Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Peter Cooper — There Would Be No Capitalism Without the State


Why capitalism is necessarily state capitalism to one degree or another. Capitalism is dependent on a state or a comparable institution. Individuals acting independently are not self-organizing or self-regulating. Institutions are required and they are provided by governance. Of course, there are many ways to organize governance. Governance under capitalism has been, is and will continue to be oligarchical until governance of the people, by the people, and for the people is established and that his ultimately up to the people. Since history has demonstrated a liberal bias, one can hope that this is the direction of progression socially, politically and economically. But it is not going to just happen. People have to take the reins and in order to do so effectively, they must be prepared to do so. It is in the interest of the oligarchy to see to it that this never happens.

heteconomist
There Would Be No Capitalism Without the State
Peter Cooper

2 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Sounds like Marx was blind to the existence of the government sector....

Should this analysis be admired?

Peter here probably does a better job of observing/describing reality than Marx ever did ...

Dan Lynch said...

Consistent with Perelman's thesis that capitalism as we know it is not a natural order but rather something that was artificially and deliberately created to serve the upper class.

Take away government and you are left with Somalia, Iraq, Ukraine, Libya, etc.. That's your natural order, at least in an industrialized world.

Indigenous peoples may have gotten along without government per se but they were small tightly knit bands effectively governed by shared social beliefs.

As usual, I like the way Peter thinks.