{"id":57087,"date":"2015-04-27T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=57087"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:49","slug":"whats-obama-up-to-with-his-tpp-ttip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/04\/whats-obama-up-to-with-his-tpp-ttip\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Obama Up to, with His TPP & TTIP?"},"content":{"rendered":"

26 Apr 2015 – <\/em>The motivation behind U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s trans-Pacific trade-deal TPP, and his trans-Atlantic trade-deal TTIP \u2014 the motivation behind both of these enormous international trade-deals \u2014 is the same, and Democratic U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are correct<\/a>: it is not at all progressive. It is instead to transfer political power away from the public in a democracy, and for that power to go instead to the international aristocracy (i.e., to go as far away from any<\/em> national democracy as is even possible to go). This is to be done by switching the most fundamental thing of all: the global power-base itself. Instead of that power-base being democratic votes of the national publics, who elect their political representatives who determine the laws and regulations, that national democratic political system becomes instead the exact opposite: the global aristocratic stockholder votes of the international aristocracy who elect the corporate directors of international companies, who will, in their turn, then be selecting the members to the international-trade-panels which, in TPP and TTIP, will, in their turn, be determining the rules and enforcements regarding especially workers\u2019 rights, product-safety, and the environment.<\/p>\n

The international aristocracy\u2019s weakening of these national rules will enable lowering wages of the public, who are the people who don\u2019t control international corporations but who control only their own personal labor, which goes down in value to the lowest hourly wage in the entire international trading-area. This new system will also enable minimizing regulation of the safety of foods and other products and thus maximizing the ability of international corporations to avoid any expenses that companies would otherwise need to devote to raising the safety of their products. Those expenses (the liabilities of dangerous products) will thus be increasingly borne only by the products\u2019 consumers. Risks to investors (which is the thing that aristocrats seek most to avoid) are consequently reduced \u2014 shifted more onto the public. It will also enable environmental harms to become virtually free to international corporations that perpetrate them, and to become likewise costs that are borne only by the general public, in toxic air, water, etc. Thus, yet another category of risks to investors will be gone. This will increase profit-margins, which go only to the stockholders \u2014 not to the public. Profits will thus become increasingly concentrated in international corporations and the families that control them, and losses will become increasingly socialized among consumers and workers \u2014 and just generally to livers and breathers: the public. \u2018Government\u2019 will increasingly be merely the spreader and enforcer of risks and penalties to the public; and, this, in turn, will enhance yet further the \u2018free-market\u2019 ideal of there being less and less, or \u2019smaller,\u2019 government; i.e., of there being less and less of \u2018democratic\u2019 government. That\u2019s what the aristocracy\u2019s \u2019small government\u2019 jag has really been all about: it\u2019s about cost-shifting, from aristocrats, to the public. Thus, the maximum percentage of the costs \u2014 for product-safety, workers\u2019 rights, and the environment \u2014 become borne by the public, and the minimum percentage of costs become borne by the stockholders in international corporations. In turn, aristocrats will be able to pass along to their designated heirs their thus ever-increasing dominance and control over the general public. Thus, the concentration of wealth will become more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer families, a gradually smaller hyper-aristocracy. This is what\u2019s happening, and it will happen now a lot more if TPP and TTIP pass. (According to the most detailed study of the matter, as of 2012, the \u201cWorld\u2019s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World\u2019s Poorest 68.7%.\u201d<\/a> So: the world is already extremely unequal in its wealth-distribution. TPP and TTIP are designed to increase that inequality.)<\/p>\n

Furthermore, President Obama and the Republican Party in Congress (which support him on this, and on all other matters that are of highest concern to America\u2019s aristocracy, such as the defeat of Russia, China and the other BRICS nations \u2014 for example, by Obama\u2019s\u00a0yanking Ukraine away from Russia\u2019s aristocracy and into control instead by America\u2019s aristocracy<\/a>) are ensuring that America\u2019s aristocracy will be increasingly on top internationally, and these trade-deals are additionally taking advantage of America\u2019s being the top power across both of this planet\u2019s two major oceans: the Atlantic, and the Pacific.<\/p>\n

