Defeat Corporate Communism
Rich Zubaty | 02.11.2002 07:39
New book excerpt explaining how everything we thought was bad about communism is what's wrong with corporatism
Defeat Corporate Communism!
What the hell is Corporate Communism?
(partially excerpted from the new book The Corporate Cult by Rich Zubaty)
Remember every bad thing you ever heard about communism? Well that’s corporate communism.
Remember hearing that people living under communism have no Civil Rights? Ever work for a corporation? When you punch in your time card you punch out your Civil Rights. You have no rights to free speech or free assembly or due process of law on the corporate jobsite. They can fire you if they don’t like what you say or how you look. It’s as if you entered a foreign nation located on U.S. soil. Guess what? You have. The Microsoft nation. The GE kingdom. The Boeing principality. Corporations are foreign economic nations operating on our soil.
Remember hearing that communism is a centrally planned economy? Well that’s corporate communism. Cuba ranks 72nd on a list of centrally managed economies. The first 71 are global corporations. Of the 100 largest economies in the world 51 are now corporations and only 49 are countries. General Motors -- the 22nd largest economy in the world -- is larger than Denmark, Thailand, Hong Kong or Turkey. GM is now the largest private employer in Mexico. Wal-Mart stores is larger than Israel or Greece. The instant we were unburdened of Soviet-style centralized economic planning we were colonized by corporate-style centralized economic planning -- a.k.a. the global economy.
Mom and pop operations are being driven out of business and you get to order burgers with bacon or burgers with cheese or burgers with fries. No homemade stew or fresh-baked cherry pie on the menu. Each day there are hundreds of hours of TV time telling you how to play the “market”, but none -- ever -- telling you how to form a union or make investments in small businesses in your very own community. Corporate communism takes over the marketplace and removes choice -- the opposite of what it claims to do. You only get the books and movies and music they want you to have because they control the distribution of EVERYTHING. Corporate communism has a stranglehold on distribution.
Remember hearing that for all its noble ideas communist society is actually run by a few anonymous drunken thugs? Well that’s corporate communism. Right this minute some men and women are sitting on barstools deciding what clothes you will wear and what cars you will buy and what entertainment you will “choose” and even how you will vote: Republicrat. The “one true” corporate party -- with two happy faces.
Remember the posters of Lenin and Mao and the annual party rallies? Ever go to a stockholders meeting and hear them cheer the fearless leader for firing employees and keeping “profits” up? Millions of people lost jobs in the go-go nineties -- meanwhile we were all being told, every night, how great things were going.
We are awash in “feelings” and dehydrated from lack of ideas. We are suffocating in a Wal-Mart of the Soul. We are spoon-fed rhetoric about “free markets” and “freedom of speech” and the “free press” -- meanwhile everything we do, everything we have, everything we think, everything we are, is dictated by corporations.
What the hell is Corporate Communism?
(partially excerpted from the new book The Corporate Cult by Rich Zubaty)
Remember every bad thing you ever heard about communism? Well that’s corporate communism.
Remember hearing that people living under communism have no Civil Rights? Ever work for a corporation? When you punch in your time card you punch out your Civil Rights. You have no rights to free speech or free assembly or due process of law on the corporate jobsite. They can fire you if they don’t like what you say or how you look. It’s as if you entered a foreign nation located on U.S. soil. Guess what? You have. The Microsoft nation. The GE kingdom. The Boeing principality. Corporations are foreign economic nations operating on our soil.
Remember hearing that communism is a centrally planned economy? Well that’s corporate communism. Cuba ranks 72nd on a list of centrally managed economies. The first 71 are global corporations. Of the 100 largest economies in the world 51 are now corporations and only 49 are countries. General Motors -- the 22nd largest economy in the world -- is larger than Denmark, Thailand, Hong Kong or Turkey. GM is now the largest private employer in Mexico. Wal-Mart stores is larger than Israel or Greece. The instant we were unburdened of Soviet-style centralized economic planning we were colonized by corporate-style centralized economic planning -- a.k.a. the global economy.
Mom and pop operations are being driven out of business and you get to order burgers with bacon or burgers with cheese or burgers with fries. No homemade stew or fresh-baked cherry pie on the menu. Each day there are hundreds of hours of TV time telling you how to play the “market”, but none -- ever -- telling you how to form a union or make investments in small businesses in your very own community. Corporate communism takes over the marketplace and removes choice -- the opposite of what it claims to do. You only get the books and movies and music they want you to have because they control the distribution of EVERYTHING. Corporate communism has a stranglehold on distribution.
Remember hearing that for all its noble ideas communist society is actually run by a few anonymous drunken thugs? Well that’s corporate communism. Right this minute some men and women are sitting on barstools deciding what clothes you will wear and what cars you will buy and what entertainment you will “choose” and even how you will vote: Republicrat. The “one true” corporate party -- with two happy faces.
Remember the posters of Lenin and Mao and the annual party rallies? Ever go to a stockholders meeting and hear them cheer the fearless leader for firing employees and keeping “profits” up? Millions of people lost jobs in the go-go nineties -- meanwhile we were all being told, every night, how great things were going.
We are awash in “feelings” and dehydrated from lack of ideas. We are suffocating in a Wal-Mart of the Soul. We are spoon-fed rhetoric about “free markets” and “freedom of speech” and the “free press” -- meanwhile everything we do, everything we have, everything we think, everything we are, is dictated by corporations.
Rich Zubaty
e-mail:
richzubaty@hotmail.com
Homepage:
www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/5225/
Comments
Hide the following 5 comments
correction
02.11.2002 11:21
observer
Nah
02.11.2002 12:42
Zz
these kind of sophist articles
02.11.2002 14:07
Our contributor makes an essential error, perhaps deliberate, of conflating COMMUNISM with COLLECTIVISM. Several strands of thought do this, including the indidvidualist right wing and our very own SWP. The right say capitalism is a kind of communism; the SWP say soviet communism was a kind of capitalism.
Many non communist forms make use of collectivist notions, such as mass party, unified nation, and even virulently anti-communist forms flirt with red flags and shirts, even usuing the name 'socialist' when it comes in handy. Britain is undergoing a collectivist capitalist project of enormous proportions, but i can assure the original contributor that socialism in its international sense has never been further away ! Blair even spoke of "social-ism", as distinct from socialism, in other words, a return to control in britian through social rather than overtly political means. all the talk is of partnership, togehtherness, etc, and I suspect most of the left here, including the SWP are inclined to half believe it... Fortunately, we can tell them by the trail of dislogic; when anyone says "something is like something else" we must sieze on this synthesis and also ask in what way are they DISsimilar. Otherwise, we dont get anywhere, and even lose ourselves. Is a cat like a dog ? Both have fur, chase mice and pester me for food all day. My two are even friends, playing together qyite amicably. Therefore, do I conclude that a cat is like a dog ? Ask a burglar ! Answers on a postcard, please.
doshfokwonfu
Corporate communisn is not communism!
02.11.2002 17:50
Under true communism all the means of production and distribution are under the democratic control of everyone through workers councils and all officals hold temporay posts and no offical earns more than the average wage of a worker. There is also a democratically planned economy based on production for need not profit. Furthermore communism is meant to be a global system which replaces global capitalism.
Harlequin
Homepage:
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk
Interesting comments
04.11.2002 02:42
Fortunately Europe is finally busting the chops of corporate America is ways that are long overdue. Keep it up. We need the reality punch. We want our country back.
Thanks, Rich Zubaty
Rich Zubaty