Podbean audio Introduction
Episode 54. July 24, 2020
Vimeo video Introduction
CLP Topic Category: Crony Capitalism
BLM Marxism and the Emerging Alliance With Global Corporate Crony Capitalism.
Introduction.
Our podcast today is titled BLM Marxism and the Emerging Alliance With Global Corporate Crony Capitalism and it extends the analysis of Richard D. Wolff, in his Salon article, “How racism became the essential tool for maintaining a capitalist order” by placing BLM Marxism within the conventional Marxist analytical methodology of its critique of capitalism.
In other words, we use Wolff’s standard Marxist class conflict theory to explain that the BLM alliance with crony capitalism is best understood as the capitalist class co-opting BLM with the tool of racism, in order to perpetuate global capitalism.
We argue that the recent crony corporate capitalist endorsements of the use of the term “systemic racism” enables the capitalist class to reproduce itself by continually pointing out to BLM that their conditions of oppression are caused by racism, not global crony capitalism.
Wolff notes,
“Employers (capitalists) played on racialized differences to keep employees (workers) from unifying against them. The bitter competition between Black and white workers acts as a shock-absorber for cyclically scarce jobs… capitalism fostered and benefited from racism.”
To paraphrase Wolff, the capitalist class pits Blacks against Whites to act as a shock absorber for the lack of jobs and choice provided under the older form of monopoly capitalism.
Wolff’s Marxian methodology must be updated from the older interpretation of monopoly capitalism to incorporate the newer concepts of global corporate cronyism.
Marxian theory predicted that the older forms of monopoly capitalism had internal contradictions that would, eventually, consign capitalism to the trash heap of history.
We argue that monopoly capitalism has been replaced by crony corporate global capitalism.
The earlier concept of “working class” in monopoly capitalism must be updated to incorporate the group identity ideology that all social groups are exploited by the capitalist class.
In the newer version of crony capitalism, the capitalist class includes all white people, not simply the White cops or the White owners of production capital.
The concept of exploitation and increasing misery of the oppressed groups must be updated to include the newer concept of the neo-slavery of global crony capitalism.
In the neo-slavery of global corporatism, oppressed people have no choice but to submit to the economic choices, including unemployment and poverty, offered by corporations.
The concept of democracy as citizen participation in collective political decisions must be changed to mean equality of incomes, as determined by the elites in the vanguard political party.
With these modifications to traditional Marxist theory, the dialectics of two seemingly incompatible world views, the BLM Marxist view of America as systemically racist, and the crony capitalist view that democratic structures and competitive markets are inferior to a seamless global, totalitarian government, can be more easily reconciled.
The synthesis between the two seemingly incompatible world views is through the joint understanding and agreement by both parties that the Chinese Crony State Communism model represents the best economic model to replace the free enterprise, individualistic model.
The traditional Marxian theory offers both an economic theory of the capitalist’s use of profits obtained through exploitation of the worker, and a theory of history, called the “materialist conception of history.”
The truth of the Marxian historical prediction was never verified because capitalism never died, like Marx predicted. Capitalism kept reinventing itself, and seemed to reincarnate into new forms that defied the Marxian historical prediction.
The reason for the recent failure of historical materialism is that the older monopoly capitalism, of the 1960s, morphed into global corporate crony capitalism, of the 1990s, which uses state propaganda of systemic racism to direct the benefits of the global economic system to themselves.
In Marxist thought, the “state” is the same thing as the “Swamp.”
Marx explained that the state is a powerful institution of the ruling class that uses the state apparatus to secure obedience to rules and to enforce its preferred relations of production and exploitation.
The economic part of Marxian theory predicted that scientific socialism, at the end of history, would replace monopoly capitalism.
The modern form of scientific socialism is the model of Chinese Communism.
In the socialist logic of social construction of reality, communism, as an ideal end state, already exists in the imaginations of socialists, and it is manifested, or made real, by the existence of Chinese communism.
Marx stated,
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence”.
