Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Norman Pollack — Monster Capitalism and the Complicit State

The phrase “close-embrace” to describe the incestuous relationship between business and government in advanced capitalism is by Masao Maryuma, a Japanese political scientist to describe corporate concentration under the blessing and encouragement of government. This is, along with the centrality of war and market expansion, among the most salient integral features of capitalist development in its progression to monopolism, hierarchical class structure, and establishing a full-blown partnership with government: the Corporate and National-Security States merging, with national security concerned as much with protecting the market share and freedom from adverse regulation of the dominant firms in the industrial and financial sectors, as with putatively repelling a foreign foe and protecting the “homeland”. The upshot, fascism without, necessarily, the concentration camp—fascism predicated on the internalized repression of the populace, conditioned to look to the business system as the genius of the nation, its arbiter of taste, its salvation. The trickle-down paradigm follows, as does the moral superiority of those at the top AND the enterprises they lead—conversely, justified class-stratification where the lazy and/or subversive (i.e., those maladapted to the incentives offered by capitalism) fall deservedly into an underclass.
Counterpunch
Monster Capitalism and the Complicit State
Norman Pollack

2 comments:

Jan said...

Harry Carney speaks out http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/27/capitalism-critique-bank-of-england-carney

Matt Franko said...

Its interesting to see this website which at least borders on exhibiting paranoia wrt the state and corporate business organization also has a book it is trying to sell in the right hand column titled "Its NORML to Smoke Pot" which has typically been against the LAW to possess or sell...

And the recreational use of has been documented to produce paranoia:

http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/06/why-pot-smokers-are-paranoid/

And as they are libertarians over there, this title is revealing in that to libertarians, it IS 'normal' to routinely ignore authority and laws that come out of it, this from people both on the left and right...

Is there a connection between marijuana use and libertarianism on the left? And on the right, I would link metals (guns/gold, etc) to libertarianism over there..

So on the left you have all the pot head libertarians who are antagonistic to the marijuana laws and on the right you have all the metal head libertarians who are antagonistic to the gun laws and non-convertible currency systems.

But in either case with these two cohorts the common factor is a heavy dose of libertarianism with these people, while drugs are at work generally on the left and metals generally at work on the right.

rsp,