naked capitalism

David Lentini says:

I think the real problem is an underlying shift in culture fron one based on some sense of justice, i.e., ethics to which all are subject, to one based on power. We have become a Thrasymachian society, to borrow from Plato’s Repblic, in which whatever benefits the stronger is just. Or more recently, it’s the ethics of Ayn Rand.

In the Thrasymachian (Randian) world, property rights, governmental corruption, corporate theft all become meaningless: if it benefits the stronger party, it’s just. Since modern economics places consumption, and therefore wealth, as the greatest good, the rich can do what they want. Just look at the writings of Richard Posner and others in the “Law and Economics” crowd—parties can pretty much do what they want, so long as there is “economic benefit”.

Ironically, as Hannah Arent noted, the destruction of collective rights is ofen associated with a maturing of populist movements. She argued that political movements based on the rights of the masses often degenerate into individualistic movements that are ripe for transformation into fascism or corporatism. In a strage way, “left” and “right” have a way of meeting up. As Robert Maynard Hutchins noted, “In a contest between Hitler and people who are wondering whey they shouldn’t be Hitlers, the finished product is bound to win.”

The real problem is to move culture away from a myopic focus on economics to politics. We need to keep everyone (or the majority) focused on the values and behaviors that define democracy: justice, truth, and freedom. When we move away from that triad—especially worshipping freedom blindly—we weaken our commitment to democracy and drift toward tyranny.

We’re alomst there now.

• Banger says:
  July 12, 2013 at 12:20 pm

  In fact, the focus on economics is an example of how the system uses misdirection. Essentially there is no such thing as economics as separate from politics–it is a subset, and a minor one, of politics, i.e. it is the chief way of allocating power. You are powerful to the degree you have money not a bad political system as a system but it is a political system first and foremost.

  When the system features “economics” it neutralizes politics–the misdirection is that people are all looking at the economic system to give them something while the real players are stealing from them because they know the score.

  Reply
  • sgt_doom says:
    July 12, 2013 at 1:55 pm

    I forget the man who said this (a great Jewish-American thinker and popularizer of Thorstein Veblen), but economics is basically the institutionalization of the excuse as to the existence of inequality; why some are born with everything and most are born with nothing!

    Reply

sufferinsuccotash, stupor mundi says:

A must-read for anyone trying to make sense of what is miscalled “corruption” in the supposedly “developed” world.

http://www.amazon.com/Oligarchy-Jeffrey-Winters/dp/0521182980/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373639644&sr=1-1&keywords=Jeffrey+Winter

• from Mexico says:
  July 12, 2013 at 11:16 am

  From the book description:

  The existential motive of all oligarchs is wealth defense… Moreover, the rule of law problem in many societies is a matter of taming oligarchs.

  It sounds like the author is deeply into materialist territory, along with folks like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, Michael Parenti and C. Wright Mills.

  Some days I’m in that camp, but other times I find myself drawn to the more spiritualist theorizing of folks like Immanuel Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah Arendt, and Joan Silk.

  Reply
  • Banger says:
    July 12, 2013 at 12:08 pm

    Both are camps are valuable, really. When I think about politics I think in Machiavellian and systems analysis terms. Why? Because it always works with only very minor exceptions.

    Having said that the materialist perspective offers us nothing in terms of solutions only more of the same with different characters and a slightly different dynamic. What offers us a possibility of real change, particularly in this historical period, is spirituality–which I might define differently.

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  • Phrase says:
    July 12, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    @ from Mexico

    “Some days I’m in that camp, but other times I find myself drawn to the more spiritualist theorizing of folks like Immanuel Kant, Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah Arendt, and Joan Silk.”

