paul krugman/naomi klein statist leftism vs. right-wing corporatism presents us with a horrendous dilemma: state or corporation? it articulates a stark choice between forms of subordination: state control of the economy (along with and backed by military or police coercion), welfare-state regimes of total surveillance and public housing vs. horrendous economic inequalities, third-world exploitation, and every surface plastered in advertising. choose a spike for your impalement. but i suggest that this opposition is anachronistic, still based on marxist vs laissez-faire models as they squared off in the 19th century. seriously, on which horn of this dilemma do you place china? both at once, and the u.s. and the eu are constantly approaching the condition of squishy totalitarianism: the merger of corporation and state into a single overwhelming power (well, they were never as distinct as the ideologies made them seem). the point has to be resistance to power. if the choice is state or corporation, we had better colonize a new planet and start again.

say your strategy to reduce the power of goldman sachs was to give more power to the treasury department...you'd merely be naive and confused. 

Comments

[adamcrazypants]

every day, the news is the same.

I'm not a political anarchist, I'm a political nihilist. all I see is people behaving badly everywhere all the time.

[Abonilox]

Finally I see something on here that indicts both rotten heads of the leviathan.

We can't colonize another planet yet... but what about Greenland? You know with global warming upon us, I think we could make a go of it.

(Note to self: Search the archives for definition of "squishy totalitarianism")

[Cb]

FYI: Klein is an open proponent of anarchism. Her documentary "the take" is about an anarchist movement in Argentina. Amazing doc, loved it.

[Lisa Simeone]

Abonilox:

http://eyeofthestorm.blogs.com/eye_of_the_storm/2009/01/define-squishy-totalitarianism-alright-its-totalitarian-in-that-the-state-permeates-the-lives-of-people-to-an-ever-greater.html

[adamcrazypants]

hatred of corporations - or "conversely" - of labor unions, is just irrational. people fight and claw to get above the rest with whatever means you provide them. is one necessarily better than the other? are corporations worse because the structure is blatantly hierarchal, and democratic institutions at least pay lip service to equality, yet still remain and function as hierarchal organisms? oh, there are distinctions, but not much of a difference. maybe different societies and cultures orient and organize to their liking, and prefer one to the other (ie. what makes "America" unique), but I get the feeling that these people - advocates or partisans or priests for one form or the other - just want to live in a museum.

[Stephen]

Great post.

[CF Oxtrot]

Excellent, Prof Crispy.

++++++++++++

"Klein is an open proponent of anarchism"

In word, not deed. She does dig her big wealth via capitalism, even if she doesn't like those tacky "logos" that were the center of her upper-middle-class youth.

NEXT?

[adamcrazypants]

"I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the multinational corporations,
and to the profits for which they stand,
one interlocking directorate,
under no government,
indivisible,
with monopoly and cheap labor for all."

-Utah Phillips

[Lisa Simeone]

. . . This language of blind obedience and retribution is used by authority in our inner cities, from Detroit to Oakland, as well as our prison systems. It is a language Iraqis and Afghans know intimately. But to the members of our dwindling middle class—as well as those in the working class who have yet to confront our new political and economic configuration—the powerful use phrases like 'the consent of the governed' and 'democracy' that help lull us into complacency.

The longer we believe in the fiction that we are included in the corporate power structure, the more easily corporations pillage the country without the threat of rebellion. Those who know the truth are crushed. Those who do not are lied to. Those who consume and perpetuate the lies—including the liberal institutions of the press, the church, education, culture, labor, and the Democratic Party—abet our disempowerment.

No system of total control, including corporate control, exhibits its extreme forms at the beginning. These forms expand as they fail to encounter resistance.

. . . All tyrannies come endowed with their own peculiarities. This makes it hard to say one form of totalitarianism is like another. There are always enough differences to make us unsure that history is repeating itself. The corporate state does not have a Politburo. It does not dress its Homeland Security agents in jackboots. There is no raving dictator. American democracy looks real even as the levers of power are in the hands of corporations. But there is one aspect the corporate state shares with despotic regimes and the collapsed empires that have plagued human history. It too communicates in two distinct languages, that is until it does not have to, at which point it will be too late.

-Chris Hedges

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/recognizing_the_language_of_tyranny_20110206/

[ohtarzie]

naive and confused

This from a dude that wants the US to bomb Libya.

[Chris Bray]

Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916, 1963 (emphasis added):

"Nor is the extension of federal regulation over the economy a question of progressive intent thwarted by conservative administration and fulfillment. Important business elements could always be found in the forefront of agitation for such regulation, and the fact that well-intentioned reformers often worked with them -- indeed, were often indispensable to them -- does not change the reality that federal economic regulation was generally designed by the regulated interest to meet its own end, and not those of the public or commonweal...

The first federal regulatory effort, the Interstate Commerce Commission, had been cooperative and fruitful; indeed, the railroads themselves had been the leading advocates of extended federal regulation after 1887...

[T]he business and political elites of the Progressive Era had largely identical social ties and origins. And, last of all, the federal government, rather than being a source of negative opposition, always represented a potential source of economic gain. The railroads, of course, had used the federal and local governments for subsidies and land grants. But various other industries appreciated the desirability of proper tariffs, direct subsidies in a few instances, government-owned natural resources, or monopolistic privileges possible in certain federal charters or regulations. For all of these reasons the federal government was a natural ally."

[Rik Little]

Do the Koch brothers drink Coke or Pepsi? If they drink Coke then I see the corporations and State coming together into one unit to lead us all into the future.

[crispy]

well that's interesting if naomi klein counts herself an anarchist. the only thing i've really read - besides some columns in the guardian - is no logo. i suppose it's the opposition to 'privatization' that would make me skeptical. the discourse of 'public ownership' seems disingenuous to me: it's state ownership, and putting all these powers in the same hands is a really bad idea in my book. sometimes left-anarchism just flummoxes me: like anarchists on the streets of greece or whatever protesting cuts in public assistance etc. i can see why we don't want people to starve, but surely the point would be to try to develop extra-state systems of mutual support.

[Joe]

The opposition to privatization makes sense if we're talking about the state essentially hiring a private firm, using tax money, to perform a function the state used to do itself. I don't get the sense that Klein makes this distinction, though, so you're probably right.

[CB]

Crispy, I believe it was Rudolph Rocker, who in his book Anarcho-Syndicalism, pointed out that sometimes anarchist will require the state to build a huge public welfare apparatus - such as what the Greeks wanted maintained, or a single-payer health-care system - so that when the times comes for a more emboldened anti-state movement, those apparatuses people will want without a state - again a functioning equal health-care system - are already quasi in place for the seizing. And the idea that such a system is possible, is reinforced by its previous existence.

[Franklin]

See Kevin Carson's,"Thomas Frank Almost Gets It"
http://c4ss.org/content/6102

and Roderick Long's, "How To Do Things With Words"
http://aaeblog.com/2010/12/26/how-to-do-things-with-words/