This essay is excerpted from a longer manuscript and is copyright protected.

Not to be published without consent of the author.

In an era touted as the end of history following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, that “logically absurd idea”[1] flaunts the triumph of capitalism and globalization and liberalism as the ultimate goal and good of humanity, led by the greatest democracy ever created, the United States of America. Pure of ideal, motivated only by the impulse to spread democracy and freedom, the U.S. “has no great desire…to conquer for the extraction of natural resources.”[2] The capitalist “free-market is the only ideological alternative left,” having blown “away all the major ideological alternatives to free-market capitalism”[3] Ultimately, the United States is the global leader morally and financially, and the “proof of the transcendent importance of the American experiment would be found not only in the perfection of American institutions at home but also in the spread of American influence in the world.”[4] It becomes an almost theological inspiration when transcendence and perfection are used to describe a system that carries its influence around the world, purportedly for the good of all. These conceits, these opinions that are much too highly regarded by the American politic, are evident throughout the structures and institutions that make up the corporate, legal, and political bodies of the U.S.

These conceits work throughout the political and economic spectrum of the United States (and other countries, but being the undisputedly most powerful country economically and militarily, the others are mainly followers) from the lowly levels of the everyday consumer to the unseen and highly censored machinations of the military-industrial complex, leading finally to the creation of empire. Maybe not an empire in the historical sense of land-grabbing and colonisation, but certainly an economic empire supported by a highly technological military that allows only a minimal attachment to conquered territories. There are two main streams in American society that keep the rich and powerful in place and in control of this empire. The most obvious is the military-industrial- political complex whose operations normally reside outside the scrutiny of the average citizen. The second is the consumer themselves, unwitting pawns in the rush for consumer goods and services that redistribute the wealth upwards to the large corporations (MacDonald’s and Nike are two almost purely commercial wealth creators). Often the two meet, as with General Electric operating on the military level and also selling appliances to the consumer, always new and improved. Intel also fits this category, with the “Intel Inside” sticker on many computers, and one wonders if that sticker might actually be applied to some of the guidance systems for the rockets and missiles used by the military. Hewlett-Packard, Dupont, and Kodak, among others, are other corporations that fit this mold quite neatly as well.[5]

The American consumer economy and the military empire tie together quite nicely, as “sustaining American prosperity under existing political arrangements would require the unimpeded growth of trade and investment abroad,”[6] in other words, to keep the customer satisfied, we’ll have to impose ourselves abroad militarily. Other aspects of the overall picture include the reality of what capitalism is, what democracy is, what corporations are, what globalization is and how it is occurring, and an understanding of the mostly unspoken drive to “seize every opportunity to open new markets.”[7] There is within the political sphere the understanding that “the internal American market was insufficient to sustain the necessary level of economic growth,”[8] and that the empire is a result of “the less-than-subtle imperatives of international capitalism,”[9] rather than the idealistic values of liberty and freedom for all.

What then is capitalism, that leads into this grab for imperial power? It starts with the assumption that, while all peoples consume in order to survive, greed is the driving factor to accumulate goods, essentially that greed is good, leading to the ultimate expression that “being green, being global and being greedy can go hand in hand.”[10] But that is getting way too far along in far too short of order. So greed is good, selfishness is good, therefore the accumulation of wealth is good. This accumulation of wealth is good as there really is no morality involved because the mechanism to get there, the market forces of capitalism, are morally neutral. The market has no values, it just exists and is subject to the whims and wishes of the populace, and the freedom of choice in this market leads to individual freedoms with the result that the individual reigns supreme in the market. Therefore capitalism becomes equated with freedom and to take it to the next step, the international level, the U.S. and its citizens “by advancing their own interests they advance the interests of humanity.”[11]