In other words: the United States, with the TPP & TTIP, will be in the extraordinary position of basically locking in, perhaps for the next century, the U.S. aristocracy\u2019s participation in both of the two major international-trade compacts. This commercial lock-in will retain the American aristocracy\u2019s control over the national aristocracies of almost all of the other major industrial nations \u2014 encompassing virtually all of the northern hemisphere, which is where most of this planet\u2019s land-mass is located.<\/p>\n

Consequently: not only will the global aristocracy control the global public, but the U.S. aristocracy will also control the other aristocracies in ways that will increase their collective power against any non-member national aristocracy; and, so, America\u2019s Empire will be increasingly the biggest global Empire that the world has ever known, by exploiting the publics everywhere, and not only within merely one country.<\/p>\n

Obama told graduating West Point cadets, on 28 May 2014<\/a>: \u201cChina\u2019s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors. From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums.\u201d In other words: part of these future military officers\u2019 jobs will be to help make sure that the BRICS, and other countries that have lower per-capita wealth than in America, stay poor, so that America\u2019s aristocrats can send jobs there instead of pay America\u2019s own workers to do it \u2014 in other words: get America\u2019s workers competing against ones in poor countries, rather than get America\u2019s investors competing against ones in poor countries. He\u2019s telling America\u2019s military that they are soldiers in this international class-war, paid by the public, but working actually for America\u2019s aristocracy and not for the public, but against<\/em> America\u2019s public \u2014 to drive down their wages, food-safety, etc.<\/p>\n

This is the way toward a certain type of world government by the super-rich for the super-rich, keeping them and their appointed heirs in control over the assets of the entire globe \u2014 both its natural and its human resources \u2014 and using as the local agents throughout the world the local aristocrats, who will be the people who will keep their local publics in line and working for the ever-increasing intensification of the planet\u2019s wealth, in the hands of, first, the global aristocracy, and, second, America\u2019s aristocracy as being the globally dominant<\/em> aristocracy.<\/p>\n

What will remain of local national governments will then become mere shells.<\/p>\n

Benito Mussolini, who learned his fascism from the founder of fascism, his teacher Vilfredo Pareto (whom Mussolini called \u201cthe Karl Marx of fascism\u201d), who was also the founder of modern economic theory and especially of its Welfare Criterion, which shapes so much of the rest of economics and especially all cost-benefit analyses (such as of proposed means to restrain global warming)<\/a>, explained\u00a0as follows<\/a>\u00a0the \u201ccorporationism\u201d that he held to constitute fascism:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe corporation plays on the economic terrain just as the Grand Council\u00a0and the militia play on the political terrain. Corporationism is\u00a0disciplined economy, and from that\u00a0comes control, because one cannot\u00a0imagine a discipline without a director. Corporationism is above\u00a0socialism and above liberalism. A new synthesis is created.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Following below this article will be Mussolini\u2019s essay on that issue, in which he sets forth what he claims is a post-capitalist, post-socialist, ideology, and which the also self-described post-capitalist post-socialist Barack Obama (as an agent for the global aristocracy) is increasingly putting into actual practice \u2014 especially via TPP & TTIP.<\/p>\n

