Modern Imperialism: Corporate Takeover of the World

[Time for change]

Imperialists, like everyone else, have always sought to justify their actions. In the latter 19th Century and the early decades of the 20th Century, imperialism was more direct than it is today, and it was called imperialism. The basic concept was rather simple. A militarily strong country from Europe would enter a militarily weak third world country and take control of it. The natural resources and human labor of the weaker country were put in the service of the stronger country.

The justification of this process has been captured by the phrase “white man’s burden”. Under this theme, imperialism was justified on the basis that the dominated countries were inhabited by culturally backwards savages who were in need of being “civilized”. Dominating them was not something that the imperialists did in order to enrich themselves, but rather it was a burden that they carried out for strictly altruistic purposes.

Numerous successful rebellions by the colonized countries in the first half of the 20th Century eventually discredited the concept, so that imperialism went out of favor. The new anti-imperialist world attitude towards imperialism is captured in the preamble to the United Nations Charter, which came into existence in 1945:

We the people of the United Nations determined:

To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…

But progress has never followed a straight line. Imperialism is alive and well in the world today, but it goes under different names, such as “free trade”, “foreign investment”, or “structural adjustment”. Naomi Klein, in her book, “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, uses another name for it: Shock therapy. As always has been the case, its practitioners and proponents provide justifications for the new imperialism, just as they did for the old imperialism. But of course they use different justifications than the old ones, in order to conform to the new ideologies.

The ideology at the root of all these policies is supplied by Milton Friedman’s economic theories, developed at the University of Chicago. These theories, when put into practice in several countries over more than three decades, have served primarily to increase the wealth and power of the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else.


The new imperialism

Under the new imperialism, various strict and related conditions are imposed upon a country in return for a loan, usually structured by international financial institutions that are largely under the control of the United States. In addition to a strict schedule for repaying of the loan, the conditions generally include: opening the country to private investment; the privatization of national resources, services, and industries; various favors towards those industries, like selling off state assets at bargain prices, tax breaks, subsidies, a paucity of regulation, and laws that greatly favor capital over labor; and drastic cuts in social services for the country’s inhabitants.

The primary result is that the foreign corporations and investors make vast profits while the country’s inhabitants become even more impoverished than they were. The process is something akin to loan sharking or indentured servitude.

The rationalization used to justify this process is that the privatized industries, through the process of the unfettered “free market”, will be far more efficient and productive than they were when they were under government ownership. This will result in improved goods and services for the country’s inhabitants, and will provide tons of jobs as well. However, it rarely works like that.


Critique of the rationale for the new imperialism

James Petras, in his book, “Rulers and Ruled in the U.S. Empire”, debunks the many rationalizations that proponents of the new imperialism use to justify their activities.

He points out that, far from making their products more available to a country’s inhabitants, the prices that multinational corporations (MNC) charge are usually so high that most inhabitants of third world countries are priced out of the market. Because of the many tax breaks and lack of oversight leading to illegal tax evasion, few tax revenues are received by the country. Few or no net jobs are created because the MNCs often don’t hire local workers for its activities. And when they do hire local workers they do so under government laws that greatly favor capital over labor, which are enacted to attract MNCs. The bottom line is that rather than serving as a financial asset to the country, profits accrue to the MNC and its investors while draining the country of its financial and other resources. Debt it piled up, necessitating new loans, and a vicious cycle of loans leading to further indebtedness.

With regard to the ideological claims that the process encourages “competition”, Petras has this to say:

The real effect is to convert public monopolies to foreign owned private monopolies. This usually results in an increase in charges, a decline in services for less profitable regions or low-income consumers, and an end to subsidized rates for emerging domestic industries and the impoverished urban and rural poor…

Foreign investors have successfully secured control over some of the most lucrative oil and gas fields from compliant rulers. The obvious result has been a huge transfer of wealth from the national economy to the MNCs under the assumption that the new investments … will provide compensatory benefits. The problem is that energy corporations are notorious for not fulfilling their investment obligations. They charge international prices to local consumers, pricing endogenous producers out of international markets and impoverishing low-income energy users. It deprives the revenue starved state of a source of public funding. It heightens inequalities between the foreign rich and their local associates and the rest of the population

Why do countries allow this to happen to them?

Persuasion
Persuasion is often the preferred initial method to convince countries to accept the conditions required by international lending institutions in return for loans. Persuasion of course is apt to be more effective when countries are desperate for money. And it can take many forms.

First there are the ideological arguments about the wonders of the “free market”. Such arguments may have held some sway with well meaning people in the past. However, by now the fallacy of these arguments has become well known, as least among those who have studied the effects on developing countries.

John Perkins, in “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, explains how persuasion is often used, from the perspective of an insider who formerly did the dirty work that he describes in his book. Perkins explains that economic hit men (EHM) are paid by U.S. corporations to develop economic projections for major development projects in third world countries. Their projections are supposed to predict substantial economic growth and thereby justify huge loans from international lending institutions. The money from the loan then is immediately funneled into U.S. oil, engineering or construction companies (which is a precondition of the loan) to develop their projects.

