The state is that entity which claims a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory, according to Max Weber. The Hobbesian, Rousseauvian, Lockean perspectives are that the state arose from a world of chaos via a social contract that happens to empower a ruling class (for the good of the people, of course).

The funny thing is, nobody can point to the precise moment when the state arose. Perhaps it was a place like Çatalhöyük (ca. 7500 BC) or Sumer (ca. 2900 BC)—where a stratified society was structured on the basis of might and religious doctrine. The earliest monarchies, empires, and republics—they derive power from violence and the legitimacy of the erroneous inevitable.  Inalienable rights were unheard of – if you blasphemed God (or one of his temporal bureaucrats in the Vatican) within the Holy Roman Empire, you could be excommunicated and any schmuck could kill you without reprisal. Government is rule by some men [sic] over others, nothing more. So is ours—which, let the record show, was built out of slave labor justified by a profound sense of faith in the arbiters of White moral supremacy. In some sense, it still is.

One feature unique to states is taxation, or the forcible extraction of property to be used in a way that the victim would not use themselves. When other groups take your property (or money, which equals time plus energy), it is called theft. Social goods like roads, schools and medical care can be and are best provided by the market. The state has little incentive to provide a quality product because it has no competitors. Capital intensive projects are not better handled by the state due to diffusion of responsibility and bureaucratic opacity. Taxation is extortion at gunpoint, a vestige of tribute paid by a subservient group to conquering armies, according to David Graeber, in his 2011 treatise Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

The only way we justify taxation is to claw back the monopoly profits “earned” (stolen) by the class that has taken control of the machinery of the state (capitalists). But redistribution does not address the root of the problem: state-secured privilege conferred to the politically connected capital class. Capitalism is not to be conflated with free markets, which have existed in various forms (including really free exhange, like Marcel Mauss’ gift economies) throughout human history.

Although controversial, the present scheme, state-capitalism, has only been around since the Early Modern Period. To paraphrase Gary Chartier in Markets Not Capitalism, this system is a symbiosis between big business and government, where the workplace is ruled by an individual called a boss. It is not inevitable that we should live in a system where there are more empty houses than homeless people, or that there can be such a thing as a permanently impoverished working class.

Voters place their hope in God-Kings called Presidents, expecting them to lift them out of servitude. The funny thing is, the rulers are drawn from the same elite class that holds essentially the same ideology as the prior masters. There are exceptions – Presidents who grew up poor, but they became wealthy prior to their inauguration and executed policies that favor the elite. One cannot become president without selling out to corporate interests because of campaign financing. Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

What about the poor?

Saying nothing of colonialism and imperialism—strictly the purview of states, policies that originated much of the world’s destitution—capitalism requires poverty to function. Someone must do the dirty work, staff the military, and subjugate themselves to others in exchange for depressed wages.

The welfare / social safety net cash doled out to the poor covers only bare necessities; the Marxian opium das volkes, a mere placation of radical revolution that would threaten state-conferred capitalist privilege (Marx was an astute critic but a dreadful problem solver – state violence can’t be remedied by augmenting state power). Supporting the welfare state is rational on realpolitik grounds, but not as an endgame.  However, the deeper question is this: why are there so many working poor, when an entire class of people need not work at all yet find themselves stubbornly wealthy?

Jesus did not originate the welfare state in an act of benevolence. Rulers employed payouts to bribe the population under a structural-functionalist logic: to keep the system alive and buy their allegiance. In the 1870s, Otto von Bismarck crippled the German Socialist movement by offering a palliative concession, saying  ”my idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their sake and interested in their welfare.” To this day, oppressed people believe the state is looking out for them. The reality is that the state breaks the legs of the poor and hands out taxpayer-funded crutches.

The state is that entity which claims a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence in a given territory. (Philippe Leroyer/Flickr)

State Violence

State violence is proffered as a solution to the consequences of past state intervention, like these:

1. Creation of a legal entity called the limited-liability corporation, which absolves capitalists of crimes and protects their personal wealth from judicial penalty. The state recently decided to give these legal “persons” speech rights. Corporations are immortal, and enjoy considerable tax advantages. The wealthy pay a pittance in capital gains tax, the commoners pay the heftier income tax. Corporations were originally chartered to build bridges and public works and then disband; modern corporations live on – insatiably seeking greater profits regardless of social consequence – the “fiduciary responsibility.” This un-empathetic behavior characterizes psychopathy.

2. States subsidize politically connected businesses like Wal-Mart, Monsanto, Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, Goldman Sachs and Exxon. These companies externalize their diseconomies of scale onto the taxpayers, including disproportionate use of roadways, government research, and monopolistic patents (which deprive people of access to vital generic forms of drugs, for example).

3. Weakening and co-opting labor unions, actively suppressing worker-owned modes of production (workers’ cooperatives). In the previous elections both Romney and Obama favored corporate plunder despite extensive evidence that worker-owned enterprises are far more efficient (no policing costs and workers have an incentive to increase revenue when they share in the profits).

4. Fake regulatory agencies like the FDA, EPA, USDA and SEC which protect corruption under the guise of consumer / taxpayer protection. They are foxes guarding the henhouse, made up of the same individuals that worked in the supposedly regulated industry just prior.  Phenomena known as “regulatory capture” and the “revolving door.”

