| Back OpEd News | |||||||
|
Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_richard__080128_capitalism_as_the_en.htm (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
|||||||
January 28, 2008
Capitalism as the Engine of Global Crisis
By Richard Mynick
The months and years ahead may bring catastrophe through military conflagration, environmental disaster, economic collapse, or any combination of these. This essay argues that these problems are all ultimately linked; that they are fundamentally rooted in corporate capitalism, and moreover that none of them can be solved within the framework of capitalism.
::::::::
It's increasingly evident to thoughtful persons that humanity has entered a period of unusual danger on multiple fronts. The months and years ahead may bring catastrophe through military conflagration, environmental disaster, economic collapse, or any combination of these. This essay will argue that these problems are all ultimately linked; that they are fundamentally rooted in corporate capitalism, and moreover that none of them can be solved within the framework of capitalism. I will focus on the role of capitalist ideology in precluding resolution of the gathering tensions; and on the idea of capitalism as a system that can be analyzed somewhat as mechanical systems are analyzed.
Infinite Growth in a Finite World?
Capitalism seeks to maximize growth. "Growth" is calculated in a way that overlooks fundamental quality-of-life determinants such as the social cohesiveness of communities, clean air and water, access to healthcare and education, well-maintained parks, leisure time, and the like. Meanwhile, such noxious "goods and services" as mind-numbing TV commercials, hideous real-estate development, and high-tech weapons systems are counted as "positive contributions" to GDP.
The obsession with growth is oppressive and objectionable, even in times not threatened by imminent systemic crisis. But when consumption nears certain natural limits, such as the exhaustion of vital resources, a unidimensional insistence on growth becomes the enemy of reason and planetary well-being. You can't have infinite growth in a finite world -- yet capitalist theology provides no adequate mechanisms for recognizing and responding to such limitations.
The capitalist apologist might argue that as certain processes (climate change, water pollution, the destruction of rain forests and various biological species, etc) approach critical points, a set of price rises should signal economic actors to desist from the offending processes, & to develop alternatives. However, this simple "Econ 101 supply-and-demand" view does not factor in the ability of corporate monopolies and cartels to overwhelm society's information-processing abilities. The simplest example is the threat posed by global warming -- where, rather than facing the crisis, oil corporations are able to simply buy or bribe media outlets and government into denying that the crisis even exists.
This last example -- the power of cartels -- reflects another increasingly destructive and destabilizing aspect of capitalism: the inexorable tendency towards concentration of wealth. The adage that "the rich get richer" is widely acknowledged in American culture. The phrase itself has a kind of "folk wisdom" status. It's often spoken with a rueful chuckle, then dismissed -- as though it were simply "the way of the world" -- as natural and inevitable as the sun setting in the west.
But what underlies the adage is no laughing matter. An economic system in which the dominant social class becomes ever wealthier and more powerful is ultimately incompatible with democratic governance. The only possible endpoint for such a system is a two-tiered society consisting of a ruling class, and everyone else. The only governmental form possible in such a society is plutocracy, in which the machinery of state becomes purely an instrument of class rule. The Bush administration, and the concurrent lack of a real opposition party, are merely bitter foretastes of the blatancy these tendencies must eventually achieve.
The system dynamics here deserve serious reflection, because the basic process is a "self-reinforcing feedback loop." To wit: the wealthier the ruling class gets, the more influential it becomes. The more influential it becomes, the more it can effect policy to make its members still wealthier. A self-reinforcing feedback process grows stronger as time goes on, & can't be stopped without the action of an outside force. In this case, as the loop continues, class tyranny becomes ever more entrenched. Ultimately, the only possible outcomes of such a process are class dictatorship, or social upheaval.
The Cell: a Metaphor for the Organization of Living Systems
In 1974, the physician Lewis Thomas wrote a collection of essays titled "The Lives of a Cell." It was something of a sensation in certain circles, and won the National Book Award. The titular essay ended with this passage:
Indeed, many of the basic processes exhibited by the individual cell -- ingestion, metabolism, growth, excretion, reproduction, and so forth -- are seen at every level of living organization, from the cell, to the multicellular organism, to simple and then great populations, up to and including the whole biosphere. The analogy is self-evidently a rich and compelling one.