Communism, as an end state, exists for socialists, in the same way that heaven exists for Christians. In Christian thought, a believer deeply believes in the existence of heaven, but the person must die in order to get to heaven.
In Marxism, BLM Marxists deeply believe that socialism is better than capitalism, but capitalism must die in order to get to communism.
Communist heaven looks like nirvana to socialists. Communist heaven would abolish all exploitation and all social hierarchy.
After the revolution, all social classes would disappear. The state would wither away, as politics ceased to exist.
In communist nirvana, technology would be “inherited” from capitalism, in the same way that the Chinese “inherit U. S. technology,” and the inherited technology would be used to produce plenty for all.
This concept of Chinese communist heaven is the end goal of BLM Marxism.
The two parts of the Marxian theory are in conflict with each other. Capitalism, in materialist history, did not die, and the heaven of scientific socialism, in Marxist economic theory, already exists in the end state of Chinese crony state communism.
The crony capitalist are dangling this concept of Chinese communist heaven in front of the BLM Marxists to co-opt the socialist revolution.
Our podcast today is the introduction to a much longer article, available for free, for one week, at www.clpnewsnetwork.com
The other sections of the longer article include:
Section 1. The Co-option of BLM.
Section 2. The Similarity Between Chinese Crony Communism and American Crony Capitalism.
Section 3. The New World Order of Global Collectism.
Conclusion. The Emerging Global Corporate Crony Capitalism.
The full text and audio of the most recent podcast is available for free at clpnewsnetwork.com. The entire text and audio archive of all the CLP News Network podcasts are available for an annual subscription of $30.
Section 1. The Co-option of BLM.
The American crony corporate global capitalist system can best be understood as a rent-seeking economy where elites use the power of government to obtain unearned profits from non-elites.
In the co-option of BLM, the strategy of the ruling class is to have the members of BLM adopt the crony rent-seeking strategy by buying off BLM Marxist with bribes and propaganda, and supporting the BLM rent-seeking reparations for slavery.
In the most recent civil unrest of BLM, crony corporations pledged money and assets to BLM to persuade them that the corporate capitalist class was an ally of the overtly BLM Marxist organization.
The corporations which offered their support to BLM were signaling their agreement with BLM that America is a racist, white supremacist society.
Andrew Kerr, an investigative reporter for the Daily Caller, listed 30 crony capitalist firms that have pledged support to BLM. The companies are listed below:
Company Name Company Statement on BLM
American Airlines Charting a Course to Create and Sustain Meaningful Change
American Express American Express Announces Grants in Support of the Black Community
Bank of America Bank of America Announces $1 Billion/4-Year Commitment to Support Economic Opportunity Initiatives
Chevron chevron leaders on racial injustice and discrimination
Coca-Cola Where We Stand on Social Justice
Dell Technologies Standing strong together
Estee Lauder The Estee Lauder Companies Commits to Racial Equity
Expedia
CEO Peter Kern Letter to Employees
FedEx
Letter from Frederick W. Smith and Raj Subramaniam to All FedEx Team Members and Global Leadership
Grand Hyatt
Change Starts Here
Johnson & Johnson A Message from Johnson & Johnson Chairman and CEO Alex Gorsky About Recent Events in the United States
HP, Inc. HP’s CEO on diversity, equality, and social justice
IBM IBM CEO’s Letter to Congress on Racial Justice Reform
Intel Bob Swan Memo: The Sidelines Are Not An Option; Intel Pledges $1M To Address Social Justice, Racism
Marriott
We Stand Against Racism
Macy’s Instagram statement
Mattel Our Commitment to the Black Community
McDonald’s Twitter statement
Morgan Stanley
Challenging Times: A Conversation About Race and the Current Social Climate
Nike, Inc. Nike, Inc. Statement on Commitment to the Black Community
PayPal LinkedIn statement from CEO Dan Schulman
Procter & Gamble
Equality. Justice. Action
Scholastic
Statement in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter
Target
A Note From Brian Cornell to Our Teams and Communities in the Twin Cities and Beyond
Under Armour A Message From Under Armour CEO Patrik Frisk
Uber Twitter statement
UPS
UPS Calls For Justice And Reform To Advance Equality
Visa
Action, dialogue and change
Wallgreens Boots Alliance An open letter on racial injustice
Walmart
Advancing Our Work on Racial Equity
The Walt Disney Company Resolve in a Time of Unrest: A Message to Fellow Employees
According to Kerr, American Express Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Communications Andrew R. Johnson pledged $1 million to the National Urban League and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
HP, whose CEO, Enrique Lores, quoted Martin Luther King saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
Walmart, whose CEO Doug McMillon said,
“The company’s goal was to help replace the structures of systemic racism, and build in their place frameworks of equity and justice that solidify our commitment to the belief that, without question, Black Lives Matter.”
