Before I became a communist, I used to believe that the largest de-facto conspiracy out there was the money-issuing capability of national and international banks.
After discovering the truth behind communism, I immediately stopped being interested in this conspiracy theory, because it was plagued by antisemitism and all too often coincided with cryptocurrency promotion programs or religious preaching.
That said, after two years or so of exploring Marxism, I haven’t stumbled upon almost any solid attempts at debunking the narrative that is being spread in many of the right-wing “libertarian” circles, as most Marxist analysis is focused on class and class differences, rather than bourgeois economical ideas.
So, I am asking now, what does Marxism say about banking? Specifically, here are a few videos that I used to watch and get my ideas about banking from before I became a communist. Some of them peddle obvious falsehoods, such as the one about the Rothschilds and the events of the battle of Waterloo, but others are more difficult to disprove:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQUhJTxK5mA
Lenin’s Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism deals with this topic at length. He speaks about how industrial capital has given way to finance capital, that is, how banks have become the lynchpin of the world capitalist system and are consequently predominant over politics, displacing the political influence of the formerly dominant industrial capitalists of the 1800s due to the increasingly important role banks play in the controlling capital.
This marriage of industry and finance can be seen today with major pipeline projects involving finance from multiple banks which seek rent from these projects in the form of interest. This makes them more difficult to counter because the intnaglement of intersts in the project complicates strategies for direct action. You cant just go after Energy Transfer Partners for trying to build the pipeline, you have to go after its investors who act as the boss of your boss, as well as the state.