5. And lets not forget: imperialism, conscription and mass murder. The CIA, the military-industrial complex, the FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, TSA, and the DEA. In sum, the modern welfare-warfare state that knows best for you.

6. Enforcing a monopoly on the issuance of a fiat currency, the value of which derives from government’s future ability to tax. This money is devalued by printing more, which transfers purchasing power from those who get the new money last to those that receive it before circulating (The Cantillon Effect). In this case, Federal Reserve member banks are the beneficiaries. This is an invisible tax.

Illusion of Choice and the Presidential Elections

The epic electoral battle staged every four years is meant to juxtapose two presidential candidates as polar opposites, like Zeus and Hades. But lest we forget, they were brothers. As rhetorical wars are fought and bought with corporate money, the truly substantive issues are never brought up because both teams have a vested interest in the statist quo.

Neither candidate exhibited reservations about a century of ongoing American imperialism, with 700 military bases spanning the globe, or that this country spends more than the next 19 largest spenders combined on the military-industrial-congressional complex. Instead, they bickered over social issues like an individual’s right to marry whomever they want. In an anarchist system, marriage exists outside of the state; couples don’t need state approval to declare their union legitimate.

The corporation-state is the dominant institution of modernity. The logic of state necessity and inevitability rests upon many uninvestigated premises. These assumptions must be interrogated; otherwise court-intellectuals and demagogue-pundits distract us by dramatically rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic. As Noam Chomsky wrote, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”

The media always drum up the race as the most important election in history. Those that actually study the history of politics realize that platforms have been blending and triangulating—moving unceasingly in the direction of statism. Left and right may polarize, but they share essential authoritarian characteristics. For example, both candidates favored the National Defense Authorization Act – which strips Americans of their right to a trial before jury and allows for indefinite detainment. Furthermore, both parties are beholden to the dictates of the financial sector, empowered and cartelized by the Federal Reserve.

During the election, both Romney and Obama differed on a slim few substantive issues, and one candidate may be marginally better than the other. However, being forced to choose between these two candidates is like deciding to poison the well with either cyanide or arsenic; innocent people die either way.

Obama is a militaristic president. For example, Obama authorized the drone killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi (a United States citizen living in Yemen) in September 2011. The CIA killed his 16 year old son two weeks later. There was no due process – the President unilaterally assassinated a US citizen on foreign soil.

If any individual killed another person, it would be a heinous crime. When a state kills someone, it’s for the greater good and often remains secret for supposed “reasons of national security.”

Any military age male (18-35) is considered a militant by the U.S. army unless proven otherwise. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, from 2004 to 2012, between 2,562 and 3,325 people were killed in drone strikes in Pakistan alone. The U.S. also operates drones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.  Some 474 to 881 of those killed in Pakistan were civilians, including 176 children. Another 1,300 were wounded. These numbers are likely to be low, because the U.S. and Pakistani governments seek to obfuscate the severity of the carnage.

Why should we give more power to the guys with the guns and expect that to solve our problems? We need human-scale solutions. We must dig to the root of the issue, which is state-capitalism itself; or the economic system where state power protects illegitimate ownership claims and creates artificial scarcity to protect profits. The state is what makes capitalism (but not markets) possible.

The state and the capitalist class are not antagonistic forces, and America is nowhere near a “free market.” Big business hates authentically free markets – capitalists prefer mercantilism. Unless you are member of the ruling class, you should do everything you can to bring about a less violent, non-statist paradigm—because states have a nasty tendency to start putting certain people in camps and you never know who will be next.

По данным недавнего опроса на сайте ZeroHedge.com, американцы 18-29 лет в целом негативно реагируют на слово «капитализм» (47/46), в противовес более благоприятной (49/43) реакции на слово «социализм».

Большую часть ответственности за это несут сами капиталисты. Как я уже говорил много раз, если «свободный рынок» — это то, что имеют в виду апологеты капитализма, то я тоже его ненавижу. Молодёжь постоянно слышит словосочетание «свободно-рыночный капитализм», употребляемое так, как если бы оно было одним словом. И наблюдает политиков, корпоративных пресс-секретарей и дикторов СМИ, объясняющих, что такие вещи как патентная инфляция цен на лекарства, стремительный рост заработной платы всяких гендиректоров при нищенских доходах прочего населения, грязное корпоративное благосостояние на основе Keystone XL [Прим. пер.: Keystone XL — проект нефтепровода в США, критикуемый экологами] и стрип-шопы капитализма по модели Bain Capital — всё это части «нашей системы свободного предпринимательства».

Молодёжь от двадцати до тридцати, по-видимому, реагирует на коннотации: «капитализм» — «всех обманывают, чтобы богачи становились ещё богаче», а «социализм» — «к людям относятся по-человечески». Этим коннотациям способствуют обе основные группировки в нашем обществе, с той лишь разницей, что такие люди как Ромни говорят: «А разве это что-то плохое, когда всех обманывают и богатые становятся ещё богаче?»