Sometimes there are darker aspects to persuasion, for which we will probably never know the full extent . Perkins describes these aspects in his second book, “The Secret History of the American Empire – Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption”, quoting an anonymous source, who was a fellow EHM:

I walked into El Presidente’s office two days after he was elected and congratulated him… I said “Mr. President, in here I got a couple hundred million dollars for you and your family, if you play the game – you know, be kind to my friends who run the oil companies, treat your Uncle Sam good.” Then I stepped closer, reached my right hand into the other pocket, bent down next to his face, and whispered, “In here I got a gun and a bullet with your name on it – in case you decide to keep your campaign promises.” I stepped back, sat down, and recited a little list for him, of presidents who were assassinated or overthrown because they defied their Uncle Sam: from Diem to Torrijos – you know the routine. He got the message.

Financial manipulation or indifference
Naomi Klein explains in her book that countries are much more susceptible to requests to alter their laws and economic policies to benefit foreign corporations when they are in shock. The shock can result from war, assassination or overthrow of a head-of-state, natural disaster, or financial calamity. In any of these cases, the shock can provide great opportunities for opportunistic foreign scavengers.

The Southeast Asian financial crisis of 1997 – the economic collapse of the so-called Asian Tigers – provides a good example of how international financial institutions have used their financial powers to facilitate a financial crisis to benefit powerful corporations. Just prior to their collapse, the Asian Tigers were being held up as great success stories of globalization. Klein explains the role of international financial institutions in the crisis.

In the mid-nineties, under pressure from the IMF and the newly created World Trade Organization, Asian governments agreed to lift barriers to their financial sectors, allowing a surge of paper investing and currency trading…

As for the IMF, the world body created to prevent crashes like this one, it took the do-nothing approach that had become its trademark since Russia. It did, eventually, respond – but not with the sort of fast, emergency stabilization loan that a purely financial crisis demanded. Instead, it came up with a long list of demands, pumped up by the Chicago School certainty that Asia’s catastrophe was an opportunity in disguise…

Klein also explains in great detail the motivation for the financial elites wanting the Asian economies to fail. Here is part of that explanation:

If the crisis was left to worsen, all foreign currency would be drained from the region and Asian-owned companies would have either to close down or to sell themselves to Western firms…

The IMF was exclusively focused on how the crisis could be used as leverage. The meltdown had forced a group of strong-willed countries to beg for mercy; to fail to take advantage of that window of opportunity was, for the Chicago School economists running the IMF, tantamount to professional negligence.

To “take advantage of the opportunity” the IMF required the Asian countries to adopt a host of Milton Friedman’s Chicago School economic “reforms”, such as:

The IMF also demanded that the governments make deep budget cuts, leading to mass layoffs of public sector workers in countries where people were already taking their own lives in record numbers. They were now ready to be reborn, Chicago-style: privatized basic services, independent central banks, low social spending and, of course, total free trade… Indonesia would cut food subsidies…

Government overthrow
John Perkins explains that if the EHMs are unsuccessful in their efforts to convince a government to play ball, then the “jackals” are sent in to assassinate or overthrow the uncooperative government officials in question, as was done for example in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, in Chile in 1973, or in Indonesia in 1965.

Naomi Klein describes how Milton Freidman’s economic theories and policies worked in tandem with U.S. covert assistance to destroy the economic functioning of several South American countries in the 1970s, following the overthrow of Salvador Allende and his replacement by the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1973:

The Chicago School counterrevolution quickly spread. Brazil was already under the control of a U.S. supported junta… Friedman traveled to Brazil in 1973, at the height of that regime’s brutality, and declared the economic experiment a “miracle”. In Uruguay the military had staged a coup in 1973 and the following year decided to go the Chicago route…. The effect on Uruguay’s previously egalitarian society was immediate: real wages decreased by 28% and hordes of scavengers appeared on the streets… Next to join the experiment was Argentina in 1976, when a junta seized power from Isabel Peron. That meant that Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil – the countries that had been showcases of developmentalism – were now all run by U.S. backed military governments and were living laboratories of Chicago School economics.

Violence and war
Violence and war meld with government overthrow as a means of getting countries to go along with our wishes. Perkins explains that when other methods don’t work, then we send in our military, as we did in Panama in 1989 or in Iraq in 1991 and 2003.

Klein explains that the preferred economic policies are often so painful to a country’s population, that peaceful means are not enough to maintain them. She describes the role of systematic violence in persuading Chileans to accept new economic policies following the installation of Pinoche’s regime:

The generals knew that their hold on power depended on Chileans being truly terrified…The trail of blood left behind over those four days came to be known as the Caravan of Death. In short order the entire country had gotten the message: resistance is deadly… In all, more than 3,200 people were disappeared or executed, at least 80,000 were imprisoned, and 200,000 fled the country.

