In progressivism, government must recognize corporations.

PGA Weblog ^

[ProgressingAmerica]

Since this is something progressives want and need, we should favor abolishing it. Government must not recognize corporations, they are not within the scope of the United States Constitution anyways. In the book The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly (Founder of The New Republic) wrote the following: (These are all from chapter 12 section 2, The Recognition of Industrial Organization)

The constructive idea behind a policy of the recognition of semi-monopolistic corporations, is, of course, the idea that they can be converted into economic agents which will make unequivocally for the national economic interest; and it is natural that in the beginning legislators should propose to accomplish this result by rigid and comprehensive official supervision.

This is a two step process for progressives. First, government becomes "aware" of corporations, and because of this can then regulate them and take control. This is the first step toward government picking winners and losers, as Croly states below. By this phrase "economic agents" above, he means wholly owned subsidiaries of government. Then the corporations advance the governmental agenda like puppets, which gives government cover and plausable deniability. As for picking winners and losers, he wrote:

Thus the recognition of the large corporation is equivalent to the perpetuation of its existing advantages. It is not an explicit discrimination against their smaller competitors, but it amounts to such discrimination. If the small competitor is to be allowed a chance of regaining his former economic importance, he must receive the active assistance of the government.

So you see, small businesses should be turned into welfare queens with "active assistance". Then a central planning board can be established because everybody has been purchased with tax dollars, and with that the entire economy is government-based:

The powers bestowed upon those commissions are based upon the assumption that the corporations under their jurisdiction cannot be trusted to take any important decision in respect to their business without official approval. All such acts must be known to the commission, and be either expressly or tacitly approved, and the official body has the power of ordering their wards to make any changes in their service or rates which in the opinion of the commission are desirable in the public interest. Thus the commission is required not only to approve all agreements among corporations, all mergers, all issues of securities, but they are in general responsible for the manner in which the corporations are operated.

The purpose for this is simple, to abolish free enterprise. But free enterprise can of course be exchanged for collectivism using these schemes according to Croly:

Nevertheless, at the last general election the American people cast a decisively preponderant vote in favor of the Roosevelt-Taft programme; and in so doing they showed their customary common sense. The huge corporations have contributed to American economic efficiency. They constitute an important step in the direction of the better organization of industry and commerce. They have not, except in certain exceptional cases, suppressed competition; but they have regulated it; and it should be the effort of all civilized societies to substitute coöperative for competitive methods, wherever coöperation can prove its efficiency.

Of course, Croly brings Ch. 12 S. 2 down to the bottom line of wealth redistribution. With cooperation, comes government's hand in your back pocket.(The pocket containing your wallet) He wrote:

That cases exist in which public ownership can be justified on the foregoing grounds, I do not doubt; but before coming to the consideration of such cases it must be remarked that this new phase of the discussion postulates the existence of hitherto neglected conditions and objects of a constructive industrial policy. Such a policy started with the decision, which may be called the official decision, of the American electorate, to recognize the existing corporate economic organization; and we have been inquiring into the implications of this decision. Those implications include, according to the results of the foregoing discussion, not only a repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, but the tempering of the recognition with certain statutory regulations. It by no means follows that such regulation satisfies all the objects of a constructive national economic policy. In fact it does not satisfy the needs of a national economic policy at all, just in so far as such a policy is concerned not merely with the organization of industry, but with the distribution of wealth. But inasmuch as the decision has already been reached in preceding chapters that the national interest of a democratic state is essentially concerned with the distribution of wealth, the corporation problem must be considered quite as much in its relation to the social problem as to the problem of economic efficiency.

That's always the bottom line with progressivism. Did you pay a 4% tax or a 39% tax? No, you did not. What really happened is that the progressives allowed you to keep 55% of your pay or they allowed you to keep 82% of your pay, or whatever percentage you were deemed worthy of keeping. Because the elitism and arrogance of progressives makes them believe that they know better than you including how much of your own paycheck you should keep. And all this is built upon the back of the idea of corporate recognition.

Abolishing the government's ability to even recognize corporate entities would be putting progressivism through the wood chipper. That is, for those of you interested in such prospects.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Government recognition of corporations opens the doors for all sorts of big government schemes.

[ProgressingAmerica]

If anybody wants on/off the revolutionary progressivism ping list, send me a message

Progressives do not want to discuss their own history. I want to discuss their history.

Summary: If progressives can't even use government to recognize corporations, the whole thing falls apart. Recognition leads to control, which leads to aristocracy and oligarchy. This isn't a one stop to another stop and then we're done. We are making progress, continual progress to wherever they want to move toward.

