Corporate America Embraces Authoritarianism
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.
- Justice Brandeis
By JM Hamilton (12-16-2018)
A great deal was written last week about the GOP's rejection of democracy and election outcomes. More specifically, a reoccurring theme has emerged in North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin, whereby the Republican state legislative bodies have sought to strip incoming Democratic governors & AGs of the very power that they were perfectly willing to allow GOP governors and AGs to wield prior to defeat. The Republican attack against democracy is multi-pronged: if they aren't stripping incoming Democrats of power, or writing new laws to thwart democracy, itself, they are out to disenfranchise Democratic voters, via voter suppression. Who says Jim Crow is dead? Fear runs deep throughout the Republican party and its base: fear of change - economic & political - and the fear of the loss, and primacy, of dated & failed beliefs and racist values. That the GOP - and in particular, the donor class - works against the interests of its own base is no longer news or a surprise.
What is surprising, as pointed out in the NY Times, is that the donor class (corporations, multinationals, and billionaires) are in open support of some of these same anti-democratic initiatives, directly and indirectly, expressly and tacitly. JMH has written for several years about how the concentration of economic power, into too few hands, is a direct threat to our democracy. But this too should not come as a shock, for corporations and multinationals are authoritarian models. When the C-Suite makes a decision about the direction of the company, or financing for say, the latest round of financial engineering, it doesn't run those decisions by the rank-and-file employees w/in the organization, nor does it consult w/ government.
And as we've seen throughout the US economy - which is increasingly being written about in the MSM - the concentration of economic power in industry after industry (as they consolidate into cartels, duopolies, & monopolies) is only growing. To such an extent that the private sector - and its anticompetitive bias - is a direct threat to capitalism itself, as well as the attendant benefits of capitalism (as defined by competition, a focus on customer service, innovation, and rising wages as business are forced to compete for labor, etc.).
The growing concentration w/in industry after industry is a form of corporate dictatorship over the private sector, and ultimately, the public sector.
It's a well known maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so it is, particularly, w/ economic power. And that economic power translates into near total political power (thanks to Citizens United & SCOTUS) in regards the sway the billionaire, and multinational, class hold over the Republican party, and indeed, over establishment Democrats, especially of the Clintonian mold. Establishment Dems too, certainly aren't above feathering their own nests and are all too often engaged in gerrymandering, as well. Billionaires aren't exactly known for their humility. The authoritarian nature of the corporate model, where a C-Suite CEO makes a decision and it is often followed w/out question, often translates into the political world, where we see executive, legislative, judicial - as well as, fiscal & monetary policy - capture. As POTUS Trump indicated in the 2016 primaries, he often called upon his fellow Republican candidates, post - donation, and he would tell them to jump, and they'd ask how high. If that isn't a dictatorship, it's not too short a walk to the authoritarian model.
By way of example, US foreign policy coddles dictatorships around the globe. US foreign policy is often a direct reflection of US multinational interests that stand the most to gain from these authoritarian/totalitarian commercial & political alliances: whether it be Big Oil; the military industrial complex; or a multinational, say Apple, that desires to exploit Asian and SE Asian labor & overseas tax laws. The US barely pays lip service to democracy and human rights any longer, let alone seek its spread.
Given the authoritarian nature
of the C-Suite vandals running the nation is it any wonder? As
Justice Brandeis said, we can either have democracy in this country, or
concentrated wealth and power, but we cannot have both.
