This is a really Good article. Have finished reading the org one from the link i found.
http://attackthesystem.com/the-iron-fist-behind-the-invisible-hand/
Shows a lot of how these "Better than Everyone Else" rich A-Holes got us all in this mess in the first place. Thanks Todd ;-)
~LisaMarie~
From: todd alan smith (36888045)
Date: 11/27/2009 12:04:46 PM
Subject: Kevin Carson "The Iron Fist..." (attackthesystem.com)
Excerpt from an excellent review of Kevin Carsons book, THE IRON FIST BEHIND THE INVISIBLE HAND
Taken from attackthesystem.com
(American Revolutionary Vangaurd)
the article CAPITALISM VS FREE ENTERPRISE
Keith Preston and company dish some of the most thoughtful political philosophy to be found in America today.
peace out for now,
Talansmith
Carson traces the development of modern corporate states all the way back to the late medieval period. In those days, the feudal structure, which originated from the military conquest of traditional agricultural communities and the imposition of an artificial aristocracy of external state-privileged exploiters, was in the process of breaking down. The free cities of the era began to appear as points of light on the broader feudal map. The market economy was growing, innovative technologies were coming into existence and the common people were obtaining more opportunities to claim their rightful status as free individuals. The ruling class was put on the defensive and sought to reestablish itself by fully expropriating traditional peasant lands and militarily conquering the free cities. The dispossessed peasants, no longer having any means of autonomy or self-sufficiency, were forced to migrate towards industrial centers and into the slave-like factory system. The state intervened to make sure that labor discipline was maintained by such methods as severly restricting the freedom of migration and suppressing efforts at self-organization by the laborers. The old feudal elites reinvented themselves as a new industrial capitalist ruling class by means of mercantilist economic policies which tended to concentrate wealth. In early America, for example, it was the northeastern mercantilists consisting of banking, shipping and land magnates led by Alexander Hamilton who initiated the Federalist coup against the libertarian Articles of Confederation and established the centralist presidential state for the purpose of advancing mercantilist commercial interests.
Carson’s central thesis is that “capitalism”, defined in the traditional Marxist/socialist/left-anarchist sense of separation of labor from ownership and the subordination of labor to capital, would largely be impossible under genuine free market arrangements. Most Americans are accustomed to thinking of capitalism and free enterprise as being one and the same. This is certainly the perspective taught in the state’s educational institutions and promoted by the corporate media. Carson lambasts fake populism of the type promulgated by corporate-sponsored afternoon talk radio which ignores the role of corporations, banks and other elite economic interests in fostering statism and instead works to channel the hostility of the working and middle classes away from the elites for whom most state intervention is actually done and towards the lower classes and the urban poor in a type of “divide and conquer” strategy. According to this ideology, the real enemies of free enterprise and proponents of statism are welfare recipients and the residents of homeless shelters and public housing projects. But it is the ruling class that is the primary beneficiary of state intervention. The primary role of such intervention is to redistribute wealth upward and centralize economic power. The tools used to obtain these objectives are as old as modern corporate states themselves. These tools include the state-imposed money monopoly, patents and subsidies.
Under the present system of federal government monopoly on the issuance of legal tender and central banking via the Federal Reserve, interest rates are kept artificially high, an artificial shortage of credit is maintained and access to finance capital is constricted. These arrangements centralize wealth and concentrate economic power in a myriad of ways. Carson argues that under a system of free banking, cooperative banks would be able to form and issue private bank notes as credit against the output of future production. Genuine competition among free banks would dramatically reduce interest rates, perhaps to the cost of administrative overhead. Access to cheap credit would make self-employment possible for nearly any industrious person with marketable skills or services. As the price of capital diminished, interest upon bonds, dividends upon stock and rents upon land and buildings would also fall. The proliferation of new businesses and the increased viability of self-employment would greatly enhance the bargaining power of workers, both individually and collectively. Workers would have a wider variety of potential employers to choose from in addition to greater opportunities to work for themselves. Employers would be forced by market pressures to make their workplaces more attractive to prospective employees. Workers would gain the collective power to demand the right of self-management in the workplace and could pool their credit to buy out their employers if they wished. This greatly enhanced bargaining power would essentially allow workers to control industries, even industries that remained nominally stockholder-owned. The virtual elimination of interest through market competition would also significantly lower mortage payments and credit card debt. The cost of housing would drop and overall workers’ savings would increase. Part-time employment would become a more viable option for many workers as would earlier retirement. Involuntary unemployment would also shrink.
