Feudal States of America Democracy lost

April 12, 2003 1:26 PM

The Feudal States of America?Timely article from Thom Hartmann called The Real War - On American Democracy. "Those of us who still believe in republican democracy would have "We, The People" make the decisions through representatives we've elected without the feudal influence of corporate money. We realize that "big government" is, indeed, a menace when it's no longer responsive to its own people, as happened in Germany and Russia in the last century - and is happening today in America under the neoconservatives."
posted by thedailygrowl (32 comments total)

What a hoot! Excellent parody of left-wing fanaticism.

(What? What do you mean, he's serious?)
posted by MidasMulligan at 1:52 PM on April 12, 2003

Okay then ... so far as this is concerned:

In the midst of news of foreign wars, Americans are beginning to wake up to the real war being waged here at home. It is, however, a confused awakening.

For example, Americans wonder why the Bush administration seems so intent on crippling local, state, and federal governments by starving them of funds and creating huge federal debt that our children will have to repay.

Other Americans seem to be wondering about Democrats:


"Sacramento, Cal.—The talk at the California Republican Party convention here last week centered around the move to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and elect a replacement using a unique provision in California law.

Four months after he was re-elected by an unimpressive margin of 47% to 42% over Republican Bill Simon, Davis is sporting a disapproval rating of 72%.

His surge in unpopularity derives from his misstatement of the state’s deficit. Before the November election, Davis said it was $25 billion and could be serviced. After the election, he announced it was actually $34.6 billion and required increasing taxes."
posted by MidasMulligan at 2:12 PM on April 12, 2003

Oh, nice, MM. Once again, argument by complete change of subject. A screwup by a California governor as counterpoint to the Fascistic (using the word in a historically accurate sense) policies of the Bush administration. Yeah, amazing rebuttal. Oh, and Gore invented the internet, you forgot that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 2:25 PM on April 12, 2003

MidasMulligan was never much good at "connect the dots" in elementary school either. ;)

Yeah, what so bad about Corporate Personhood? And why shouldn't our politicians be the dancing marionettes at the end of the corporations' strings? The past is in the past for a reason - because there's nothing that we can learn from it.

Hey this is fun! I'd love to see where this is all headed too, but fortunately, Mr. Bush will soon be back on his ranch.
posted by scamper at 2:27 PM on April 12, 2003

Good article thedailygrowl! I'm not sure what the California state budget has to do with the article though.
posted by michaelonfs at 2:30 PM on April 12, 2003

Honestly, galloping paranoia regarding one's democratic overlords is a very healthy attitude.
posted by Celery at 2:34 PM on April 12, 2003

I think a distinction really should be drawn here: are we asserting that neo-cons actually have a policy where their goal is to take us toward feudalism (and if so, why)? Or are we asserting that's the direction greed and unchecked Milton-Friedmanism will take us?

See, with neocon foreign policy, you can actually point to Perle's and Wolfowitz' and Cheney's paper trail and read their explicit goals for the use of military might as a foreign policy tool. And you can argue all you want that it's misguided or it's the right thing to do and over fine shades of interpretation. But their end goal -- American Security -- is also clear, and not unworthy. And their intentions and proposed means really aren't just a conspiracy theory -- you can find it directly stated in a dozen documents that metafilter has linked to.

I don't see the same thing in neocon econ policy, not yet anyway, and if anyone has such links, they oughta post them.
posted by namespan at 3:05 PM on April 12, 2003

Oh, nice, MM. Once again, argument by complete change of subject. A screwup by a California governor as counterpoint to the Fascistic (using the word in a historically accurate sense) policies of the Bush administration. Yeah, amazing rebuttal. Oh, and Gore invented the internet, you forgot that.

What's actually nice is that we have yet another in a long, grueling, seemingly endless series of far-left posts on MeFi, full of assertions, using bizarre rhetoric, and claiming vast conspiracies by "corporate feudal lords" (God I just love that phrase) that are plotting a war against democracy, and seek to replace it with a "worldwide feudal state".

Naturally, anyone that doesn't take this sort of garbage seriously is accused of changing the subject. Yep amazing rebuttal. I probably did forget Gore. Then again, you forgot the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bohemian Grove.
posted by MidasMulligan at 3:29 PM on April 12, 2003

Hey MM, the author was not picking on Republicans, he painted the Dems with the same brush.

If fascism and communism are right wing, then I'm all for the left, Democracy!
posted by CrazyJub at 3:32 PM on April 12, 2003

Midas, I think what you got nailed for is making the same kind of arguments you were jumping on the article for.

You wanna take issue? Maybe explain how unregulated market-capitalism with high concentrations of capital owned by a small portion of the populace is different than feudalism. I can think of a few differences myself, but I think the analogy is apt enough that it's worth taking note of.