Antonia Juhasz, in her book, “http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dthe%2Bbush%2Bagenda%2Bjuhasz%26btnG%3DSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail">The Bush Agenda – Invading the World One Economy at a Time”, describes how force and violence are used by third world governments to protect corporate interests:

Cochabamba is the 3rd largest city in Bolivia… In late 1999, the World Bank required that Bolivia privatize Cochabamba’s water in return for reduction of its debts. Bechtel – one of the top ten water privatization companies in the world – won the contract.

Immediately after Bechtel took over the Cochabamba water system, and before any of the promised investments in infrastructure were made to improve or expand services, the company raised the price of water… by 100%... Many were simply forced to do without running water… The same law that privatized the water system also privatized any collected water, including rainwater collected in barrels…

The majority of the people voted for the cancellation of the contract with Bechtel. When this demand was met with silence from government officials, the citizens went on a citywide strike… the Bolivian government defended Bechtel’s right to privatize by sending armed military troops into the streets to disperse the crowds. At least one 17-year-old boy was shot and killed and hundreds more were injured…

Petras describes the role of the U.S. military as the ultimate guarantee that our preferred policies will be realized:

The responsibility of the US for the growth of Latin American billionaires and mass poverty is several-fold and involves a very wide gamut of political institutions, business elites and academic and media moguls. First and foremost the US backed the military dictators and Neoliberal politicians who set up the billionaire economic models.

Examples of the consequences of the new imperialism

The books described above provide numerous examples of the consequences of the new imperialism in a wide range of countries. Here are just a few of them:

Russia 1991
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Russia was in dire financial straights as it attempted to convert to capitalism. Under pressure from the United States and international financial institutions, Boris Yeltsin decided to go the economic shock therapy route:

After only one year, shock therapy had taken a devastating toll: millions of middle-class Russians had lost their life savings when money lost its value, and abrupt cuts to subsidies meant millions of workers had not been paid in months. The average Russian consumed 40% less in 1992 than in 1991, and a third of the population fell below the poverty line. The middle class was forced to sell personal belongings from card tables on the streets.

Chile 1973
As described in Klein’s book, following the overthrow of Allende and his replacement by Pinochet:

In 1974, inflation reached 375 %. The cost of basics such as bread went through the roof. At the same time, Chileans were being thrown out of work because Pinochet’s experiment with “free trade” was flooding the country with cheap imports… Unemployment hit record levels and hunger became rampant… Chicago boys argued that the problem didn’t lie with their theory but with the fact that it wasn’t being applied with sufficient strictness.

Poland – 1988
Poland won its independence from the Soviet Union in 1988, and it was in dire financial straights at that time. It was made clear to them that they could expect little or no help unless they agreed to economic shock therapy. Klein describes how that worked out:

Shock therapy in Poland did not cause “momentary dislocations,” as predicted. It caused a full-blown depression: a 30% reduction in industrial production… unemployment skyrocketed, and in 1993 it reached 25% in some areas – a wrenching change in a country that, under Communism, for all its many abuses and hardships, had no open joblessness…

In 1989, 15% of Poland’s population was living below the poverty line; in 2003, 59% of Poles had fallen below the line. Shock therapy, which eroded job protection and made daily life far more expensive, was not the route to Poland’s becoming one of Europe’s “normal” countries…

The Asian Tigers – 1997
Klein describes what happened to the Asian people following the financial crisis described above:

24 million people lost their jobs in this period… What disappeared in these parts of Asia was what was so remarkable about the region’s “miracle” in the first place: its large and growing middle class… 20 million Asians were thrown into poverty in this period of what Rodolfo Walsh would have called “planned misery”… Women and children suffered the worst of the crisis. Many rural families in the Philippines and South Korea sold their daughters to human traffickers who took them to work in the sex trade… a 20 percent increase in child prostitution.

Iraq – 2003
Antonia Juhasz explains in her book that economic plunder was one of the chief reasons, and probably the chief reason, for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. In that sense, it was a great success, not the failure that it is often made out to be.

The Foreign Investment Order provided the legal framework for the invasion of U.S. corporations into Iraq. It provided for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises, foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, tax-free remittance of all profits, immunity of foreign businesses from Iraqi courts, and much else. As with everything else about the U.S. occupation, these provisions did great damage to the Iraqi people, for the benefit of U.S. corporations. Juhasz describes the effects of privatization of Iraqi industries:

In Bremer’s own words, “Restructuring inefficient state enterprises requires laying off workers.”… Even those workers who still had jobs in Iraq at the time only received… about half of what they made before the war. At the same time, prices skyrocketed.