As Richard Wolff explains, the unifying principle for the crony corporatist class who offered support to BLM is to maintain their hegemony of globalism by virtue-signaling to BLM that BLM can achieve a socially just society, within the framework of crony capitalist globalism.
Wolff notes that the former monopoly capitalists had a type of “eureka” moment, around 1975, when they figured out that global Chinese communism was compatible with global corporatism.
“So in this eureka moment capitalists said, “What are we doing here in Western Europe, North America and Japan? It’s much more profitable if we produce in China, India and Brazil.” And there begins what we’re still in the middle of: the exodus, the abandonment of the places of origin of capitalism by the capitalists. If you go from high wages in the United States to low wages in China, the bottom line is that the people earning wages are earning a lot less than they used to. It’s not just that they’re not Americans; they’re Chinese, but they can’t buy back what you’re building.”
After this eureka moment, monopoly capitalism transitioned to global corporate cronyism. Wolff mistakenly chortles that globalism is a final capitalist contradiction that cannot be resolved.
We argue, instead, that the synthesis that resolves BLM Marxism with corporate globalism is the compatibility of corporate globalism with Chinese communism.
We agree with Wolff that modern racism is based upon the framework of global crony capitalism, which began around 1985.
The initial stages of global corporatism involved innovative ways for large corporation to move production facilities to low cost nations.(Vass, Laurie Thomas, Searching for Signs of Technological Innovation in the Ruins of the American Economy (August 4, 2008). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1270789)
The unifying principle of crony capitalism is globalism, and modern systemic racism is consequence of globalism. (The Restoration of the American Natural Rights Republic. Correcting the Economic Consequences of the Republican Party Abdication of Natural Rights and Individual Freedom. Laurie Thomas Vass, GabbyPress. 2017).
Globalism destroys the middle class blacks and whites, together, but globalism cannot work unless the crony corporations convice Blacks and Whites to hate each other more than they hate the crony capitalist ruling class.
Chinese communism is the desired end-state goal of the BLM Marxists, and the statements of support from the crony capitalists to BLM is that they can achieve nirvana, if they simply adopt the crony capitalist economic model.
In Chinese communism, the means of production are under collective state ownership, not private. The state makes collective decisions on the distribution of profits and incomes so that profits are distributed roughly equally.
Wolff makes another mistake about Chinese communism when he rhapsodizes about the fair income distribution of the communist system.
Wolff states,
“Its idea is that the way you make sure that the government never again becomes an institution over the people, but rather simply an instrument of the people, is by making sure that at the base of society, where people live and work, the wealth, the productive capability, is in their hands.”
Wolff tends to have an ideological blind spot that overlooks that most of the profits from Chinese production go to the top elites in the Communist Party, or to make capital investments in their “national champion” industries.
He also tends to overlook the fact that Chinese crony communism derives about 80% of all profits from their trade arrangements with U. S. crony corporate capitalist companies.
Coincidentally, those companies that benefit the most from trade arrangements with China are the same ones listed above who virtue signal support for BLM. The list below constitutes the primary organized political force of global crony capitalism, which implemented the trade relationships with China.