Однако, маленький грязный секрет демократической стороны заключается в том, что все эти «прогрессисты», защищающие государственное вмешательство, чтобы сделать капитализм менее обременительным для тех, кто под его игом (т.н. «помощь работающим семьям») — по сути просто другое крыло того же самого капиталистического правящего класса. Основная причина их действий, она же основная причина расширения сети социальной безопасности от Франклина Рузвельта и Линдона Джонсона, заключается в стабилизации капитализма — чтобы дать ему возможность извлекать прибыль на более устойчивой основе в долгосрочной перспективе.

Как говорил Маркс в статье «Закон о десятичасовом рабочем дне в Великобритании», основной функцией «прогрессивных» законов капиталистического государства является преодоление «дилеммы заключенного» между отдельными капиталистами и принуждение их к действиям в общих интересах капитала — другими словами, прийти к соглашению насчёт удобрения своих полей так, чтобы отдельные фермеры не лишились земли во имя краткосрочной прибыли.

Давайте представим консерваторов и либералов как фермеров. Фермер-консерватор думает, что добьётся успеха, держа свою скотину на голодном пайке, заставляя её работать до смерти, а потом заменяя её новой. Фермер-либерал думает, что в долгосрочной перспективе получит более высокие показатели, заботясь о своей скотине и не перетруждая её. То что и демократы и республиканцы не говорят нам, что они представляют интересы различных капиталистических групп — лучше всего доказывает, что мы им нужны исключительно в качестве рабочей скотины.

И это даёт громадные возможности либертарным левым для пропаганды идеи свободных рынков как общей для всех платформы против сил корпоративной плутократии.

Эта целевая аудитория последние недели смотрит видео на YouTube, постоянно прерываемые Томасом Петерфи, в приторном ужасе от идеи равенства, как будто она монстр из глубин Манифеста Коммунистической Партии. Эти люди уже готовы узнать правду: нынешний уровень неравенства поддерживается из-за того, что миллиардеры, гендиректора и прочие корпоративные королевы вэлфера — главные бенефициары государственного вмешательства в рынок.

Случилось так, что поколение 18-29-летних заразил мем, гласящий что всё то, что мы имеем сейчас (корпоративная плутократия и т.д.) есть якобы результат «государственного невмешательства в рынок». И поскольку ни у демократов, ни у республиканцев нет никакой заинтересованности в развенчании данного заблуждения, вся молодёжь вполне ожидаемо сочла, что восточноевропейская социал-демократия не так уж плоха на этом фоне. Естественно! Если бы единственной альтернативой «банановой республике», которую хотят Том Дилей и Дик Арми, я знал лишь требования «достойной продолжительности рабочего дня и социальной справедливости» на немецкий манер, то я бы и сам предпочёл социал-демократию.

И поэтому мы должны расказать стольким людям, скольким сможем, что это не единственная альтернатива. Нам нужно изо всех сил продвигать свой собственный мем — который для большинства людей будет откровением — что государство это главный виновник системы корпоративной плутократии, которую мы имеем сейчас. Мы должны рассказать ту правду, которую скрывают и Обама и Ромни — правду, что это государство капиталистов.

Статья впервые опубликована Кевином Карсоном, 14 ноября 2012.

Перевод с английского Tau Demetrious.

A lot of the blame for response this can be laid at the feet of the capitalists themselves. As I’ve said many times, if the “free market” meant what capitalist apologists mean by it, I’d hate it myself. Young people constantly hear “free market capitalism” used as if it were one word. And hear see politicians, corporate spokespersons and media talking heads explaining that stuff like patent-inflated drug prices, skyrocketing CEO pay and stagnant wages, the Keystone XL corporate welfare scam and the Bain Capital model of strip-shop capitalism are all parts of “our free enterprise system.”

Twenty-somethings are presumably reacting to the connotations “capitalism” = “everyone gets screwed over so the rich can get richer, and “socialism” = “people are treated like human beings.” These connotations are promoted by both mainstream coalitions in our society; the only difference is people like Romney talk like it’s a Good Thing for people to get screwed over to make the rich richer.

Meanwhile, the dirty little secret of the Democratic side is that all these “progressives” promoting state intervention to make capitalism less onerous to those under its yoke (aka “help working families”) are just another wing of the same capitalist ruling class. The main reason they do this, and the main reason they expanded the social safety net under FDR and LBJ, is to stabilize capitalism — to enable it to extract profits on a more sustainable basis on the long run.

As Marx said of the Ten-Hour Day law in Britain, the primary function of “progressive” legislation by the capitalist state is to overcome Prisoner’s Dilemma problems among individual capitalists and force them to act in the collective interest of capital — in his words, to come to an agreement on the manuring of their fields so individual farmers don’t strip the soil in the interest of short-term profit.

I like to depict conservatives and liberals as farmers. The conservative farmer thinks she’ll come out ahead giving her livestock short rations, working them to death and replacing them. The liberal thinks she’ll get a higher margin in the long run by taking care of them and working them in moderation. What the Democrats and Republicans don’t tell us is that they both represent different factions of capital — both of them interested in us primarily for our services as livestock.

This is a huge opportunity for us on the libertarian Left to propagate the meme of freed markets as an egalitarian force against corporate power and plutocracy.

This target demographic, for the past several weeks, has had its YouTube videos repeatedly interrupted by Thomas Peterffy’s pearl-clutching at the idea of equality as if it were an abomination straight out of the Communist Manifesto. They’re wide open to be exposed to the truth: Present levels of inequality exist because billionaires, CEOs and corporate welfare queens are the primary beneficiaries of state intervention in the market.

