[Peace-discuss] Re: Individuals and corporations

[n.dahlheim at mchsi.com]

Well, quite often large corporations move and act based upon the disproportionately great influence of 
powerful oligarchical families.  The three greatest examples might lie in the petroleum industry.  The 
Rockefellers probably still have a major influence as shareholders and directors of Exxon-Mobil and 
Chevron, the Rothschilds probably still make the major decisions in running BP, and the Dutch Royal 
Family still probably pulls many strings at Shell.  Corporations are a legal instrument of oligarchical 
control---economist Phillip Heyman said as much in the early 1990s when he proclaimed that maybe 500 
people make all of the important decisions in running the USA.


----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "John W." <jbw292002 at gmail.com>
To:      "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>, "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
Cc:      peace-discuss at anti-war.net
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Blair To Brown - The Killing Will Continue 
Date:    Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:07:25 +0000

> At 06:31 PM 7/23/2007, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
> 
> >Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> >
> >I'm sending too much it seems, but this piece from Media Lens tells what's 
> >up in the UK.
> >
> >"We speak of national interests, national capital, national spheres of 
> >interest, national honour, and national spirit; but we forget that behind 
> >all this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of power-loving 
> >politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a 
> >convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for 
> >political power from the eyes of the world." (Rocker, Culture and 
> >Nationalism, Michael E. Coughlan, 1978, p.253)
> >
> >This comes from 
> ><http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php>http://www.medialens.org/alerts/inde
> x.php 
> >
> >
> >entitled: From Blair To Brown - The Killing Will Continue
> >
> ><http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php>http://www.medialens.org/alerts/inde
> x.php 
> >
> >
> >**********
> >
> >It's vital, though, in exposing the fraud of Clinton-Blair "humanitarian war."
> >
> >The paragraph you quote from anarchist writer Rudolf Rocker --
> >
> >"We speak of national interests, national capital, national spheres of 
> >interest, national honour, and national spirit; but we forget that behind 
> >all this there are hidden merely the selfish interests of power-loving 
> >politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a 
> >convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for 
> >political power from the eyes of the world."
> >
> >-- incidentally makes clear why libertarians and the anarchist left are 
> >opposed to one another.
> >
> >Anarchism is left-wing socialism (as Rocker says elsewhere, "All 
> >anarchists are socialists, but not all socialists are anarchists"), and 
> >socialism is that critique of capitalism that demands an economy based on 
> >production for use rather than production for profit.  Anarchists add that 
> >production must be under democratic control.
> >
> >Modern American Libertarianism, although it's verbally consistent with 
> >Enlightenment Liberalism in asserting the essential need for freedom to 
> >human nature ("liber" is Latin for "free"), errs by asserting that that 
> >freedom must also belong to "legal persons" -- corporations.  They don't 
> >seem to notice that freedom for concentrations of money is precisely what 
> >takes away freedom from real persons, who have to sell what makes them 
> >human, their work of head and hands, to those concentrations of money in 
> >order to eat regularly.
> >
> >Anarchists, at the other extreme of the political spectrum, want to 
> >establish that freedom for real persons, and that means bringing 
> >concentrations of money under democratic control. Otherwise the "free 
> >economy" merely presents "the selfish interests of power-loving 
> >politicians and money-loving business men for whom the nation is a 
> >convenient cover to hide their personal greed and their schemes for 
> >political power from the eyes of the world."  --CGE
> 
> 
> Serious question, Carl:  Why distinguish corporations?  What about 
> concentrations of money in the hands of individuals or families?  In other 
> words, what about "real persons" exercising their freedom in ways so as to 
> accumulate money?  What do anarchists want to do about that?
> 
> John Wason
> 
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