When will it be Acknowledged that our Ideology is the Problem? Capitalism vs Corporatism

[Bullet1987]

Everyone is talking about insurance companies, Big Pharma, Oil companies, tobacco companies, etc as if they're not connected. The rise of corporate America, the brainchild behind the "silent coup," was none other than Milton Friedman and Chicago School economics according to Naomi Klein. It preached deregulation across the board, allowing corporations to do whatever they wanted. Among other things, it required the cutting of social programs and privatization of entire sectors as well as the total obliteration of unions. No longer could natural resources be controlled by the people that owned them (as Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, etc wanted pre US-backed coups) allowing the people of that nation to become wealthier (see developmentalism/nationalization in the 3rd world). Resources would be privatized and therefore owned by foreign corporations. All of the countries in Latin America that experienced coups all believed in developmentalism and they were all replaced by extremely brutal and dictatorial regimes that sometimes murder hundreds and imprisoned more. But they were all deemed friends of corporate America. Pinochet, dictator of Chile, was very popular during his time. Friedman went there personally to see his Chicago Boys at work in the new regime. That's another common thread, in the new regimes that swept Latin America in the '70s, they all had economists and supporters in their ranks that in some way learned at the Chicago School of Economics. How does this all connect to us today in America though?

"The Chile Project" comes Home

Chile was the springboard of a corporate movement that would sweep the world. It would take new names and with the money pouring in...new converts. Namely Ronald Reagan, the God of the Right. Naomi Klein states, "when the hype and salesmanship behind the miracle are stripped away, Chile under Pinochet and the Chicago Boys was not a capitalist state featuring a liberated market, but a corporatist one. Corporatism, or "corporativism," originally referred to Mussolini's model of a police state run as an alliance of the three major power sources in society - government, business, and trade unions - all collaborating to guarantee order through nationalism. What Chile pioneered was an evolution of corporatism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war on the third power sector - the workers - thereby drastically increasing the alliances share in the national wealth." Later on page 106, Klein shows signs of the disastrous effects of corporatism,"an urban bubble of frenetic speculation and dubious accounting fueling superprofits and frantic consumerism, ringed by ghostly factories and rotting infrastructure of a development past; roughly half the population excluded from the economy altogether; out-of-control corruption and cronyism; decimation of nationally-owned small and medium-sized businesses; a huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands, followed by a huge transfer of private debts to public hands. In Chile, if you were outside the wealth bubble, the miracle looked more like the Great Depression, but inside its airtight cocoon the profits flowed so fast and free that the easy wealth made possible by shock therapy-style "reforms" have been the crack cocaine of financial markets ever since."

Many of the problems Chile and other Latin countries faced are now being seen in America. It took over 20 years for some to realize it, but globalization is a product of THIS ideology! NAFTA, CAFTA, and other "free trade" agreements are part of THIS ideology! The corporate movement naturally started on the Right. It was really at it's basic core, anti-Keynes (the architect of the New Deal under FDR) so therefore anti-Democratic. I believe this is the root of the liberalism=socialism we hear today (and have been hearing since the Reagan days). This is why the Republican Party has always been seen as the business party (or the corporate party).

'90s and the Clinton Administration

Something happened in the 1990s under the Clinton administration. Many of the economic beliefs of the Republicans began to be voiced by Democrats. What was once the party of the worker...of the people...has become nothing more than corporate-lite. In their greatest time of need, the Democrats sold out American workers and have done virtually nothing since the "Reagan Revolution" (or corporate revolution) to change that. Maybe they're scared of challenging corporate self-interests. Afraid that what happened in Latin America could very well happen here (I mean the brutal part of the coup, the political prisoners and disappearances).

When will people wake up and realize, it's not incompetence that has brought us here, it's been a systematic and deliberate takeover by corporate America and their globalization/free-trade ideology. They're re-written the game to be won by them through trade agreements and lobbyists rewriting laws. It's a self-gratifying system that opens the door to uncontrollable corruption and cronyism. Our entire economic ideology needs to change.

[amyrose2712]

1. K&R for Noami Klein's 'Shock Doctrine' nt

[patrice]

2. Our ideology isn't our problem; it's our damnation to Death & Destruction serving our Royal Masters.

[Bullet1987]

3. I beg to differ

Our economic ideology right now is very much corporatism.

[ljm2002]

4. Or, one could say...

...This is not your grandparents' Democratic Party.

Not by a long shot.

It is undeniably true that nowadays, rather than two opposing political parties, we have two wings of the Corporatist party. There is no one, well with a few honorable exceptions, who is looking out for the little guy.

And it continues to get worse, not better. I am truly at a loss what to do about it. It appears to me that until the little guys figure out that (a) we're all in this together and (b) the corporations and politicians are out to rape us all -- until then, it seems to me there is little hope of changing the current order.

We have basically bought into consumerism, and the concept that the corporations are the Source of Everything Good. That commerce could not exist without the Giganto World Corporations. That "economies of scale" dictate global companies with 100,000 employees or more.

Of course -- no one ever discusses the flip side, that might be referred to as the "hazards of scale" that also occur. Some things are better left to the smaller scales. I would put food production right up there -- we have found that there are hazards of monoculture, etc.

Anyway, rambling, stopping now.

[Bullet1987]

6. Consumerism is a major part of it yea

Consumerism is what has blinded many Americans. It's needed to keep the corporate structure afloat (just in case the money from developing nations ever runs dry for whatever reason), but it also keeps Americans and Europeans in line. Having them think that more items and material things is a sign of the American dream. Having new shoes and clothes is all well and good, but you need a JOB first! You need UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE first! Consumerism is the major road block holding so many Americans back from accepting the truth.

[HughMoran]

7. We never had anything else

The rise of corporate power in this country is a relatively new phenomenon. You can't say that "this is not your grandparents' Democratic Party" without also noting that "this is not your grandparents United States". Also note that politicians on both sides were always corrupt (and we knew it), in fact it might be argued that transparency laws, though they haven't stopped the corruption, have made us all more aware of the corporate influence. Combined with the growth in the size & number of massive multinational corporations since our grandparents' time, and you now have a new paradigm that we haven't learned how to deal with yet.

[Bullet1987]

9. This is true

This type of government is a new creation of the elite in human history. I guess powermongers have to get creative finally.

[ljm2002]

11. Agreed that we never had anything else...

...although I do see a couple of key differences:

1 - People used to know their politicians were corrupt and were less easily placated

2 - There were some real populist movements, of course we all think of FDR because he took on the challenge of the Great Depression and initiated the New Deal

Nowadays, the corporations have bought the great majority of the politicians outright, and it is considered "just doing business". The elites have successfully drilled into us that "Capitalism Is Great", period, end of story. They have successfully demonized "The Evil Left". We have been subjected to an ongoing barrage of disinformation / misinformation / muddying of the waters, more than was possible back in the day.

So yes, government has always done the bidding of big business, at least as much as they could, because of the $$$ involved. But people used to be a lot wiser to it, and also people had more of a sense of being together than we have now.

[jody]

5. Welcome to the Corporate State of America

[progressoid]

8. "Our entire economic ideology needs to change."

Instead, our party continues to support the corporatist model.

[damntexdem]

10. I'm sorry, but such an acknowledgement is not ideologically sound.

We must, after all, keep allowing our dogma to savage our karma. ;-)

[Bullet1987]

12. Why so little attention? Is this not the heart of the problem?