Well, ok, generally, I'm opposed to socialism.
We have socialist features in our society.
Like the Defense establishment. The defense corporations and military services are an enormously successful socialist enterprise. In fact, some people think they are too successful. Some people think they waste extraordinary amounts of money, fight unnecessary wars sometimes, and regularly give us protection-racket-scares to juice up their budgets. Some people think we could rein in military spending without becoming defenseless.
And Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. All socialist features. Though I'm generally opposed to socialism, I'm one of those people who thinks that medical care should not be a business proposition. Call it my sympathy for some Christian ideas.
Yes, I'm opposed to socialism.
Call me a capitalist. I don't think that the government should be running the economy. Just an ideological thing, I guess. The constitution doesn't mention anything about setting up economic governing bodies and a title system that ensures that a small number of big shots will decide for the rest of us peasants what economic policies are best for us.
If I'm not mistaken, the constitution actually prohibits noble title systems, so that influential families or aristocratic cliques can't trade in titles that represent charters of government power. At the time of that prohibition, an especially sensitive issue was the idea of aristocratic LANDLORDS.
I'm sure someone will raise the objection about plantations and confederate notions of national union. I think the final decision on that matter was foreshadowed in the prohibition of slave importation by a set date, and the eventual war that ended with a prohibition on slavery.
But I digress.
When I say I'm opposed to socialism, I am not opposing any policies which are good policies, which happen to have been the policies of socialists and progressive republicans and liberals. Like progressive taxation. And I think it's important to point out that it is possible, in a free society, to choose different policies from different ideologies and suit them to our needs, as long as we don't endanger republican government with them.
Fascists in Germany developed an extraordinary national highway system, and we adopted the policy. That doesn't make anyone in favor of the highway system a fascist! They developed rocketry, too, which we adopted for space exploration and development of space. One of our most influential scientists in that effort was a former Nazi officer. Doesn't make the Moon landing a Nazi triumph, does it?
No, when I say I'm opposed to socialism, what I mean is that I am opposed to systemic changes that alter our form of government into a socialist form of government. For example, central planning. This was a feature of socialist government which was an undeniable failure. It failed in the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba.
We forget sometimes, though, that this element of socialism was also present in corporatist states like fascist Italy, fascist Spain, fascist Chile, fascist Argentina, fascist Germany, etc etc etc.
You see, in the fascist states, and in the socialist states I mentioned they adopted economic governing bodies and merged government and corporate power. Their economies were overwhelmingly dominated by these economic governing bodies, and these economic governing bodies had enough power and influence to instill a conventional orthodoxy with regard to the financial system, the legal system, government regulation, mass media communications, and even political appointments.
One of the features of such corporatist economic structures was the anti-republican internal and external forms of organization that they adopted.
You see, fascist ideology is an anti-republican ideology. Fascists are willing to borrow from any anti-republican philosophy or policy as long as it undermines republican governance in every area of society. They even borrow the idea of merging economic and government power from socialism, because it allows them to revive an entire body of law which is prohibited under republican government: aristocratic law.
Aristocratic law is of course founded upon assumptions of aristocratic sovereignty, the notion that there is a ruling class which has a legally established franchise of government power. A charter.
If we look at our own corporations, we see anti-republican structures of organization, established with government-granted charter. We see all of the features and powers associated with aristocratic sovereignty, and aristocratic law, just as history shows us, was revived by fascist states.
In our corporate system, we see vestiges of what was intended to be a system with republican checks and balances, but, we see those barriers to the revival of aristocratic law and sovereignty overrun and disregarded.
Looking through the lens of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, we can view the present "bailout" as a shock doctrine event, and we can see our corporate system eagerly advocating a solution to the crisis (they make the crisis, then propose to "solve" it). That solution, the "bailout" is a solution which proposes to merge government and corporate power systemically.
There is a republican alternative to the "bailout" solution. I'm not speaking of the Republican Party's solution, which is to hide the books from regulators! Poof! Now you see the collapse, now you don't!
No, I'm talking about a fundamentally republican solution, one in which we discard the system of corporate governance which we have, and replace it with a system of corporate governance which has internal and external republican checks and balances. It's a solution that discards the "noble title" system and other anti-republican abuses of the corporate charter.
This is now the fifth diary I've written about this reform. Each diary I've written has drawn fire for it's proposed solution to the mortgage crisis.
I'll make that argument one more time, in the context of the corporate reform I've proposed.
The STATES are the proper actors to solve this crisis, or, if we cave to the ransom being demanded by the increasingly brazen fascist movement, the next crisis, which shouldn't be too far in the future.
The States, collectively, hold all the corporate charters, and they can revoke them and create a wider franchise of corporate power and republican checks and balances within the corporate system, and they can abolish anti-republican abuses of the corporate charter.
Congress, of course, is the correct institution to fund this effort.
Our corporations, under a period of receivership, and under state regulatory oversight, can cancel all the mortgages and send the titles to the people currently paying the mortgages. Everyone would get 100% equity, and they would have, each month, the cash in their pocket which would have otherwise gone to pay the mortgage.
Now, no one keeps all their cash in their pocket, unless you are a crack dealer. People would keep that money in the bank as deposits. Banks, just as they do now, could lend out that money, and using fractional lending, they could lend out nine times what they hold.
That solves the mortgage crisis and the credit crunch. No collapse of Main Street. The majority shareholders of the large corporations would lose control of the corporations, and they would take the biggest hit in terms of lost equity, and many of them would be persona-non-grata in the new republican corporate system. But many of them would still walk away with millions, and a more capitalist society would emerge from all of this.
But, hey, what do I know? Go ahead and "bailout" the anti-republican corporate system that we have. Go ahead and hand the fascist movement yet another step toward merging government and corporate power. Go ahead and preserve and sustain the unconstitutional system of titles and aristocratic sovereignty and aristocratic law.
I'm just a capitalist republican who believes in the fundamental liberal philosophy that is embodied in our history and our constitution. And I'm opposed to socialism.
The "mainstream" has apparently moved so far right that I'm now conservative by comparison. A liberal lefty like me.