In other words, Chinese crony state communism could not function without the symbiosis with American global corporate crony capitalism. And, American globalist crony capitalism could not reap profits and function without the Chinese communist model.
The co-optation of BLM is in the implicit contract that U. S. crony capitalists will rid American society of systemic racism and give BLM the end state Chinese communism they desire, as long as BLM leaves the existing crony capitalist system untouched by the riots and civil unrest.
The strategy of co-option is to have BLM Marxists target White American society for destruction, not the institutional framework of corporate globalism.
U.S. China Business Council Member Companies
3M Company
A.O. Smith Corporation
ABB Inc.
Abbott Laboratories
AccuWeather, Inc.
Adobe Systems Incorporated
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
AIG
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
Airbnb, Inc.
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Albright Stonebridge Group
Alcoa Inc.
Allen & Overy LLP
Alston & Bird LLP
Amazon
American Express Company
Amgen Inc.
Amphenol Corporation
Amway
Analog Devices, Inc.
APCO Worldwide
Apple Inc.
Applied Materials, Inc.
Archer Daniels Midland Company
Arconic Inc.
The Asia Group, LLC
Autodesk, Inc.
Audia Plastics Holdings, Inc.
BakerHostetler
Baker McKenzie
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Barbara Franklin Enterprises
Basic Fun!
Basilinna
Bayer
Beacon Global Strategies LLC
Becton Dickinson
Best Buy Co., Inc.
Blue Heron Holdings, LLC
The Boeing Company
BP PLC
Brehm Global Ventures, LLC
Bridge Pacific Consulting
Brunswick Group LLP
C.V. Starr & Co., Inc.
Cabot Corporation
Canadian Solar Inc.
Capital Group
Carbon, Inc.
Cargill, Incorporated
The Carlyle Group
Case New Holland Inc.
Caterpillar Inc.
CET Academic Programs
Cheniere Energy, Inc.
Chevron
Children’s National Hospital
Chindex International, Inc.
Chubb
Cigna
Cisco Systems, Inc.
Cloudflare Inc.
The Coca-Cola Company
The Cohen Group
Comcast Corporation
ConocoPhillips
Control Risks
Conway Data, Inc. Corning Incorporated
Corteva Agriscience
Covington & Burling LLP
Cowen Inc.
Crowell & Moring LLP
Crown Equipment Corporation
Cummins Inc.
Danaher Corporation
Deere & Company
Dell Inc.
The Walt Disney Company
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
Dorsey & Whitney LLP
dōTERRA International
Dow
DV International, Inc.
East Penn Manufacturing Co., Inc.
Eastman Chemical Company
Eaton Corporation
eBay Inc.
Ecolab
Edwards Lifesciences LLC
Eli Lilly and Company
EMD Serono Inc.
Emerson
Ernst & Young
The Estee Lauder Companies
Exxon Mobil Corporation
Facebook Inc.
Factory Mutual Insurance Company
Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP
FedEx
Fluor Corporation
FMC Corporation
Ford Motor Company
Freepoint Commodities LLC
Freeport-McMoRan Inc.
Garrett Motion Inc.
General Atlantic
General Dynamics
General Motors Corporation
Genworth Financial, Inc.
Gilead Sciences Inc.
Global Strategic Associates, LLC
GNC Holdings, Inc.
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
W.R. Grace & Co.
GreenPoint Group
Grifols
Harley-Davidson, Inc.
Hbk Investments L.P.
Heidrick & Struggles
Herbalife International of America, Inc.
Hewlett-Packard Company
Hills & Company
Hilton Worldwide
Honeywell
HP Technology Co., Inc.
Huntsman Corporation
IBM Corporation
Illumina, Inc.
Ingersoll-Rand Company
Institute of Management Accountants, Inc.
Intel Corporation
International Paper Company
Intralox, LLC
Jacobs Global Trade & Compliance LLC
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson Controls
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
WPP Group
Xcoal Energy & Resources
Zebra Technologies Corporation
Zipcorp, Inc.