The problem with capitalism at this level is the assumption - the myth - of choice and greed in place of the basic human condition requiring food, clothing, and shelter. Yes, people ‘choose’ their work and spending according to supposed market forces, but more truly they are compelled to work and spend in order to cover their basic needs. But they cannot truly choose which hospitals they go to, what medical aid they can get, what schools and universities they attend, and the communities they wish to live in. They buy, they sell, they consume, they dispose, and buy some more, all the time that money - contrary to the “trickle down” myth of economies of the right - accumulates upwards to the established wealthy. Everyone pays taxes to the government, on income and in some form or other, on goods and services purchased. There is minimal democratic choice as to how this money is used once the government has its hands on it and all too often it goes as subsidies to large corporations who look for tax breaks, direct subsidies, or other incentives to locate themselves in one place or another. The government rules - the plutocracy rules - are set up to help big business at the same time that government earnestly decrees that they are not in the business of business - another myth - that the best government is minimal government. Following on that however, taxes never seem to go down, and government never seems to get smaller. Certainly there are small changes to the tax brackets which invariably have favoured the already rich over the poor, but more directly, when government is “smaller”, user fees and service fees increase and essentially nullify any tax breaks, especially for the working poor. But to return to small business and the myth of small business as the backbone of the economy as it makes up only a small percentage of the overall wealth of a country. It is in reality another level of consumption, forever ordering material, forever selling material, forever blocked from having the wealth and capital to secure the resources needed to become truly wealthy and powerful. Yet when times are rough, when the economy slows, when jobs are not increasing fast enough, the government and the think tanks all exhort the individual to become self employed and to get out and shop. Another myth is the Horatio Alger ideal of the poor man making it big - but only a very few have ever done this and in reality, we are not created equal nor do we exist with equal opportunity, especially when it comes to access to resources which the already wealthy control through previous political and economic machinations. These myths all support the ideological imperatives of the free market system and provide the justifications for the powerful and wealthy (greedy) to “engage in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”[12] Further, the market forces of capitalism are far from democratic, controlled and regulated by some of the least democratic institutions, the large corporations.

The international level is best supported economically by corporations which are the highest legal functioning level of capitalism, corporations that extend their powers well beyond the political boundaries of the country. They are non-democratic: the employees have little if any say in how they are run unless they come up with some cost saving idea; the share holders are mostly already the wealthy and powerful; and those of us putting their savings at risk in some fund or other have no say in how things are managed. Large corporations, in this era of ‘small government’ have a large impact on economic decisions, on the rules to ‘guide’ the corporations through there indiscretions against the environment and and the consumer. Further they manipulate government decisions by threatening to withdraw from areas where they are already established, and by bargaining for subsidies and/or regulations that facilitate their setting up in one area or another – and governments are all too happy to fall over themselves trying to get the best deal in the name of ‘growth’ and ‘progress’ and ‘the economy’ when the true benefits go not to the employees but to the corporate owners. Corporations are also unaccountable, they are invisible entities with limited liability, and the people behind them are unseen and seldom brought to account as the corporation, being recognized in law as an individual, takes all the heat - but heat applied to an invisible void dissipates quite quickly leaving the CEO’s, owner-magnates, and executives well out of harms way, in this sense, the law or the judiciary: the “law permit’s the incorporation of a business for the very purpose of enabling its proprietors to escape personal liability.”[13] Receiving “judicial awe for corporate structures”[14] the corporations operate under a different set of legal standards as the lawyers and judges have risen through the same set of corporate/legal rules, having in a sense already proven their fit for their position. Finally, corporations avoid taxes through using these laws to manipulate the complex and confusing interactions between people and other corporations, to the final step of setting up off-shore companies in tax free havens.

Beyond the corporations are even more secretive institutions, those that operate without any pretence of democratic idealism, those that “collude in secret” hoping to write the “constitution of a new global economy”, the supra-corporate World Trade Organization, and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, and its many associated think tanks. Theses structures, while not wholly American controlled, are part of the overall framework, leading some to believe that the U.S. must “support international institutions such as the [WTO, IMF, and OECD] that provide a framework of rules for the world economy.”[15] Welcome to the era of globalization.

Developed further these ideas lead into the American Empire. In a supremely rhetorical work, one pundit states repeatedly that the rest of the world should play by the rules: “if the major European and Asian states play by the rules, the great power order will remain stable,” allowing the U.S. “to build order around institutionalized political relations among integrated market democracies, supported by an opening of economies.”[16] But whose rule are they? What are they? Who enforces them?

The rules themselves are unclear, negotiated in secret by the international organizations with political appointees, CEO’s, MBA’s, and corporate lawyers in multi-lateral and bi-lateral agreements, or the essentially American institutions that create rules on economic funding and economic participation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They are the realm of specialist lawyers and career politicians looking for a seat on a corporate board after retirement. What the public hears, what the supposed backbone of the economy hears, are free choice, transparency, good governance, and openness. There are no particular rules to advance these ideological themes - the rules are made to support the accumulation of wealth to the centre of the empire with lower cost production and increased consumption - which takes the argument all the way back to the consumptive greed and accumulation of wealth where this discussion started. But the circle is not yet closed.

