In 1922 longtime Senator and
American capitalist Richard Franklin Pettigrew published, "Triumphant
Plutocracy: The Story of American Public Life from 1870 -- 1920", the years
Pettigrew was intimately involved with the plays and players of the post-Civil
War "Gilded Age" and WWI eras. Pettigrew presented himself as a staunch
opponent of America's increasingly imperialist aggressions against Hawaii, the
Philippines, Cuba, and Central American and other target nations. The
robber barons had already appropriated the wealth of the American continent so
latter day capitalists had to look further afield for new territory to own and
exploit. Today this process is euphemistically called "free trade" and "economic
development", to maintain the brainwashed American public's support for these
"virtuous' acts of financial sabotage and economic plunder.
Pettigrew believed
imperialism was inconsistent with American republican government that is
morally based on the idea of a universal human right to self-determination.
But from the perspective of American capitalists and their fellow
travelers in political power, the surest road to fabulous personal wealth was
to enjoin the US government to engage the US military in the conquest of small
weak nations so that the capitalists could simply "appropriate" the land
and resources of those nations and force the populations into wage slavery,
producing foods and mineral wealth for export to the American and European Imperial
homelands. And fabulous profits and family dynasties for the
appropriators.
After US overthrow of the
Kingdom of Hawaii's native government, the Republic of Hawaii's first and only
President was Sanford B. Dole, whose name you are probably familiar with from
the pineapple cans in your cupboard.
A pineapple Emperor, fruit of ignominy. That's what "capitalism" looks like.
Never confuse capitalism with
"free markets". Capitalism is about power and wealth
accumulation by any and all means. The term "free markets" is a
snow job, a propaganda slogan, a veil of economic and political legitimacy to
cover the reality of capitalism: Capitalism is concentrated financial and
economic power ruling by legalistic force and stolen ownership, no different in
effect from conquest by armies and rule by imperial governors. Except
capitalists steal by wielding money, not armies. Markets are to be
"captured", not "freed", which is why to this day American
capitalists wage war on any nation whose resources the capitalists do not yet
own.
Imperial Rome allowed
conquered people broad latitude to practice their own economics and cultures
and religions. But if you stirred
up trouble or failed to pay your oppressive tributes and taxes they crucified
you. There are limits to the
"liberties' of the conquered.
Modern financially conquered
nations become colonial vassal states, their natural and human resources
pressed into economic-cum-financial wealth creation for their owner/masters.
The national income is diverted to interest payments to bankers' and
corporate profits. This is not
exactly feudalism, as the rulers are now corporations and plutocrats (rule by
the rich) rather than aristocrats (rule by the blood heirs of territorial
conquerors), and land is no longer the primary basis of wealth. Now the
populations are repressed by debt and economic oligopolies, not by the
impossibility of escape from serfdom or by the ready broadswords of occupying
armies. But what we have today is
certainly neofeudalism, which is rule by banker control of money and by
corporate oligopoly ownership of all valuable or strategic resources and
industries. Free markets are not "ruled" by anyone. But we are ruled, and in every
scalable, oligopolizable industry our markets are not free.
The US itself, and the foreign
nations subsequently conquered by US capitalists, are administered by bankers
and corporate plutocrats who exercise financial and economic dominion, rather
than by kings and lords exercising their divine right to own countries and rule
nations. Bankers and industrial corporations
write the legislation that "regulates' their industry. Politicians serve their moneyed
masters, not the people of the nation.
The owners, not the democratic governments, make the rules. Military force always lurks in the
immediate background should any people or nation resist "opening their
markets" to capitalist predation. Uncooperative political leaders
are summarily deposed or assassinated and "regime change" implemented.
The immediate weapon of mass
destruction used to defeat and enslave nations is the US$, in its post-WWII role
as the global trade currency. Nations must use US dollars to pay for
goods, especially oil, that they purchase from other nations. Oil is the
master commodity without which modern large scale industry, transportation and
trade cannot function. Wall St
bankers create those US dollars as loans of credit money for their plutocratic
and corporatist allies who are thereby empowered to buy up the wealth of
nations "on credit".
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