Inverted totalitarianism?
Counterpunch
Oh, Those Nasty Russians — Notes on Totalitarianism
Norman Pollack
Counterpunch
Oh, Those Nasty Russians — Notes on Totalitarianism
Norman Pollack
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Norman Pollack — Oh, Those Nasty Russians — Notes on Totalitarianism
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10 comments:
"inverted totalitarianism is described as a system where corporations have corrupted and subverted democracy and where economics trumps politics."
Its not that corporations have corrupted democracy its that our economic policy makers are blind to any authority they have to impose a more robust and just economic outcome and they leave it up to the non-govt sector (code here "corporations") that has to somehow foment a "natural" outcome of a robust and just economic result...
"Corporations" I'm sure are flattered with this idea but they cant do it, they have no authority to do it.
So corporations take advantage of govt policy makers mailing it in like this and use these govt sector beliefs to their advantage in advocating for policy adjustments that often directly favor them...
The US is highly libertarian and this is what you get with libertarianism... govt is out to lunch...
Our economics SHOULD trump politics...
why would you want politics to trump economics????
This sounds like it is some sort of "Political Science" point of view where "politics is everything" to these people.... so theyre like "we cant have economics trump the politics!!!!"
More political idiocy here imo....
"economics trumps politics"
That was Chris Hedges' definition.
M,
Look at Hedges bio.... English and a M.Div. ..
He's NOT QUALIFIED to be opining on any of this.... he's all confused...
"Libertarianism requires strict enforcement of the sanctity of person and property, especially for the powerless against the powerful"
Really? Who protects poor people in Libertarian fantasy land?
"...and completely prohibits ANY and ALL business subsidies and favors"
In Libertarian fantasy land, big business IS the government.
@Bob Roddis,
Just because Friedrich Hayek wrote it doesn't mean that it's accurate. Hayek was commenting on politics, and political thought groups, just as any other person could, and giving his perception of them.
Franko is actually talking about the economic structure in a society. The which-came-first question. As his second paragraph shows, he is indicting the "economic policy makers," i.e: our congressmen, for failing to do their jobs under the constitution in providing for the general welfare of all. They are, after all, the only ones who have the legal right and duty to fulfill.
The economy should serve the people, not a financial index or phalanx of corporations. In fact, during the heavily libertarian 19th C, according to noted Stanford-based 19th C historian Richard White, the vast majority of Americans believed that the purpose of an economy in a republican society was to produce republican citizens, not the highest gross national product. (C-SPAN talk Commonwealth Club of California at around 55 minutes).
He said that they believed that the economy should "produce citizens who are able to take their civic role in the republic and they were very clear what they were talking about here. That means:
• a worker should be able to support his family
• that there should be a kind of independence among producers, nobody can dictate to them about the conditions in which they will reach market."
White went on to say, "They really hold these things very, very seriously, and it becomes the core of this politics. It's a politics, I think, we completely misunderstand now, but they really understood at the time."
Hayek's view of Germany and Nazism from his perch in Austria is an interesting historical view, but it has no bearing on how our economy is structured.
Hayek's equating both fascism and communism with "socialism," that is, government power, is true in a sense and in another sense it is nonsense. Both were totalitarian systems in which government was hijacked, in in the case of communism by the left and in the case of fascism by the right. Neither Stalin or Mao's communism, or Hitler's Nazism, or Mussolini's fascism were socialism in the sense of worker control. They were top down authoritarian states that where captured by force, even through they all began with popular movements that were reacting to conditions that people in general regarded as unacceptable. This is the danger of revolutions and it is even a failing of republicanism aka representative democracy as the history of the Roman republic goes to show.
Government is always centralized to the degree that the organizational model it employs is hierarchical, since this model was developed historically based on a power structure, a ruling class, and militaries with chains of command.
Where there is hierarchical government there is the potential for capture by the left or the right. In fact, this is what contemporary politics is about through legitimate means and common consent usually arrived at through either majority vote or coalitions of parties. The party or coalition that controls the government hold the reins of power centrally.
Through corruption of the system, e.g., through bribery and other forms of influence (which can be legalized) or force, control of the system can be seized by either the right, e.g. resulting in fascism, or the left, e.g., resulting in communism.
A third possibility, which is now becoming more visible in the US, is capture of the system by the deep state in the form of "bureaucracy," usually involving the clandestine services and often the military also.
Libertarians of the left and right therefore advocate for either limited government, no government, or non-hierarchical consensual government. Just as Marx assumed that communism would eventually lead to the withering away of the state, ensuing in utopia, so too, economic liberals and anarcho-capitalists assume that their political model based on minimal rules and economic liberalism will also lead to a withering away of the state and ensuing utopia.
Since there is not precedent of this ever happening historically on any significant scale or in anything like contemporary context, there assumptions are utopian. The question is the degree to which it is reasonable to conclude that adoption of the models would lead to a utopia or even a more desirable state of affairs socially, politically, and economic than has yet existed.
There is no historical evidence supporting this, and the justification must therefore come from reasoning from principles. But reasoning from principle is not scientific but philosophical and this is tantamount to saying ideological.
As a libertarian, I would like either to be true or even plausible, but I see no good reason to conclude this, let along be persuaded that the argument is either logically compelling or empirically warranted. I conclude that it is more rhetorical than logical, pleading for competing libertarian ideologies from right and left.
Libertarians need to look elsewhere than these extremes. My own opinion is that libertarianism's time has not yet arrived owing to lack of sufficient development of individual consciousness/conscience on a sufficiently large scale to be socially viable. Humanity still has work to do in developing itself to be capable of the type of freedom that can be imagined and desired.
History has a liberal bias and freedom is expanding. However, neither Marx nor Rothbard have presented a credible model suitable of adoption today, or even capable of being adopted on any scale today.
The classical text of libertarianism is the Tao Te ChingTao Te Ching (Daodejing), which is attributed to Lao Tzu (Laozi). This is my view of libertarianism.
@Tom HIckey,
The crux. Precisely.
libertarianism's time has not yet arrived owing to lack of sufficient development of individual consciousness/conscience on a sufficiently large scale to be socially viable.
On this we concur 110%:
The classical text of libertarianism is the Tao Te ChingTao Te Ching (Daodejing), which is attributed to Lao Tzu (Laozi). This is my view of libertarianism.
And this, although I would add the emphasis in brackets:
Humanity still has [a lot of] work to do in developing itself to be capable of the type of freedom that can be imagined and desired.
Rothbard does not advocate limited government. He advocates absolute dictatorship.
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