The MSM often describes POTUS Trump as a toddler, or what the French like to refer to as an enfant terrible, but is our corporate dictatorship any different? They demand that their interests be met by the federal and state governments, and the federal and state governments nearly always comply to the point of abject subservience. This has devolved into a fiscal, and political, crisis in many Western governments - as tax cuts are provided to the rich - while everyone else dines at austerity's table and receives little or no tax relief (and in some instances, tax increases). Witness as POTUS Trump, and his cabinet, defends a tyrant, and Saudi Arabia, the number one sponsor of terror on the planet, all so that the MIC can continue its multibillion dollar weapons sale. Wall Street banks and shadow banking have hijacked central banks, the Fed, and monetary policy for so long, that Americans no longer know what it is like to have the markets determine interest rates & yields... and should interest rates rise too high, the fallout has been compared to a tantrum, as financial interests and the exceptionally wealthy retaliate against any hint of monetary normalization, by withdrawing from markets. Big Pharma has become both a classic, and real time, example of a cartel colluding on patented medicines to extract extravagant rents from a US citizenry, facing the hardship of stagnating wages.
Demonstrators gather at the Arc of Triomphe in Paris during a
protests on Dec. 1.
Photographer: Lucas Barioluet/AFP via Getty images, by way of
Bloomberg, LP
The irony in all this - and in keeping w/ Newton's third law - is the terrifying concentration of power, and the globalism and neoliberalism ideology that has allowed this to occur, are already suffering considerable blowback. Throughout the West so-called centrist political parties - and the defenders of the laissez faire faith that has metastasized into authoritarianism - in both government & the private sector - are facing a fierce backlash. So far, this backlash has been channeled into hard right and hard left political parties. The financial & political elite - who just want to maintain power and the status quo - are, to some extent, fine w/ all this (although they’d prefer that their owned centrist parties return to power). As long as, the 99% are warring w/ each other - over the color of one's skin, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, socio-economic origins - that's all right by the corporate elite, as it keeps the heat & spotlight off the aristocracy.
But something new is happening, and we are seeing this in Europe, the noncentrist left and right are uniting. We saw this in Italy first w/ the right-wing, League, and the left-wing, Five Star, joining forces to form a government, w/ their joint nemesis being the EU elites (who are merely anti-democratic puppets for the banker & multinational set). And now, France has demonstrated the same left/right merger in the Yellow Vest movement, where again, a great number of the population have figured out the enemy is not each other but the financial and political elite, who President Macron is a party to and represents. What else would we expect from an investment banker, but doubling-down on the failed beliefs that: markets are self-regulating and need no oversight; Western labor is to be crushed to compete w/ emerging market workers; and the only "free trade" worth doing is that which is dictated by crony-governments and multinationals. As for those elites counting on the economic growth fairy to create a rising tide that raises all yachts & lifeboats, keep dreaming.
Where is all this headed? Well, likely, for a great deal of economic & market disruption, and possibly the loss of some - financially engineered - and monopolistic profits, as the momentum behind populism continues to grow. Corporations, multinationals, and robber barons are said to hate change, and anything that disrupts profits flow; but in seeking & finding guaranteed profits - by co-opting and owning democratic institutions (to the detriment of the majority of the West's citizens), and consolidating into cartel & monopoly w/in industry after industry - they have sewn the seeds of their own economic disruptions.
In short, the exorbitant profits many of the monopolies earn today are a direct threat to democracy itself & unsustainable.
(Public officials are said to be concerned about the untoward influence illegal drug cartels hold over Western democracy; hence, the drive towards cannabis legalization and the elimination of blackmarkets. So why aren't our elected officials equally concerned about the far more debilitating effects of another cartel: Big Pharma?)
Populism is on the rise, and for a very good reason: cartels and monopolies, and the billionaire set are anti-democratic, antisocial, and arguably, psychopathic in their singular lust for power and profits. As a consequence of rising wage & wealth inequality, the people are rising up, and they want their economies & governments back. And of course, they will be seeking a more populist approach to fiscal, monetary, and trade policies that for too long have been dictated to further the bankocracy's & kleptocracy's interests, exclusively.
Investors and multinationals may look back, someday, on the present Neo-Gilded Age with longing, because the ride has already grown bumpy. The guaranteed profits & uncertainty created by the elites - to the detriment of the world - is more than likely to unwind in ways both foreseen and unforeseen.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018
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