K&L Gates LLP
Kamsky Associates, Inc.
Robert A. Kapp & Associates, Inc.
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
Kissinger Associates, Inc.
KKR & Co. L.P.
Kobre & Kim LLP
Koch Industries, Inc.
KPMG LLP
Larkin Trade International, LLC
Las Vegas Sands Corp.
Liberty International Holdings, Inc.
Linde plc
Maritime Products International
Mars, Incorporated
Martin+Crumpton Group LLC
Mary Kay Inc.
MasterCard Worldwide
Mayer Brown LLP
McLarty Associates
Merck & Co., Inc.
MetLife, Inc.
Micron Technology, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
MKBC International
Moody’s Investors Service
Morgan Stanley
Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc.
Oxbow Carbon & Mineral Holdings, Inc.
Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison
Paypal Holdings, Inc.
PepsiCo, Inc.
PerkinElmer, Inc.
Perkins Coie LLP
Pfizer Inc.
Polar Air Cargo Worldwide
PricewaterhouseCoopers
The Proctor & Gamble QUALCOMM Incorporated
Raymond James Financial
Raytheon Technologies Corporation
Rock Creek Partners LLC
S&P Global Inc.
Sas Institute Inc.
The Scowcroft Company
Seagate Technology LLC
The Sherwin-Williams Company
Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Smiths Group PLC
SoftBank Group
Squire Patton Boggs
Standard Chartered Bank
State Street Corporation
Steptoe & Johnson LLP
Target Corporation
TE Connectivity
Teng Yue Partners, Lp
Texas Instruments Incorporated
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
Third Point LLC
The Timken Company
Trane Technologies plc
Tyson Foods, Inc.
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Visa Inc.
VMware
Volk Flow Controls, Inc.
Walmart, Inc.
Warner Bros.
Warburg Pincus LLC
Washington Analysis LLC
Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC
WestRock Company
WeWork Companies, Inc.
Whirlpool Corporation
Willis Towers Watson PLC
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
Their purported common enemy is the “systemic racism” of the American society. Their end-state common goal is a world that looks like, and functions like, Chinese crony state communism.
Section 2. The Similarity Between Chinese Crony Communism and American Crony Capitalism.
In his American Thinker article, “Marxo-Capitalism at Work,” David Solway offers his interpretation of the similarity between Marxism and crony capitalism.
Solway notes,
“One of the great enigmas of our day is the fact that the most devoted and powerful socialists among us happen to be capitalist billionaires, corporate patricians laboring to destroy the democratic structures and free-market economies that allowed them to amass their fortunes in the first place. They are the elite members of the fabled one-percent whose policies and initiatives would ideally abolish the fiscal bracket to which they belong.”
The enigma that Solway sees in American crony capitalism is explained by the insight of Victor Davis Hanson on the use of the term “systemic racism,” to perpetuate crony capitalism.
Hanson writes,
“There’s a narrative where the Media has joined Antifa and Black Lives Matter in forging the agenda that the United States was at the beginning, in continuation, in its present, and in the future a racist country that can only be remedied by violence that draws attention to the need for radical redistribution and reparations… Making an assertion designed to turn black and white Americans against each other. ..Thus, the Left contends, their policies would have worked but for this systemic racism. All they need is more time and power to overcome this systemic racism so they can turn their promises into reality.”
The great value for BLM offered by the alliance with crony capitalists is that their leftist policies would work, under an economic system like Chinese communism.
The enigma of capitalism being socialist is resolved by understanding that crony Chinese state communism looks and functions just like American crony corporate capitalism.
As Aligicia and Tarko explain, both forms of cronyism can be categorized and placed into the larger framework of “rent-seeking,” which is a more conventional way for academics to analyze cronyism.