What is capitalism, in this analogy? Capitalism is the logic of a cancer cell. It is the prioritizing of growth to the exclusion of all else, regardless of the consequences for the "organism" as a whole. The capitalist class is a cancer on the aggregate social body. While the rest of the body labors to perform its varied functions -- all essential for the well-being of the whole organism -- a disproportionate share of vital nutrients is commandeered by the tumor and diverted into its own excessive and chaotic growth, until the process consumes, cripples, and destroys the entire organism.
In still another sense, an elemental theme is recapitulated as one moves from lower to higher levels of social organization. Marx describes the "class war" -- the inherently conflicting interests of working class and the capitalist. It is clear that at the most concrete and local level (say, a factory owner and his workers), the capitalist holds the power, which the workers must submit to, or cope with as best they can.
What is still true but far less obvious is that as capitalist power relations are echoed throughout ascending levels of society, one winds up with a national power structure just as favorable to the capitalist class in relation to the working class, as the individual worker-capitalist relationship is to the individual CEO or factory owner.
The working class is roughly 4/5 of the population. The various layers of the middle class comprise most of the rest, while the capitalist class is less than a percent. Based on these general estimates alone, it should evoke astonishment that there is no such thing in the United States as a "workers' party." Instead, workers are compelled to vote for candidates of one of the two officially-sanctioned capitalist parties, both of which exist primarily to promote the interests of the richest Americans. This arrangement is papered over with silly fluff in which each party purports to represent the interests of "all Americans" -- a posture so ludicrous that it's difficult to even say it with a straight face. And of course, if you live here, and have heard it all your life, you become so accustomed to the idea that we only have two parties, that it begins to seem "natural." Yet there's really nothing natural about the fact that the 99% of the population who are not in the capitalist class are nonetheless compelled to vote for one of two parties which BOTH primarily serve the interests of the richest 1% -- often to the detriment of most of those 99%. It's deeply revealing, when one pauses to consider it, that in the United States, this arrangement is reverently referred to as "democracy."
— Edward Dowling, Editor and Priest, Chicago Daily News, July 28, 1941
Why Do People Accept Rule by Elites?
Some 250 years ago, David Hume inquired into "...the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, the implicit submission with which men resign..." their fate to the few who rule over them. Hume noted that in terms of raw strength, "force is always on the side of the governed." What is it, one might wonder, that prevents the many from rising up and taking power themselves? Hume concluded that it is ultimately "on opinion only that government is founded." {1} Rule by the few rests, therefore, on managing the opinions of the many.
Under feudalism, for example, a king was able to rule over a large number of subjects -- in the final analysis because the subject population accepted the arrangement. Of course the king would have some armed thugs at his disposal, just in case some serfs stepped out of line. But for the most part, it was acceptance of the king's right to rule, that undergirded social stability.
A look at modern society shows that little has changed. For the ruling establishment to be accepted by the masses as society's legitimate leadership, it's necessary to impose a certain mode of thought on the population. In adopting this mode of thought, or "social doctrine," a citizen agrees to a set of power relationships, and accepts the society's core institutional structures as legitimate. The doctrine itself is usually unspoken of, and unchallenged. It operates at an unconscious (or at least, unexamined) level, automatically & reflexively, most of the time. Accepting it is what we call socialization -- or "indoctrination."
Because social stability (ie, continued rule by elites) depends so critically on mass acceptance of the doctrine, society is extremely sensitive and resistant to any examination of the doctrine's constituent ideas. Such subjects -- and lines of thought leading too close to such subjects -- are practically taboo.
Elites and the "Ruling Ideas"
What is the "ruling establishment?" The Establishment is a layer at the very top of the social pyramid, roughly the richest and most influential half-percent or so of the population. It consists of the upper echelons of the corporate world, the top military brass, powerful elected officials, high-level career bureaucrats, and influential members of the press and academia.
Though in many ways a diverse group, the Establishment as a whole has definite interests which bind all its members, and which often conflict with those of the rest of the population. The "social doctrine" mentioned above (also referred to as "The Dominant Paradigm" on a witty bumpersticker, as Michael Parenti notes {2}) amounts to a worldview legitimizing society's hierarchical structure. It's a special prism which, when you look through it, makes it seem plausible that elite rule is "natural" and justified.
Marx observed that "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." In feudal times, these "ruling ideas" included the divine right of kings. In our time, they include similar props for the prevailing power structure. The notion that we live and work in a merit-based system is one such idea. The notions that justice is a foundational element of our society ("We are a society of laws, not men"); and that we have a "democracy," are others. A very important one is that our society is organized as it is, because this "maximizes production" and is "most efficient."
