Showing posts with label corporatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corporatism. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Is Scott Walker a Fascist?
Written on June 19th, 2012
I
read an article the other day that described Scott Walker as taking
the first step towards libertarian small-government ends. Canadian
liberty activist Stefan Molyneux said that even if Ron Paul or some
other libertarian becomes president, since they want small
government, it will inevitably involve cuts in government services,
cuts in the pay and benefits of government employees, and cuts in the
size of governments’ work forces. Molyneux’s point was that a
libertarian taking charge of a monopoly government that stays
monopolistic will appear to most people as a corporatist (fascism
minus the theocracy) system.
I’d
say that the more socially tolerant the libertarian president or
governor is, the less he would appear as a fascist. This is why more
liberals like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson than do Scott Walker; Ron
Paul and Gary Johnson – although they may be far from
enthusiastically pro-choice when it comes to personal ethics, and
although their abortion policy is guided by the principles of dual
federalism (states’ rights) – are not actively trying to make
abortion clinics dissuade people from getting abortions, unlike
Walker and the Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature. And
since most people who oppose abortion oppose it on religious grounds,
that puts the theocratic element back into corporatism, making Walker
appear as nearly a fascist to most pro-choice labor rights’
advocates.
The
problem I think we’re overlooking is the problem of monopoly
government. Which government controls us depends not on our choice
from among a varied selection of alternatives, but on where we live.
A government monopoly (on the legitimate use of power) can easily
engender corporate monopoly (by threatening to use that power).
We
have a “corporate government” to an even greater extent than that
to which we have a “pay-to-play” system full of corruption,
corporate welfare, and wealth disparity; we have a “corporate
government” because it has the potential to exist indefinitely
(like corporations), and because its debt is shared by people who –
through the legal-fiction paper representations of themselves – are
never given the ability to resist their government, or given enough
information to understand why they might have wanted to resist
becoming a corporate person in their first weeks of life.
But
a monopoly government also engenders monopoly unionism. It can be
very difficult to criticize the most visible problems with the labor
movement without offending leftists. It took me a long time to figure
out what’s to like about the labor movement and what’s not to
like about it. But what appears clear to me now is that there needs
to be a way for government employees to keep their jobs and benefits,
for them to compete against the private sector to provide similar
services, and for them to choose who is their boss (or governor,
president, etc.).
My
solution – as clumsily as I might phrase it sometimes, like right
now – is to simply submit to “private governance”. The founding
fathers intended for the General Welfare Clause to mean that federal
spending should benefit all or most people in the country. But most
people in the country are very wealthy, nor are most people
government employees. Those types of people want specific
welfare, not general welfare.
If
Walker’s opponents would just admit that they want special benefits
for union members, and if we just change things to that the current
governments have to allow other governments to co-exist with them –
and compete with them for citizens in the same territory – then we
wouldn’t see things like the Walker controversy happening;
Democrats would be governed by Democrats, Republicans would be
governed by Republicans, union supporters would be governed by
someone to the left of Tom Barrett, and we would be having a very
different conversation.
For
more entries on Wisconsin politics, please visit:
On Social Corporatism and Tripartism
Written on May 27th, 2011
Social
corporatism is the political system of the day.
It
goes back at least as far as the FDR administration, and
if the Strasser brothers had seen Hitler carry out
the
delivery of benefits to unions which they promised, Nazi
Germany would have been a National Social Corporatist country.
Corporations
extract profit from workers.
Unions
extract dues from laborer-members.
Government
extracts taxes from citizens.
Government
requires corporations to negotiate with unions.
Unions
condition laborer-members to accept a certain level of union-approved
benefits from their employers.
Unions
and corporations alike lobby government for funds.
Social
corporatism thrives best when government, corporations, and unions collude
to legitimize one another in private, but decry one another in
public.
Social
corporatism is a way to put unions and corporations on a level
playing field with one another, and this is customarily done through
special favors from the government.
I
would end this practice, putting unions and corporations on a level
playing field with one another by training them to seek power and
wealth independent of government-provided taxpayer funds.
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