“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” — Jim Rohn
So the warning signs are all around. Free market capitalism, shuddering under the weight of bureaucrats and the social welfare state, is kneeling to a differing form: state capitalism, otherwise known as corporatism.
I posted my thoughts regarding this dangerous new alliance between socialism and corporations, and the symbiotic need for one another that puts individuals in a vise. The centerpiece was the UK Guardian article by Stuart Jeffries articulating the unholy alliance and its implications for neo-Marxists far better than I could:
The irony is scarcely wasted on leading Marxist thinkers. “The domination of capitalism globally depends today on the existence of a Chinese Communist party that gives de-localised capitalist enterprises cheap labour to lower prices and deprive workers of the rights of self-organisation,” says Jacques Rancière, the French marxist thinker and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. “Happily, it is possible to hope for a world less absurd and more just than today’s.”
That hope, perhaps, explains another improbable truth of our economically catastrophic times – the revival in interest in Marx and Marxist thought. Sales of Das Kapital, Marx’s masterpiece of political economy, have soared ever since 2008, as have those of The Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse (or, to give it its English title, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy). Their sales rose as British workers bailed out the banks to keep the degraded system going and the snouts of the rich firmly in their troughs while the rest of us struggle in debt, job insecurity or worse. There’s even a Chinese theatre director called He Nian who capitalised on Das Kapital’s renaissance to create an all-singing, all-dancing musical.
And in perhaps the most lovely reversal of the luxuriantly bearded revolutionary theorist’s fortunes, Karl Marx was recently chosen from a list of 10 contenders to appear on a new issue of MasterCard by customers of German bank Sparkasse in Chemnitz. In communist East Germany from 1953 to 1990, Chemnitz was known as Karl Marx Stadt. Clearly, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former East Germany hasn’t airbrushed its Marxist past. In 2008, Reuters reports, a survey of east Germans found 52% believed the free-market economy was “unsuitable” and 43% said they wanted socialism back. Karl Marx may be dead and buried in Highgate cemetery, but he’s alive and well among credit-hungry Germans. Would Marx have appreciated the irony of his image being deployed on a card to get Germans deeper in debt? You’d think.
…and that’s the problem. If the “New Communism” rests upon the corporations that enable the wealth to provide the dream where in this alliance between socialism and corporations does the individual escape?
Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.
Short version is, there’s two wolves deciding what’s for dinner — government on one hand, corporations on the other.
You and I are the lamb.
With the cards so highly stacked against the individual, where does the individual escape? If you’re looking for solutions, don’t look towards the so-called “liberty” movement. They’re great at identifying the disease, but terrible in prescribing the cures:
Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single-payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges.” Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.
To which I respond: blah… blah… blah…
Dr. Paul can identify the problem all day long. But solutions? There are none, other than high floating ideas such as “stop spending” and “respect the Constitution” that — when pressed — devolve into “legalize marijuana” and “I should be able to torrent all the pirated files I want! FASCIST!!!”
Let me give you a quick and dirty example, just to show you how distant these self-professed liberty minded folks really are from reality:
Q: “So you’re an individualist, right?
A: “Yep.”
Q: “OK, great! So if the world were to go to hell in a handbasket right now, how long could you survive?”
A: “Dude — I’ll just sit here and blaze, play the Xbox, and celebrate the end of an oppressive government!”
–or–
A: “Well I’ll sit back in my rocker and firearms, sleeping well safe in the fact our Constitution is restored!”
–or–
A: “Survive? I’ve got all the ammo I need right here!” [chambers bullet]
Q: “So how much food do you have in your pantry, cowboy?”
A: “Food? I got plenty of Ramen noodles… you know… just in case…”
Q: “Like a week’s worth? Maybe two?”
A: …silence…
Q: “And when the electricity isn’t working, how long do you think that’s going to last?”
A: …silence…
Q: “So great, Mr. Individualist. When your food runs out, what then?”
A: “Why, I’ll just cash in all these gold certificates I have stashed under my mattress! Gold is forever!”
Q: “And when food is more valuable than gold, then what are you gonna do?”
A: “Um…”
Q: “Wasn’t in the game plan, eh? What’s next?”
A: “Well, I can hunt for food!”
Q: “You and about 2 million other hungry neighbors. What’s next?”
A: “Um… well… then I guess I’ll have to take from everyone else once their dead!”
Q: “Uh huh — zombie apocalypse. We all get the references by now. What happens when you’re the zombie?”
A: “No way! I’ve got guns and a box of ammo!”
Q: “And when 20 or so people have you surrounded because there’s no food, no electricity, no transportation system, no law enforcement, no commerce, and no society to keep it all working, then what?”
A: “The Constitution says that’s wrong!”
Q: “Yeah, tell that to the Romans, the Byzantines, the French, or anyone living in a failed Third World dictatorship.”
A: “Well then I’ll just run to the mountains and use my *shakes vigorously* emergency seed bank full of 100% organic seeds!”