It's crucial of course that the ruling ideas comprising our social doctrine are supposed to be held by everyone, regardless of whether you're a ruling class member or not. Indeed, that's precisely their utility, so far as social stability is concerned: if most non-elites rejected the ideology, the few would no longer be able to dominate the many.
Capitalism and the Social Doctrine
What is the relation between capitalism and our social doctrine? According to the doctrine itself, we have a capitalist economic system because it leads to the greatest good for the greatest number of people, by virtue of its dynamism and efficiency. In reality, we have it because it allows a relatively small number of people to amass unlimited wealth.
This last is an example of how the doctrine itself serves the ideological needs of the underlying economic system. If it were publicly proclaimed that we have capitalism because it permits a few people to become infinitely rich at the expense of everyone else, it would likely be poorly-received by the masses. They might get angry and revolt. It is therefore politic to implant the idea that the whole scheme is merit-based; that the rich enjoy their wealth only because of their contributions to the greater good; and that everyone is better off because of it.
Is it an accident that the social doctrine so conveniently serves the ideological needs of the economic system? Not hardly. Marx provided penetrating insight into the relationship between the doctrine (ie, the ideology) and the needs of the underlying economic system:
In other words, much of our consciousness -- our way of thinking about the world, including our social, intellectual, legal and political ideas -- ultimately arises from, and is shaped by, our "mode of production" -- by the economic system. Under capitalism, there's great pressure to think like a citizen in a capitalist society is "supposed" to think. Under feudalism, it's easy to imagine that one was likewise pressured to conform to the ideology of that era.
Chomsky and Edward Herman are rightly credited with contributing great insight into the forces really determining the performance of the corporate media. But in a sense, their writings on media can be seen as simply a special-case application of the general principle Marx lays out, above.
Our Gravest Dangers Can't Be Solved in the Capitalist Framework
In the beginning of this essay, I asserted that the 3 greatest dangers we currently face -- endless and unnecessary war, environmental destruction, and economic collapse -- are all rooted in the imperatives of corporate capitalism; and that none of these dangers can be averted within the framework of capitalism. I'll attempt to sketch a defense of this assertion here, drawing on the notion of the "social doctrine."
The movie's official website even has a "What You Can Do" section, listing such things as keeping your tires inflated and insulating your home. It goes so far as to say (in boldface type) that "Reversing global warming is not a political issue"!{4} To the contrary, of course -- no issue could possibly be more political.
An experienced politician like Gore is keenly aware of what lines may be safely crossed in public discourse. He understood that it's permissible to present evidence about climate change; but that specifically attacking the oil corporations -- and their control over the media and the political system -- is stepping over a line that can't be crossed. (In the recent Democratic Party debates, John Edwards has crossed that line -- and the media has relegated him to the rank of "unperson" because of it. And of course, Dennis Kucinich has always been an "unperson," because many of his positions violate the real but unspoken precepts of corporatist doctrine.)
The rule underlying these phenomena follows directly from Marx's passage quoted in the last section. In a capitalist society, most commonly-heard political opinion is a reflection of ruling class interests and system imperatives. A public examination of the question "Has corporate power become excessive?" is impermissible on both counts: it cuts against ruling class interests, and violates system imperatives. In the religion of corporate capitalism, the very concept of "excessive corporate power" is a kind of heresy; one may not speak of it. (It's like asking whether God has too much power, and whether He can be trusted with it.) Accordingly, Gore won't speak of it in his movie, and Edwards and Kucinich can't do it in debates.
The issue of corporate power can't be addressed in nationally televised debates. It can hardly even be mentioned. Anyone who tries to do so is promptly labeled "anti-business" by the media, and relegated to unperson status -- just as a heretic might be excommunicated. In effect, the whole subject is "off the table" -- like all other subjects that might in any way threaten the prevailing power structure. The diabolical element of genius here is not the ability of corporatists to "win the debate" about corporate power; it's their ability to control what subjects even get debated, and to block any debates they don't want to have. The issue of "excessive corporate power" is simply not open for discussion.
A serious discussion of global warming must necessarily examine the question of corporate power. Since that question is verboten, no global warming discussion can be serious. The oil companies & allied industries can't be controlled by government, because they have purchased the government, advise the government, and practically "are" the government. They can veto legislation they don't like, or simply write their own legislation, if they choose. If they don't like the coverage they get from some media outlets, they can simply buy the outlets, or start their own. (Strictly speaking, this last point is no longer really operative. It's "so-o-o 1980's." It is no longer even necessary for the oil companies to "discipline" the media. The media has been completely defanged. It has thoroughly adapted itself to its current role, and no longer even attempts coverage that in any way treads on the toes of those who really run the country.)