They state,
“Our thesis is that (macro) crony capitalism is yet another type of rent- seeking society, (macro) crony capitalism is not mere rent-seeking, it is a meta-rent-seeking mechanism for securing the rents at consistently high levels…it as a quasi-technical label meant to describe a political system rife with corruption.” (Huber 2002; Haber 2002). (Paul Aligicia and Vlad Tarko, Crony Capitalism: Rent Seeking, Institutions and Ideology, Kyklos, May 2014).
The three main components of both the American global crony national economic structure and the Chinese communist economic structure are:
1. The global firms in the military-industrial complex.
2. The global manufacturing industrial firms with a financial interest in obtaining foreign trade benefits, especially with China.
3. The global banking and investment firms who coordinate global financial transactions in conjunction with global central banks.
The common characteristics of global cronyism, in both economies, and in all three of the national economic structures, is a preference for collectivist globalism, as opposed to promotion of a sovereign national economic interest.
Like the top-down, one party political system in China, the American global corporate crony political system is a one party top down system, based in Washington, which functions entirely independent of the consent of the governed.
Todd Zywicki places cronyism into an economic exchange framework to demonstrate that that the parties who benefit from the crony exchange exploit those who bear the costs of cronyism.
Deploying the Marxist analysis, the crony capitalist elites exploit the non-elites in both systems.
Zywicki states,
“In the (implicit crony) exchange, the firm promises to share some of that surplus with politically-favored groups, such as labor unions or favored interest groups (such as environmental groups), and with the politicians themselves through campaign contributions and other means of support. Thus, the firms and their managers and shareholders gain what amounts to a sinecure and protection from the gales of creative destruction, and in exchange politicians can divert some of this flow of resources to their preferred policies and groups. (Todd J. Zywicki, Rent-Seeking, Crony Capitalism, and the Crony Constitution, Supreme Court Economic Review, Forthcoming; George Mason Legal Studies Research Paper No. LS 15-08; George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 15-26. August 26, 2015. Available at SSRN).
The one party ruling class in America looks like, and functions like, the CCP in China that directs economic wealth to the cronies in the political system.
As Leonard Lynn and Hal Salzman note in “Collaborative Advantage,”
“U. S. multinationals are weakening their national identities, becoming citizens of the countries in which they do business and providing no favors to their country of origin. This means that the goal advocated by some U.S. policymakers of having the United States regain its position of leadership in all key technologies is simply not feasible, nor is it clear how the United States would retain that advantage when its firms are only loosely tied to the country.” (Issues In Science and Technology, Winter 2006).
When the large U. S. corporations moved their regional intermediate supply chains to China, around 2002, they disconnected themselves from allegiance to the national economy, and functioned more as “citizens of the world” than American corporate citizens.
Their new allegiance was to the global alliance with the Chinese Communist Party.
In Wolff’s older monopoly capitalist model of Marxism, the monopoly capitalist class captured the state itself, and all the regulatory agencies, with national sovereignty a mere trapping of consolidated market power in the hands of a Republican Party hegemony.
In the newer version of Marxian analysis, the crony capitalists in both China and America, captured the world market by making national sovereign boundaries obsolete.
The two crony systems are a mirror image of each other. One is a crony communist state capitalist system, and the other is a crony corporate global capitalist system.
Both forms of cronyism exploit non-elites, and the profits from exploitation are directed to the elites in each system.
Both ideologies require the end of individualism and the implementation of a collectivist society.
As Marx noted,
“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
In the emerging alliance between BLM Marxism and crony capitalism, the great value of the alliance to the capitalist class is that BLM is using riots and violence to get rid of the individualism of White American society.
When the crony corporations virtue signal to BLM their support, they acknowledge that individualism is an obsolete concept in the new world order of collectivism.
Section 3. The New World Order of Global Collectism.
When William Barr recently stated that American corporations see themselves as citizens of the world, Barr explained that it was American corporations that had led the economic rise of China.
The Chinese used the profit-sharing from U. S. corporations to invest in their military in preparation for assuming world domination. The U. S. corporations were okay with this Chinese ascendancy because it did not threaten to disrupt their flow of profits.