And with respect to the lack of any constraints on foreign corporations:

U.S. corporations are therefore invited to enter the Iraqi economy, exploit a nation at its most vulnerable point, with no obligation to reinvest in the country at a time when rebuilding Iraq is professed to be the Bush administration’s most vital assignment. U.S. corporations have reaped staggering revenues from their Iraqi operations… Chevron, Bechtel, and Halliburton have each experienced skyrocketing returns to their Iraqi endeavors.

In the hands of U.S. corporations, the effort to rebuild Iraq was a miserable failure:

The Bush administration … failed in this mission because it did not focus its efforts on the immediate provision of needs, but rather on the opening of Iraq to private foreign corporations… Iraqis have continually pointed to the lack of electricity as a primary source of unrest… electricity has remained far below prewar levels and significantly below U.S. stated goals…

The result was frequent blackouts and the availability of electricity for only a few hours a day, with air conditioning unavailable much of the time in the face of outside temperatures of 130 degrees. Lack of potable water and sewage treatment has been another continuing and major problem:

The full failure of the reconstruction was revealed in a January 2006 U.S. government audit. Although more than 93% of the U.S. appropriation has been spent or committed to specific companies and projects, as much as 60% of all water and sewer projects will not be completed…

Conclusion – some words about world hunger

Since world hunger is one of the greatest scourges in our world today, it is fitting to end this post with some words on that subject. Contrary to popular beliefs, world hunger and starvation is not just an accidental result of the unpredictability of nature – rather it is largely a result of the policies described above.

World agriculture produces enough food to feed everyone in the world with at least 2,720 calories per day, as explained by the “World Hunger Education Service”, which notes that “The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food.” Yet, the most recent (2006) estimate of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization is the 820 million people (12.5% of the world’s population) are malnourished.

A recent article in The Nation, titled “Manufacturing a Food Crisis”, by Walden Bello, explains much of the dynamics of world hunger in today’s world:

The apostles of the free market and the defenders of dumping… The policies they advocate are bringing about a globalized capitalist industrial agriculture. Developing countries are being integrated into a system where export-oriented production of meat and grain is dominated by large industrial farms… The elimination of tariff and nontariff barriers is facilitating a global agricultural supermarket of elite and middle-class consumers…

There is little room for the hundreds of millions of rural and urban poor in this integrated global market. They are confined to giant suburban favelas, where they contend with food prices that are often much higher than the supermarket prices, or to rural reservations, where they are trapped in marginal agricultural activities and increasingly vulnerable to hunger. Indeed, within the same country, famine in the marginalized sector sometimes coexists with prosperity in the globalized sector…

This transformation is a traumatic one for hundreds of millions of people, since peasant production is not simply an economic activity. It is an ancient way of life, a culture.

Such is, and has always been, the results of imperialism – war, misery, and the repression of the many, so that a small minority may live in luxury beyond the imagination of most normal people.

[izquierdista]

1. Seeds of their own destruction

These same corporate imperialists have also unwittingly sown the seeds of their own destruction. For you see, all those Russians selling their personal possessions on card tables in the streets, that is a scene replicated in every underdeveloped economy around the world. They are forced into self reliance, into growing vegetables on the balcony and in the back yard and bartering for other goods and services. They will survive when the imperialists run into a "subprime crisis" or a "spike in crude oil" crisis, for they never were able to get a subprime mortgage and they certainly don't consume much in the way of crude oil.

The more self-reliant people become in third world countries, the less they need the products of the global economy. If they replace the export crops that have been foisted on them and grow locally adapted food crops, they won't need to import American grain. In the history of the world, every place where humans have prospered has provided them with the food and fiber and building materials that they needed, for if food wouldn't grow (like in Antarctica and the Sahara), people didn't stick around long.

People are naturally self-reliant and it takes quite a social derangement to keep them from building adequate shelters and growing adequate food. A derangement on the order of North Korea, where adulation of the 'Dear Leader' takes precedence over putting kim chee away for the winter. Corporate imperialists are exporters of social derangement. They build a pipeline to the resources of an area and hook it up to a vacuum, pulling out things of value and leaving only pollution behind. The sooner that indigenous peoples take up arms against the visiting corporatist who is casing the joint, the better off they will be.

[Time for change]

8. I think that's true to some extent

But still, self-reliance alone will often not be enough, I'm afraid. People need land to grow food, they need access to water, and they need a lot of other things. When people are run off their land by their government, they need a lot more than self-reliance alone to set things right.

I think it's going to be a long hard struggle to prevail over imperial rule.

[izquierdista]

12. When people are run off their OWN land

by their OWN government, that is when revolutions are born. Like the rebels in Chiapas, they will set up their own state and drive away the government that sells out their own interest to the corporate imperialists. The corporate interests are always looking for places with a "stable political climate" to invest. That translates to "people too docile to rise up when they are being robbed". America is a great place to invest because the populace will continue to pay ever increasing prices with ever decreasing wages by accepting higher and higher levels of debt. They will gladly indenture themselves to pay for baubles and trinkets that a self-reliant people would either not waste their time on, or make on their own.