Regarding specifically international-trade deals, Mussolini\u2019s master, Pareto, said that the free market should reign supreme and untrammeled by the State in all regards, not only within<\/em> nations, but also, and even especially, between<\/em> nations. As I noted in this regard, in my\u00a0recent book on the historical development of fascism, up to and including our own time<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cPareto was consistently a\u00a0free-market purist, since at least 1896. For example, in his 1\u00a0September 1897\u00a0\u2018The New Theories of Economics\u2019 in the\u00a0Journal of Political Economy, he\u00a0stated: \u2018Were I of the opinion that a certain book would contribute more than\u00a0any other to\u00a0establish free trade in the world at large I would not hesitate an\u00a0instant to give myself up heart\u00a0and soul to the study of this particular work,\u00a0putting aside for the time all study of pure science.\u2019\u00a0He also said there: \u2018We\u00a0have been able vigorously to prove that the coefficients of production\u00a0are\u00a0determined by the entrepreneurs in a r\u00e9gime of free competition precisely in\u00a0the same way\u00a0as a socialist government would have to fix them if it wanted to\u00a0realize a maximum of ophelimity\u00a0<\/em>[his invented term for\u00a0\u2018welfare\u2019 in order to obscure the actual value-base so as to enable economists to pretend to be value-free even as they ranked things in benefit\/cost analyses that are, in fact, applying his pro-aristocratic or \u2018fascist\u2019 theory]\u00a0for its subjects.\u201d <\/em>[And notice there Pareto\u2019s slip-up, referring to the government as having not \u2018citizens\u2019 but instead \u2018subjects\u2019 \u2014 the\u00a0 underlying aristocratic assumpion, that the public are \u2018subjects\u2019 instead of real \u2018citizens\u2019.] Pareto always challenged\u00a0whether a socialist government would be able to\u00a0achieve that, but he was here\u00a0saying that the free market would do it naturally, just like the physiocrats\u00a0had said that \u2018natural law\u2019 should reign instead of any tampering with it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pareto set Adam Smithian economics, and the economics of the French physiocrats who had laid the foundation for Smith\u2019s economic theory, upon a basis that subequent economists could then develop mathematically in a way that would hide the theory\u2019s essential fascism \u2014 the modernized (i.e., post<\/em>-agrarian) form of feudalism.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama and congressional Republicans are simply carrying this fascist operation to the next level. As for congressional Democrats, they are split on it, because (at least until the new economic theory that I put forth in my new book) no one yet has formulated an economic theory for a democracy; current economic theory has been designed instead specifically for a fascism \u2014 an aristocratically controlled State. Consequently, the few progressive Democrats that still remain in Congress are experiencing difficulty to communicate easily and readily to the public what the real political and economic stakes are in Obama\u2019s proposed TPP and TTIP: the transfer of national democratic sovereignty over to an international fascist aristocracy, which will be dominated by American aristocrats. Without that transfer, of democratic national sovereignty to international fascist bodies that represent global corporate management, these deals would be nothing.<\/p>\n

This transfer is called\u00a0Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS.<\/a>\u00a0It is really an emerging, and distictively fascistic, world government. It is not at all democratic, and it is a creeping form of international government which, to the extent that it becomes imposed, reduces national sovereignty. The prior, progressive, type of world-government proposal, which had been fashionable after World War II in order to make a WW III less likely, was based instead upon the idea of an international federation of independent democracies<\/em>. ISDS has nothing in common with that, the original vision for world government. It is instead pure fascism, on an international scale.<\/p>\n

In the first decades after World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s vision of an ultimately emerging democratic world government predominated, aiming for an emerging democratic United Nations, which would evolve to encompass in an increasingly equalitarian way more and more of the world; but, after Republican control started becoming restored in the U.S. with Dwight Eisenhower and his installation of the Dulles brothers to control and shape future U.S. international policies, things moved increasingly in the direction of a U.S.-aristocracy-based control over the world (especially with the Allen Dulles CIA coup in 1953 Iran); and Barack Obama is thoroughly in that fascist, overwhelmingly Republican, tradition, even though he is nominally a \u2018Democrat.\u2019 Some\u00a0analysts<\/a>\u00a0even\u00a0consider<\/a>\u00a0Obama to be a\u00a0CIA operative<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0early in his life<\/a>. (The CIA, when Eisenhower came into office, placed the CIA\u2019s pro-Nazis into control; and,\u00a0afterward, this control has only become more deeply entrenched there<\/a>.) The British journalist Robert Fitch seems to have figured Obama out even as far back as 14 November 2008<\/a>, right after Obama was elected to become President. Basically, Fitch described Obama as a fascist who had determined to rise to power by fooling progressives into thinking he was one of them. He was portraying Obama as a Manchurian-candidate, Trojan-Horse, Republican-in-Democratic-rhetorical-clothes, conservative operative. He had Obama right, even that early.<\/p>\n

