Corps(e)

There's a "new" way of doing things, economically. So called "State Capitalism (see the current issue of the Economist). This is where the Authoritarian State takes over, or forms, a Corporation. Like China owning it's phone company, or Saudi Arabia buying controlling shares in an Omani Gas Drilling Company. This is the Legacy of State Communism...and, like that arguable perversion of a Good Idea, relies on Force, Coercion and Authoritarianism. I don't reckon that anyone reading this would desire to live under such a system...it has all those traits that the Propagandists of the Cold War railed on about the USSR. One could say that the East has a long acquaintance with Authoritarianism....

In the West, we have acquaintance with a different kind of Authoritarianism...and our Corps reflect this. It is Myth that USA is a Purely Capitalist Country(world without end...)

here, our Government didn't purchase, or found, the Corps...the Corps, instead, ate the Government.

We both operate under certain fictions...in the West, that everyone is Free, and all the rest of the Liberal Democratic Canon....in the East, that everyone knows their place, and that the Heirarchy is equivalent to the Cosmic Machine.

Both of these, East and West,State owned Capitalism, and Capitalist Owned State, seem to be pointing in the same direction....an end to Liberal Democracy, and an end to Individual Freedom....Both are inherently Authoritarian...

All us little people are to be merely cogs in the wheel.

As I've said, and alluded to, repeatedly...I prefer a loose fundamentalist resurgence of Adam Smith's Capitalism....tempered with Marx's Socialism.

The thing that jumped out at me, with Smith...was the need to distribute the Means of Production as widely as possible. Democratise Everything. Instead of Petrobras, or Exxon...a million little oil companies(we need a new word?)connected up to a state supported infrastructure of distribution, refining and whatnot. (Oil is a bad example, per the reality of PO).

The naysayers fear that "We" will somehow "Lose", if we went this route....that "We" couldn't compete with Exxon or Petrobras....I figure that that sentiment is predicated on certain assumptions that need not be as important as the current Paradigm makes them. The world will soon begin Shrinking....with the end of cheap oil.....instead of Global Concerns, Local will become more and more important.

Perhaps the Corporation has reached the limit of it's usefulness.

I think of the success of the Internet....a million nodes...interconnected...headless, and therefore unkillable. Distributed Network. You know the story. Robust,.

Why not apply the same Model to what we call "Business"....which is the identification of Needs/Wants, and the attempt to satisfy them.

For 30+ years, the mantra has been that Capitalism is the End of History...that this is proved by the collapse of the USSR(state commie...not really Marxist,btw)...and that the Free Market(supposedly the thing we're aiming for(!?)) will triumph....and that there is no alternative(TINA).

Brewing and fermenting in far off China, where the Masters of Capitalism sent all our Plant(?), is this alternative..."State Capitalism".

.............I can hear the new ideological, existential struggle, already....

Democracy, as usual, is given no consideration...at best, only lip service...like a tshirt.

Perhaps Adam Smith, Marx and Thoreau(!!!) should be taught in high schools...ha! it says a lot that this is utterly unlikely.

(http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6491/)

(http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6470/)

(http://www.alternet.org/story/153933/7_signs_the_corporatocracy_is_losing_its_legitimacy--and_7_tools_to_help_shut_it_down/?page=entire)

(http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/this-changes-everything-how-the-99-woke-up)