[rhett o rick]

25. It's kinda like killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Corporations need the people

both for labor and for a market. If you kill (figuratively) all the people the corporations would die. If no one could afford a car, Exxon would have a hard time selling gasoline.

[Duke Newcombe]

2. "Well, I for one welcome our new corporate overlords."

In a pig's eye. :puke:

Duke

[cloudythescribbler]

3. This post is a real gem -- folk interested in imperialism should contact sds/mds & consider joining

sds/mds (students for a democratic society/movement for a democratic society)is a multi-tendency, multi-issue ANTI-IMPERIALIST organization and movement open to all. sds back in the 60s was the group that launched the antiwar movement opposed to US intervention in Vietnam and its relaunching in 2006 was to evoke, in the era of the Iraq War (another FAILED imperialist military venture) the anti-imperialist tradition (at least in the US) to which sds is so central.

Analyzing imperialism and communicating what it is (in part with an eye to bringing anti-imperialism into the political mainstream, at least of the grassroots of the Democratic Party and progressives generally) is part of sds/mds's mission -- but of course mobilizing a mass militant movement to oppose it in practice is really crucial. It is important that our 'talking' at least be tied to some kind of 'doing' or 'walking', for that talking and thinking to be fully meaningful:

http://studentsforademocraticsociety.org/home/

and our active wiki:

http://newsds.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

[Time for change]

6. Thank you for the information

I think that one of the biggest problems is that this is an absolutely taboo subject in American politics. A mainstream politician simply cannot criticize our country in this vein without seriously risking the end of his/her political career. That is the sign of a really sick society IMO. If we can't talk about our most serious problems we certainly won't have the will to do much about it.

[cloudythescribbler]

7. Yes, Repugs and, for that matter, DLC Democrats and Todd Gitlin cry "anti-American" ....

but it seems to me that "Rainbow Coalition" Democrats and the broad liberal mainstream (Kennedy/Boxer Democrats) of the Democratic Party should be winnable over to a politics of anti-imperialism. Once it is clear that NAFTA/WTO, outsourcing, and exploiting the undocumented status of immigrants, in addition to the Iraq War are all the ESSENCE of imperialism, it doesn't seem so "unAmerican" to a broad swath of the US public.

In India, Arundhati Roy -- also an anti-imperialist, and critic of neo-liberalism -- is trashed with an epithet that is their equivalent of "anti-American": "anti-National".

[rhett o rick]

26. What form of government does SDS subscribe? nm

[Junkdrawer]

4. Tonight, at a dinner party,we were discussing how industrial powers...

always morph to imperial powers and that that usually marks the beginning of their decline.

Happened to Rome...

Happened to Britain...

And it's happening to us...

[Time for change]

20. Yes, I would rather that happen to us than

that we go on being the imperial power that we have become. That will mean the destruction of the whole world.

[T Monk]

5. it boils down to armed corporate violence will kill anyone anything anywhere anytime k&r

[Time for change]

21. Yes, many of them have no consciences

I have to say that I was horrified when I read of the violence against the protesters in Cochabamba, demonstrating because, essentially, Bechtel came in and took over their water supply and then priced them out of the market. And I was horrified that something like that could be done with impunity. Of course, it shouldn't be surprising. World history is filled with examples like that.

Some day the world won't allow things like that to happen.

[T Monk]

29. kick for farc rebel leader sureshot marulanda r.i.p.

[Junkdrawer]

9. Lots of Recs...not enough Kicks

:kick:

[Echo In Light]

10. K&R

[tbyg52]

11. It's the (unchecked) corporations, stupid!

BushCo's just a symptom.....

[Time for change]

13. What are you trying to say?

[tbyg52]

14. That the corporations are the *root* of the problem.

i.e., I was agreeing with you.

I've been trying to get my "It's the corporations, stupid!" meme out there - this is the first time I've posted it without a disclaimer that I was not calling anyone here stupid, and look what happens..... ;)

I think I should just give up. :hi:

[Time for change]

15. I couldn't tell for sure

With written communication, in contrast to verbal communication with all its non-verbal cues, it's often difficult to tell what someone means unless very specifically stated.

Thanks for clarifying. :hi:

[tbyg52]

16. Yep, I think it's time for me to give up on "It's the corporations, stupid!"

Although it *is*.......!

[rhett o rick]

17. Please don't give up. I like it. nm

[tbyg52]

22. OK, I won't!

:hi: It *does* have the advantage of being the simple truth.... ;)

[rhett o rick]

24. But we need a plan for what to do about it. We need to speak openly about

good corps vs. bad corps. ATT is bad while Quest is good. There used to be a site that rated corporations re. blue or red. I lost it.