The root corrupting force here has nothing to do with there being "bad people" in the boardrooms of the oil companies. Any CEO who got soft and weepy about global warming would rightly be seen by other board members and shareholders as a threat to profits. He would simply be replaced by someone less given to sentimentality. A capitalist enterprise can't do otherwise. As long as we have corporate capitalism, oil companies will try to maximize profits. One may be certain that on the day the next major American city drowns, the oil companies will still be issuing press releases claiming that global warming is a "fantasy" and that "the science is not conclusive."
The underlying economic system is the foundation of power. It sets limits on the kind of society that can be built on that foundation. The system has its core dogma; its sacred points of doctrine. The dogma can't be challenged without threatening the social structure. Those at the top of the social structure will naturally defend the dogma, often by stifling attempts to examine it. This is why, under capitalism, no response to global warming can be formulated. It's also why Bush can't be impeached. In both cases, the required discussion would cut too close to sacred points of doctrine. Such discussion is rightly recognized by the ruling classes as threatening to their position. They will accordingly do everything in their power to prevent such discussions from taking place.
At least in his famous Farewell Address (though not in actions, as president), Eisenhower saw the danger with great clarity:
It is said that Ike intended to use the phrase "military-industrial-congressional complex," but was dissuaded at the last moment by advisors. In more recent times, the phrase "military-industrial-media complex" has appeared. It would be accurate to speak of the "military-industrial-media-governmental-financial complex" (though admittedly, Ike's version worked better rhetorically). The point is that all these institutions of top-level power have become increasingly integrated, and function increasingly as a unified entity, which pursues its own interests, regardless of the effect on the "national organism." Again, analogies to a cancer, or to a parasite, are irresistible.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together..."
Since 2001, endless war has been the official stated policy of the US government. This may strike most rational people as insane -- but from the viewpoint of the MIC, it's Nirvana.
The MIC is an illustration of what inevitably develops when corporate profits are society's supreme organizing principle. By virtue of the nearly limitless demand for its products, the MIC straddles the intersection of government, military, industry, and technology. The logic of its position suggests that virtually no amount of resources would be "too much" to devote to the MIC, because demand for its products is far from sated. Indeed, like cancer, it should logically continue to grow until it consumes every bit of GDP not absolutely required for food, housing, and a few other essentials. Why should the lives of Americans be anything other than a matter of eating, sleeping, and occasionally reproducing, in order to better serve the war machine in some capacity? Whether as engineers, administrators, accountants or marketing experts, surely we can all serve Lockheed Martin or Boeing in some way.
This is doubtless where we are headed, if corporate profits remains the ultimate arbiter of society's allocation of resources. There is no countervailing force to this tendency. What's supposed to stop it? In the above quote, Eisenhower suggested that "only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" could serve as a countervailing force. As admirably prescient as much of his speech has proved to be, 47 years later we can all see that this potential countervailing force has been neutered, smashed, and removed from the playing field.
Much of the MIC's growth is driven by economic forces that would exist whether the US was "at war" or not. From the late 1940's until 2001, the MIC grew steadily, slurping insatiably from the public trough -- and there were only a few outright wars of significant duration -- Vietnam and Korea. There were numerous smaller or shorter-lived interventions, in addition. But most of the time, it was possible to keep the MIC growing steadily, even without fighting on a scale that objectively warranted MIC expansion. Even when the USSR -- the ostensible "threat" that was supposedly the MIC's raison d'etre -- disintegrated, there was no letup in "defense" spending. Instead, there was panic in Washington to come up with a new "enemy" that could replace the "Communist Menace" as a justification for MIC growth. The primary imperative was MIC growth; finding an "enemy" to justify it was secondary.
MIC expansion was immensely profitable even without occupying countries whose natural resources were great economic prizes. But the fateful US turn towards open military aggression, including the establishment of enduring bases in Iraq, created the conditions for profit-making opportunities which hadn't existed before. It opened up whole new vistas of corporate militarism.
