| Submit your comments on this article |
| Economy |
| Obama and the Reawakening of Corporatism |
| 2009-04-09 |
| Steven Malanga, Real Clear Markets In 1970, General Motors was the largest and most profitable company in America. Today, of course, GM is neither. Instead, in 2009 America’s largest company is Wal-Mart, which was still only a regional, privately-held retailer in 1970. Wal-Mart’s rapid rise is not unique, however. Among the 100 largest firms today, a number—including FedEx, Microsoft, Cisco, and Home Depot--didn’t even exist in 1970. So profoundly has the landscape changed that 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies today are different from 1970. All of this is the result of an entrepreneurial revolution spurred by everything from intensifying international competition starting in the late 1950s, to the lowering of confiscatory tax rates starting in the 1960s, to a series of technological revolutions that gathered momentum in the 1970s, to the taming of inflation in the early 1980s. During that time the corporate team player, the quintessential organizational man, slowly gave way to the dazzling but disruptive entrepreneur whose innovations rapidly reshaped the economy—and the ranks of corporate America—several times over. But we are entering quite a different age right now, one in which the President of the United States and his hand-selected industrial overseers fire the chief executive of General Motors and chart the company’s next moves in order to preserve it. Conservative critics of the president have said that the government’s GM strategy is one of many examples of an America drifting toward socialism. But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. . . . Corporatism is especially attractive to politicians, public intellectuals who serve as policy makers, and Nobel Laureates because it is ultimately a world managed by the few, the elect, through the state. If we are told enough times that nothing, even technological innovation, is possible anymore without significant contributions and directions from the state, maybe we’ll eventually come to believe it, although the inventors of the printing press, the steam engine, the light bulb, the telephone, and internal combustion engine and other game-changing technologies might wonder how they accomplished what they did without government. Corporatism is not about regulating capitalism better as markets evolve. It is several steps beyond. It is instead about those who believe in “the beauty of pushing a button to solve problems,” as the economist Paul Krugman recently described his attraction to the social sciences. Some people worry about what happens when the regulators take charge of our economy. But the real concern is what happens when the button pushers take charge, for the button pushers are the corporatists. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #6 "The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power" --Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Fascist Dictator of Italy |
| Posted by: Lftbhndagn 2009-04-09 16:49 |
| #5 How does that differ from fascism? Not by much. Read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism for a full discussion. |
| Posted by: Mike 2009-04-09 16:23 |
| #4 How does that differ from fascism? |
| Posted by: trailing wife in Buffalo 2009-04-09 16:20 |
| #3 Corporatism is Communism - not socialism. So yeah - Obama's not a Socialis. He is a Communist. |
| Posted by: Lftbhndagn 2009-04-09 16:19 |
| #2 Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better. Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better. Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism. There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-04-09 16:17 |
| #1 But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. . . . Politburo by any other name. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-04-09 15:35 |