Large corporations are growing ever larger at a faster rate than ever before. They and the people that run them are starting to buy up more and more land to the point where they Carte Blanc can purchase entire countries if they wanted to and over ride national constitutions at the whim and fancy of the company board, renouncing international standards and practices of law, laws that protect the environment, human rights, and rights that were previously indivisible for the generalized citizenry, writ large. All for the sake of concern to the shareholders. People everywhere are being exploited for no other reason that higher profit margins.
No, this is not some grim notion of fictionalized future events. This exploitation is happening here in the Americas and abroad via so-called free trade agreements such as NAFTA, the WTO, and the G8. Backed by huge banking ventures such as World Bank, free trade seems to be being applied all over the place at the mercy of the little person and small business. It is more and more difficult for startup companies and family enterprises to stay afloat due to the monopolization of power and profits by large corporations and enterprises of the oligarchic state, which is bought and sold by the economic-political system.
We have the illusion that all is all right. Our economy is booming, right? The Dow Jones is rising. NASDAQ is stable. But problems are obvious. Jobs are being cut across board thanks to Mr. George Bush who has cut more jobs in his brief stint in office than Ronald Reagan. What are left is being exported to other countries legally thanks to agreements like NAFTA. The exporting of America is bad for us and it is bad for them. Workers in other countries will work for next to nothing. It is practical slave labor is places like Mexico and Taiwan where working conditions are hardly worth mentioning as even close to pleasant and the minimal wages are whatever the employer cares to afford- not exactly American standards.
Back at home both Republicans and Democrats are being bought and sold like the corporate shills that they are. Evidenced through campaign soft money records and the whole lobbying game. Third parties are hardly listened to. Whereas in the past, third parties were the source of inspiration for new legislation such as the abolishment of slavery, women�s rights to vote, and the eight hour work day, today parties like the Green Party are hardly given notice, except when a high profile person like Ralph Nader runs for Presidential Office. In any other case they are hardly paid notice.
It is a big monies game where corporations are given huge tax breaks for providing campaign contributions to the two-headed political beast. It is hard to tell who is really in charge, the politicians or the corporate power that sways them. One thing is for sure though; it sure is not the American people running things. Sure, we vote for our guy or gal, but we are so brainwashed by the commercial media that our eyes are practically guided by the motions of political current.
We usually do what our friends and neighbors do. And we usually follow the ones with the most money and material possession or the ones with the loudest voices. We need to start thinking for ourselves about what we really want instead of being pushed and pulled by the principle of least resistance. It is just easier to listen than to be heard. I have my opinions and I have done my research in the course of this manuscript, but that should not stop the reader from doing their homework.
Ultimately the faults of society are our own. We are the ones responsible for its ills as citizens so we are the ones responsible for cleaning it up and reshaping it. We poorer elements of society have had a long history of uprising. In Howard Zinn�s book The Peoples� History of The United States he illustrates numerous revolts of repressed peoples since the time of Columbus. Many were quashed, but many succeeded. Landlord and capitalist alike throughout history have been overthrown by co-optive ventures and have been brought under the mercy of labor unions.
Unions are a good thing, but they have two major faults. If they get too large they do not stick around for long and they do not normally organize on a large scale to begin with, with other unions and co-ops to form a political party. Case in point, at one time the International Workers of the World (The Wobblies) at its height had over 250,000 members. Today that number has dwindled to a mere 1,200.
If there is to be any change in the corporate take over of the political system and control of America and the world by big business it will lie in what is known as a Cooperative Commonwealth. Basically small cooperatives organize on a grand scale to eventually form a workers party:
Basically, co-ops are businesses of any size where everyone is governed by a direct democracy and everyone who works for the company owns a part of the business without outside shareholders. A true co-op does not need outside involvement because all the employees own the company in common. A union on the other hand (trade unions/ labor unions) is an organization representing large groups of people of similar trades to keep the corporations for which workers work for in check. Unions make sure people have medical coverage, vacation time, fair working conditions and whatnot. Workers are responsible for union dues to pay for the services provided.
