Road to Corporate Serfdom

It was Bill Clinton's campaign strategist, James Carville, who in 1992
created the election slogan: "It's the Economy, Stupid." For the 2010
Congressional campaigns, the slogan should have been: "It's Corporate
Crime and Control, Stupid."

But notwithstanding the latest corporate crime wave, the devastating
fallout on workers, investors and taxpayers from the greed and
corruption of Wall Street, and the abandonment of American workers by
U.S. corporations in favor of repressive regimes abroad, the Democrats
have failed to focus voter anger on the corporate supremacists.



The giant corporate control of our country is so vast that people who call themselves anything
politically--liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian,
independents or anarchist--should be banding together against the
reckless Big Business steamroller.



Conservatives need to remember the sharply critical cautions against
misbehaving or over-reaching businesses and commercialism by Adam Smith,
Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek and other famous conservative
intellectuals. All knew that the commercial instinct and drive know few
boundaries to the relentless stomping or destruction of the basic civic
values for any civilized society.



When eighty percent of the Americans polled believe 'America is in
decline,' they are reflecting in part the decline of real household
income and the shattered bargaining power of American workers up against
global companies.



The U.S. won World War II. Germany lost and was devastated. Yet note this remarkable headline in the October 27th Washington Post:
"A Bargain for BMW means jobs for 1,000 in S. Carolina: Workers line up
for $15 an hour--half of what German counterparts make."



The German plant is backed by South Carolina taxpayer subsidies and is
not unionized. Newly hired workers at General Motors and Chrysler,
recently bailed out by taxpayers, are paid $14 an hour before
deductions. The auto companies used to be in the upper tier of high
paying manufacturing jobs. Now the U.S. is a low-wage country compared
to some countries in Western Europe and the trend here is continuing
downward.



Workers in their fifties at the BMW plant, subsidizing their lower wages
with their tax dollars, aren't openly complaining, according to the Post. Not surprising, since the alternative in a falling economy is unemployment or a fast food job at $8 per hour.



It is not as if we weren't forewarned by our illustrious political forebears Fasten your seat belts; here are some examples:



Thomas Jefferson--"I hope that we shall crush in its birth the
aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge
our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of
our country."



Abraham Lincoln in 1864--"I see in the near future a crisis approaching
that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.
...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high
places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to
prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
(1864)



Theodore Roosevelt--"The citizens of the United States must control the
mighty commercial forces which they themselves call into being."



Woodrow Wilson--"Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but
because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges
and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy."



Franklin D. Roosevelt--"The first truth is that the liberty of a
democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power
to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state
itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism--ownership of Government by an
individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."



Dwight Eisenhower, farewell address--"In the councils of government, we
must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."



And, lastly, a literary insight:



Theodore Dreiser--"The government has ceased to function, the corporations are the government."



Are you, dear reader, the same now as you were when you began reading this column?