Posted on 10/13/2002 2:12:41 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
This is the second article in a three-part series on corporate feudalism and our erstwhile billionaire collectivist pigs.
Read Part I: The Left-Wing Billionaire Collectivist Pigs.
Toward State and Corporate Feudalism
Why do our economic, political and intellectual elites promote the one-world-fits-all collectivist cultural, economic and political template for America and humankind?
Why do billionaires like Bill Gates Sr. and Jr., Ted Turner, George Soros, Alan Greenspan and yes, even supposedly conservative elites advance globalism and collectivism? They do so by paying for it, encouraging it and setting in motion all the policies and systems which will deconstruct and recreate the basic national identity and political structures.
For many of us, it is difficult to consider that so-called capitalists are in fact collectivists. Perhaps we have been so preoccupied with other things, like wars, national events and social problems, that we didn't notice. Nevertheless, this nation and its institutions continue the long march toward the Corporate Collectivist State.
In bygone times this would have been called a feudal system. These days it is dubbed globalism, the New World Order, or the Third Way. To reverse a phrase made famous by Martha Stewart – it is NOT a good thing.
Nature of the Corporate Collective Beast
The "globalism" of the progressive left, as well as the corporate partnership with the left, is authoritarian in nature. It is also destructive of legitimate authority. The deconstruction and overthrow of legitimate authority includes basic institutions like Christianity and religion, as well as the nuclear family.
In addition, that partnership is facilitating the ruination of republican and classically liberal political values, civic virtue, Western culture, history and literature, AUTHENTIC capitalism, our national identity, and the administration of our borders. In fact, the entire basic legacy, which is the essence of Western civilization and society, is being torn apart.
Social critic Robert Locke defines one aspect of this new paradigm by calling it "corporatism." According to Locke, "It has the outward form of capitalism in that it preserves private ownership and private management, but with a crucial difference: as under socialism, government guarantees the flow of material goods, which under true capitalism it does not.
In the effort to reconstruct society, the confederation of elites encourages unlimited mass immigration, which benefits the Gramscian left as much as it helps the corporate and political elite. Both groups get what they want. Both take the lion's share of economic and political power, nationally and internationally.
Collectivists are gladdened as Western society is reconfigured into oppressor and victim classes, with the help of the modern Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who with a few others from the Frankfurt School of Social Theory gave us political correctness, identity politics, non-assimilation of immigrants and mediocre education that does not support a Western-oriented American identity. It also gave us the tools they use on the great unwashed through the use of psychosocial controlling mind games.
Just about any multicultural or diversity program, as well as the latest psychological technique, has absolutely no trouble getting grants and funds from the corporate giants. In that regard, both the educational establishment and corporate America use something called the Delphi Technique. DT is a psychosocial manipulative mechanism used on groups of individuals to create a "consensus." However, it is always a consensus at the expense of the individual, freedom and the nation-state.
Social critic and Hudson Institute scholar John Fonte has a name for a part of this demise of freedom and the nation-state. Fonte calls it "transnational progressivism." In an essay that dealt with modern Marxist Antonio Gramsci's influence on American civilization, Fonte referred to assorted corporate CEOs as the Hegelian CEOs. Since the days of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Mellon and the rest, "cutting edge" ideas that are customarily leftist and collectivist have found a sugar daddy among our economic elite.
Corporate Collectives
Old-time capitalists, as well as more modern ones, continue to fund collectivist causes. The majority of funds for population control, eugenics and weird science came from the Rockefeller Foundation. Ford and Pew fund many leftist and radical causes such as identity groups and radical environmentalism, as well as offering funds for litigation against property rights, support of U.N. programs, radical feminism, and outrageous art and literature.
The collective corporate insists that a quasi-government group, like The Nature Conservancy, is doing us all a favor. Meanwhile, TNC buys up land from people who are often railroaded into being "willing sellers" of private lands. Then TNC sells it back to the government at top dollar. This is corporate elitism at the expense of private property, the ordinary citizen, and the U.S. Constitution. This kind of corporate activity flies in the face of everything this country is supposed to be about. It is another example of a corporate identity promoting a collective idea – the idea that the state is better equipped to "take care" of land or whatever else it has its sights set on.