As regards not what economic theory but instead empirical economic studies indicate would likely be the result from both the TPP<\/a> and the TTIP<\/a>: one independent economic analysis has been done for each of these two international-trade deals, and both of them come up with the same conclusion: the publics everywhere will lose wealth because of them, but aristocrats, especially in the United States, will gain wealth because of them. They\u2019ll probably do what they were designed to do.<\/p>\n

As regards what some of Obama\u2019s defenders say about his trade-deals, namely that Investor-State Dispute Settlement is merely a detail and the overall deal is good: that\u2019s like saying that a person\u2019s health is good but the brain or the heart needs to be fixed or maybe even replaced. These people know it\u2019s a bad deal; that\u2019s why they support it. They\u2019re being paid by the aristocracy.<\/p>\n

WOULD HILLARY CLINTON BE ANY BETTER?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What, then, about Obama\u2019s intended successor? Would she be any different? Here\u2019s the record concerning that:<\/p>\n

On 23 February 2008, Hillary Clinton stood before microphones and cameras, and harangued in angry tones, \u201cShame on you, Barack Obama!\u201d alleging that two of his campaign\u2019s flyers lied about her positions.<\/p>\n

One of the flyers said that her proposed health-insurance mandate would penalize Americans who didn\u2019t buy health insurance. It was true but she tried to deny it. (Only after Obama was elected did he copy her plan by merely adding the individual mandate to his own.) The other flyer which Hillary was complaining about, quoted\u00a0Newsday\u2019<\/em>s characterization of Hillary\u2019s NAFTA view in 2006: \u201cClinton thinks NAFTA has been a boon to the economy.\u201d Hillary now was also claiming that this was a lie. Many in the press blindly supported her accusation against Obama here, because \u201ca boon\u201d was\u00a0Newsday\u2019<\/em>s phrase, not hers. However, again, it was she, and\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0Obama, who was lying. Her 2003\u00a0Living History<\/em>\u00a0(p. 182) actually did\u00a0brag<\/em>\u00a0about her husband\u2019s having passed NAFTA, and she said: \u201cCreating a free trade zone in North America \u2014 the largest free trade zone in the world \u2014 would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our country was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of globalization.\u201d This was one of, supposedly,\u00a0her<\/em>\u00a0proudest achievements, which were (p. 231) \u201cBill\u2019s successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA.\u201d But Hillary was now demanding that Obama apologize for his flyer\u2019s having said: \u201cOnly Barack Obama fought NAFTA and other bad trade deals.\u201d That statement was just a fact, notwithstanding what Hillary, and many of the major U.S. \u201cnews\u201d media, were now alleging. (Obama was saving his worst to be delivered to the nation only after he would become President \u2014 and, especially, after he would be re-elected and then he could be free to go far-right, which was his genuine inclination even at the start, though he couldn\u2019t achieve the goal if he didn\u2019t first deceive about what his goal actually is, so that he could maybe get into position to achieve it.)<\/p>\n