[tbyg52]

27. Is this it?

http://www.buyblue.org/

[rhett o rick]

43. Yes thanks. I think they have been down for a while. nm

[lonestarnot]

41. Agree! What in the hell do we do about it? WHAT WHAT WHAT?

That is the question. Dismantle the IMF and the World Bank, rid ourselves of NAFTA, and kick the shit out of corporate CEO's WHAT????

[rhett o rick]

44. To do that we need friendly Congress-critters and that is a task. But we do have some power of the

purse. We should boycott ATT for example. They cooperated with the fascist cabal and are currently trying to subject the internet to corporate control.

[Junkdrawer]

19. Modern imperialism traces its roots to the East India Company...

and the Dutch East India Company - among the very first corporations.

Trivia Question: In 1800, what was the world's largest empire?

Answer: The private empire of the East India Company. Complete with private navy and private army.

[rhett o rick]

23. And the Revolutionary War was actually fought against King George acting

on behalf of the East India Company.

[rhett o rick]

18. Great post. k&r nm

[Time for change]

30. Thank you

[Elspeth]

28. "The real effect is to convert public monopolies to foreign owned private monopolies." YES!

And that is the goal the Friedman school of economics.

[bertman]

31. Very informative,

and I'm solid with your title Modern Imperialism: Corporate Takeover of the World.

However, I'd like to point out that this has been an ongoing phenomenon among human beings of most, if not all, races and cultures. Being a white boy I'd like to harken back to the good ole days of some of the darker-hued inhabitants of our celestial sphere, namely the Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Chinese, Japanese, Toltecs, Aztecs, and Maya to name a few. They all did a pretty bang-up job of empire-building given the limited resources they had to work with. However, I will concede that they were pikers compared to us Christian Conquistadors and our high-tech weaponry and worldwide communications net. But I'm convinced that's mostly attributable to bad timing on their part.

There are some folks who view the Chinese as the next in line to inherit our mantel when we self-destruct. But who knows? Being a product of our inferior, nationalistic educational system I don't know anything about the history of India and a bunch of other cool countries, so I apologize in advance to anyone who is offended that I left their group off the list.


The question is: How are we going to overcome this genetic defect?

[Time for change]

33. Yes, imperialism has existed since the dawn of civilization

Probably starting about 5500 years ago.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But thanks for pointing it out.

[lonestarnot]

42. So it's longevity means there is no cure for the evil hearts of men?

[Time for change]

45. I don't know about the evil hearts of men

But certainly we can devise a civilization where evil men have a lot less power than they do now.

[lonestarnot]

46. One would certainly think so!

[ChristianDemocrat1]

32. The other side of all this....

While I concede that there is much greed-driven abuse going on ... and I while am inclined to accept as reality the facts as laid out in the OP ... is there not something good going on, too? I mean, one of the reasons we have over 6.5 billion people alive today compared to apx 1 billion people circa 1900 is because -one way or another- the standard of living of the common human is better than ever.

In short, we have a population explosion right now because common people the world over are living longer, healthier, better fed, better clothed, better educated, more peaceful lives with higher paying, easier, safer jobs with more liesure time, travel & luxury items to show for it than ever before in Earth's history. Throughout the world, many many people are living today the dreams of their grandparents. The people's efforts to give a better life to their children have not been in vain. Much of these benefits have come directly from the advanced countries whose own populations have stabilised into slower population growth long ago. Two centuries ago most kings could not have electricity let alone air conditioning ... now they're considered necessities by many of the poor.

We consider it an injustice that many 3rd worlders are not living anywhere near the American dream. Nonetheless, many 3rd worlders are living far better than their ancestors -- and are starting to get a taste for the American Dream right there in their own countries, (thus the increased demand for industrialisation & oil - which is driving its price up).

To what degree these rosy facts are attributable to corporations can be debated. What really cannot be disputed is that, whatever wrong has been going on, a lot of good has happened to a lot of common people in every part of the world. While examples may be cited to attempt to refute the gist of what I am saying here, those examples would be regional and/or temporary anomalies to the general, global trend of rising standards of living for common people everywhere -- thus the rise in population.

There is something about working together that brings a better return for effort -- that involves organization. While there are a variety of forms of economic organization besides into corporations, the track record of benefits of their involvement still make them very attractive. Without corporations, how would you get that affordably priced laptop you are using right now? Or that affordably priced microwave oven? (Only 35 years ago, microwaves were the luxury item of the rich who paid like $2000 for one). Without corporations we could not have the vast infrastructures that enable the planet to provide life-support to over 6.5 billion people. We simply would not have the means to produce and distribute the food. And subsistance level farming by individuals has historically produced overworked, undereducated low populations who died young --- of overwork. And many of them died ignorant. And yet, largely through corporations, many who would have been ignorant peasants in decades past now have access via the internet to greater intellectual resources than the advisors of kings of just a century ago. Without corporate-built, modern, indutrial infrastructures the Earth's present population could not be sustained ---> Nature would quickly force us back to population levels of over a century ago, to population levels of at least 5.5 billion less people, less people experiencing life itself.