Robert Lighthizer made the same point in 2019, when he stated,
“The United States made the mistake of treating China as if it was another democracy. The world trading system created by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947 excluded countries like China for good reason, the earlier trade agreements excluded communist countries because they thought such countries would sabotage GATT.”
The “mistake” was not a mistake.
In 2013, U. S. corporations paid workers in manufacturing jobs an average of almost $34 an hour in wages and benefits, or a premium of almost 9 percent compared with all other American jobs, according to the Manufacturing Institute, an affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers.
In China, after the trade deals were implemented, the U. S. corporations paid Chinese slave labor $200 per month, or just under $1 per hour.
The difference between $34 per hour and $1 per hour, in Marxian theory, is called surplus labor value, which was shared between U. S. corporations and the Chinese Communist Party.
The trade agreements with China were not a mistake, they were a deliberate policy choice by global corporations to implement an economic system that allowed them to use Chinese slave labor to reap enormous profits. (Laurie Thomas Vass, Who Is It In America That Is Responsible For Implementing the Trade Agreements With China?, CLP News Network. March 2020).
During the Congressional Hearings on Normal Trade Relations (NTR), in 2000, Michael Bonsignore, CEO of Honeywell, and the lead lobbyist for the Business Roundtable, bragged that Honeywell was doing over half a billion dollars, annually, in trade with China.
Bonsignore stated,
“On virtually every Boeing aircraft shipped to China, Honeywell’s avionics, auxillary power units, wheels, and brakes are on board. We ship industrial instruments and systems to help modernize a wide range of Chinese industries, from pulp and paper to petrochemicals.”
As a result of Honeywell’s efforts to implement NTR, China stole the technology for its nuclear warheads, including Honeywell’s guidance systems for the W-88 warhead capable of delivering 150 Kilotons within 80 yards of it intended target.
China stole from Honeywell the technology for testing these warheads through simulations and firing in camouflage mode.
In 2000, the Roundtable members wrote the law, and rigged the terms of trade to benefit their members. In other words, the social welfare function that the Roundtable members maximized was their own, as if that selfish, private welfare function was a surrogate for a national social welfare function.
The Business Roundtable, spent close to $10 million on lobbying members of Congress for NTR passage, at that time, the largest-ever campaign for a single legislative issue.
George W. Bush stated, after the NTR vote,
“Passage of this legislation will mean a stronger American economy, as well as more opportunity for liberty and freedom in China,”
Speaking on behalf of China, the Chinese negotiator stated,
“The conclusion of this agreement serves the interests of both China and the U.S., and is conducive to the development of Sino-U.S. relations, to China’s becoming a WTO member as soon as possible and to the development of the world economy and trade,”
Sean Illing, a socialist writer for The Atlantic, uses the globalist economy to describe the devastation on working class families in America that resulted from the passage of NTR.
He writes,
“A lot of this bitterness and cynicism (in America) is justifiable. Globalization and automation have ripped apart so many communities across the country, and people feel that they’ve lost any agency at all over their l ives, and that the spoils of this new order have gone to people behind desks and computers, people on the coasts and in the cities…Is it possible that liberal capitalism has just run its course, that it’s produced a world that’s grossly unequal and grossly unrepresentative, that’s destroyed our environment, and that perhaps the “failure” we’re witnessing is the I nterregnum between the death of liberalism and the birth of whatever comes next?.. But putting an end to this regime, so necessary and deserved, is only the beginning.” If that’s the beginning, what do you hope comes next?
Oddly, and paradoxically for BLM Marxists, what comes next is the slavery of Chinese Crony State Capitalism, ushered onto the world stage by the organized political power of the American Crony Corporate Capitalists.
In Wolff’s rendition of Marxism, “the state” is not a neutral institution. It sides with the capitalist class to distort economic outcomes to the benefit of the ruling class.
In their crony capitalist substitution of monopoly capitalism for Chinese state capitalism, the state is not a neutral institution between the Chinese slaves and the Chinese elite.