On 20 March 2008, the day after Hillary finally released her schedule during her White House years, the\u00a0Nation\u2019<\/em>s John Nichols blogged \u201cClinton Lie Kills Her Credibility on Trade Policy,\u201d and he said: \u201cNow that we know from the 11,000 pages of Clinton White House documents released this week that [the] former First Lady was an ardent advocate for NAFTA; \u2026 now that we know she was in the thick of the maneuvering to block the efforts of labor, farm, environmental and human rights groups to get a better agreement; \u2026 now that we know from official records of her time as First Lady that Clinton was the featured speaker at a closed-door session where 120 women opinion leaders were hectored to pressure their congressional representatives to approve NAFTA; now that we know from ABC News reporting on the session that \u2018her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA\u2019 and that \u2018there was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time\u2019; \u2026 what should we make of Clinton\u2019s campaign claim that she was never comfortable with the militant free-trade agenda that has cost the United States hundreds of thousands of union jobs?\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, ABC\u2019s Jake Tapper, at his \u201cPolitical Punch\u201d blog, headlined \u201cFrom the Fact Check Desk: The Clinton Campaign Misrepresents Clinton NAFTA Meeting,\u201d and he reported: \u201cI have now talked to three former Clinton Administration officials whom I trust who tell me that then-First Lady Hillary Clinton opposed the idea of introducing NAFTA before health care, but expressed no reservations in public or private about the substance of NAFTA. Yet the Clinton campaign continues to propagate this myth that she fought NAFTA.\u201d She continued this lie even after it had been repeatedly and soundly exposed to be a lie.<\/p>\n

Consequently: the only real difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is that Obama is a vastly more skilled liar. It\u2019s how he has gotten as far as he has. She probably won\u2019t; she\u2019s the same incompetent now that she was back then.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Excerpts from George Seldes\u2019s 1935 book about Mussolini,\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>Sawdust Caesar:<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

APPENDIX 15<\/strong><\/p>\n

Capitalism and the Corporate State\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Benito Mussolini,\u00a0November, 1933<\/p>\n

Is this crisis which has afflicted us for four years a crisis in the\u00a0system or of the system? This is a serious question. I answer:\u00a0The crisis has so deeply penetrated the system that it has become a\u00a0crisis of the system. It is no longer an ailment; it is a constitutional\u00a0disease.<\/p>\n

Today we are able to say that the method of capitalistic production\u00a0is vanquished, and with it the theory of economic liberalism which\u00a0has illustrated and excused it. I want to outline in a general way the\u00a0history of capitalism in the last century, which may be called the\u00a0capitalistic century. But first of all, what is capitalism?<\/p>\n

Capitalism is \u2026 a method of industrial production. To employ\u00a0the most comprehensive definition: Capitalism is a method of mass\u00a0production for mass consumption, financed en masse by the emission\u00a0of private, national and international capital. Capitalism is therefore\u00a0industrial and has not had in the field of agriculture any manifestation of great bearing.<\/p>\n

I would mark in the history of capitalism three periods: the dynamic period, the static period, and the period of decline.<\/p>\n

The dynamic period was that from 1830 to 1870. It coincided with\u00a0the introduction of weaving by machinery and with the appearance\u00a0of the locomotive. Manufacturing, the typical manifestation of industrial capitalism, expanded. This was the epoch of great expansion and\u00a0hence of the law of free competition; the struggle of all against all\u00a0had full play.<\/p>\n

In this period there were crises, but they were cyclical crises,\u00a0neither long nor universal. Capitalism still had such vitality and such\u00a0power of recovery that it could brilliantly prevail.<\/p>\n

There were also wars. They cannot be compared with the World\u00a0War. They were brief. Even the War of 1870, with its tragic days\u00a0at Sedan, took no more than a couple of seasons.<\/p>\n

During the forty years of the dynamic period the State was watching; it was remote, and the theorists of liberalism could say: \u2018You,\u00a0the State, have a single duty. It is to see to it that your administration does not in the least turn toward the economic sector. The better\u00a0you govern the less you will occupy yourself with the problems of\u00a0the economic realm.\u2019 We find, therefore, that economy in all its\u00a0forms was limited only by the penal and commercial codes.<\/p>\n

But after 1870, this epoch underwent a change. There was no\u00a0longer the struggle for life, free competition, the selection of the\u00a0strongest. There became manifest the first symptoms of the fatigue\u00a0and the devolution of the capitalistic method. There began to be\u00a0agreements, syndicates, corporations, trusts. One may say that there\u00a0was not a sector of economic life in the countries of Europe and\u00a0America where these forces which characterize capitalism did not\u00a0appear.<\/p>\n