Organization of small co-optive and union enterprises into coalitions, confederations and into a workers party is known as Council Politics. This is the opposite of Revolutionary Politics, which favors an overthrow of the government by brute force. These revolutions usually fail because they are led by the bourgeoisie (middle class) instead of by the proletariat (working class/ lower class) and do not end up a true communist state but rather a state controlled (monopoly) communism.
Capitalism plagued by the same or more problems than a representative democracy or old-world feudalism are what, in actuality, these systems really are. Mao, Stalin, Castro, Noriega, et. al., were bourgeoisie and NOT proletariat. These dictators were power hungry overlords that ruled with an iron fist and pretended to be like and for the people when they, like our own system of leaders are not.
The workers must establish absolute control. There are a lot of excuses to this nature. �Well, my employer gives me stock options.� Let it be said that this is just a ruse to keep the worker appeased while the real drama and carry-ons are still dictated by their bosses. When a dictatorship of the proletariat is heard of by most they get scared. Understandable. People hear the word dictator and not proletariat. In a proletarian dictatorship, power is spread out to the many instead of concentrated in the hands of the few. Everyone in the workers party would get an equal vote due to the fact that it is run by them and they are not simply card carrying members of, in a directly democratic system; one vote per person in all applicable affairs.
Corporations and the government should be run like a co-op. More on that later. The only reason this is called a dictatorship is due the fact that it excludes the bourgeoisie; the rich capitalist. In a system such as ours they already have their political parties. They are called Republicans and Democrats. In the United States or there has never been a powerful party built up of solely the blue collar, factory and service worker, the manual laborer and the destitute. Which is exactly why it should be done. Outrageous! A political party strictly for and from the working stiff and the poor?! Absurd. But I digress.
The real issue is our contact with the rest of the world. Especially in the role of trade. If we are to have a true representation of the people it is only particular that we are to abolish free trade agreements entirely and replace them with a flat out accordance of fair trade in their place.
Fair trade just makes more sense. It is better for everyone because free trade fosters negation of constitutional boundaries and monitoring by the government from whence they were spawn. With free trade any company can just pick up and move south of the border, escaping regulatory monitoring and itself run like a shogun warlord. Corporate policy does not have to apply in Mexico. Those fools will work for pennies, says the rich capitalist.
It is exactly what Karl Marx predicted. Capitalism and its economic backlog of brutal despotism are turning out to be the new feudalism and the worker is merely a serf with better gas mileage. It is no wonder Socialism took off where feudalism reigned. In the new feudalism there must also be a new communism. One with a business model. Money can still be made. Look at how co-ops are functioning. To understand how money can be made in a socialist system, we must look further into what communism and capitalism are. Webster�s New World Dictionary defines capitalism as the economic system in which all or most means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated for profit under competitive conditions. Communism is any economic theory based on the ownership of all property by the community as a whole. Sounds a lot like a co-op to me. And a co-op is the elemental building block to a workers party. So profit is still to be made, only that in such a way that wealth is shared.
I am not advocating that the state owns all community in common, only that the elemental building blocks of the party are owned in this way. It only makes sense. Let us go a little deeper into the realm of cooperatives. If Bill makes $7 an hour then Sue makes $7 an hour. Even though Bill is the current president and Sue is comptroller, they still get paid the same wage because they and five other individuals own the co-op in common. Another exciting aspect of co-optive ventures is the rotating board. Unlike corporations where a board is typically set, a rotating board would allow the head officers� positions to be re-voted upon at regular intervals. Bill may be president for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, but Sue, Charlie, Felix, Monique, Alan, or Amhet may become president for the following fiscal year of 2006-2007.
As I stated previously, these co-ops may also band with others to form a coalition for stability. Let us say Bill and Sue�s co-op is a grocery store, they may band with another co-op elsewhere that sells magazines and another that functions as a juice bar. The magazine store and the juice bar may be banded with a pro shop and a health club respectively but may have nothing to do with Bill and Sue, be it some sort of imperative on the grocery store�s side or a business policy. Maybe Bill and Sue do not want to associate with the pro shop because they will not sell the store�s homemade hackey sacks or maybe the pro shop just has a different fiscal policy. Again, what have you. The point is that if you get enough of these cooperatives loosely in common, a large coalition can indeed be formed. And if a coalition can be formed, a confederation can be formed, all the way up to a Workers Party. I think it would be an exciting venture and a bold undertaking. Ambitious, yes, but not impossible.