What’s happened is, the 18-29s have bought into the meme that what we have now (corporate plutocracy) is what naturally happens when there’s no state interference in the market. Because neither the Democratic nor the Republican wing of the corporate ruling class has any interest whatsoever in challenging this misconception, these young people have predictably decided that Western European-style social democracy isn’t so bad after all. Of course! If I thought the only alternatives were the kind of banana republic people like Tom Delay and Dick Armey want, and German-style work hours and a social safety net, I’d choose social democracy myself.

So we need to be telling as many people as possible that these are not the only alternatives. We need to be promoting the hell out of the meme — something many have yet to hear for the first time — that the state is the chief culprit behind the system of corporate plutocracy we have now. We need to share the truth — carefully concealed by both Obama and Romney, that it’s the capitalists’ state.

Translations for this article:

• Russian, Ну конечно же они ненавидят капитализм.

Anyway, barring the increasingly usual “hanging chad” dramas, the 2012 elections are over. Heave a sigh of relief, take stock of any likely minor changes, and get on with our lives, right?

Wrong. We live in the age of the “permanent campaign.” The 2014 congressional election cycle, and the 2016 presidential contest, started on Wednesday, November 7th.

The permanent campaign is a feature of modern American electoral politics for the same reasons that we see constant advertising by Coke/Pepsi, McDonald’s/Burger King, etc.

Electoral politics is a consumable/perishable product, and the available brands are remarkably similar. Candidates and parties don’t sell themselves by being qualitatively different from their competition. They sell themselves mainly through repetition and ubiquity, with occasional stabs at brand pizzazz. They know they will never corner their entire market niche. Rather, their goal is to increase their own market share at the expense of those look-alike alternatives.

In such a context, re-branding experiments are rare, because they are risky. Remember “New Coke?” How about the “Arch DeLuxe?”

The American political class is handicapped by the fact that it must occasionally change figureheads and spokespersons. The major parties avoid that as much as possible (by pouring big bucks into protecting incumbents in office), and where they can’t avoid the necessity (as with presidential candidates at least every eight years) they strive for two things:

– Brand/message continuity: The Republican and Democratic candidates in 2016 will sound a lot like their counterparts in 2012, who sound quite similar to the 2008 slates.

– Brand/message convergence: Your political burger will consist of bun, patty and cheese regardless of which party you buy it from. Any variations will be minor — plain versus sesame seed bun, plus or minus the pickles or onions, maybe a “special sauce” instead of ketchup and mustard.

These two things accomplished, political success or failure comes down to getting as much “face time” and “mind share” as possible between elections. And that’s the way both wings of the political class like it.

The party-based component of the political class — candidates, officeholders, campaign staff and party apparatchiki — get job security and lots of money flowing through their operations on a perpetual basis from brand continuity.

The real stakeholders — the politically connected business sector — know that they are take care of. Whichever brand comes out on top in any given election, the gravy train of subsidies, protections and government contracts will keep on rolling due to brand convergence.

As for the voters, well, stand by for four more years of constant advertising, and a diet of greasy burgers with wilted lettuce on top, accompanied by sugary drinks, at outrageous prices.

No, not for the reasons he wrote it. But because it’s an excellent example of what left-libertarians mean by the phrase “vulgar libertarian.”

Not a single one of Root’s complaints regarding Obama involves the state’s favored treatments of large businesses. In a particularly telling paragraph, Root states that:

This election is our LAST STAND to save America. Mitt understands that Obama’s rhetoric, constant threats against business, union favoritism, IRS intimidation, 60,000 new rules and regulations, stimulus to nowhere, never-ending unemployment and food stamps, the added taxes and regulations of ObamaCare, and the attempt to ban oil drilling and regulate the coal industry out of existence, have collectively ground the U.S. economy to a halt. We will not survive four more years of Obama as CEO of this economy.

While Root is concerned about all kinds of programs ostensibly designed to assist the poor or rein in big business, there is nothing in his list of horrors about state beneficiaries in high places. In Wayne’s world, the bailouts apparently never happened, insurance companies don’t benefit from people being literally forced to buy their product, and there’s no potentially ecologically devastating Keystone Pipeline involving massive violations of property rights via eminent domain or the threat of it. Nope, just a bunch of rich dudes trying to making an honest living while Obama ruins their party by oppressing them in order to serve the wishes of the (apparently pretty powerful!) poor.

Root seems psychologically incapable of even entertaining the idea that there might be systematic state distortions of markets that redistribute wealth upward rather than downward. When he says that “this election is about capitalism and Big Brother socialism,” you get the feeling that he thinks those are the only two alternatives of social organization.

He also parrots the typical conservative references to Jeremiah Wright, voicing fears that after being reelected, Obama will fully embrace his views. If this means that Obama will begin to agree that Christians should condemn the United States government for murdering innocent people, then perhaps I should drop my anti-voting stance and get out the vote for Obama.

Unfortunately, of course, this is frankly delusional on Root’s part. It is telling, though, that W.A.R. doesn’t even write one word about foreign policy, which should be one of the top (if not the top) issues for anyone whose views are remotely based around non-aggression. But hey, what does mass murder matter when there’s still food stamps?