How are these rules enforced? They are enacted by supra-national and supra-corporate bodies that are beyond the pale of national structures, and indeed these national structures often give up some of their sovereignty and territoriality in order to gain access to the supposed benefits of globalization and free trade. Enforcement in part then is because many buy into the myths of capitalism being equated with freedom (via greed), with globalization being a given as a capitalist triumph (without any discussion of the possibility of globalization being a social democratic possibility), and with liberal democratic values (that the corporations and institutions themselves do not live by). Enforcement is partly self induced by submission to the dictates of these ‘rules’ as the weaker states have little power to avoid the ugly necessities of openness imposed by the IMF or the World Bank. The latter in particular has come under attack in many areas of the world for its free-market, capitalist schemes that have left the poor poorer and the rich wealthier.[17] The other aspect of enforcement, for those of us who do not see the light and are belligerent enough to say so, is military - a doctrine easily accepted by many of the pro-empire believers. The U.S. has the “material and military resources to maintain its power,”[18] and it should be “making the world safe for capitalism and democracy,” if necessary “by military force.”[19]

That the U.S. military has been doing this for decades is hardly arguable as they have established military bases throughout the world that do not directly colonize territory but leave them under the de facto rules of engagement as dictated by the necessities of global commerce, in many cases oil. The majority of the Caspian Basin is surrounded with new military bases; the Balkans have a major military base far beyond the requirements of military policing; Pakistan is currently teetering between accomodating American forces and possible national civil war; the Pacific Rim is surrounded with military bases and secret intelligence installations gathering data on just about everything; Europe is still home to many American forces regardless of changes in political circumstances in Eastern Europe.[20]

In addition to their outright military power, the American military establishment is also an economic power controlling hundreds of billions of dollars in accounted funds and possibly many billions more in unaccounted funds. The Pentagon’s budget has great impact on the economy of the U.S., and in particular is subject to intense lobbying to keep it going as the defence establishment is widely distributed throughout the political divisions. Many programs are kept running without any evident need for them simply because local politics demands it.[21] Mixed up in all this is the revolving door between industry, the military, and politics, the current Bush cabinet being a prime example of this, with its non-elected members having been in various companies, and in various other political appointments, and also having various backgrounds with the military.[22]

Has the circle closed yet? Almost. From the myths of capitalism that developed the attributes of the American market place - independent free acting individuals all with equal opportunity - through the rules of corporate law and international law that give lie to those supposed attributes at the corporate and international level, ending at the control of the global economy through those rules with the strong assistance of a global military power that is uncontested except for a few radical terrorists who have developed an extreme hate for anything American. And a few rogue nuclear states - and a few democratic European states that don’t buy the American arguments - and the billion or so Chinese who are slowly becoming global players and may ultimately challenge the U.S. - and the Russians who have recently returned a more authoritative government - and the Spanish who have recently elected a socialist government in order to get them out of Iraq. While the Americans may have global supremacy, it is not absolute, it is not uncontested. The circle is almost closed - the American Empire essentially controls the globe through the ongoing myths of capitalist free market democratic freedom. Democracy is the last untouched aspect of these myths.

Democracy, the power of the people, is only partially true in many western countries. Capitalism does not equate with democracy, but rather institutionalizes the disparities between groups and individuals, as competition by necessity has winners and losers, justifying in law and corporate practice the accumulation of wealth at the top. Democracy as expressed in most western countries has rights and freedoms of religion, of sex, of race, and many more, but noticeably lacking is the right to access of resources. These ‘neo-liberal’ institutions, the corporations and the governments that support them, say nothing about discrimination based on wealth. More truly the system is a plutocracy, rule by the wealthy, as the wealthy truly control the power, and the voters vote in the vain belief that voting for one of two parties that are essentially the same when it comes to economic controls and foreign policy might make a difference. The argument can be extended to that of a klepocracy, the theft of wealth by the powerful. This is recognized of other countries with the twist that kleptocracy is equated with cronyism and when “legal transactions become the exception rather than the norm.”[23] However a true kleptocracy is when the institutions that control society have legal transactions with rules that favour the accumulation of wealth to the already wealthy. Finally the question arises about the demise of socialism, how poorly it did on the world stage, and how it has been fully discredited, all of which again are myths of the current globalizing free market leaders.