Progress is constantly being made within the new progressive movement itself. I cannot turn on the TV anymore without hearing something about trade agreements. When I was in high school, the WTO was being formed and no one around here in Washington State who was against NAFTA was for the WTO either. It was great. All these young people not much older than myself where coming out in droves to protest the WTO Conference in Seattle. Sure, there was violence, on both sides, but most of the protesting was peaceful. What these people are against is free trade, the excuse large corporations use to over-ride international law. Today, protests have go on from coast to coast and all across the globe from Seattle to Britain and Denmark, to Africa and about anywhere else imaginable.
Just recently there was a concert that attracted over 200, 000 patrons in Britain to help out the cause against the G8 Conference, another large umbrella for the multicorps to promote sweat shop labor and cruelty to man and beast alike. What all these protesters are for is the concept known as fair trade. Fair trade promotes environmental crackdowns. Fair trade promotes labor unions. Fair trade promotes protecting democracy. Fair trade is just better for everyone. Except the capitalist. And that is the only reason �free� trade is protected.
The co-op and fair trade make up what could become a North American Cooperative Commonwealth at its finest. People are starting to organize again. There is a true enemy in sight. We are seeing the evils of capitalism in an age when capitalism sees all as evil that runs against it. Most of the protesting is peaceful, but sadly, some still see the only path to peace as through the barrel of a gun. This kind of attitude is contradictory to the whole goal. The ends do not justify the means. Violence will only beget more violence. Look at Bolshevism. Look at Maoism. Look at the violence in America. We a nation riddled with a past and present of extreme cruelty and violence. There are places in Europe where police officers do not even need to carry a gun. I wonder what psychologists say about this. Some bodies somewhere seems to be packing some sort of weaponry on either side. It is the very definition of bullshit politics. The only way workers can achieve their goals is by organization, civil disobedience, and by forming a workers party OFF the radar screen as possible. If we are out there shooting off guns and blowing up municipal areas, we are nothing but terrorists. And terror we will beget. This is sinking to their level. We must rise above and show that we are better than them.
Let us imagine we have stopped playing with guns like children. Let us imagine a workers party has nominated a candidate for President. What should the campaign be all about? What would be the duty of the workers party president? Well, this person�s job is to continue the goals of the workers party. The Workers are much different that any other party before it. They are really a party of confederations, all with different views. Like the Greens of Europe, various groups are one. The first order of business should be some platforms. The main platform should really be an all out co-opting of America and the economy. Unlike previous politicians have positted, the state should not run like a business because a government is a totally different entity than a corporation. Running a government like a fractured business seems to be too resemblant of a military campaign, especially how businesses are run today; private entities dividing and conquering. It makes for a smaller government to be sure, but at what cost? Ultimately only the elite rich would be able to afford social security and the like and the government would no longer be able to regulate programs that are now only out to make a buck.
Instead I offer up this solution. Run the government like a cooperative; direct democracy through initiative and referenda as some states have and new laws enacted that would demand corporations over a certain size be broken up. And the rest of the economy, you guessed it, runs cooperatively. This new legislation should be enacted across the board from huge multicorps like Enron and Microsoft to Mom and Pop�s everywhere. We could also make the big utilities governmental as is done in places like New Zealand. That way there could be some corporatization of large enterprises, yet at the same time a push for direct democracy and worker ownership of all the rest. We could be an example to the rest of the world of what a Cooperative Commonwealth should be. The North American Cooperative Commonwealth, a national project.
I think if more people felt and truly did have a stake in the country, they would care about it more. They would care enough to lessen pollution. Heck, They might even be more willing to defend her in the military in times of war. Workers would not feel like they were being lorded over by their bosses because they would be their own bosses and would have more stake in the company and the nation. Beats mere stock options and corporate lobbying in the way of the polical process. Business would change for the better, people would be happier, and there would be more freedom and responsibility in the hands of the populace. We could make this nation great again with a few minor changes because life would be a daily project to become better citizens and better people in this new participatory system of governance and economic parity.
Lucas C. Werner, Author