Pew spent nearly $5 million in advertising to buy the "roadless initiative" executive order from the Clinton administration and was reprimanded by the House legal counsel and a federal judge in Idaho, but to no avail. The Hispanic political identity group La Raza, meanwhile, takes big bucks from the Ford Foundation. Planned Parenthood gets much of its money to promote abortion from the Rockefellers.
Yes, the Rockefellers. It is short of amazing that immigrants who benefited so strikingly from the freedoms they found in America successfully added new levels to the human misery index. The Rockefellers often used unethical and anti-human practices to control others, or to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
The Rockefellers' support of the racial "scientific" projects of the pre-Hitler Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Germany, plus their relationship with I.G. Farben before and during WWII, were not free-market capitalism at its best.
Rather, their activities and special treatment by government as well as the misuse of their position fit the definition of corporatism. Many of their actions and support of divergent collectivist causes such as eugenics, racial theory and population control represent a major failure in moral principles. This is not what American economic freedom and the free market are supposed to be about.
The Rockefeller partnership with the German industrial giant Farben caused the Truman Commission in the early '40s to condemn that relationship, which included trying to keep the oil flowing to Hitlerland in spite of the war. (1)
Additionally, thanks to the Rockefellers' support of hyper-racist Margaret Sanger and her offspring, Planned Parenthood, social Darwinism thrives. Demographically, the West is in population free fall; but with help from the Rockefellers, and now many other Western moguls, abortion is a social convenience as well as a sacrament.
More recently, they have given us a bioethicist loony named Peter Singer. Professor Singer holds a Rockefeller- endowed chair at Princeton.
These days, the Rockefellers, along with mega-bazillionaire Maurice Strong and former red-turned-green Mikhail Gorbachev, have decided that not only does the world have too many unwanted people, but also they have the answer to this self-described inconvenience. The new elite calls it the Earth Charter. It is the Ten Commandments of the New World Order, utopian globalists, Third Wayers, whatever. In a recent column, lefty Alexander Cockburn takes on this particular clique of corporate collectivist elite.
Cockburn tells us:
Cockburn concludes:Perhaps the most grotesque recent display of UN Kulchur at full stretch was the carrying of a cheesy "Ark of Hope", containing the Earth Charter from the US to the Earth Summit in Johannesburg last month. This same charter is the spawn of Steven C. Rockefeller, Canadian eco-mogul Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev who has said of it, "My hope is that this charter will be a kind of Ten Commandments, a Sermon on the Mount, that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond."
Now comes the jackboot: The earth must "adopt at all levels sustainable development plans and regulations. Prevent pollution of any part of the environment. Internalize the full environmental and social costs of goods and services in the selling price. Ensure universal access to health care that fosters reproductive health and responsible reproduction." In other words, population control, as promoted through the century by the Rockefellers, who of course assigned the Manhattan real estate to the U.N. for its headquarters. [http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn1009.html]The Rockefellers are a prime example of the weird marriage of corporatism and progressivism and why it is destructive.
There are a lot of names to assign to this growing darkness and one of them is "transnational progressivism."
Transnational Progressivism
In his very excellent essay "The Ideological War within the West," John Fonte gives us some clues as to what shape this new monster is taking. Fonte states, "The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:
The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born."
Furthermore, "A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Transnational ideologists have incorporated the essentially Hegelian Marxist 'privileged vs. marginalized' dichotomy."
In his analysis of Fonte's essay, Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum Concludes: "Although forwarded by progressives and garbed in post-modern lingo, Fonte shows that bureaucratic leftism represents a throwback to a pre-modern age in Europe when rulers were unelected. Today's bureaucrats effectively fill the role of yesteryear's kings."
