Propaganda tidbit du jour
From: Philip Bobbitt "The Shield of Achilles"–War, Peace, and the Course of History– (2002)
Think about this quotation, and everything it means:
"…a new constitutional order [is emerging]. This new form is the market-state. Whereas the nation-state… promised to guarantee the welfare of the nation, the market-state promises instead to maximize the opportunity of the people and thus tends to privatize many state activities and to make voting and representative government less influential and more responsive to the market. The United States, a principal innovator in the development of the market-state, must fashion its strategic policies with this fundamental constitutional change in mind."
Now, I am going to withhold final judgment, as I have a long way to go in the book, but this is flagrant, and the slant is extremely obvious.
make voting and representative government less influential and more responsive to the market.
Traditional political rights will be given up to "the market"– which means giganto-capitalist entities, ie plutocracy, etc.
Bobbitt's whole putative thesis is that "history proceeds by successive constitutional forms."
He then explains how history is now moving to a new form– and from this, we are to conclude "ah, now history is moving from the nation-state to the market-state, therefore, we should give up our political rights to multi-national corporations!"
And it's not a question of "privatization" versus "state control"– the problem is that privatization is being used to essentially dissolve the state as a political force, and with it the peoples power. Traditional discussion of private versus state didn't take this extreme into account, and assumed everything happens within a stable state that isn't being usurped.