“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
—´René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy
“When they arrived, we had the land and they had the Bible and they told us to close our eyes to pray. When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
—Desmond Tutu
The driving force behind Western imperialism has always been the pursuit of economic gain, ever since Queen Isabella funded Columbus on his first entrepreneurial voyage. The rhetoric of empire concerning wars, however, has typically been about other things – the White Man’s Burden, bringing true religion to the heathens, Manifest Destiny, defeating the Yellow Peril or the Hun, seeking lebensraum, or making the world safe for democracy. Any fabricated motivation for war or empire would do, as long as it appealed to the collective consciousness of the population at the time
A Jewish folk tale relates the story of a mute child who had never said a word despite all the efforts of the doctors. Then one day, at the ripe age of ten, he dropped his spoon and cried out, “The soup is too salty!” His parents asked him in amazement why he had kept silent for years, and the child replied, “Until now, everything was all right.”
Wolfe focuses particularly on the analysis Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington presented in a section of the report entitled “The United States.” Huntington is an articulate promoter of elite policy shifts, and contributes pivotal articles to publications such as the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs.
Huntington tells us that democratic societies “cannot work” unless the citizenry is “passive.” The “democratic surge of the 1960s” represented an “excess of democracy,” which must be reduced if governments are to carry out their traditional domestic and foreign policies. Huntington’s notion of “traditional policies” is expressed in a passage from the report:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
—Harry S. Truman, New York Times, June 24, 1941
Germany’s war effort, both before and after America and Germany were officially at war, was a collaboration between German and American industrialists and bankers. Ford, General Motors, and many other American firms built factories in Nazi Germany, produced planes, tanks, and the other weapons needed by the Reich, and continued operating throughout the war. In some cases critical supplies needed by Allied forces, were instead routed to German industries. Prescott Bush, grandfather of President G.W. Bush, acted as an American agent for Nazi interests during the war.
By carefully coordinating its assistance to both Germany and the Soviets, U.S. elites were able to maximize those nations’ mutual devastation. After entering the war officially, America had the additional lever of military action against the Axis, so as to further manipulate the progress of the war, in collaboration with British forces. America emerged from the war with its industry intact, with 40% of the world’s wealth and industrial capacity, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, and control of the seven seas. Never before had one nation held such a degree of hegemony over world affairs.
“Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundation of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their shareholders as possible.”
—Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
As adverse as the economic and human-welfare consequences of the neoliberal project may be, perhaps even more alarming are the political implications. What the neoliberal project is really about, at the most fundamental level, is the transference of economic sovereignty from elected governments to the globalist institutions (WTO et al.) that represent elite corporate and financial interests. While neoliberalism is generally considered to be an economic philosophy, the neoliberal project is at its core a political project, aimed at undermining the sovereign nation state, and replacing it with an institutionalized form of global corporate governance.
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…[V]oice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ”Mussolini said, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
—Harper’s Magazine, January 2002
—Hermann Goering, interview during the Nuremberg Trials, April 18, 1946
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, March 28, 1999
“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
—attributed to John Maynard Keynes
If those who have the most capital – those who control the biggest banks – are in charge of setting society’s agenda – which is what capitalism is about – then they will do so according to their overall perceived best interests, not by following any particular economic doctrine. A war or depression can be more useful, at times, than economic growth, while protectionism and free trade are simply tools for different jobs.
Aristocracy is one kind of plutocracy, and capitalism is another. It is in this realm of political systems that capitalism is most appropriately considered. While aristocracy favors inherited wealth, and is characteristically land-based and conservative, capitalism tends to favor wealth accumulation, and is characteristically development-based and change-oriented.
In economic terms, the essence of neoliberalism is monetization – everything being measured in terms of its value as a commodity on the market. If you’re not employed, that’s your fault: you need to get retrained so that you will have value on the employment market. If a nation’s economy is deteriorating, that’s because it is not competitive enough, i.e., it is not offering enough value to the all-powerful ‘investment community.’ Such a nation needs to lower its corporate taxes, relax its regulations, and cut back on public services, so that it will have more ‘value’ to offer on the investment market, particularly as regards privatization opportunities.
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