Contrary Notions by Michael Parenti

Author:Michael Parenti
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: City Lights Publishers

23 DEMOCRACY VS. CAPITALISM

It will disappoint some people to hear this, but in fact there is no one grand, secret, power elite governing this country. But there are numerous coteries of corporate and governmental elites who communicate and coordinate across various policy realms. And behind their special interests are the common overall interests of the moneyed class. Many of the stronger corporate groups tend to predominate in their particular spheres of interest, more or less unmolested by other elites, which is not to say that disputes never arise between plutocratic interests.

Business exerts an overall influence as a system of social power, a way of organizing capital, employment, and large-scale production. Because big business controls much of the nation’s economy, government perforce enters into a uniquely intimate relationship with it. The health of the economy is treated by policymakers as a necessary condition for the health of the nation, and since it happens that the economy is mostly in the hands of large corporate interests, then presumably government’s service to the public is best accomplished by service to those interests. The goals of business (high profits, cheap labor, expanding markets, and easy access to natural resources) become the goals of government. The “national interest” becomes identified with the systemic needs of corporate capitalism at home and abroad. In order to keep the peace, business may occasionally accept reforms and regulations it does not like, but ultimately government cannot ignore business’s own raison d’être, which is the limitless accumulation of wealth.

Wealth, in turn, is the most crucial power resource in public life. It creates a pervasive political advantage, and affords ready access to other resources such as organization, skilled personnel, mass visibility, media ownership, outreach capacity, and the like. So wealth is used to attain power, and power is applied to secure and increase wealth.

Government involvement in the U.S. economy represents not socialism (as that term is normally understood by socialists) but state-supported capitalism, not the communization of private wealth but the privatization of the commonwealth. This development has brought a great deal of government involvement, but of a kind that revolves largely around bolstering the profit system, not limiting or replacing it.

In capitalist countries, government generally (a) nationalizes sick and unprofitable industries (“lemon socialism”) and (b) privatizes profitable public ones—in both cases for the benefit of big corporate investors.

Examples of (a): In 1986, in what amounted to a bailout of private investors, the social democratic government in Spain nationalized vast private holdings to avert their collapse. After bringing them back to health with generous nourishment from the public treasury, they were sold back to private companies at bargain prices. The same was done with Conrail in the United States: run into insolvency by private profiteers, brought back to health by generous infusions of public funds, only to be sold off again to private investors.

Some examples of (b), the privatization of prosperous state enterprises: A conservative Greek government privatized publicly-owned companies such as the telecommunications system, which had been reporting continuous profits for several years.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.