That omission (as well as odd comments that do appear in the piece, like Root categorizing the President as “CEO of this economy”) might seem strange for a libertarian. Yet as he himself goes out of his way to remind us: “I’m not just a Libertarian. First and foremost, I’m a capitalist evangelist.”

If we were to remove the word “just,” I’d have to say that Root is certainly right in that self-description.

It’s hard to guess whether Mittens is really this abysmally ignorant or just pandering to his estimate of his audience’s stupidity.

Let’s start with Chavez. He’s certainly shown a dismaying tendency toward authoritarianism and caudillismo as president of Venezuela. But it’s a safe guess his “Bolivarian Socialism” is nowhere near as godawful as the regime the United States would have replaced him with — and still would — had its attempted coup in 2002 succeeded. At best it would reenact the corporate looting of state assets, rubber-stamping of fake “free trade” treaties, and union busting carried out by Paul Bremer’s Iraq Provisional Authority. At worst, it would resort to the same secret police and death squad murders of labor activists as other Latin American regimes installed by U.S.-backed coups in previous decades. Either way, you could count on massive transfer of peasant land back to landed oligarchs.

Apparently the U.S. state’s main criterion for a “bad actor” is someone who doesn’t take orders from Washington — and worse yet, manages to retain power when Washington decides to punish him for it.

As for that bit about “freeing countries from dictators” bit, my eyes hurt from rolling so much. Yeah, the U.S. freed the hell out of Guatemala, Iran and Indonesia. Mobutu built pyramids of the skulls of those he liberated. Starting with Goulart in Brazil and Allende in Chile, and proceeding through Operation Condor in the 1970s, the United States “freed” one country after another from left-leaning elected governments and replaced them with military dictatorships. In those days you could identify the “Free World” by all the dictatorships installed by the United States, rather than by the Soviet Union.

And any time you see a U.S. government ranking of “state sponsors of terrorism,” you should always remember to fill in the unspoken “except for the United States.” From the military regime that supplanted Arbenz in 1954 to the Contras in Nicaragua thirty years later, the systematic use of death squads to terrorize labor and landless peasant activists into docility has been a favorite weapon in the American arsenal.

Never mind the direct use of state military power as a terrorist weapon — deliberately blowing up electrical plants and water purification facilities. When it comes to the murder of hundreds of thousands through fire-bombing as an instrument of state terror, the U.S. has been the unchallenged heavyweight champion since 1945.

Not that Obama is any better. Liberal Democrats, just as much as Republicans, make foreign policy on the assumption stated by Chomsky as “America owns the world.” Obama, as much as Romney, believes the United States bears some sort of messianic obligation to maintain “global security” by determining the outcomes of international disputes, installing “responsible” governments, and deciding who’s allowed to have nukes. Obama, as much as Romney, believes America is the one country whose “defense” capability should be based, not on “legitimate defensive needs,” but on the capability of enforcing its will on the entire rest of the world combined. Obama believes, every bit as much as Madeline Albright did when she was raining death from the skies over Yugoslavia, that “America is the world’s indispensable nation.”

Obama may believe that America sometimes “makes mistakes” in carrying out this messianic destiny, but he doesn’t question the rightfulness of the destiny itself. Romney uses red meat rhetoric to appeal to the jingoist bigots in his base. But Obama’s more pacific rhetoric amounts to little more, in practice, than James T. Kirk’s attitude as expressed in the novelty song “Star Trekkin'”: “We come in peace — shoot to kill, shoot to kill …”

However the 2012 race comes out, the winner will believe America has a unique role in telling the other countries of the world what to do. He’ll murder people — including American citizens — by the thousands with drones with no oversight whatsoever. And he’ll treat the ability to defend against an American attack as a “threat.”

The foreign policy will be the same. But you get to choose whether you want it packaged in idealistic Kennedy liberal rhetoric, or troglodytic “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” rhetoric. So which is it? Coke or Pepsi?

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, El Debate de Política Exterior en Estados Unidos: ¿Coca-Cola o Pepsi?

He notes that “for every dollar a timber company paid in leasing fees, the US government spent $1.27 on road-building and other projects to enable the exploitation of those timber leases.” The same applies to oil drilling in places like the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve: “the next time a natural resources extraction company offers to cover the entire cost of its own operations on ‘public’ land, let alone deliver a net profit to the US government on the deal, will be the first time.”

Extractive industries are among the biggest welfare queens in human history. Much — probably most — of the oil and mineral wealth of the planet is still in the hands of transnational corporate beneficiaries of centuries of colonial looting. Oil and mineral companies routinely use their pet states to politically guarantee access to mineral resources. Just look at the overthrow of Mossadeq in Iran — then read the Wikipedia article on BP. The politics of oil is the central factor in the slaughter of millions in the Congo, Zaire, and Angola since WWII. The same goes for the Suharto coup in Indonesia and the democide in East Timor. I think Shell actually has a Vice President for supervising death squad activity.

Most production of cash crops for corporate agribusiness, under the neoliberal “export-oriented development model” the Washington Consensus forces on the Third World, takes place on land from which peasants were either outright evicted, or reduced to at-will tenancy and then evicted, under colonialism or post-colonialism. The fastest way for a left-leaning regime to bring those “Washington Bullets” down on itself is to try putting that land back in the hands of its rightful owners — the peasants who originally cultivated it. Just ask Jacobo Arbenz.