What was the result? The end of free competition. Restricted as to\u00a0its borders, capitalistic enterprise found that, rather than fight, it\u00a0was better to concede, to ally, to unite by dividing the markets and\u00a0sharing the profits. The very law of demand and supply was now no\u00a0longer a dogma, because through the combines and the trusts it was\u00a0possible to control demand and supply.<\/p>\n

Finally, this capitalistic economy, unified,\u2019trustified,\u2019 turned toward the State. What inspired it to do so? Tariff protection.<\/p>\n

Liberalism, which is nothing but a wider form of the doctrine of\u00a0economic liberalism, received a death blow. The nation which, from\u00a0the first, raised almost insurmountable trade barriers was the United\u00a0States, but today even England has renounced all that seemed traditional in her political, economic and moral life, and has surrendered\u00a0herself to a constantly increasing protectionism.<\/p>\n

After the World War, and because of it, capitalistic enterprise became inflated. Enterprises grew in size from millions to billions. Seen\u00a0from a distance, this vertical sweep of things appeared as something\u00a0monstrous, babel-like. Once, the spirit had dominated the material;\u00a0now it was the material which bent and joined the spirit. Whatever\u00a0had been physiological was now pathological; all became abnormal.<\/p>\n

At this stage, super-capitalism draws its inspiration and its justification from this Utopian theory: the theory of unlimited consumers.\u00a0The ideal of super-capitalism would be the standardization of the\u00a0human race from the cradle to the coffin. Super-capitalism would have\u00a0all men born of the same length, so that all cradles could be standardized; it would have babies divert themselves with the same playthings,\u00a0men clothed according to the same pattern, all reading the same book\u00a0and having the same taste for the movies \u2014 in other words, it would\u00a0have everybody desiring a single utilitarian machine. This is in the\u00a0logic of things, because only in this way can super-capitalism do what\u00a0it wishes.<\/p>\n

When does capitalistic enterprise cease to be an economic factor?\u00a0When its size compels it to be a social factor. And that, precisely,\u00a0is the moment when capitalistic enterprise, finding itself in difficulty,\u00a0throws itself into the very arms of the State; It is the moment when\u00a0the intervention of the State begins, rendering itself ever more necessary.<\/p>\n

We are at this point: that, if in all the nations of Europe the State\u00a0were to go to sleep for twenty-four hours, such an interval would be\u00a0sufficient to cause a disaster. Now, there is no economic field in\u00a0which the State is not called upon to intervene. Were we to surrender\u00a0\u2014 just as a matter of hypothesis \u2014 to this capitalism of the eleventh\u00a0hour, we should arrive at State capitalism, which is nothing but State\u00a0socialism inverted.<\/p>\n

This is the crisis of the capitalist system, taken in its universal\u00a0significance. \u2026<\/p>\n

Last evening I presented an order in which I defined the new corporation system as we understand it and wish to make it.<\/p>\n

I should like to fix your attention on what was called the object:\u00a0the well-being of the Italian people. It is necessary that, at a certain\u00a0time, these institutions, which we have created, be judged and measured directly by the masses as instruments through which these masses\u00a0may improve their standard of living. Some day the worker, the tiller\u00a0of the soil, will say to himself and to others: \u2018If today I am better\u00a0off practically, I owe it to the institutions which the Fascist revolution has created.\u2019<\/p>\n

We want the Italian workers, those who are interested in their\u00a0status as Italians, as workers, as Fascists, to feel that we have not\u00a0created institutions solely to give form to our doctrinal schemes, but\u00a0in order, at a certain moment, to give positive, concrete, practical and\u00a0tangible results.<\/p>\n

Our State is not an absolute State. Still less is it an absolutory\u00a0State, remote from men and armed only with inflexible laws, as laws\u00a0ought to be. Our State is one organic, human State which wishes to\u00a0adhere to the realities of life. \u2026<\/p>\n