Naomi Klein delineates a group of these in her discussion of "the homeland security bubble" which saw a network of "start-ups" and "incubator" companies sprouting up like wild mushrooms in the suburbs ringing Washington DC, in the wake of 9-11. She writes, "Whereas in the nineties the goal was to develop the killer application, the 'next new new thing,' and sell it to Microsoft or Oracle, now it was to come up with a new 'search and nail' terrorist-catching technology and sell it to the Department of Homeland Security or the Pentagon."{5} Surveillance equipment, biometric ID technology, facial recognition software and the like rapidly became big business, nourished by the US Treasury acting as "venture capitalist."
Other roles in the MIC are played by politically-connected companies like Blackwater and Halliburton. Still another role is played by the oil companies (whose executives met with Cheney 4 months before 9/11 to gaze at maps of Iraqi oil fields together -- without the MSM finding this in any way improper!).
The basic project in Iraq -- projecting military force into an oil-rich country -- flows directly from the logic of capitalism. In terms of causation (as has been articulated for years with great clarity by the WSWS {6}), the project reflects the decline of the US global economic position. The US is attempting to use its military prowess -- its one remaining area of unquestioned superiority -- to compensate for its deteriorating economic dominance.
In terms of forward-looking strategic goals, the project is inspired by the oil and gas; and the leverage it would give the US, to be able to control the energy spigot of its rivals. Under the rules of capitalism, there is simply no way to pass up an "opportunity" like this, any more than any corporate board can ever afford to pass up a chance for a truly lucrative acquistion. Initially, one might hesitate at small impediments like the US Constitution and international law. But such trifles are easily swept aside. The "law" must give way, because the law arises from the foundation of the profit system, not the other way around. (Another affirmation of Marx: the economic system is primary; while concepts of law are subordinate, and are abandoned when they no longer serve the system. Similarly, concepts of politics are subordinate, and are abandoned when no longer useful. This is why the Bill of Rights, Geneva Conventions, habeas corpus, & so on are simply being thrown overboard.)
Stepping back for a moment to assess how all the forces line up, one sees that the imperatives of the economic system "incentivize" war at every level. The only force against the war is the population who's being forced to fight it and pay for it -- but they have no power. By contrast, the oil and oil-service companies, the security companies, weapons makers, helicopter makers, military-base service & construction firms, and so forth, all have a great deal to gain by more war. And they all have plenty of power.
The arena of official politics reflects the decidedly pro-war imperatives of the economic system. There, we currently see the spectacle of the "presidential primaries," where both parties are predictably moving towards nominating pro-war candidates (neatly disenfranchising the 70% of the public that opposes the war). One party is unabashedly pro-war; the other is no less determined to achieve the strategic and economic goals of the occupation, but conceals this by emphasizing language like "getting the troops home as soon as possible." Meanwhile, the media also reflects the same system imperatives, portraying the establishment of permanent military bases in an oil-rich country as "fighting terrorism, to keep Americans safe." No candidates of either party dare contradict this laughably dishonest and self-serving formulation -- to do so would run counter to sacred points of state doctrine.
Even the perennial media and government cheerleaders for the "strength of the US economy" had recently begun to acknowledge that there will be some rough sailing ahead. For years, these voices had blithely ignored the failings illustrated by burgeoning trade and budget deficits, mounting indebtedness, weak job creation, the offshoring of American jobs, the stock market and housing bubbles, and the drop in real living standards for over 80% of the population since 1977.{7}
Though the MSM has predictably sought to conceal it, the trigger for the currently threatened collapse -- the credit crunch brought about by the subprime mortgage fiasco -- is a tremendous crime. It's not (as the MSM narrative would have it) a "natural" economic problem, like the fluctuations of the business cycle. Rather, it stems from a massive Enron-style looting, far more ambitious than anything Ken Lay ever pulled off. Mortgage originators knew perfectly well that they were creating "securities" based on something that was guaranteed to fail: the ability of uncreditworthy homebuyers to buy wildly overpriced houses. They created these securities, got rating firms like Moody's to rate them "AAA," then turned right around and sold sliced-and-repackaged versions of these things to other banks and pension funds around the world. Now much of the financial world is sinking in the resultant toxic sludge.
Nonetheless, the shysters who did this (aided & abetted by financial deregulation, which both parties backed), and some of the banks they sold sludge to, are still very powerful people. They got their friends at the Fed to bail them out. This makes the banks happy, and it makes the stock market happy. But it does nothing to help those who were victimized by predatory loans and will lose their homes to foreclosure; or the many retirees who live on interest income from their savings. It harms the entire domestic population, who will be paying the bill via increased inflation, as the dollar drops and import prices rise. The Fed's action is "of Wall St, by Wall St, and for Wall St." Essentially, it shifts the burden of paying for the theft from the powerful to the powerless. This is only to be expected, in a society that's run almost exclusively to protect the interests of the privileged.