[Starboard]

The oppression by big leftist controlled government is just beginning. We’re only in the first inning.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Nah. This is like the 7th inning. It all goes back to FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt.

All that bureaucracy didn’t just get built in the last three presidencies. It started being cobbled together since 1900.

[Starboard]

I’m referring to oppression (censorship, vote fraud, the political weaponization of federal agencies, spying on Americans, etc.). Its true that Big Government has been growing annoyingly intrusive and burdensome for decades but the really bad stuff is just starting. The freedom and liberty we took for granted is rapidly disappearing. Dissent will be curtailed/punished in ways never imagined.

The demographics and culture of this once great country have changed in very profound ways that will soon enable despotic control of the population. Banana republic stuff. It’s coming.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Fair enough.

We’ll have to think outside of the box and come up with a way to communicate that can’t be censored.

[Starboard]

I think we’re in for some very tough times ahead. The Left is cunning and determined and they mean business. They could care less about the niceties of democracy. To them, the ends justifies the means.

Trump scared them to the point that they are committed to never letting someone like him get elected ever again. And they are intent on silencing his supporters.

Hate to be so negative but its imperative to recognize what we’re up against. The enemy must be understood.

One thing I know for sure: we can’t win with people who are afraid of the Left. We need warriors who are in it to win it. Brawlers like Donald J. Trump.

[ProgressingAmerica]

I’ve felt that way for years now, that’s why I record these works as audiobooks and get the word out.

These are the original progressives, and they weren’t nearly as dishonest back then about their intentions as what we have today.

[vpintheak]

Hmm... What’s it called when corporations are allowed to be “free” to operate, as long as the government can give them specific guidelines on how to act and what to do? You know, for the benefit of the citizens.
I kind of remember some German nation doing this in the 20th century?

[otness_e]

I'd argue it was even earlier than those three, unfortunately. In fact, it may have even dated back to Jefferson himself. That's certainly what Christopher A. Ferrara seems to imply in his book Liberty: The God that Failed.

"Interring the Jefferson Legend

"With his death approaching, Jefferson knew full well that 'the vagaries of life had left a vulnerable legacy,' as even a Library of Congress biography admits.[160] To fund the lavish life a retinue of slaves had helped make this possible, Jefferson accumulated massive debts that were satisfied in part by the post-mortem sale of his already heavily mortgaged human chattels. 'Fear for his reputation and public legacy led him to beg his closest friend, James Madison, to 'take care of me when dead.''[161]"

"Today, libertarians are engaged in the same mission in defense of Jefferson. For without him, to whom can they point as an example of Liberty fulfilling its promises? What becomes of their defense of Liberty if even Jefferson, the very Apostle of Liberty, revealed that Liberty in practice means Power in disguise? Led by such dearly departed gurus as Murray Rothbard, libertarians of the so-called Austrian School hold fast to the idea, unsupported by any real evidence of comparative human happiness, that true freedom was won for America and the world with the overthrow of King George and the creation of 'republican government.' Firmly convinced that Liberty delivered what it was promised in 1776 (when? where? how?), libertarian historians draw a bright line at the beginning of the Lincoln era, depicting his actions as a betrayal of the principles of 'Jeffersonian democracy' expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Kentucky Resolutions, especially 'states rights.' The following is a typical example of this 'libertarian narrative'[162] of Liberty.

"'Jefferson was the apostle of states' rights, enunciated in his famous Kentucky Resolve of 1798; Lincoln waged the bloodiest war in American history to destroy the Jeffersonian states' rights doctrine. Jefferson authored America's Declaration of Secession from the British empire, known as the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln's overriding purpose in his war was to destroy the secessionist and states' rights principles of the Declaration (while using slick rhetoric designed to pretend that he revered the document).[163]'

"Missing from this historical cartoon are all the inconvenient details of Jefferson's career examined on the preceding pages, including these:

"* His drafting of legislation imposing a compulsory oath of loyalty to the Revolution and the State of virginia and renouncing loyalty to the King, providing severe legal penalties for refusal to take the oath, and punishing even "verbal crimes" against the Revolution.

"* His call for the outlawry and shooting on sight of Tory counter-revolutionaries who should have been treated as prisoners of war, pursuant to a bill of attainder he himself drafted and pushed through the Virginia legislature.

"* His imprisonment of political criminals in virtual concentration camps while revolutionary governor of Virginia.