In other words, what modern Americans are facing is feudalism and fascism that is masterminded by the world's collectivist know-it-alls, and funded by myopic control-freak rich guys. The corporate types who have accumulated power and position want to keep it. The collectivists want to devise the master plan to remake humanity into the utopian ideal. Their collaborative results are individuals who become pieces in the big machine of the collective state.
This is NOT about class warfare. It is pure and simply the growth of modern- day feudalism. It is also a kind of fascism which attempts to be the prime director as to who is allowed to have the keys to the vault of wealth, privilege, power and identity.
Capitalism or Corporatism?
Political economists tell us: "Capitalism is not a system biased toward any group of people, but emphasizes a level playing field for all to progress in. In contrast, corporatism gives political power to a group of people. Corporations can manipulate the system to obtain results which are not in sync with the free market."
If the programs and ideas of the collectivist left and the corporate groups go into effect, it will mean the demise of our national identity, as well as what is left of our floundering constitutional republic. As it is, we are to be transformed into citizens of the world, where others will centrally plan our lives.
Of course, in that New World the individual is merely part of a particular demographic group in which the individual has no power, but rather the group has the power. It is perfect form for the unelected bureaucratic state. It fits in with the thinking and analysis of Robert Locke in his recent series on "What Is Corporatism in America."
Locke explains: "What makes corporatism so politically irresistible is that it is attractive not just to the mass electorate, but to the economic elite as well."
In his latest essay, "Corporatism and the '90s Bubble," Locke identifies many aspects of the emerging confederation of elites – particularly, how they impacted American society and economics in the '90s under Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan.
Locke maintains: "But during the past bubble, wage inflation was suppressed by mass immigration. Importation of foreign workers to the United States doubled in the 1990s, and during the mania, the technology industry succeeded in adding another 100,000 foreigners per year by expanding the H-1B program. Instead of worrying about how to end the bubble, Alan Greenspan focused on using even more immigration to keep wages down and prolong it. … Greenspan said, 'Aggregate demand is putting significant pressures on an ever-decreasing available supply of unemployed labor. The one obvious means that one can use to offset that is expanding the number of people we allow in. Reviewing our immigration laws in the context of the economy which we will be employing in the decade ahead is clearly on the table.' "
We allowed our economic central planners to fiddle with the free market, and because of that we have the economic mess we are in. The average person should remember something important before they look to these central planners to CURE a single thing ever again.
As Locke reports: "Another alarm that was cut was wage inflation. In the long term, wage inflation equals raises for American workers, a self-evidently good thing. In the short term, wage inflation acts as a self-correcting mechanism to stop bubbles: as workers become too expensive, companies stop hiring. It also serves as a signal to the Federal Reserve that the economy is growing too fast, i.e. unsustainably fast and fast enough to bring on an eventual crash."
As for the current failure of the free market, Locke adds, "the free market has been corrupted by corporatism. The boom became the ultimate entitlement and the stock market the ultimate means for the delivery of government largesse to the middle class, the upper middle class, and the wealthy."
I can't recommend this article highly enough, as it cuts through the garbage and gets to the gold. I suggest you read the entire Locke article as well as his "What Is American Corporatism?" They are both brilliant and may be found at www.frontpagemag.com or www.vdare.com in Locke's archives.
Also must-reads are John Fonte's essays on Gramsci and de Tocqueville in America and "The Ideological War within the West."
Next time: Part III, Corporate Collective Feudalism.
Footnote
1. United States Congress. Senate. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Military Affairs. Scientific and Technical Mobilization (78th Congress, 1st session, S. 702), Part 16 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1944), p. 939. Hereafter cited as Scientific and Technical Mobilization.
Collusion by definition also implies conspiracy. I'm not sure Alden is describing so much a conspiracy as she's describing a group of extravagantly wealthy and powerful institutuons/entities with the same world view. They are acting in what they believe are their own best interests. The name of the game is control; elimination of variables and unknown quantities. Life becomes a lot easier when your aspiring competition can't get out of the starting gate.
