If you are not from USA, you have lower chances of being mistaken on definition of Republic. If you are…
January 7, 2015
What is Democracy | What is Communism | What is Capitalism | What is Socialism | What is Republic | What is Fascism | What is Aristocracy | What is Anarchism | What is Corporatism | What is Libertarianism | Conclusion
The thing with Corporatism is that, it does NOT exist.
Really: Nothing. Nada. Hot air. Water Vapor.
Corporatism is supposedly the dominance of corporations in political and economic life. Who subvert democracy, kill ‘small businesses’, and then exploit everyone and wreck nations for their own profit.
But there’s a problem with this definition.
For, see, what IS a corporation ?
A corporation is an organization which does business in the name of the shareholders.
Basically, its the greater version of a ‘small business’ – a mill, a workshop, a foundry, or a textile mill. It commands much more wealth and resources than a small business of 4-5 people, of course. Some mega-corporations command average hundreds of thousands of people around the world, record-breaker Walmart has 2 million employees. Not to mention that there are numerous corporations in the list of top 50 economic entities of the world. Therefore there are numerous corporations which are much bigger than 150 countries on the planet as of today.
Basically, they are nations/countries inside themselves.
Imagine 50 supposedly democratic countries in the world being owned by a handful of rich men. For that’s exactly what it is.
A mega-corporation is owned by a handful of majority shareholders, with one shareholder being the dominant one. And it is run totally according to wishes of that majority shareholder. Total private tyranny.
Theoretically this person would be bound by the ‘rules and wishes of the market’. But however, when you are the 28th biggest economic entity in the world, the truth is that you are not bound by any rules anymore – even the rules of your own nation.
Because, wealth makes might. As we have seen in the case of feudalism and capitalism, you can easily corrupt the political process and push your own laws, leave aside protecting yourself from being prosecuted under any existing law.
Which is the situation everyone talking about ‘corporatism’ is complaining these days.
Alright. Logical. This IS a problem. Then how does corporatism not exist, whereas a problem like this exists?
Lets take the corporation out of the picture for a second…
What remains ?
All the wealth, resources and means which were owned by the corporation, now will be owned directly by the wealth holder – the majority shareholders of the corporation. Few private rich men, exercising total control over resources bigger than ~150 nations.
It suddenly turned into Feudalism, isn’t it.
The only thing missing is the armed men of the lord, who enforce the ‘property rights’ of the lord in his feudal domain (aka corporation). But nowadays even that feature is already present, with the Blackwater Mercenary corporation and other private armies having become a reality.
The only thing preventing full blown feudalism as of this moment is the existence of central states which have bigger resources and standing armies than these privately held ‘countries’.
Aha – catch 22.
If you don’t have a centralized state which can ‘undo’ all the private lords and enforce the will of the people through democratic process, you end up in feudalism. If you do, this time the state is corrupted by the wealth holders and gets usurped to be used against the people themselves, because of the immense wealth they were able to gather.
Which is, as you remember, a problem with Capitalism – allowing accumulation of unbounded wealth.
And that’s another pointer why corporatism is nonexistent – its just Capitalism, exercised through corporations. If you remove corporations, you see that everything corporations were doing will now be done directly by those who owned those corporations. As the history of USA in late 19th century shows: Entire country was basically owned by 12 people, nicknamed ‘robber barons’. Only with the implementation of anti-trust laws, they had to break up their corporations, and exercise ownership through a network of shareholder-ships, seemingly indirectly.
So basically, Corporatism is something that does not exist. It’s just Capitalism.
What is Democracy | What is Communism | What is Capitalism | What is Socialism | What is Republic | What is Fascism | What is Aristocracy | What is Anarchism | What is Corporatism | What is Libertarianism | Conclusion
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