Posted on 10/11/2004 1:14:10 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Monday, October 11, 2004
By Vox Day
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
One of the most widely believed myths in America today is the belief that corporations are an inherent part of capitalism. Concomitant with this is the idea that big corporations and big government have an intrinsically hostile relationship and that the stock market is a free market.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Capitalism was already well entrenched and the Industrial Revolution was complete when the U.S. Supreme Court radically altered the concept of the corporate charter in 1886 by ruling that the Southern Pacific Railroad that was a "natural person" under the U.S. Constitution. Prior to this time, corporations were strictly controlled by state law, which is why the word "limited" still occurs in corporate language.
The Supreme Court had tried once before to expand corporate power by stripping sovereignty from the state of New Hampshire in 1819. In response, many states wrote laws to ensure that they would retain their sovereignty – 19 "even amended their constitutions to make corporate charters subject to alteration or revocation by their legislatures".
The 1886 ruling trumped these efforts, fulfilling Thomas Jefferson's prescient fears. In a letter to George Logan written on Nov. 12, 1816, he wrote:
I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.
But these monied corporations did more than challenge our government, they corrupted it entirely and established a symbiotic relationship with it. This symbiotic relationship is openly anti-capitalistic, as undying corporations take advantage of laws originally written to protect the entrepeneurs who are the genuine engine of technological progress and economic growth, and use them to sustain their unnatural, parasitic life.
For example, Disney successfully lobbied Congress in 1998 to extend the period of copyright law for 20 years, increasing it to the life of the author plus 70 years. This is obviously of no benefit to a deceased author or his children, but it does prevent Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain while remaining technically within the constitutional dictates that copyrights be granted for a "limited time."
Corporations also use the government to protect their pool of investment money in the stock market. Due to the massive regulation of this anti-capitalist and unfree market, entrepreneurs needing to raise large sums of capital to challenge established corporate competitors are forced to submit to the predatory regime of the investment banks. In a genuinely free market, the owners of small, but growing businesses could simply sell their public shares over the Internet to anyone who wished to invest.
Indeed, with today's high-speed communications technology and digital money, there is no more need for Wall Street than there is for Congress. Eliminating both and replacing them with electronic systems – Free and Open Source, of course – would result in the realization of significantly more pure and efficient strains of capitalism and democracy alike.
One need only look at the various socialist and communist states around the world and the friendly relations that giant Western multinationals have with them to realize there is no fundamental link between capitalism and corporations. Gozprom, LUKoil and 400 other Soviet corporations were operating inside and outside the USSR prior to 1989, while Communist China not only permits corporations, but owns several that are listed on the Global Fortune 500. Some of them, such as PetroChina and Sinopec, are even traded on the Hong Kong and New York stock markets.
In fact, it is not the Chinese government, but the People's Liberation Army that owns the International Trust and Investment Corporation, which among other things has more than 200 Canadian corporations and is the largest "private" operator of shipping container terminals.
Not everything to which the idiot Left is hostile is necessarily good. It is impossible to assert that the age of untrammeled corporatism has been friendly to individual liberty or prosperity, especially when real wages have been falling for three decades – they are 14 percent lower than they were in 1972.
The genius of human invention and the undeniable blessings of capitalism do not stem from artificial structures at law, they come only from the mind of the individual. Conservatives would do well to remember that the next time that the corporations go to their comrades in Congress, demanding more violations of human freedom and more restrictions on individual liberty in order to sustain their vampirish unlives.
45-"Unfortunately most people can't see the difference between corporatism and capitalism. Corporations use their influence to pervert our legal system and the entire free enterprise system. That they do it under the guise of capitalism make it more repugnant. Corporatism is the enemy of free market capitalism."
good call see :
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3054
What is American Corporatism?
By Robert Locke
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 13, 2002
58- excellent summary
61 - " Labor in and of itself has little value."
????
ROTFL
Labor is only the foundational value of EVERYTHING we value.
65 - you are absolutely hilarious.
Labor has no value? A ditch has no value?
It's pretty obvious you never worked or never were in the military.
73 - "If nobody paid you to dig a ditch, and you were dumb enough to dig one that you didn't need, that's your problem."
LOL - So that's his problem.
Ya...that's what it proves. Your "opinion" proves something to. Any idea what?
Lincoln acted to free slaves based on his morally certain understanding of the value of men, as reflected in the comment quoted by Willie Green.
I've read all the arguments about the Constitutionality of Lincoln's action, and am fully aware that he declared war to 'preserve the Union,' not "to free the slaves."
Of course, one can also postulate, defensibly, that he REALLY wanted to 'free the slaves,' and used 'the Union' as an excuse which was acceptable to Northern interests.
In either case, the moral axiom must stand and must be defended. Labor has priority over capital. If you don't agree, that's fine: but you cannot be a Conservative and believe otherwise.
Now...why can't I be a conservative if I don't believe that labor has priority over capital? Capital has intrinsic value. A dollar is a dollar no matter how I spend it. Labor value, if any, can only be measured by the usefulness of the labor.
Let's say I have flour, apples, eggs, baking soda, shortening, salt sugar, milk, and various spices. The average cook could make a delicious pie. A great cook could make some extraordinary confection that far surpasses a pie. Without labor I simply have cooking materials, yet labor without expertise or motivation and I'm lucky to get a pie. Incompetent labor could actually destroy any inherent value of the ingredients. Without capital of some type the cooks wouldn't even be cooking. Labor in and of itself CAN have value but it doesn't have INTRINSIC value. Capital can be more valuable if used correctly but it's minimum value is fixed. It has inherent value despite it's usage.
One could argue that capital can not be created without labor. That is true up to a point until you come to the conclusion that if you are starting with nothing but yourself and your potential of labor, then you are in fact your own capital and you will invest yourself into your work to make more capital.
I do not believe that capital has priority over labor, nor do I believe the opposite. Capital can not increase it's value without labor. Labor can not find value without capital, hence we have created a capitalistic system.
The more I think about this...isn't capital really just a representative of applied labor? Perhaps discussing the two as if they are separate entities presents a false dichotomy.
It is the sweat of Man's labor that creates capital.
In the pre-Civil War southern states, the entire socio-economic structure was based on a foundation of slave labor. All arguements that attempt to minimize and discount this fact, and attribute the war to less significant, supposedly-unrelated factors are an excercise in diversionary hypocrisy.
bump
73 - "If nobody paid you to dig a ditch, and you were dumb enough to dig one that you didn't need, that's your problem."
-willy-
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LOL - So that's his problem.
86 xbob
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'So'? -- Not at all.
Durus's problem is in laboring to educate you two. Such labor has no value.
In the military, a ditch has value as a storage place for the dirt you just dug.
Foxholes and latrines are also useful military ditches,
but ya gotta make sure they're well labeled so nobody gets them confused.
;^)
There is a dichotomy, because capital exists only because of labor; it is a result. IOW, labor is primary, just as certain rights are given not by Gummint, but by God.
Yes, capital represents labor; but do not confuse 'dollars' with capital. That's fatal.
90 - "A dollar is a dollar no matter how I spend it."
LOL - A dollar has no intrinsic value. It has only the value which those who accept it agree that it has.
If you cannot find a "buyer"/"acceptor" for your dollar, then it is worth only what you can use it for, like a value as toilet paper.
In as much as a dollar is accepted by someone for their own labor or possesion, then, and only then, does it represent the value of that labor or posession, to that person.
Remember the 'confederate dollar'?
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