    I do appreciate Yves blog, and the above post. … However, sometimes i need to try to formulate a broader vision of the context within which such illegitimate, illegal, immoral actions move with such impunity.
    .
    Has civil society lost the ability to imagine and entertain a vision of a time when the a real world context (pluralistic at that) , would mirror for ex., … Rene Forst’s ‘right to justification’, … propelled by free safe investigative journalists given global distribution in the name of transparency, accountability, and that master-word, democracy ? … The case of Michael Hastings is truly alarming ! … And yet the disenfranchised are demonstrating even though public policy furthers elite global neoliberal agendas maintained by the manipulation of different fear factors.
    .
    But, the reason for my response was just to share the name , and the work of, a cultural anthropologist … Arjun Appadurai, “Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization” (1996)

    … “ The new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models (even those that might account for multiple centers and peripheries). Nor is it susceptible to simple models of push and pull (in terms of migration theory), or of surpluses and deficits (as in traditional models of balance of trade), or of consumers and producers (as in most neo-Marxist theories of development). Even the most complex and flexible theories of global development that have come out of the Marxist tradition (Amin 1980, Mandel 1978, Wallerstein 1974, Wolf 1982) are inadequately quirky and have failed to come to terms with what Scott Lash and John Urry have called disorganized capitalism ( 1987).The complexity of the current global economy has to do with certain fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics that we have only begun to theorize.’
    I propose that an elementary framework for exploring such disjunctures is to look at the relationship among five dimensions of global cultural flows that can be termed (a) ethnoscapes, (b) mediascapes, (c) technoscapes, (d) financescapes, and (e) ideoscapes “
    .
    Arjun Appadurai’s writings are a recent find for me. I am very interested in the idea that visual culture has replaced print culture. I’m still working my way from Deleuze’s ‘control society’ of self-imposed censorship to a more current vision which Appadurai’s ideas are currently shaping. … Imagination, and aspiration unlock transformative motivated energy in me. … best regards ! … phrase

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  • sgt_doom says:
    July 12, 2013 at 2:00 pm

    Please never mention C. Wright Mills, a real fraudster and redirection specialist if there ever was one!

    Ferdinand Lundberg, in his classic book, The Rich and the Super-Rich, makes a highly valid point about Mills when he points out that Mills completely ignored the most important socioeconomic study of that time, and probably still is, the TNEC study (Temporary National Economic Committee study, major parts of which are still confidential to this very day, and was the causal factor for the lawsuit brought against 17 investment houses of Wall Street [US Government v. Morgan et al.]).

    Nor, I believe, does Mills ever mention any of the studies undertaken in congress by the greatest populist and Real American from Texas, Wright Patman.

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Banger says:

Yves, sometimes you come up with some great articles that get to the heart of matters and this is one of them. This subject is very important and needs a lot of thought. The problem I have though is the question: what do we mean by corruption as a general idea? I’m not sure we can define it. The word itself comes from the Latin to destroy. So corruption is about destroying society and here I’m not sure we can say that the definitions you give actually destroys society.

I see things from a systems viewpoint. As I see it the system (which is society) actually works very well. All the things you cite here are things that contribute to the robust nature of the system. If you are familiar with Washington it bears a lot of resemblance to organized crime in a highly sophisticated way. There are operators, fixers, consiglieri, and even hit men along with the obvious actors covered in the mainstream media and all of them act to maintain the stability of the system. Each of them wax and wane in power depending on all kinds of external forces that they have, over time, learned to adapt to and game. Washington, from the point of view of Washington, works very well. And let’s speak frankly here, even though the public is now pretty convinced that there’s something very rotten in Denmark there is no real effective movement for reform or changing the system other than a strong nihilist component on the right that serves as an effective tool for the power-elite.

Even you, about as smart a commentator as we have on the internet, really has no clue on how to change things or what course to chart to move towards fundamental reform of the financial system that is pragmatic and not just a lot nice items on a bucket-list. Without thoroughly understanding the nature of this regime and how it enforces its will through various institutions including the entertainment industry and particularly the mainstream media we have no hope in countering the current system which remains, as we speak, utterly immune to real change.

Only by admitting our powerlessness can we begin to gain power first through knowledge (I think we are getting there) but very slowly–we still refuse to see the real lineaments of power in all its frightening aspects–you have to deconstruct everything, all the myths the state heaps on us through the various ways it has of manufacturing consent. I maintain that every issue we face from economics to external threats serve the function of controlling the public and have nothing to do with reality. This is easily discovered by the most elementary inquiry into the assumption of the mainstream narrative which crumbles into dust like the famous Wicked Witch scene in the Wizard of Oz.