Echoing Rothbard, Carson demonstrates how patents are nothing more than government grants of monopoly privilege. The function of patent law is to create monopolies on the marketing of particular products thereby establishing an artificial pricing system where such products are marked up dozens of times beyond their actual market value. This has been particularly true of pharmaceuticals where prices are often marked up 40 times or more. The effect of this arrangement is to eliminate competition and innovation by others seeking to improve upon an original product. Patent privilege pertaining to drugs and medical technologies sharply increase the cost of health care to the average consumer, effectively pricing many of forms of health care out of the range of many consumers. The restrictions on competition involved in patent privileges also constrict economic growth and increase unemployment. International patent privileges established by global trade agreements also tend to concentrate wealth in the advanced nations and stifle growth, competition and innovation in the Third World. Patents serve as a mercantilist tool utilized to maintain lesser developed nations as economic colonies.
Subsidies are probably the most egregious form of state favors to economic elites. Virtually all major U.S. industries are heavily dependent in some way on direct or indirect government financing. Throughout U.S. history, federal subsidies to transportation from the railway system to interstate highways to civil aviation have served to centralize wealth and control over a wide assortment of industries ranging from electrical utilities to petroleum to finance to retail sales. Much is made in some circles about the way large corporate retail chains such as Wal-Mart undercut local small businesses and run them out of the market. But this would be impossible without the massive government subsidies to shipping and transportation that benefit large national chains. So-called “defense spending” frequently amounts to a corporate welfare program. Most defense analysts estimate that a defense budget of approximately $100 billion would be required to effectively defend the territory of the United States. Yet overall military spending is nearly three and a half times that amount and increasing. The primary beneficiaries of such spending are arms manufacturers, the telecommunications industry, defense contractors and petrochemicals industries whose profits are guaranteed via the Pentagon system. This arrangement creates a tremendous concentration of wealth in the hands of de facto state protected monopolies. Tax breaks to corporations that subsidize R&D centralize wealth even further. Carson notes that some free market economists, including Rothbard, object to the characterization of tax breaks as subsidies, an understandable argument, but the problem here is that the burden of making up for this lost revenue is shifted onto the small businessman and rank and file worker.
Carson also engages in a rather thorough analysis of how the state creates an ideological superstructure to conceal its true nature and intentions. Outrageous amounts of “defense” spending are justified by demonizing one local tinpot dictator in the Third World after another, most of whom are the direct creation of U.S. imperialism, subversion, interventionism and aggression. Poor nations with no history of imperial ambition outside of their immediate borders, such as China, are held up as grave threats to world security. Currently, the beleagured nation of Iraq, which has never acted aggressively against a single American, is attacked as the Second Coming of Nazi Germany and the American public is bombarded with exaggerations and outright lies regarding Iraq’s weapons capabilities. Those who criticize and speak out against these lies are denounced as “un-American” under the cover of a pseudo-patriotic ideology while the state controlled media and educational system seeks to remove the authentic patriotism of Jefferson, Madison and Henry from public consciousness. Domestically, corporate sponsored think tanks and other propaganda outlets attack the urban poor as the source of the nation’s extensive fiscal problems and pretend that state aid to corporate and financial interests is non-existent. Elite class interests play to public hysteria over crime and scapegoat immigrants, drug users, the homeless and other marginal groups in order to justify the creation of a massive police state apparatus for the purpose of social control.