(Even if I think the article is a bit over the top).
posted by namespan at 3:42 PM on April 12, 2003

This author confuses fascism, feudalism and corporatism, three systems which are distinct. The first two do have some similarities, as do the first and third, but not the second and last. Specifically, both fascism and feudalism require immaterial bonds between citizens, while fascism and corporatism both require business to become mingled with the government. But, feudalism is almost by definition a pre-corporate state, as capitalism in fact overthrew the damn thing, even in Marx's eyes. And since corporatism is a "capitalist" state, it would by its very nature dissolve the very bonds which make fascism and feudalism necessary in favour of "naked self-interest".

That said, I don't particularly like the neo-cons either. But there are more serious critiques of them to be made than that they are crypto-fascists.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 3:56 PM on April 12, 2003

Capitalism, when left uncontrolled leads to a disparity of wealth. This disparity leads to the disenfranchisement of the majority and empowers the wealthy minority. It isn't so much an economic problem, though it can lead to economic problems, but a political one.

I'm not advocating the dismantling of capitalism, but instituting more control of the free markets to insure that the population as a whole benefits. Capitalism does many positive things, creating innovation, for example. On the other hand capitalism can lead to abuse of resources and individuals in return for short-term gains.

I believe in what I'll call "small-market capitalism." While economies of scale do lead to greater productivity, they also lead to less competitive business environments where only the wealthy can create wealth. Corporations should be regulated in such a way to avoid monopoly in name and practice. The media is a good example of capitalism going too far and by doing so, restricting democratic freedom. As Americans, we have the freedom of speech, yet that freedom is constricted by the businesses who control the media outlets. Today only a half dozen companies control every news and entertainment outlet in the United States. With such a consolidation of wealth it is nearly impossible to create independent media that could dissent from the mainstream realities projected by the current oligarchy of powerful corporations.

If it wasn't for the internet, there would be no dissent at all. I suspect this is the reason large corporation fear the internet so much and use their political influence to create things like the DMCA and insert clauses in laws to erode the right of privacy for internet users.

I'm not a communist, but someone who believes the US interpretation of capitalism is flawed and needs reviewed. Markets should be open and sustainable, yet I fear the current paradigm achieves neither of those ideas.

I don't know about the specious connection to neo-conservative ideology and the rise of centralized corporate power, but I do believe that the corporations are seeking control of government policies in order to benefit themselves. Corporations, as I see them, use the free market to rise to power and then restrict the free market to preserve their power. This is dangerous to not only the business environment, but to the freedom of democracy itself.
parts of this are lifted from my comments in another thread
posted by elwoodwiles at 4:28 PM on April 12, 2003

Very good analysis, Pseudoephedrine. Your system distinctions helpful clarify the issues. Suppose, though, if we removed the feudalism aspect from the article, and saw the "new" neocons rather as a global corporate-facsist movement. That seems to hold together a bit better.

Yet namespan, perhaps purposefully, reminds us of the paranoia principle: how likely is it that this movement is really as organized as it seems? Also, namespan, re Perle's and Wolfowitz' and Cheney's motivations:But their end goal -- American Security -- is also clear, and not unworthy. I'm not sure that this goal is as crystal clear as you suggest. While I'm not suggesting that they would act deliberately *against* US security, I don't share your confidence in their ability to balance their short term financial and political gain against long-term security. This is, after all, the administration who still thinks putting Social Security into the stock market is a good idea, and Star Wars II, and the Tax Cut, etc.

BTW, any troll who wants to turn this thread into a *yawn* partisan flame war ought to read the article--both parties are indicated.
posted by squirrel at 4:32 PM on April 12, 2003

elwoodwiles, I know what you mean. I used to abhor any form of socialism, but current trends convince me that there are worse things. There is a public good and a public trust to be honored: it's what we pay taxes for and employ representative government for. To continue to suck taxes out of us and minutely police our daily activities while abrogating all responsibility for the public weal to private enterprise is to commit one form of daylight robbery while actively facilitating another. I do not trust corporations with our birthright or our future, and certainly not to be self-regulating. I trust politicians little more, but they at least are supposed to be answerable to us, and if they aren't, that's something we can theoretically fix.

There's not much to choose between untrammeled capitalism and the unworkable fantasy of communism. What's needed is a strong, centrist balance, where the public good is protected by laws and responsible public bodies, while the free expression of one's natural desire to better one's condition is not unreasonably impeded. It's when the extremists get control that things turn ugly.
posted by George_Spiggott at 4:45 PM on April 12, 2003

I agree with MM the article is pretty whacked out in its use of terminology. It's radical stuff like that that drives the middle to the right and doesn't help the left gain converts, except those naive enough to buy into it.