Today we bury economic liberalism. The corporation plays on the\u00a0economic terrain just as the Grand Council and the militia play on\u00a0the political terrain. Corporationism is disciplined economy, and from\u00a0that comes control, because one cannot imagine a discipline without\u00a0a director.<\/p>\n

Corporationism is above socialism and above liberalism. A new\u00a0synthesis is created. It is a symptomatic fact that the decadence of\u00a0capitalism coincides with the decadence of socialism. All the Socialist\u00a0parties of Europe are in fragments.<\/p>\n

Evidently the two phenomena \u2014 I will not say conditions \u2014 present a\u00a0point of view which is strictly logical: there is between them a historical parallel. Corporative economy arises at the historic moment\u00a0when both the militant phenomena, capitalism and socialism, have already given all that they could give. From one and from the other we\u00a0inherit what they have of vitality.<\/p>\n

We have rejected the theory of the economic man, the Liberal\u00a0theory, and we are, at the same time, emancipated from what we have\u00a0heard said about work being a business. The economic man does\u00a0not exist; the integral man, who is political, who is economic, who\u00a0is religious, who is holy, who is combative, does exist.<\/p>\n

Today we take again a decisive step on the road of the revolution.<\/p>\n

Let us ask a final question: Can corporationism be applied to\u00a0other countries? We are obliged to ask this question because it will\u00a0be asked in all countries where people are studying and trying to\u00a0understand us. There is no doubt that, given the general crisis of\u00a0capitalism, corporative solutions can be applied anywhere. But in order\u00a0to make corporationism full and complete, integral, revolutionary,\u00a0certain conditions are required.<\/p>\n

There must be a single party through which, aside from economic\u00a0discipline, enters into action also political discipline, which shall serve\u00a0as a chain to bind the opposing factions together, and a common\u00a0faith.<\/p>\n

But this is not enough. There must be the supremacy of the State,\u00a0so that the State may absorb, transform and embody all the energy,\u00a0all the interests, all the hopes of a people.<\/p>\n

Still, not enough. The third and last and the most important condition is that there must be lived a period of the highest ideal tension.<\/p>\n

We are now living in this period of high, ideal tension. It is because step by step we give force and consistency to all our acts; we\u00a0translate in part all our doctrine. How can we deny that this, our\u00a0Fascista, is a period of exalted, ideal tension?<\/p>\n

No one can deny it. This is the time in which arms are crowned\u00a0with victory. Institutions are remade, the land is redeemed, cities\u00a0are founded.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Here are two excerpts from the Seldes book\u2019s APPENDIX 9, \u201cthe Labor Charter,\u201d a document that dates from 22 April 1927:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Art. 2. Labor in all forms, intellectual, technical and manual, is\u00a0a social duty. In this sense, and in this sense only, is it protected by\u00a0the State. From the national point of view all production is a unit;\u00a0its objects are unitary and can be defined as the wellbeing of the\u00a0producers and the development of national strength. \u2026<\/p>\n

Art. 7. The Corporate State considers private initiative in the\u00a0field of production the most efficacious and most useful instrument\u00a0in the interest of the nation. Private organization of production being\u00a0a function of national interest, the organization of the enterprise\u00a0is responsible to the State for the direction of its production. Reciprocity of the rights and duties is derived from the collaboration\u00a0of the productive forces. The technician, office employee and worker\u00a0is an active collaborator in the economic undertaking, the direction\u00a0of which is the right of the employer, who has the responsibility for it.<\/p>\n

___________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 <\/em>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/a>,<\/em> and of\u00a0<\/em>Christ\u2019s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>, and\u00a0of\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 washingtonsblog.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is instead to transfer political power away from the public in a democracy. The global aristocratic stockholder votes of the international aristocracy who elect the corporate directors of international companies will then be selecting the members to the international-trade-panels which, in TPP and TTIP, will, in their turn, be determining the rules and enforcements regarding especially workers\u2019 rights, product-safety, and the environment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}