The Growth of Corporate and Decline of Governmental Power circa 1875

"The Nation" magizine is celebrating their 150th anniversary. The digital verison is free to all at:

www.thenation.com...

It's a wonderful read with contemporary content as well as selected reprints from their remarkable history.

Here's a page with excepts from their early issues:

www.thenation.com...

One in particular, an editorial from May 15, 1873 is still relevant in our time as it was in 1873:

The Growth of Corporate and Decline of Governmental Power

Some thirty or forty years ago American society discovered that this country lies remote from European complications. In this safety of isolation American society said: “We will lay aside the responsibilities and sacrifices of citizenship, and religiously ascribing all virtues and all growth and progress to a republican form of government, will allow our own to go to the dogs, devoting ourselves meanwhile to the business of getting rich.” The broadest views of duty were covered by the word “industry,” and of elevation by the word “wealth.” These ideas were flung about by the press, and caught up and adopted by society, so that every philanthropist who addressed a public school generally summed up his moral teachings in the prediction that all the good boys would work hard and get rich.

Such sayings as, “The world is governed too much,” “The less government you have, the better,” “Individual enterprise will accomplish everything, if you will only give it a chance,” were adopted as incontrovertible maxims, and society set itself to giving individual enterprise all the chance it asked. At the same time, the science of government, which had received so much attention from the earliest statesmen, was allowed to die out in this country, and the business of governing was gradually abandoned to a class of professional politicians contemptuously called office-holders and office-seekers, and the task of serving one’s country fell into general disrepute.

In a country so undeveloped on the one hand, and so rich in resources on the other, there were innumerable fields for individual enterprise—and fields of such vast extent as to be beyond the powers of any single fortune. Hence it was inevitable that individual enterprise should seek the aid of combined capitalists, and that these combinations should take the form of corporations. Such corporations were manifestly too small, too weak, and too local to control legislatures, or seriously conflict with the interests of the community which created them.They were practically, as well as theoretically, the creatures of the legislature, and created for the public convenience. In time, however, these several corporate links, with others of the great chain, became welded together, and since then consolidations here and “giant enterprises” there have brought great corporations upon the whole country. The immense power of great and concentrated wealth which is actively employed made itself almost immediately felt.

With such new forces springing into existence in every State, more numerous, if not intrinsically greater, than was ever known before in the history of corporate bodies, and growing rapidly into a magnitude that could never have been anticipated, and with the efficiency of American government constantly lessening, it is apparent that a time might, indeed must, come when Government would be really too inefficient to maintain the rights of society by duly restraining their aggressive powers. Such is not far from the condition of American society at the present moment. Corporations to a certain extent take the place in American society of the privileged classes in aristocratic Europe; for they constitute a feudal system which exacts service, if not homage, from an influential portion of every community, and which carries on a disguised warfare with the Government, sometimes in Congress, sometimes in State legislatures, in which warfare concentrated wealth and power are arrayed against the wishes and, in some cases, interests of society at large.

a reply to: FyreByrd

How powerful can profit machines become? Much more powerful. They are amoral and will run themselves until they run out of resources. People are the resources.

Can we get to a Hunger games scenario? Yes and much sooner than you think. Corporations could partition off the US and pay bureaucrats and technocrats to supply "customers" by force.

Can we get to the "Matrix" outcome? I don't currently see anything that would stop it. Those are some sobering options.

Ditch the amoral value system of the profit machines before it's too late.

a reply to: FyreByrd

Post to get this on favourites list to read later.

F&S&

At what point will the sheep look up?

In 1873 the Corporations had the Pinkertons to control the masses, it appears now they have the FBI and the Department of Justice. It may also be possible that the Corporations have created their own Intelligence Community trained militias'. They entrap or place evidence on troublesome individuals and then call in their pet law enforcement to make the bust. The management of the FBI is told to overlook the presence of these militias. You can't arrest a militia you don't know exists.

The Corporations are no longer satisfied with controlling the government, they are trying to become the government.

originally posted by: InverseLookingGlass
a reply to: FyreByrd



Ditch the amoral value system of the profit machines before it's too late.

Capitalism has to go. Production for use not profit.

a reply to: FyreByrd

Seems to me the old "capitalism v/s communism" polarity is inaccurate and inadequate. I also think any economic paradigm that defines people exclusively as "consumers" and cultures only as "markets" seriously misses the boat.

They want to shrink the government, just in case it breaks lose of corporate control. Also the Corporate CEO's want to have the power of life and death without any government intermediary. They really don't like being told no.

They may already have the capabilities of the NSA within AT&T and Cox. They use the same Intelligence Community personnel that are already using the corporation as their cover story. The Intelligence Community becomes their night job and loyalty to the United States is second to the Corporations.

If there isn't any government to investigate them (and possibly break them) then they win FOREVER.

Luckily they have gotten soft, stupid, and corrupt.