Socialism, given the opportunity, without interference from the United States as happened in Vietnam, Guatemala, Columbia, Philippines, Cuba, Chile, Italy, Greece and many other countries, may have proven very successful as a global humanitarian, more egalitarian structure worldwide - a globalization of peoples looking for health, education, welfare support, and peace, rather than the accumulation of materialistic goods to support the wealthy and powerful. That it did not succeed overall is because the powers of the American Empire did not want it to succeed and interfered anytime it had the opportunity under the guise of defence against communism. Many “people power” or democratic movements were thus destroyed or negated by American imperial ambitions. Today, the doctrine is globalization, the method is still imperial, the new fear is terrorism, without any regard for examining perhaps that terrorism arises from more than jealousy of wealth and libertarian values. The accumulation of wealth continues, the empire expands, with new military bases now in the Middle East, contrary to the absence of weapon’s of mass destruction, or ties to the terrorists, and with the false expedience of establishing democracy.

The American Empire is therefore based on the conceits of capitalism, that “the world needs an American pax to provide both global peace and prosperity.”[24] The realities of capitalism and how it is truly enacted through corporations and powerful elitist governments does not give the global citizen much room for hope of peace and prosperity.

Global peace and prosperity can be well advanced by other beliefs; social democratic beliefs, beliefs that show more maturity and wisdom than the accumulation of capital goods to create wealth in a supposed but unrealistic sustainable pattern; beliefs that are founded on the well being of all individuals in society, the well being of the environment, and the sharing and distribution of wealth so that all are fed, clothed, and housed decently, and that medical care, education, and recreation are available to all. Fortunately we are not at the end of history, but in the next stage of it. History goes on, the future is not yet written.

Footnotes

[1] Glasbeek, Harry. Wealth by Stealth - Corporate Crime, Corporate Law' and the Perversion of Democracy. Between the Lines, Toronto, 2002. P.03.

[2] Krauthammer, Charles. "The Unipolar Era", The Imperial Tense (ed. Bacevich). Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2003. p. 59.

[3] Friedman, Thoma L. The Lexus and the Olive Tree - Understanding Globalization.Anchor Books (Random House). New YOrk, 2000. p. 103.

[4]Kagan, Robert. Of Paradise and Power - America and Europe in the New World Order. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003. p. 88

[5] www.thememoryhole.org/corp/iraq-supplies.htm

[6] Beard, Charles A. cited in Bacevich, Andrew J. American Empire - the Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002.

[7] Bush Sr. cited in Bacevich. p. 73.

[8] Bacevich, p. 85.

[9] Carr, Caleb. The Lessons of Terror - A History of Warfare Against Civilians. Random House, New York, 2003. p. 237.

[10] Friedman, p. 282.

[11] Kagan, P. 88.

[12] Galbraith, John K. www.quotablequotes.net

[13] Glasbeek, p. 42.

[14] Glasbeek, p. 50

[15] Nye Jr., Joseph S. The Paradox of American Power - Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone. Oxford University PRess, Cambridge, Mass. 2002. p. 144.

[16] Ikenberry, John G. "Imperial Ambitions" in Imperial Tense (ed. Bacevich), p. 186.

[17] see in particular: Gibbon, Peter, et al Blighted Harvest - The World Bank and African Agriculture in the 1980's. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 1993; Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents W. W. Norton, New York, 2003; and Shutlz, Jim. Bolivia's war over water. www.democracyctr.org as a particular case example.

[18] Kennedy, Paul. "Maintaining American Power: From Injury to Recovery", in The Age of Terror, (Ed. Chanda and Talbott). Basic Books, New York, 2001. p.60.

[19]Ferguson, Niall. "Clashing Civilizations or Mad Mullahs: The United States Between Informal and Formal Empire." in Age of Terror. p. 140.

[20] Johnson, Chalmers. Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic Metropoliton Books, (Henry Holt and Compahy), New York, 2004.

[21] Greider, William. Fortress America - The American Military and Consequences of Peace Public Affairs (Perseus Books), New York, 1998.

[22] See Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War - The Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Rowan and Littlefield, New York, 2003. and Caldicott, Dr. Helen. The New Nuclear Danger - George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex. New Press, New York, 2002.

[23] Friedman, p. 146.

[24] Kagan, P.45.