Also, we don't live anywhere near a free market it is highly regulated. Just by large example, foreign exchange rates are contrived out of thin air by a group of bankers every 3 or 6 months or so which trickles down to the value of goods and services world-wide. The notion of a "free market" went away a long time ago the only complaints are it not being free enough.
posted by stbalbach at 6:41 PM on April 12, 2003

Liberalism is not socialism, and never will be... Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly.

Winston Churchill
posted by y2karl at 7:59 PM on April 12, 2003

y2karl, where do you get all these cool quotes?

You're not reading books on us, are you?
posted by namespan at 8:20 PM on April 12, 2003

y2karl, where do you get all these cool quotes?

Churchill as Liberal.
posted by y2karl at 8:42 PM on April 12, 2003

stbalbach, what you said about foriegn exchange sued to be true but was overthrown in the '70s--it was called the Bretton Woods system. Nowadays, for most capitalist economies and certainly all the important ones other than China (which I'm not sure about), the exchange rates are set the same way as all other financial instruments, by the big investment banks and traders. Not necessarily any better but certainly closer to a free market than you state. Ask a Singaporean financier about George Soros sometime, you'll get and earfull.
posted by billsaysthis at 9:33 PM on April 12, 2003

If it wasn't for the internet, there would be no dissent at all.

Crikey, that's terrifying, if it's true (or at least true to the extent that needle is pointing more in that direction). You seriously think so?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:17 PM on April 12, 2003

You seriously think so?

if not for the internet, I would be left in my podunk town thinking I was the only one that thought like I did.
posted by mcsweetie at 10:28 PM on April 12, 2003

Ask a Singaporean financier about George Soros sometime, you'll get and earfull.

Paul Krugman would disagree on Soros's part in the Asian financial crisis

Yes, George Soros--the visible face of a vast and very nasty network of private financial interests, controlled by the leading aristocratic and royal families of Europe--and the Rothschilds, etc, picking on crony capitalists like poor Singapore and Malaysia...

Oddly enough, conspiracy theories aside, George Soros agrees on free markets:

In The Philosophy of History, Hegel discerned a disturbing historical pattern -- the crack and fall of civilizations owing to a morbid intensification of their own first principles. Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.

The Capitalist Threat
posted by y2karl at 10:41 PM on April 12, 2003

Hm. If I had to critique Soros there, I'd simply point out that if he's going to quote Hegel, he's unfortunately bereft himself of grounds to complain. Capitalism is the zeitgeist of our times, and M. Soros is not a world-historical figure of the caliber to change that (on a side note, Osama bin Laden almost was. The world's funny like that).

I actually agree with Hegel, Soros, and Barzun (who advances the same point about the exhaustion of the project of the West, albeit from a cultural, not philosophical or financial aspect) that it's the intensification of certain principles to the point where they become anti-life is dangerous. I don't, on the other hand, think there's anything to be done about that that is not catastrophic in the extreme, and ultimately, not worth it. I'd rather Western civilisation gutter out than blow up, and I don't really see another realistic option for us other than the two. Luckily, I speak Mandarin and have read the Koran, so at least I have a future as a second-class citizen in my old age to look forward to.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 1:26 AM on April 13, 2003

I'm drunk and about to go to bed. But you MM are an idiot. And or a prop.

I can't tell the diff anymore. . .

I can't even tell the diff between conspiracy and reality anymore.

Conspiracy, reality, absurdity and irony have completely merged.

You true believers are gonna have a hell of a time when the reality of what you've been soaked with hits you and makes you drown.

/left wing fanatic
posted by crasspastor at 3:17 AM on April 13, 2003

Sit back and sleep and play in fields of conspiracy.
posted by stbalbach at 12:22 PM on April 13, 2003

crassypassy, I love you and want to be with you always but please sober up before hittin' the button!
posted by mcsweetie at 1:52 PM on April 13, 2003

y2karl, my reference to Soros was just to give stbalbach a recent wellknown event to show him how misinformed he was.
posted by billsaysthis at 3:45 PM on April 13, 2003

This author confuses fascism, feudalism and corporatism, three systems which are distinct. (...)Specifically, both fascism and feudalism require immaterial bonds between citizens, while fascism and corporatism both require business to become mingled with the government. But, feudalism is almost by definition a pre-corporate state, as capitalism in fact overthrew the damn thing, even in Marx's eyes. And since corporatism is a "capitalist" state, it would by its very nature dissolve the very bonds which make fascism and feudalism necessary in favour of "naked self-interest".

I don't entirely agree with your definitions or your analysis of the article. Corporatism, which, as the article states, was a term used by Mussolini before he replaced it with Fascism, so essentially, as far as this article is concerned, they are the same thing. Regardles of the article, I wouldn't equate the organization of society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation (Corporatism) with Capitalism, although it is most definitely a by-product of late 20th Century-21st Century American Capitalism.

If your definition of Fascism is "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism" then the Bush administration is entirely Fascist. This isn't an ideological statement, it is simply a statement of fact (which part of the definition doesn't apply to the Bush administration?).

