some firms that aided........

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