There is much to be thankful for --- even from corporations, imperfect as they are. And throughout history, even from the greediest of despots, many good people have found a way to benefit without compromising their good ethics. While considering calls to bring further progress and improvement to the lot of common people, we should always be ready to be appreciative of the progress & improvement that has already been made. And never, under any circumstances, allow anyone to talk you into doing something you know is wrong. Violence has proved itself more harmful than not to the cause of human progress over tyranny. Properous revolutions begin and end with the quiet, peaceful revolutions within the enlightened, cooperative heart -- but strife often invites misery, destroying the work of their hands and isolating them into smaller, less efficient groups.

My 2-cents...

Our greatest challenge to overcome is Nature itself. But Nature is also our life-support. Rather than fight each other, humanity needs to focus on organizing together to tame Nature into serving the greatest good ---> supporting the greatest life for all. Corporations of people have played a worthwhile part in this evolution of human organization of effort -- working together for a greater return of effort.

[T Monk]

34. poor people have never been in worse shape the working and middle classes too

[T Monk]

35. and the other side of this insists on casualties either in employment or deaths

[ChristianDemocrat1]

51. assertion of opinion is not enough ...

I invite you to present a measure of logical presentation of facts. You have not shown nor hinted how organizing human labors by way of corporations causes loss of life and jobs. The opposite is readily recognised by most. Many communities in America and the world over are looking for corporations to come (back) into their communities for the jobs and way of life they have a reputation for bringing with them. Didn't you listen to any of the speeches on the economy by the leading democratic candidates? Did you hear nothing from them during their stay in Indiana? How Indiana jobs (and their way of life) dried up when corporations moved out to other places?

I think what you really mean to say is "unregulated corporations cause problems..."
But we may as well go ahead and say "unregulated anything causes problems..."

And that is the whole point of Government, to regulate human acitivity to maximize the good and minimize the bad.
And the whole point of Politics is to regulate Government. So we are involved with a good thing.

[ChristianDemocrat1]

36. perhaps you are talking about America or another region, but worldwide...

the general trend has been better and better for common people.

You are invited to provide some rationale for your opinion.

[T Monk]

38. staple white beans $1,160 ton, were $235 two years ago

[ChristianDemocrat1]

47. That's a very short span of time = temporary setback to the upward trend

Like I said, the overarching, worldwide trend is a higher and higher standard of living for common people throughout the world. Any facts raised to refute this are restricted to a region or span of time, ie, they are the minor exceptions to the major rule.

[T Monk]

48. not to an empty stomach

[ChristianDemocrat1]

50. There are less empty stomachs per capita now than ever

That's why there is a global population explosion. People multiply when they are fed more and live longer.

A temporary or regional setback does not refute the overarching trend of global history. That global trend is an increasingly higher standard of living for even the bottom 50%.

And its come about by a lot of optimism-driven study and hard work --- despite the dark complaints of the cynical & doomsdayers, whether religious or otherwise. Our efforts to make the world a better place are not in vain, progress is being made. The organizing of human efforts by way of corporations is part of that success, despite crooks who take an unjust cut.

[Time for change]

37. Yes, there are good things going on too

But the "better than ever" living standard that you refer to applies to some people and not others. With nearly a billion people living in poverty, and wars and repression plaguing much of the planet, the good living standards that you refer to are extremely unequally distributed.

No doubt corporations have resulted in technological advances that have improved living standards, and that many people share in those improved living standards.

But we have a situation in the world now where 2% of the population owns 50% of the wealth and where the bottom 50% of the world's population owns 1% of the world's wealth. So the improved standards of living you speak of probably don't apply to half the people in the world.

So we should ask ourselves what that top 2%, or more specifically the billionairres and multi-billionaires, have done to deserve thousands or millions of times more wealth than half of the world's population. Do they deserve this because they are responsible for our improved standards of living? Or is it because they have the power and political connections to make sure that they acquire the wealth that they want? There are no simple answers, I agree. But what right does Bechtel have to come into a community and confiscate their water supply and price the water such that most of the members of the community can't afford it? Whose living standards are they improving that they have the right to do that? And what right do corporations have to make billions for reconstructing Iraq, and yet never get the job done? And what right do Bush's cronies have to the tons of money made for tearing down peoples' houses in New Orleans and building new ones that price the original inhabitants out of the market?

I have nothing against someone getting rich from honest productive activities which benefit everyone. But my point is that way too much of the world's wealth is confiscated through imperialistic activities -- in other words, violence and theft -- rather than created through honest productive activities.

Edited to add: I do not agree that our major challenge is to overcome nature. That would be true if we didn't have an elite and powerful few, like George Bush and Dick Cheney, who care only about making life better for themselves and their friends, and couldn't care less what happens to the remainder of the world's population so that they can get whatever they want.