Regarding feudalism in the article, I understood that the term was being used metaphorically, not literally, since, as you correctly pointed out, the precise definition of Feudalism ties it to lords and vassals and land ownership, not very 21st century. However, if you understand that the power relationship betwen lord and vassal can be understood in terms of Corporation (super-citizen/owner/supplier/lawmaker) and citizen (consumer/employee/soldier), or simply, ultra-wealthy and non-wealthy, it seems to me that one could speak of a neo-feudalistic state in the near American future.

Although I think it unlikely because sooner or later even the most avid Bush-fedayeen will realize that their personal liberties, safety and economic possibilities are being mangled so completely as to make blind obedience impossible and will join the rest of the Americans in revolting against the tiny number of " neo-feudal lords" .
posted by sic at 4:23 PM on April 13, 2003

My definition of fascism isn't drawn from the dictionary, it's drawn from the document "The Political Doctrine of Fascism" by Alfredo Rocco, who was Mussolini's pet intellectual and eventually, Minister of Justice, with some assistance from Alfred Rosenberg, who played the same part in the Nazi regime and wrote The Myth of the 20th Century.

In those documents, Rocco and Rosenberg elaborate the basic principles and project of fascism. They see it as a rejection of liberalism (and socialism, which they saw merely as the logical extension of liberal ideals). Their critique was that liberal attitudes alienated individuals from one another, and by extension, from the nation (under the Nazis, the racial group) of which they were a part. Likewise, in their minds, pure uncontrolled capitalism did the same thing by alienating labour from from its products. Socialism in their minds, would merely exacerbate the problem, by extending liberal practices even further. The key to reconciling members of the nation to one another in their minds was two-fold. One must integrate the person into the nation-state harmoniously, in order to give their life a sense of purpose and meaning in the service of something greater than themselves. The second part was that capital and capitalists must likewise serve the state. In the fascists' minds, by integrating both labour and capital into the service of the state, one removed the alienation from labour by allowing a person to put it in the context of service to their nation, which they would identify as being identical in interest to themselves. There's more to it than that, obviously, but that's the core idea.

Frankly, I don't think Bush et al. have this motivation in mind. They are certainly oligarchs, I will agree, interested in amassing dangerous amounts of power and advancing a particular social agenda which I find odious, but frankly, they lack the ideological underpinning to be properly fascistic, or even properly totalitarian. Tyranny is a far more successful political policy than fascism ever was.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 12:09 AM on April 14, 2003

Pseudoephedrine: Thanks for the explanation, very interesting stuff. I suppose that it's always dangerous to use historical terms to describe current trends since they rarely are perfect fits. This explains why people throw the "neo" in front of them. Pat Buchanon is screaming to the high heavens that "neo-conservatism" has nothing to do with real conservatism and I think he is correct.

That said, I suspect that a simple inversion of the phrase "capital and capitalists must likewise serve the state" to read "the state must likewise serve capital and capitalists" and replacement of the word dictator with plutocracy, we might have a truer statement about the current Bush regime.

And if we make that inversion, the corporations (as the "brand names" in front of the plutocracy) take center stage as the power base in the US. After all aren't their "interests" already protected by the State in the form of domestic legislation and foreign military intervention and paid for by the labor of regular citizens? And those regular citizens, no longer able to form relevant power organizations, like unions, because the corporations are global, nor able to participate meaningfully in the election of representatives, since they don't control the vast amounts of money necessary to get elected, are now being systematically stripped of the last vestiges of tax-payer funded social programs and thus relegated to the consumer/employee/soldier role (vassal) that is more and more directly dependant on the corporation for salary, benefits, stability, environment, safety etc. while receiving zero loyalty from the corporation (lord) who uses them as chattel.

With a bit of imagination, could this new situation be referred to as "neo-feudalism"? Whatever we call it, it doesn't seem to be too far away from what the Bush administration is creating and it doesn't have anything to do with Democracy.

.
posted by sic at 4:37 AM on April 14, 2003

my reference to Soros was just to give stbalbach a recent wellknown event to show him how misinformed he was.

Your right about Breton Woods I was misinformed. I think what I meant was the IMF still mucks with the free-market system of exchange rates by bailing out currencies that get into trouble so traders will take unusual risks such as the last Mexican crisis since they have nothing to loose.
posted by stbalbach at 7:00 AM on April 14, 2003

sic> The system you elaborate is what I would personally refer to as "corporatism", as distinct from fascism. The question, really, is whether the actions you describe are being done systematically, or nepotistically. While I would normally say that they are done nepotistically in America - someone's brother becomes senator so he gets special tax breaks and the like - it's beginning to look like this is a systematic policy under Bush, which is disturbing, to say the least.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 1:17 PM on April 14, 2003