"* His meddling in French affairs while Minister to France, including outright conspiracy with Lafayette and the National Assembly in the overthrow of Louis XVI.

"* His support for the early Jacobin massacres as expressed in the "Adam and Eve" letter.

"* His lifelong ownership of slaves, some of whom he had flogged for attempting to escape, and his continued slave trading while President.

"* His endorsement of state law prosecutions for 'seditious libel' against the President and Congress.

"* His 'we are all Federalists' Inaugural Address.

"* His expansionist acquisition of the Louisiana Territory and the subjection of its inhabitants to the federal government without their consent, even though he himself believed this to be unconstitutional.

"* His supine acceptance of the drastic worsening of the lot of the slaves in Louisiana under federal law.

"* His approval of an expedient and quite illegal 'amendment' of the Constitution by the Republican-controlled House to expand the definition of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' in order to facilitate the impeachment of his Federalist opponent, Judge Pickering, for drunkenness.

"* His attempt to stage-manage the conviction and execution of Aaron Burr merely for allegedly planning to sever Louisiana from the Union, a prosecution based on an expansive interpretation of the definition of 'treason' rejected by the Supreme Court.

"* His failed effort, following Burr's acquittal, to eliminate the independent, life-tenured federal judiciary from the Constitution--which he had earlier supported as essential to civil liberties--on the grounds that no branch of government should be 'independent of the nation.'

"*His support for General Wilkinson's military dictatorship in the Louisiana Territory in response to Burr's illusory 'threat' to the Union.

"*His declaration that 'where the laws become inadequate even to their own preservation...the universal resource is a dictator, or martial law.

"*His dictatorial embargo of American shipping, including the federal seizure of ships and cargo without due process.

"*His instigation of 'treason' trials and his demand for the death penalty for American citizens who had merely attempted to recover their own property from federal agents.

"*His retention of the entire fledgling federal bureaucracy, his expansion of the U.S. military, and his budgetary expenditures for federal projectes during his terms as President.

"*His support for the federal military conquest of Canada and a federally prosecuted war against Great Britain as necessary to America's fina emancipation from 'tyranny.'

"*His fervent advocacy to compulsory universal military service, which almost passed Congress during his presidency.

"*His call for war on the secessionists of the Hartford Convention should they secede from the Union.

"*His opposition to any restriction on the extension of slavery into the territories because it would divide the Union and impair property rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

"* His scheme for the government-subsidized forcible separation of slave children from their parents and their deportation to Haiti or Sierra Leone.

"*His support for the Monroe Doctrine, which made America the hemispheric policeman of Liberty.

"*His entire grandiose vision of an 'empire of Liberty' whose center and summit would be a militarily mighty United States with armed forces raised through the compusory military service he advocated.

"Not even Rothbard, who otherwise sings the praises of Jefferson and the 'libertarian creed' of the Founders, could ignore completely the truth about Jefferson's career. Wrote Rothbard:

"'The Jeffersonian drive towards virtually no government foundered after Jefferson took office, first, with concessions to the Federalists..and then with the unconstitutional purchase of the Louisiana Territory. But most particularly it foundered with the imperialist drive toward war with Britain in Jefferson's second term, a drive which led to war and to a one-party system which established virtually the entire statist Federalist program: High military expenditures, a central bank, a protective tariff, direct federal taxes, public works.[164]'

"But where can one find any sign of the 'Jeffersonian drive toward virtually no government' if that very drive 'foundered' precisely when Jefferson took office, both as governor of Virginia and as President of the United States? It is easy enough for Rothbard (who fails to mention the tyrannical Embargo) to say that after Jefferson left office he was "horrified at the results" and "brooded at Monticello...." But these psychological touches do not alter the basic picture: When he actually wielded power, the Apostle of Liberty was no less vigorous than the Federalists and in fact far outdid them. Rothbard perpetuates the myth of 'Jeffersonian democracy' even as he admits the historical facts that explode it."

Pages 237-39. And as far as the sources, they are the following:

[160] "Thomas Jefferson: Legacy," http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jeffleg.html.

[161] Ibid.

[162] Onuf, Jefferson's Empire, 85.

[163] Thomas Di Lorenzo, "The Latest Defamation of Jefferson," www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo100.html.

[164] Murray Rothbard, "The Libertarian Heritage: The American Revolution and Classical Liberalism," In For a New Liberty e-text excerpt lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard121.html.

[foundedonpurpose]

Thank you for your insights on Jefferson.

[vpintheak]

Power corrupts all. This is true.