The CCP enforces the slavery through the police power of the state.
In his recent book, Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy, Matt Stoller explains that under the older monopoly capitalist version of Marxism, the political power of corporations merged with leftist political groups to obtain negotiated agreements on the division of profits.
Stoller uses the example of the A & P grocery chain to show this older political alliance.
He writes,
“The giant chain struck an alliance with the American Federation of Labor and various progressive consumer and cooperative groups to strengthen its hand against the antitrusters. This anti-anti-monopoly alliance, which wedded the interests of labor to those of a large corporation, represents the spirit and logic of the New Deal.
Stoller explained that the Democrat Party, under Obama, jettisoned the alliance between organized labor and the political party, in favor of global socialism.
He writes,
“The destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century.”
The concentration of power he describes is the organized political power of the Business Roundtable and U. S. Chamber of Commerce to implement the China trade deals.
Under the old negotiated wage labor political system, the workers in America were able to obtain some portion of the surplus labor value. In the new world order, there is no reason for U. S. crony corporations to negotiate with American labor unions.
Their main partner for negotiation shifted to the Chinese Communist Party. The American corporations no longer need to negotiate with any form of labor over surplus value.
That unpleasant task is handled solely by the CCP.
Beginning in 2003, but especially after 2008, the payments for the huge trade deficit with China fundamentally changed the structure of the U. S. economy into a managed global financial services economy that benefitted 5 big New York banks.
The income and employment multiplier effects of the banking rentier economy are concentrated in the elite social classes, making income inequality much greater than under the industrial production economy, which existed prior to 1999.
The Wal-Mart trade deficit with China cost more than 400,000 American jobs from 2001 to 2013
Cisco now has 2,000 people doing R&D in India. Those jobs for highly skilled, highly-paid workers, used to be located in America.
Advocating “systemic racism” on behalf of BLM Marxist is the least-cost way for American crony capitalists to maintain their economic and financial privileges.
Oddly, the Chinese slavery model appeals to Black BLM Marxists.
Conclusion. The Emerging Global Corporate Crony Capitalism.
The Democrat Party has unleashed Antifa and BLM to create the conditions of civil unrest as the precursor to the overthrow the American form of capitalism and individualism.
Their common enemy is the White American social structure of individualism, not the existing form of global crony capitalism.
Both parties to the exchange, for different reasons, favor a globalist government, to replace the national sovereignty of national borders.
They both share a common vision that the world would be a better place under a one-world socialist government, where the socialist elites operate the apparatus of the state, and the corporate elites manage the global economy.
This arrangement solves a big logical gap for the BLM Marxists, who do not have a coherent economic system, of their own, to replace the existing system.
As Richard Wolff explains, the unifying principle for the crony corporatist class who offered support to BLM in the rioting is to maintain their hegemony of globalism by virtue-signaling to BLM that BLM can achieve a socially just society, within the framework of crony Chinese state capitalism.
The success of the new alliance rests in BLM Marxists buying into the rent-seeking system of the crony capitalists, in order to obtain their goal of reparations for slavery from non-elites.
In other words, both parties to the new alliance share the older Marxist principle of exploitation of the masses by the ruling class.
America does not have a “systemic racism” problem, because all White people in America are not racists.
But, systemic racism, used as a propaganda tool by the crony capitalists, is essential to the success of the new alliance.
America has a economic class problem, where the ruling class uses police power of the state to extract unearned profits from non-elites.
The gambit of the American crony capitalist will work if the BLM Marxists are successfully bought off to join in the rent-seeking economic system.
Both parties to the new alliance require the end of individualism and the implementation of a collectivist society.
As Marx noted,
“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.”
When the crony corporations virtue signal to BLM their support for systemic racism, they acknowledge that individualism is an obsolete concept in the new world order of collectivism.
And, in that common understanding, both parties agree that the Chinese crony communist system is the preferred alternative.
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I am Laurie Thomas Vass, and this podcast is a copyrighted production of the CLP News Network.
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