Sunday, April 17, 2011

Corporatism. . . .

To some basic degree I have always understood the corporatist mentality. After all, one only has to read Fredrick Engles' The Condition of the Working-Class to know to what inhuman lengths capitalists will go to make profits. Children working in coal-mines for 16 hours a day, women chained to weaving looms, it is all there. And people today who think that capitalists wouldn't do the same thing today if they could are naive. After all, they do, in fact, do many of the same things in the Third World today. And corporatism is even worse than traditional capitalism because it removes people further from the point of exploitation so they can be more easily indifferent to the immoral acts of the drive for profit.

So in theory it is pretty simple: capitalists will exploit people to the point of death to make money and if they feel some pangs of ethics they will either construct an elaborate ideological justification for what they are doing or they will remove the factories to far off countries where they don't have to think about the degree of exploitation.

What has always amazed me is not that capitalists do this sort of thing, what I find curious is that they have been able to sell a corporate agenda to so many average people against whose interest this ideology so obviously acts. They have done this through a rather complex combination of lying and misrepresentation. They have trained an army of technocrats who, at every turn, tell us the most outrageous lies about globalization, taxation, unions, the actions of large corporate bodies, and roll that labour plays in the creation of wealth.

A century and a half ago republicans and leftist naively thought that universal suffrage would solve many of the problematic and exploitative aspects of capitalism because they thought that people would elect representatives who would act in their interests. The problem is, however, that over time, the rich and powerful trained their economists and technocrats to essentially convince people that they HAVE to choose certain kinds of economic policies and that a more cooperative society is simply impossible. As a result, much like war, many of the most exploited have been cheerleaders in their own exploitation.

But it is all a lie. A very large, elaborately constructed lie. All the wealth of a nation, of the world, comes from the labours of people who make things and grow things, not from people who push papers around. And if all those people decide to create a cooperative society in which 90% of the wealth isn't in the hands of 10% of the population, then that is precisely what they can do. We are many, they are few.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice. I have thought of this as more of a medival hierchy for which evolution has now provided a global format. Serfdom on a Global level.........

Anonymous said...

That is precisely what Harper is doing. He even said so. His evil agenda, is to force Canadians into accepting, a Global Government. If that monster wins a majority, that's exactly what will happen. There will be no more free and sovereign Canada. Harper also said, Global Governance has been worked on, since 1945. Right after Hitler's plan for a, thousand year Reich, which would have also been a Global Governance.

This time the Global Governance will be, the 1% of the giant, greedy company's, who are the control. These huge company's, hoard all of the money, to stop the cash flow around the globe. This causes a recession, and they are getting control, of our entire country, the U.S.A. and every country around the globe. These recessions have also been going on, in a pattern since WW11.

While idly watching the House of Commons TV channel. I was jolted into attention. A motion passed to give, banks, mines, large corporations, gas and oil company's billions of our tax dollars. Ask yourselves. Why is Harper giving, the wealthiest corporations in the world our tax dollars? They also get huge tax reductions. Harper just gave these greedy outfits, another tax reduction. This reduction, will come off Canadians paychecks. These rotten company's all lined up at the trough and squealed for the HST too. Just follow the money, to connect the dots people. The money goes to one huge source, and it ain't to the citizens.

b_nichol said...

The most discouraging aspect of corporate influence is the notion that corporate tax cuts will boost business and generally benefit the country.

As the Economy Lab in the Globe and Mail showed recently, direct investment by the government in infrastructure generates many times the economic spinoffs than just giving the largest (usually transnational) corporations more after-tax income.

Many, if not most businesses employ fewer than 5 people - I would need to look that up - which means the owners pay personal income tax rates (plus business taxes) without the benefit of those Liberal and Conservative revenue give-aways.

I always get the sense that the vast majority of people equate the distinctly Pavlovian "lower taxes" to mean a better standard of living, regardless of the intended recipient. In this corporate-favoured economy, it has become the mantra, but as you say, "they have been able to sell a corporate agenda to so many average people against whose interest this ideology so obviously acts."

Is a little self-awareness too much to ask?