Plutocracy
Rob has asked OpEd
News readers to imagine what a world without billionaires would be like. In a comment stream he noted Chrystia
Freeland's new book, "Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the
Fall of Everyone Else".
Plutocracy, which means rule by the rich (the "plutocrats"), is not a
new American (or global) phenomenon, though it has grown enormously larger and
more dominant and gone "supranational" in recent decades. Corporations and their "stars" and CEOs
are now replacing nation-states and their politicians as the predominant power
players on the global stage. Nor
is reporting on and critical analysis of plutocracy a recent innovation.
I'm currently reading
C. Wright Mills' 1956 book, "The Power Elite", about the corporatization
(concentration and institutionalization) of the wealth of America's power
elite. American plutocracy began
in earnest during the post Civil War Gilded Age when control of the financial
and economic resources of America (including vast swaths of prime development
real estate given to railroads and other private businesses) was gained by the
industrial "robber barons" of that era via legal, financial and political machinations.
As always, the big Anglo-American
banks who create all the credit money to finance and monetize these gains are
central players. WWI and WWII financial
and industrial profiteering vastly increased both the absolute size and wealth
and the concentrated ownership of the new financial, industrial and real estate
corporate aristocracy.
After WWII,
corporatism was fully in command of America's economic life. The Cold War mentality of permanent war
readiness provided the military-industrial "defense" industries with not only lucrative
and secure government funded corporate profits, but a virtual monopoly on the
most high tech scientific and engineering talent and inventions. The "militaristic worldview" of the
elites, the politicians and the general public also elevated the military
commanders to new heights of foreign policy and even domestic economy policy influence. International relations were no longer
"diplomatic" relations, they were now military relations: everyone was either
ally or enemy.
At Senate Armed
Services Committee hearings before his confirmation as Secretary of Defense,
former CEO (and at the time still a very large stockholder) of General Motors
Charles Erwin Wilson was asked if he could make a decision as Secretary of Defense
that would be adverse to General Motors.
His famously misquoted answer was that he could not conceive of such a
situation because, "for years I thought what was good for our country was good
for General Motors". Corporate
interests were (and are) identified as "America's" interests, but
they are really just the money, power and status interests of the ruling
class. These interests sometimes
coincide with the interests of independent business and of labor, but "policy"
is made to serve the large interests, not the small interests or "the
people". To a significant extent
democratic and populist political rhetoric is just a smokescreen to disguise
the real corporate-friendly objectives of policy choices, which is well known
to readers of non-corporate news sources like OpEd News.
Mills describes how the
corporate plutocracy has developed (and in most cases believes in) a worldview that
is embodied in what he calls the "Romantic conservative". This mythical image
of the political economy is rooted in the classical liberal ideal of "balance":
free markets in economics and politics where competitive forces work "as if by
an invisible hand" to prevent anyone from gaining power and to optimize
socioeconomic outcomes for everyone.
This view is "romantic" because it imagines a wonderful world that might
be, and chooses not to see the real world as it is.
The seminal documents
of this attractive but anti-historical and counterfactual worldview are two
books published in the mid-18th century. The first was Montesquieu's 1750, "The Spirit of the Laws",
where he lays out his tripartite system of government where each of the
Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches of government acts as effective
checks on each other's aspirations to power; the vaunted "checks and balances"
system. America adopted
Montesquieu's system in the constitution of its government.
In 1864 a Frenchman
named Maurice Joly published a book titled, "The Dialogue in Hell Between
Machiavelli and Montesquieu: Humanitarian Despotism and the Conditions of
Modern Tyranny". Machiavelli
published "The Prince" in 1513. Joly
pits Machiavelli's devious Prince against Montesquieu's rational system of
government. In the book the
recently deceased Montesquieu joins Machiavelli in Hades where they await the
Resurrection and Judgment.
Montesquieu regales Machiavelli with the genius of his "incorruptible"
balance of powers political system.
Machiavelli proceeds to lay out how he could indeed corrupt Montesquieu's
"incorruptible' system in very short order. And as the coup de grace, Machiavelli informs the now
horrified Montesquieu that his beloved republican France has ALREADY descended into
the tyranny of (Napoleonic) Empire.
"Balance of power" is
an Enlightenment "theory" of ideal government, but Joly demonstrates how
political realism, the reality of corrupting power, easily defeats the
aspirations of enlightened reason.
People can be corrupted by appeals to their narrow and shortsighted self
interest. As Donald Wood concludes
in his 1996 book, "Post-Intellectualism and the Decline of Democracy: The
Failure of Reason and Responsibility in the Twentieth Century", the
Enlightenment ideals of enlightened self interest have not been realized. Human nature has not "improved" as was
hoped. "Self government" is not
possible, if the people prefer bread and circuses provided by their
rulers.
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