It’s hilarious that self-described defenders of “free enterprise” like Mittens, who come down hardest on boondoggles like Solyndra, are also the biggest advocates of nuclear power and projects like the Keystone XL pipeline.

Nuclear power is the most extreme example of the phenomenon Tom Knapp described. Every step in the production chain, from the government building roads to the uranium mines on federal land to the disposal of nuclear waste at government expense — and the government indemnification against liability for meltdowns in between — is heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

As for Keystone, it’s just another example — although much smaller in scale and bloodshed — of the kind of corporate looting the fossil fuels industry carries out around the world. Never mind the fact that the extraction itself couldn’t take place in Alberta if government approval didn’t constitute a de facto indemnity, essentially preempting any potential tort action in the courts for harm from pollution.

The pipeline is being built on stolen land. From Montana to Oklahoma and Texas, TransCanada is using eminent domain to steal land — often falling afoul of treaty guarantees with Indian nations — and using local police and sheriffs as mercenaries in pitched battles against activists. Even when it crosses federal land, it amounts to a subsidy to the project. “Vacant” land — actually occupied by human beings with the legal liability of having brown skin — was originally preempted by the Spanish crown, passed into the hands of the Mexican Republic, and thence into the hands of the U.S. government via the Guadalupe-Hidalgo cession. The American state held all this land out of use, in blocs of tens and hundreds of millions of acres, so that it could eventually be handed over to favored timber, mining, oil and pipeline companies without the need to buy it up piecemeal from individual homesteaders, small forestry cooperatives and the like.

So now when you hear Mittens talk about “free enterprise,” you know what he means by it.

That’s all very interesting, I guess, but for me the key moment in the debate came early when the two candidates engaged on the subject of energy prices.

Obama pointed out that domestic US oil production has increased during his tenure in office, and that that increase has substantially been a private sector phenomenon.

In response, Mitt Romney — Mister “47% of the people … are dependent on government … feel they are entitled …” — whined that the Obama administration has been insufficiently charitable with “public” land (and taxpayer money) toward the oil companies.

It’s important to understand how such sweetheart “public” land use deals work. This is a subject I started following back in the 1980s when I read an article about leases of national forest land to timber companies. At that time, for every dollar a timber company paid in leasing fees, the US government spent $1.27 on road-building and other projects to enable the exploitation of those timber leases. Or, to put it a different way, the net budget impact was a 27% welfare check to the timber company from Uncle Sugar — prior to and excluding any profits the company might make on the timber itself!

My brief dips into subjects such as the proposed Alaska National Wildlife Refuge drilling kerfuffle indicate that nothing has changed over the intervening decades. So far as I know, the next time a natural resources extraction company offers to cover the entire cost of its own operations on “public” land, let alone deliver a net profit to the US government on the deal, will be the first time.

So now you know why these companies prefer operating on “public” versus “private” property: Taxpayer subsidies make it more profitable. And you know that Mitt Romney’s promise of lower gas prices by opening up more “public” land to drilling is a sleight of hand. He wants to hide some of the cost of gas in your 1040 or on the federal debt ledger instead of letting it be displayed honestly at the pump, so that you pay more while imagining that you pay less.

My point, mind you, is not that Obama is any better than Romney when it comes to corporate welfare. Can you say “individual mandate?” The Affordable Care Act alone is the biggest welfare check to the health insurance industry since Nixon’s HMO Act.

Both candidates are beholden to sets of corporate and special interest benefactors — the bulk of the political class — who expect beaucoup return on their investments. The mission of the state, after all, is to redistribute wealth from the pockets of the productive to the bank accounts of the politically connected. The current presidential contest is just another quadrennial re-appraisal and re-division of the spoils. And it doesn’t really matter that much who wins. They’ll all end up making out like the bandits they are, and you’ll be bled just a little more dry to cover the ever-increasing costs.

For those who oppose “welfare” — be it food stamps which allegedly benefit the poor while actually fueling subsidies to Big Agriculture, or oil leases which allegedly lower gas prices while piping your money to Big Oil via the back door — the only answer is to dispense with political government itself. “Welfare” for the already rich is its raison d’etre.

Em recente discurso dirigido à Veteranos de Guerras no Exterior, o aspirante Republicano à presidência Mitt Romney denunciou propostas de assim chamados cortes na “defesa” como motivados por desejo de tornar os Estados Unidos uma “potência menor”  — o que, por sua vez, “emana da convicção de que, se formos fracos, os tiranos também optarão por ser fracos; de que, se pudermos simplesmente falar mais, envolver-nos mais, fazer aprovar mais resoluções das Nações Unidas, essa paz será quebrada. Isso pode ser o que eles pensam naquele saguão do corpo docente de Harvard, mas não é o que eles sabem no campo de batalha!”

A ouvir Mitt, você pensaria que a política externa estadunidense nos últimos setenta anos dirigiu-se para “defender a paz e a liberdade” e dissuadir “agressores”  — os Estados Unidos como criança perdida na floresta, cuidando da própria vida, forçada a defender-se contra “tiranos” que “nos odeiam” porque, bem, por eles serem simplesmente perversos. Isso está errado em tantos níveis, quando a gente submete o ponto de vista da aula de educação cívica do sexto ao oitavo grau a respeito do papel dos Estados Unidos no mundo a algum exame crítico, que é difícil saber por onde começar.

