Forum Post: State Interventionist Capitalism is Just as Capitalist as Free Market Capitalism
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 4, 2011, 8:02 a.m. EST by RossWolfe
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Many of the more "practical" protesters at OccupyWallStreet demand nothing more than the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, other bureacratic oversight measures, and perhaps a heavier progressive tax rate. The problem with this is that it does nothing to remove capitalism. Instead, it only perpetuates capitalism's existence indefinitely by "softening" the inherent volatility of the capitalist mode of production.
On the other hand, some of the more "utopian" elements of the protests seem to treat the demonstrations as little more than a hangout. Pseudo-tribalist dancing and chanting, part of the New-Agey Left's fetishization of the primitive -- these things are not politics. Of course, I'm not against dancing or having a little fun to pass the time, but repeating populist slogans like "this is what democracy looks like" does nothing to enhance political consciousness.
A Marxist critique of the protests:
Corporate Free Speech There needs to be better corporate representation. Money is speech. Every individual, even individual stockholders, "ownership," has a right to free speech. Free speech means no one can force or prevent an individual's speech. Ownership has the right to direct the corporation's speech and political contributions. Majority control of contributions may violate an individual's free speech. Corporate management can speech for the corporation, but ownership needs to authorize that speech. No speech or money spent on political contributions may be made without ownership authorization and such contributions must be taken from the individual's dividends. No dividends means there is no allowance for contributions. Corporate management must poll the ownership to determine the amount and placement of all individual stockholder directed contributions. The assignment of all corporate contributions must be made public so that ownership can verify the correct placement of their contributions. Management can not make contributions on the behalf of nonresponsive ownership and thus can only make contributions for which they have been directly authorized.
Money is speech. Corporations are people, because people get the money. Free speech means people are not forced to pay for someone else's speech. Corporations may not force to pay or deny dividends, to a person who does not approve of money spent on speech. Corporations may only spend money on speech that is taken, by approval, from the people who get the money. Every person who gets money, from the corporation, must approve the money spent on speech, in order to protect the right to free speech. Since the money spent on speech is identifiable with a person then that money is subject to caps associated with that person and must be reported. Also, tax consequences flow, to each person, for tax exempt contributions. If the corporation feels that the cost of polling and reporting the money spent on speech is prohibitive, then the corporation is prohibited from spending on speech. Corporations spend money on product ads and any political placement in a product ad must have unanimous consent of ownership.