What happens when/if these "captains" of industry and government coalesce into a working group? Collusion/conspiracy or not, the results are the same; our freedoms are history.
So, what do we do about it?
FGS
FGS
HA!!
I'm actaually shocked to hear you say that, FGS.
After all, they already have.
Done so for quite some time, too; or, at least since 1992.
What & who "is" the 'Rat Party, FGS??
...just define the 'Rat Party & you've got it.
Well Joe??
I see *Torie* finally got around to you, huh?
Look; if you want to know more about this one, just ask me in private.
I can refer you to a place where this hag's well known by a variety of people -- most journalists in one capacity or another -- & they'll not only give you the full & complete *skinny* on this one.
But also several excellent reasons why she's to be completely & totally ignored; at, all times.
OK?
HINT: can you *feel* the English Liberal-Socialist tack with her superiority complex, hmmmmm??
...btw; an excellent read, too.
What a very weird comment to pop up like a sore thumb in the middle of a wonderfully consistent Marxian analysis! I think the rest of the essay contradicts this - it is, in fact, about class warfare in the very sense in which Marx (and later Gramsci, and Foucault) were writing, certainly insofar as feudalism is concerned. If the author is accurate in characterizing the neo-robber-baron types as feudalists, then everything about this is precisely as Marx described the feudal system in Capital. Good grief, that's what the rest of the essay takes such detailed trouble to describe!
It certainly isn't the direction Marx suggested history would run vis a vis economic classes, but if I've understood the essay that's the author's point - this constitutes a regression to pre-industrialist days before the conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat overwhelmed the control on capital possessed by the feudal classes. New entries to the latter class are comprised of the owners of what might be described as intellectual and informational capital: the intelligentsia and the owners of broadcast media. These are not, strictly speaking, Marxist, but their activities certainly do correspond to those of the neo-feudal classes in which the author describes the collectivist wealthy. And the mechanisms are very definitely Marxian.
I may, of course, have misunderstood the intention of the author but I rather think the "not class warfare" comment to be inaccurate with regard to the rest of the essay. Great read, BTW...gotta chew on it for awhile...
Ahhh! Why isn't that sweeeeeeet?!?!?
I dunno Lan. While corporate America is not exactly being dragged kicking and screaming into the abyss, they're not altogether committed either, IMO. Just a gut feeling, but outside of the mega corporations(and not all of them), I don't believe American businessmen are quite ready to embrace socialism corporatism just yet. I sense a reluctance to move completely to the dark side. I think medium to large corporations still wield enough clout to stymie the megas if they have the will.
What & who "is" the 'Rat Party, FGS??
I'll grant you that, but I also believe that many, particularly in business, are just hedging their bets; hoping, maybe praying, the Pubbies can regain control of the gubmint long enough to haul out the trash. If in fact the Pubbies will. I'm hoping to live long enough to find out.
In any case, the RATS are trying desperately to hold on to their slimmest of margins in the senate. I believe the driving force is not so much to retain some control for the sake of control, but moreso to keep the Pubbies OUT of control. My thinking is that if Pubbies take charge, the unwashed will get a taste of what if feels like to have adults running the gubmint, and they might like what they see. The RATS can't afford to let that happen, IMO.
FGS
Oh sure you do, FGS.
You're the smartest Texan posting these days; that makes ya worth two from any other state, y'know.
"While corporate America is not exactly being dragged kicking and screaming into the abyss, they're not altogether committed either, IMO."
Yes, that's very true; no argument from me, a'tall.
Still, may I repeat the oft said country saying which really governs this entire subject??
"Bad things happen when good people do nothing."
"Just a gut feeling, but outside of the mega corporations (and not all of them), I don't believe American businessmen are quite ready to embrace socialism corporatism just yet. I sense a reluctance to move completely to the dark side."
Sure.
Buttttt...the operative word here, FGS, has to be "yet."
Not being overly cynical (howdy Mud :o) ) or peddling *prophecies* of the Apocalypse here, either!
Just using my years, what I've witnessed happen over my lifetime to attempt projecting the continuation of *trends* that've been a "work in progress" for at least the past four decades.