Primeiro, a política externa estadunidense não diz respeito a conciliações de interesses. E sim acerca de promover interesses. As políticas do governo estadunidense, como aquelas de todos os estados, servem aos interesses da coalizão da classe dominante que controla o estado. Isso se aplica à política tanto externa quanto doméstica. A política externa estadunidense, como a de todos os outros estados, funciona no interesse de um sistema doméstico de poder.

Nas palavras de Noam Chomsky, a Guerra Fria era — como primeira aproximação — uma guerra dos Estados Unidos contra o Terceiro Mundo e uma guerra da União Soviética contra seus satélites. Em 1984, Orwell usou a imagem de três gavelas de trigo apoiadas umas nas outras para descrever a dependência mútua de Oceania, Eurásia e Lestásia. As três superpotências usavam o conflito perpétuo entre si para justificar seu controle e exploração de suas populações domésticas.

O propósito precípuo da política externa estadunidense desde a Segunda Guerra Mundial tem sido o de escorar uma ordem mundial corporativa e disciplinar países renegados que tentem desertar dessa ordem. E na escora desse sistema global de poder os Estados Unidos têm sido, usualmente, o agressor, nas ações que têm empreendido. Os Estados Unidos, desde 1945, vêm mantendo guarnições militares em dezenas de países, e provavelmente já derrubaram e instalaram no poder mais governos do que qualquer outro império na história. E o fizeram não precipuamente em defesa própria contra a “ameaça soviética,” mas como herdeiros da túnica da Pax Britannica como garantidores de uma ordem mundial.

Os países que os Estados Unidos atacaram em décadas recentes, na maioria, não representavam “ameaças,” por incapazes de atacar os Estados Unidos. Foram países do outro lado do mundo, com forças militares de terceira categoria, sem capacidade logística para projetar força militar além de umas poucas centenas de milhas além das próprias fronteiras. Se os Estados Unidos não tivessem tanto espírito esportivo no tocante a enfrentar países como esses percorrendo mais da metade do caminho, nunca teríamos tantas guerras.

Mais que isso, há muito boa probabilidade de os assim chamados “tiranos” lá de fora terem, antes de tudo, sido colocados no poder pelos Estados Unidos, para protegerem os interesses dos círculos dominantes dos Estados Unidos contra as pessoas comuns dos outros países. Os Aliados Ocidentais, depois de “libertarem” território do Eixo, furtaram aos movimentos de resistência de esquerda seus ganhos locais e colocaram no poder governos provisórios sob colaboradores anteriores do Eixo. Começando com Arbenz em 1954, continuando com a deposição de Goulart, do Brasil, nos anos 1960, e culminando na Operação Condor e na deposição de Allende na América do Sul, os Estados Unidos instalaram juntas militares ou apoiaram esquadrões da morte na maioria dos países do hemisfério ocidental. No resto do mundo, país após país, a história: Mossadeq, Sukarno, Lumumba … para tomar de empréstimo uma frase da The Clash: “Outra vez aquelas balas de Washington.”

Quando os Estados Unidos têm problema com um “tirano,” tão frequentemente quanto não trata-se de ex-cliente do Pentágono e da CIA que parou de aceitar ordens e tornou-se um problema. Como, por exemplo, quando Saddam “deflagrou guerras de agressão contra seus vizinhos” e “usou armas de destruição em massa contra seu próprio povo.”  Os sujeitos de Washington deviam saber que Saddam tinha armas de destruição em massa — afinal, haviam guardado os recibos. E na maior guerra de agressão de Saddam, a administração Reagan teve assento de primeira fila, aplaudindo-o e fornecendo ajuda e apoio contra a assim chamada “ameaça iraniana.”

Sinto muito, Mitt. O governo dos Estados Unidos é que precisa ser dissuadido.  Romney assevera ser “conservador favorável a governo enxuto.” Afirma não confiar no governo. É, porém, ou estúpido ou mentiroso. Um governo não pára de ser governo na linha da fronteira.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 10 de setembro de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.

Observar duas intelectualmente deficientes bonecas Ken com “penteado tipo executivo” — Mitt Romney e Rick Perry — preparando-se para debater lembra-me o quanto sinto falta de Dan Quayle.

Por incrível que pareça, logo antes de eu ouvir falar da última mancada de Romney, estava lendo a respeito de um estudo do psicólogo Dacher Keltner. A experiência de vida dos ricos, diz ele, torna-os menos empáticos e mais egoístas do que as pessoas comuns. Parte disso é obtusidade deliberada; legitimar ideologias é algo que não apenas habitua os explorados a levar na cabeça como também permite que os exploradores durmam à noite dizendo para si próprios que os pobres realmente merecem.