Q: “Except that first off, hybrid seeds are grown because they yield more food, second it takes a good five years to get a garden up to snuff, and third you have precisely zero fertilizers or tools to make that work for ya. By the way, whose land are you going to confiscate to grow this magical Eden?”
A: *thinks* “Why, a national forest! I’ll steal it back and settle it!”
Q: “And that’s your master plan for the end of the world?”
A: “Yep!!!”
Q: *sigh*
A: “Hey, ever read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead? Boy, I bet she died with a bunch of friends around her!”
In short, most folks are waiting to find out if all that Call of Duty III they’ve been playing is gonna get put to real use in the real world. Does that sound like a game plan for liberty to anyone else?
(…and forgive me if I’m stereotyping, but c’mon… everyone knows at least one person planning for TEOTWAWKI… and they are totally unprepared while preaching survivalism… admit it’s true, have a good cry, and let’s move past the denial stage)
So let’s step back and come back to the topic at hand. The alliance between corporatism and socialism that many Americans — and perhaps the entire West — is now facing. The free market system is the single greatest liberator of mankind in human history. Free markets have lifted more people out of poverty than any economic system known to human history, yet today it is under assault by millions who know neither how to survive independently nor cope without some sort of government assistance.
Now detractors will immediately respond with Obama’s Roanoke Rant with “somebody else made that happen…”
…but we’re not talking infrastructure. The Founding Fathers believed in infrastructure — roads, bridges, open lanes of commerce that enabled but did not provide.
Today, we live in an America where a sizable minority (if not a thin majority) are subsidized in some form by their government.
Liberals will retort that this is true for anyone with a bank account, mortgage, farm, car, student loan, or those who simply travel to work by train, plane, or automobile. Let’s analyze that in turn… is government meddling in any of those features welcome? Necessary? Or are they — especially in instances of transportation and infrastructure — the tools that enable small businesses and individuals to prosper?
Notice there’s no provision. Just the opportunity to prosper.
Liberals know that the current economic system cannot support their desires for a social welfare state. The admission by neo-Marxists that government alone cannot provide is telling enough. They need a wagon to hitch their red star to… and that wagon bears the banners of corporations and branding, marketing and fast food, commercialism and consumption.
Corporations meanwhile know the aristocracy must be maintained. Bailouts guarantee a lack of competition. Stamping out the meritocracy of free market competition provides all the benefits of capitalism with a simulacrum of monopoly. Better still, who exactly is going to pay for all that socialism anyway, asks the masters of capital?
Thus unholy alliance begins.
So where does the individualist turn? Damn fine question to be asking nowadays. Socialism has a funny way of breeding itself out of the pool of competition. After all, why bother uncording the Gordian knot when you could just massage it into a hammock instead? Corporations grow old and stale, the profits made and the methods outmoded.
True individualists — not the dreamers or the armchair political theorists — but self-reliant individuals have two choices. Either realize their potential and start creating local modes of production, or continue along the path of Gnosticism and hypocrisy that has dotted the movement since the 1970s.
I’ve posted about this before, but it bears repeating here. Pick up a trade, determine now to live with less stuff, kill your debt, start a victory garden on any patch of soil you can call your own, and above all else — blog about it and share with friends nearby.
We will wreck the Pax Americana through the following: by living beyond our means, buy purchasing stuff beyond thinking of our own economic security, by mortgaging the future of our country through mountains of debt, by expecting more of government without expecting to pay for the cost (both material and moral), and by turning our back on the virtues and principles that made America great.
The best way to declare independence from socialism and corporatism is to do so, not just in word but in deed. Let me quote one of the greats, Michael Collins:
The real cure had to be started — that the people should recover belief in their own ways and ideals and put them into practice. Secret societies were formed and organized. The Land League came into existence. The Gaelic League came. Sinn Fein grew and developed. All these societies did much. But the effort had to be broadened into a new national movement to become irresistable. It became irresistable in the Republican movement when it was backed by sufficient military force to prevent the English forces from suppressing the national revival.
Collins goes further by explaining that Irish independence from the British only came when the Irish themselves believed themselves to actually be independent of the British Empire.
Michael Collins (1890-1921)
I’ll add the following caveat: the “sufficient military force” line used by Collins, though appropriate during the War for Irish Independence, is by no means appropriate today. We have a Second Amendment… exercise it, but don’t go running around thinking you’re a modern-day Rambo.
What I will add is this. The only way the Irish nation was able to survive the corporatism of the British Empire was by preserving their culture, their individuality, and their heritage by preserving their language, organizing themselves, purchasing back their land from the British landlords, and preserving their history and culture. Americans can do very much the same by learning trades, becoming self-reliant and self-sufficient as best they can, and focusing on local modes of production.
Another Michael Collins quote:
It is not to political leaders our people must look, but to themselves. Leaders are but individuals, and individuals are imperfect, liable to error and weakness. The strength of the nation will be the strength of the spirit of the whole people. We must have a political, economic, and social system in accordance with our national character.
Collins couldn’t have said it any better.
Until individuals are willing to separate themselves from the corrupting culture of corporate consumerism and government socialism — truly separate themselves — the battle is lost before it is joined.