"I think medium to large corporations still wield enough clout to stymie the megas if they have the will."
Well I think those medium to large corps owe their very existance to those megas, see?
So they'll do what they're told to do; or, they won't be around to *stymie* their own stockholders throwing out those who're endangering the organization's future with mere, "politics."
"Politics," are not a reason to impede profits, my friend; never has been, never will be.
Even during a time of war the goverment has intervened to "buy off" the capitalist in one way or another via contracts for everything from soup to nuts.
That's the whole genius of the Communist-Socialist plan, FGS.
They've (successfully) taken our own system & turned it against itself; against us.
Which let's face it, wasn't that hard to do.
Our way of life -- Capitalism -- to a great extent relies (tremendously) on personal "greed" to provide & fuel personal &/or group motivation & inspiration.
All so we may enjoy the fruits of the, "The American Dream."
Corrupting "greed" then, is much more than an oxymoron.
It's a *goal* & one so easy to acheive the Liberal-Socialists & Commies have to be shaking their heads they hadn't seen the tack a lot sooner.
Look.
Our friend Nakita Kruschev once made a statement at the UN, once.
He said, "We will bury you." [where "you" = the United States]
The panick resulting from that statement was most interesting insofar as the thing was completely taken out of context.
Nakita meant we Americans would destroy ourselves visa vi our greed & when that happened the Soviet Union & her people would be there to clean up the mess & "bury us"; and, naturally the American politicians -- both sides -- made great hay from this, for a variety of reasons, patriotism notwithstanding.
Well FGS?
Don'tcha think the hardcore Communist-Socialists might just be trying to accelerate Kruschev's prediction a bit?
Perhaps after these ultra-leftists have successfully infiltrated our government, acadamia, media, religion & lastly corporate America, at the highest levels?
The "unwashed" might just voluntarily *invite* a Socialist paradigm upon us??
NO, WAIT!!
Why the ultra-leftists are already embedded in all those places mentioned & we're *still* a Capitalist system!!
Shazam!
Well so far anyway, eh?
I mean we're not "Socialist," "Communist," nor can we (honestly) be called "Capitalist" anymore either, huh?
Than just what the hell are we, right now?
"Corporatist"?
Such a *nice* word, "Corporatism."
*Like* "Progressive"?
Words which won't evoke fear; that's the ticket!
Those words evoke nice, warm *fuzzies* while masking a simpler truth all the same. :o)
"...but I also believe that many, particularly in business, are just hedging their bets; hoping, maybe praying, the Pubbies can regain control of the gubmint long enough to haul out the trash."
Just good, old fashioned America-loving patriots, these businessmwo/men, eh?
Patriots who're just waiting around for their chance to strike a blow for Liberty, huh.
When the time's right then, "their guys" -- the 'Pubbies -- like Arlan Specter, Lincoln Chaffee et al will carry out this task, eh?
That right?
Hmmmmm...
You're a damned good man, FGS.
I'm sincerely honored to be acquainted with a person like you; moreover, everyone who knows you, can call you "friend" has been very blessed, indeed.
Know that, OK?
"If in fact the Pubbies will."
~yea.
Therein lies a tale to be told, doesn't it?
"In any case, the RATS are trying desperately to hold on to their slimmest of margins in the senate. I believe the driving force is not so much to retain some control for the sake of control, but moreso to keep the Pubbies OUT of control."
Well that's what the fighting's all about now, isn't it?
"My thinking is that if Pubbies take charge, the unwashed will get a taste of what if feels like to have adults running the gubmint, and they might like what they see."
They'll "learn" those government handouts aren't really for them.
See the light & reject an entire system which has more or less fostered their (~increasingly) complete dependency for how many years & generations, now?
OK.
"The RATS can't afford to let that happen, IMO."
~& a good opin it is.
Just one thing about that statement which is nawing at me, my dear friend.
...I'm not altogether sure our side can afford to let [that] happen, either.
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