Os ricos justificam suas relações com outras classes sociais com a ajuda da ideologia estadunidensista, por meio da qual exalçam a percepção de seu próprio entranhado individualismo e veem sua riqueza como resultado de caráter: “Eles acham que o sucesso econômico e resultados políticos, e resultados pessoais, têm a ver com comportamento individual, com uma boa ética de trabalho. …”(*) (* A Wikipedia explica que a ética de (ou do) trabalho não se confunde com ética de negócios e sim consiste num conjunto de valores baseado no trabalho árduo e na diligência. Exemplo, clássico aliás, seria a ética de trabalho protestante. Uma ética de trabalho incluiria ser pessoa de confiança, ter iniciativa, ou perseguir a aquisição de novas habilidades. A ética de trabalho, segundo alguns, não se limitaria ao trabalho árduo, mas também a virtudes pessoais daquele que trabalha arduamente, indispensáveis para o desenvolvimento e a sustentação de livres mercados. Ver Wikipedia, Work ethic.)

Em outras palavras, a ideologia espúria de “livre mercado” — por oposição à genuína — é o ópio das elites. Que as liberta da culpa pelo privilégio e torna sua existência suportável. A ideologia neoliberal — tal como aparece nos programas de locutores do CNBC, na página editorial do Wall Street Journal – WSJ, e nos artigos bajulatórios de FreedomWorks — defende o modelo existente de capitalismo corporativo e suas grandes concentrações de riqueza como se resultassem de virtude superior num mercado competitivo (“é assim que nosso sistema de livre mercado funciona”). Deliberadamente obscurece o papel fundamental da intervenção do governo — formas de escassez artificial, direitos artificiais de propriedade, subsídios — na atual distribuição de riqueza e de poder econômico.

De volta a Romney: Em resposta a um aparteador, ele replicou espirituosamente que “As corporações são pessoas. … Tudo o que as corporações ganham também vai para pessoas.” Diante das gargalhadas da plateia, ele perguntou “Para onde vocês pensam que vai?” “Para os bolsos deles!” retrucou o aparteador. “Bolsos de quem?” retornou Romney. “Para os bolsos de pessoas! Seres humanos, meu amigo.”

Isso é tecnicamente verdade, obviamente. O dinheiro que uma corporação ganha a expensas dos consumidores e dos trabalhadores por meio de trocas desiguais forçadas pelo estado é todo distribuído para pessoas.

Mas e daí? A menos que David Icke esteja certo e nós sejamos secretamente governados por lagartos alienígenasinvasores, todo sistema de exploração de classes da história humana serviu aos interesses de algum grupo de seres humanos. Em toda sociedade da história, não importa quão brutalmente exploradora, obviamente o ganho ilícito foi consumido por “pessoas.” Os patrícios romanos que viviam do suor dos escravos eram pessoas, e bem assim o eram os senhores feudais que extorquiam rents dos camponeses. Suspeito de terem sido “pessoas” — pessoas perversas — quem se aproveitou dos dentes de ouro extraídos em Auschwitz.

A questão é, que pessoas? Para quem a riqueza das corporações monopolistas flui desproporcionalmente? Para as mesmas pessoas para as quais foram os lucros do trabalho escravo e os rents do feudalismo, as pessoas descritas por Adam Smith: “Tudo para nós, e nada para outras pessoas, parece, em toda época do mundo, ter sido a vil máxima dos senhores do gênero humano.”

Felizmente para eles, os senhores têm a mitologia do “capitalismo de pessoas” — na qual os lucros corporativos vão todos para planos de aposentadoria pagos pelo empregador, para fundos de pensão e para a economia de posse de pessoas comuns que fazem day-trading na Internet — para assegurarem a si próprios não serem realmente lombrigas solitárias gigantes, em absoluto. Toda essa conversa acerca de injustiça e riqueza ganha sem trabalho é apenas “guerra de classes,” a “política da inveja.” Ou, como Romney desdenhou, “Houve uma época neste país quando não atacávamos as pessoas por causa do sucesso delas.”

O sucesso do próprio Romney merece alguma perscrutação. Ele está concorrendo como antigo Executivo Principal que — diferentemente de Obama — compreende “como a economia funciona.” Vejam, ele conhece em primeira mão as necessidades dos heroicos homens de negócios que “criam empregos.”

Em realidade, porém, Romney fez tudo usando o mesmo estoque de táticas/métodos de Mestre em Administração de Empresas que Chainsaw Al e Bob Nardelli: Eviscerar o capital humano, vender ativos da empresa em proveito pessoal, esvaziar a capacidade produtiva de longo prazo para inflar os números deste trimestre e fazer subir os preços das ações, em seguida garantir sua própria indenização por exoneração de executivo e emborcar a casca vazia em cima de outro comedor de carniça. Romney, como executivo, foi, para o enxugamento de pessoal [downsizing], o que Maria Tifoide foi para a tifoide.(*) (* Maria Tifoide foi a primeira pessoa nos Estados Unidos identificada como portadora assintomática do patógeno associado à febre tifoide. http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon)

É natural que Romney se agarre a qualquer pretexto para ver a si próprio como alguma coisa além de apenas outro paspalho da classe mais alta que por ocupar a terceira posição acha que conseguiu fazer um triplo(*). Graças ao evangelho de Sucesso, Realização e Prosperidade, os vis senhores do gênero humano podem continuar dizendo a si próprios que afinal não são parasitas; estão apenas tomando posse do que lhes é devido. (* Analogia com beisebol, esporte do qual não entendo.)

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson em 15 de agosto de 2011.

Traduzido do inglês por Murilo Otávio Rodrigues Paes Leme.