[bertman]

40. HEAR! HEAR!

[ChristianDemocrat1]

49. Glad you agree: the pie is so much bigger the bottom 50% are still better off than ever

the good living standards that you refer to are extremely unequally distributed
The fact that the pie is not equally distributed is not contested. I simply remind that the pie is bigger than ever and, as a result, even the lower 50% are better off than their ancestors, better off than they would have been without the organizing power by which humans have made the earth provide more bountifully for a population that is 6.7 times what it was 100 years ago. Corporations have had a positive part to play in producing that bounty by which all benefit, albeit, disproportionately.

No doubt corporations have resulted in technological advances that have improved living standards, and that many people share in those improved living standards.
See, you openly agree with the gyst of what I am saying. You have come to acknowledge the good along with the bad, the pro's along with the cons. Good for you! The lower 50% are living better than ever!

But we have a situation in the world now where 2% of the population owns 50% of the wealth and where the bottom 50% of the world's population owns 1% of the world's wealth. So the improved standards of living you speak of probably don't apply to half the people in the world.
Not so. Even after the wealthiest 2% take their 50% cut off the top, there is still more than ever before for the remaining 98% to divide up, so much so that even the bottom 50% are experiencing a population explosion. Their numbers are growing precisely because: they have more food than ages past, they live longer lives than ages past, because they have better health care than ages past, they work less hours, less strenuously than ages past. So what about the upper 2%?? If you just tune them out and focus on what the bottom 50% have now compared to what they had in ages past, they are doing better than ever. Comparing the upper 2% to the bottom 50% is more an issue of greed v envy. I am simply saying to consider moving past that greed v envy mindset for a moment to be thankful that the bottom 50% has more now than they did in ages past. Some of this ongoing prospering of the bottom 50% is attributable to the benefits of organizing the labors of massive sums of people via corporations.

I have nothing against someone getting rich from honest productive activities which benefit everyone. But my point is that way too much of the world's wealth is confiscated through imperialistic activities -- in other words, violence and theft -- rather than created through honest productive activities.
I agree. I hate violence and theft. And I hate greed and envy. Any student of history can see that that farther back into history you go, the more per capita violence, theft, greed, envy, racism, slavery, genocide and cannibalism you get, (not just figurative). I just also point out that, despite the acknowledged improvements needed to the status quo, there is still a lot of good that has come of it. And we should be thankful for what we presently have while we work towards something better. We do not need to demonize our imperfect parents in order to succeed them. We do not need to demonize the present in order to work for a better future.


I do not agree that our major challenge is to overcome nature.
You seem to think it a small, marginal thing the advance of modern agriculture that produces harvests from exhausted soils that are 13 times more bountiful than harvests from virgin soil. Many, many studious people had to work pretty hard to overcome Nature to achieve that. Same could be said of modern medicines and vaccines and treatments, advances in hygiene and food distribution and housing. It should be remembered that hot & cold, disease & famine, hostile beasts & rugged terrain are all part of Nature. Many places that were largely threatening & uninhabitable by Nature are now places of thriving development because of modern energy, transportation, construction, heating and air conditioning, pest & disease control. Studious, hard-working people are overcoming the resistance of Nature itself to provide for greater life, 6.7 times the human population of just 100 years ago! Better fed, better clothed, better health, longer lives, better housing, more education, leisure, travel, etc., has resulted for the common person of the bottom 50% than all of history past. Just because these studious people lay low and quietly get the hard work done does not mean that the crooks are more influencial. Despite the crooks in high places and low, the common people the world over are gradually climbing to higher standards of living. The exceptions to this global trend are either regional or temporary. And the massive organizing of human effort via corporations is part of that success. There are a lot of good, studious, hard-working people whose labors are organized most effectively via corporations, despite some crooks that skim off a cut.

That's just the other side of this whole thing. One side of the coin does not have to be the enemy of the other side. Its just reality: coins have two legitimate sides. So do many issues. The peaceful, productive, non-radical progressive will keep that in mind.

[Time for change]

52. I don't know where you get the idea that the bottom 50% is better off than ever

If that's based on the population explosion, I point out that there can often be a big difference between quantity and quality of life. An expanding pie does not necessarily mean that those at the bottom have any expansion at all. With nearly a billion in poverty today, it's hard to fathom that it was worse in earlier days as a general rule.

In any event, our world is rapidly reaching the point where it cannot tolerate much more expansion in our numbers. The population explosion, in other words, is nearing the point where it will cause massive catastrophe. The wealthy may be able to avoid personal catastrophe when that happens, through their extra-ordinary access.

I agree with you that it is unregulated corporations that are the problem, rather than corporations per se. But our country and our world have in recent years and decades, largely due to lobbying of those very corporations, accepted a philosophy that says the less regulation the better. That portends a very ominous future for us if it's not corrected.

[alfredo]

39. Kick this fine post