It's very significant that the looters themselves -- the loan originators -- are not only going to get away scot-free with their crime, but are not even going to be conceptually identified. The entire matter is being shoved under the rug, as the MSM builds a divorced-from-reality narrative of the gallant Fed "rescuing the economy," while it's really just trying to bail out the banks, including some that colluded in the original crime, and others who simply made foolish investments (which you're supposed to "own," in capitalist theory). The economic "problem" is being presented to the public as a "credit crunch." Nobody really understands just what that means -- which is all to the good, as far as the criminals and their powerful protectors are concerned -- but the term is useful because a "credit crunch," like a hurricane, has no deliberately scheming villains behind it. The mortgage scam, by contrast, certainly does have scheming villains behind it.
Note that the MSM narrative bears a striking parallel to the official narrative on Iraq, where what is really a world-class crime committed by the most powerful US institutions, driven by the private profit of a small class of people, is portrayed as a "noble undertaking" which supposedly "protects all Americans." In both delusional narratives, the crime in question is asserted to be "good" because it "helps all Americans" -- in the one case by rescuing "their" economy, in the other by protecting their "security." Only in a society where class consciousness has been so systematically erased from the public culture, could a national media hope to get away with conflating the interests of "all Americans" with those of a handful of giant politically-connected corporations.
Even if the mortgage-scam gangsters hadn't brought things to a near-term head, the US economy was still destined for a painful confrontation with reality. While earlier robber barons like Henry Ford understood that it was necessary to pay his workers a wage that would enable them to buy a Model T, today's robber barons lack that insight, and simply aim to plunder everything they can get their hands on. The predictable outcome has been rising wealth inequality, the 2-tier society, and the putrefaction of political institutions and media.
A System Can't Fix Itself When It Only Wants to Maintain Itself
The tendency towards increasing concentration of capital that Marx pointed to 150 years ago is alive and well. The United States may once have honored a document claiming that "all men are created equal," but going forward, the only visible prospect is a 2-tier society bankrupting itself in endless war, ruled by Wall St and the MIC. The 2 parties scarcely pretend to be more than instruments of the corporate oligarchy, while the media is the propaganda arm of the entire complex. No solution can emerge from official politics, since its function is not "solving problems," but rather protecting the social order -- in part by stifling consciousness of capitalism's inevitable consequences. Just as the oil companies will not permit recognition of global warming, the 2 US parties cannot permit recognition of US crimes in Iraq, and the MSM cannot permit recognition that the current economic convulsions result from Wall St's looting of society's resources. In each case, powerful institutions are closing ranks to protect capitalist imperatives from the type of critical public examination that would discredit the whole system.
Within the context of capitalism, the oil companies, MIC firms, Wall St banks, and media conglomerates cannot be faulted for what has happened. They did just what they're supposed to do. They wanted to maximize profits, and rightly perceived that this required overhauling the US form of government. Unfortunately, this involved scrapping broad swaths of the Constitution & international law, and debasing the media. Ultimately, you can have maximum corporate profits; or the Constitution and some degree of media integrity -- but you can't have both. ("We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both." -- Justice Louis Brandeis)
Once we accept that profits shall be society's supreme organizing principle, we condemn ourselves to a trajectory of ever-increasing rule by a consortium of banks, oil companies, and weapons contractors. Averting one's eyes from this unpleasant prospect may feel better in the short term -- but doesn't alter the trajectory, or the forces relentlessly guiding it.
References:
{1} David Hume, 1758, "Of the First Principles of Government." See for example "The People Who Own the Country Shouldn't Run It," Gore Vidal, http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/2524.html
{2} Michael Parenti, Contrary Notions, 2007, p 33. The bumpersticker Parenti refers to reads "Subvert the Dominant Paradigm."
{3} Karl Marx, Preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," 1859. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
{4} Fan site for the film at http://www.an-inconvenient-truth.com/
{5} Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2007, p 301, Ch 14
{6} World Socialist Web Site. WSWS has articulated this theme repeatedly, recently for example at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/econ-j23.shtml. A fuller exposition is at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/nib2-f13.shtml.
{7} See for example Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy, 2002, statistical data developed in book's closing section.