Sunday morning Coffee & Quotes: Observations on corporatism

[marmar]

"Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

- Ambrose Bierce

.....

"I can be free only to the extent that others are forbidden to profit from their physical, economic, or other superiority to the detriment of my liberty."

- Emile Durkheim

.....

"America's corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society."

- Saul Alinsky

.....

"The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government."

- Jim Hightower

.....

"Multinational corporations do control. They control the politicians. They control the media. They control the pattern of consumption, entertainment, thinking. They're destroying the planet and laying the foundation for violent outbursts and racial division."

- Jerry Brown

.....

" The recent quantum leap in the ability of transnational corporations to relocate their facilities around the world in effect makes all workers, communities and countries competitors for these corporations' favor. The consequence is a "race to the bottom" in which wages and social conditions tend to fall to the level of the most desperate."

- Jeremy Brecher

.....

"It is the growing custom to narrow control,
concentrate power, disregard and disfranchise the public;
and assuming that certain powers by divine right
of money-raising or by sheer assumption,
have the power to do as they think best
without consulting the wisdom of mankind."

- W.E.B. Dubois

.....

"There are companies that do good for the communities. They produce services and goods that are of value to all of us, that make our lives better, and that's a good thing. The problem comes in the profit motivation here, because for these people, there's no such thing as enough."

- Michael Moore

.....

"Corporations don't advertise products particularly; they're advertising a way of life. A way of thinking. A story of who we are as people and how we got here and what's the source of our so-called liberty, and so-called freedom. You know, so you have decades and decades and decades of propaganda and education teaching us to think in a certain way. When applied to the large corporation, it's that the corporation was inevitable, that it's indispensable, that it's somehow remarkably efficient, and that it's responsible for progress and the good life. They're selling themselves, they're selling their domination, they're selling they're rule, and they're creating an image for themselves, as just regular folks down the block. It's tough, you know, they're putting some taxpayer shareholder money into helping and who can say? But that money should be going to the taxpayers to decide what to do. And while they're doing these sorts of nice things, they're also playing a role in lowering taxes for corporations and lowering taxes for wealthy people, and reconfiguring public policy. And what we don't see is all that reconfiguring going on; we don't see all that vacuuming up of money, vacuuming out the insides of public processes, but we do see the nice facade."

- Richard Grossman

.....

"The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations."

- Noam Chomsky

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. "The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government."

K & R

[DailyGrind51]

2. Abraham Lincoln

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and cause me to tremble for safety of my country; corporations have been enthroned, 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 the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic destroyed."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864

[marmar]

3. Prescient, old Abe was.....

n/t

[truedelphi]

5. Hardly prescient - Abe had been lawyering for the big railraod companies

before he turned to running for President

[tbyg52]

4. It's the corporations, stupid!

(Here I am again, trying to get my pet meme taken up.... ;) )

[OneBlueSky]

6. what past presidents had to say about the military-industrial complex and corporatism . . .

"I hope 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." Thomas Jefferson

"There is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capacity of holding it in perpetuity by... corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses. It's one of the reasons why the word "corporation" doesn't exist in the constitution - they were to be chartered only by states, so local people could keep a close eye on them." James Madison, "Father of the Constitution"

"In this point of the case the question is distinctly presented whether the people of the United States are to govern through representatives chosen by their unbiased suffrages or whether the money and power of a great corporation are to be secretly exerted to influence their judgment and control their decisions." Andrew Jackson

"I am more than ever convinced of the dangers to which the free and unbiased exercise of political opinion - the only sure foundation and safeguard of republican government - would be exposed by any further increase of the already overgrown influence of corporate authorities." Martin van Buren

"As a result of the war, 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. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." Abraham Lincoln

"As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters." Grover Cleveland

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." Theodore Roosevelt

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of the private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, IS Fascism.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Dwight David Eisenhower

[DailyGrind51]

7. Mussolini said it most succinctly!

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

Benito Mussolini quote (Italian dictator, 1883-1945)