This is the favorite whipping boy of John Ralston Saul, in his book The Unconscious Civilization. Since it is one of mine too, I enjoy reading him. I took a slightly different approach: finding where power resides - but came to the same conclusion: in the large corporations in our economy. In their book The Power Structure of American Business sociologists Beth Minz and Michael Schwartz describe this power structure in considerable detail with lots of tables, graphs, and diagrams. In summary: they are all in bed with each other - to an amazing degree.
This should surprise nobody, but it should - because they are running our economy and our government. In other words: the are running us - and no one finds this the least bit worrisome. This is probably because their logic is simple: capitalism produces democracy - and everybody swallows this absurd foolishness without thinking about it. The two are direct opposites, not bed-fellows! Émile Durkham expressed its rhetoric this way:
The corporations are to become the elementary division of the state, the fundamental political unit. They will efface the distinction between public and private, and dissect the democratic citizenry into discrete functional groupings which are no longer capable of joint political action.
Corporatism, as developed in the 1920s, had three aims:
Shift power directly to economic and social interest groups.
Push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies.
Obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest - that is, challenge the idea of the public interest.
These were incorporated into Fascism, and later, in the US, into neoconservatism - but more importantly, into the Democratic Party, which is eager to serve them.
In case you see nothing wrong with this, let me remind you of what it means: political power has been removed from our hands.
Corporatism
This is the favorite whipping boy of John Ralston Saul, in his book The Unconscious Civilization. Since it is one of mine too, I enjoy reading him. I took a slightly different approach: finding where power resides - but came to the same conclusion: in the large corporations in our economy. In their book The Power Structure of American Business sociologists Beth Minz and Michael Schwartz describe this power structure in considerable detail with lots of tables, graphs, and diagrams. In summary: they are all in bed with each other - to an amazing degree.
This should surprise nobody, but it should - because they are running our economy and our government. In other words: the are running us - and no one finds this the least bit worrisome. This is probably because their logic is simple: capitalism produces democracy - and everybody swallows this absurd foolishness without thinking about it. The two are direct opposites, not bed-fellows! Émile Durkham expressed its rhetoric this way:
Corporatism, as developed in the 1920s, had three aims:These were incorporated into Fascism, and later, in the US, into neoconservatism - but more importantly, into the Democratic Party, which is eager to serve them.
In case you see nothing wrong with this, let me remind you of what it means: political power has been removed from our hands.
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