• Moneta says:
  July 12, 2013 at 1:11 pm

  there is no real effective movement for reform or changing the system other than a strong nihilist component on the right that serves as an effective tool for the power-elite.
  ———
  Action-reaction. Maybe that is the accelerant.

  Reply
  • Banger says:
    July 12, 2013 at 2:25 pm

    Ultimately I agree. The whole situation has a aura of perfection–it certainly is cool as a human artifact. Nihilism leads to major social realignment–it is fundamentally unstable and may well be the crack we are all waiting for.

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    • Ulysses says:
      July 12, 2013 at 3:10 pm

      “The crack that we are all waiting for”– maybe. Certainly the corrupt elites have pretty much captured and neutralized all of the traditional methods of translating public outrage into meaningful political action. Here in the U.S., for example, participating in our two-party system (except in rare instances at the local level) is to maintain a kayfabe deception, cleverly supported by the MSM, that citizens actually have a meaningful “choice.”

      The notion that Dianne Feinstein and Mitch McConnell “oppose” each other on the senate floor is pure delusion. They both oppose the interests of most Americans, while steadfastly advancing the interests of the 0.01%

      The MSM maintains an illusion of meaningful political dialogue by focusing on purely social issues, like gay marriage, that have no impact on the plutocrats’ bottom line. Plutocrats like the Koch brothers, wasting billions on trying to stop gay marriage, only help to maintain this delusion.

      We need to focus on identifying the handful of plutocrats who control the system, exposing their vulnerabilities, and toppling them from power. They won’t respond to “political pressure,” except to make the politicians they own do a better job of suppressing the righteous anger of the people.

      David Hume was correct when he said in 1742: “For so great is the natural ambition of men that they are never satisfied with power; and if one order of men, by pursuing its own interest, can usurp upon every other order, it will certainly do so and render itself, as far as possible, absolute and uncontrollable.”

      The plutocrats’ power in our present system is almost absolute and uncontrollable. We cannot reason with them, we cannot vote for better and less corrupt politicians to “reform” the present system. The present system is beyond reform. This doesn’t mean that a constitutional republic couldn’t be restored here in the U.S.– it simply means such a restoration will never happen as long as psychopaths like Jamie Dimon continue to walk free.

      Reply
      • Banger says:
        July 12, 2013 at 4:09 pm

        The genius of the American system was the idea of checks and balances, i.e., that any one faction would have to overcome considerable practical obstacles to establish and maintain control. The great thing is that, for the most part, it worked pretty well despite some periods of considerable larceny and schemes. But because the interests in the country varied greatly with locality and sector combinations were difficult to establish and maintain.

        That balanced approached has been gamed–in my view the deal-breaker was the growth of the CIA and related institutions that operate beyond all the three branches of government as a practical affair. Now a unified coherent and very robust system is in place almost unassailable in its power. At the same time, the people are becoming more skeptical of the media and their governments. When the Boston incident, for example, happened several people expressed doubt about the official story–this is very unusual because the mainstream media suppresses all alternative views on all major issues. Where do these ideas come from? As this skepticism spreads the power of the State will diminish thus encouraging a skeptical view of the mainstream narrative is more essential than advocating for individual issues.

        Reply
        • Ulysses says:
          July 12, 2013 at 4:47 pm

          Excellent point! Challenging the MSM “narrative” is critical.

          Reply
• Lambert Strether says:
  July 12, 2013 at 3:20 pm

  Step one. But “powerlessness” over what?

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  • Banger says:
    July 12, 2013 at 4:18 pm

    Powerlessness over the system as a whole–it is very robust and interconnected system at this point the result of thousands of efforts. We(by that I mean the community of dissidents) cannot intrude into the government; we have no voice and no power at present because we are unable to make any section of the system feel pain by our efforts and indeed we don’t even have real community as, for example, the African American community had in maintaining the Montgomery bus boycott. The power-elite don’t, right now, even need our support or consent–they can, in my view force almost anything down our throats using already established techniques. You know, if things get dicey, just create enemies and external threats.

    As I’ve said many times, the essential work is to de-legitimize the system, question their version of reality and point out the fakery that is at the heart of our political discourse. Unless that is done rigorously at every chance we will remain powerless.

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