Abstract
Competing with socialist economies that derive benefits from internal cooperation, capitalism’s ostensibly anti-government intervention elites turn to government for economic rescue and political protection. And this because government—allegedly incapable of running anything efficiently—ownership and/or control of Chinese industries supposedly gives them an unfair advantage! Furthermore, tariffs, patent and copyright, technological transfer restrictions, and so on, aimed at protecting profits, as per drug patents, inhibit the free flow of technology and ideas potentially beneficial to all humanity. And when all else fails, ostensibly “strategic interest,” “national security” or, unbelievably, “ecological” interests, are also invoked! Incredibly hypocritical in light of the externalization of the costs of toxic pollution, greenhouse gases, climate change, hurricanes, sea level rise, and environmental refugees, by domestic oil, coal, and gas industries; notwithstanding the astronomical cost in blood and treasure subsidizing the militaristic acquisition of oil assets.
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Notes
- 1.
See Chapter 13, footnote 4.
- 2.
Stuart Anderson, “Tariffs Are Costing Jobs: A Look At How Many” Forbes, September 24, 2018. See also, for instance Eric Boehm, “Aluminum Tariff Tradeoff: 300 Jobs for $690 Million in New Taxes,” Reason.com, December 11, 2018, and Jesse Chase-Lubitz, “The true cost of creating jobs via Trump’s steel tariffs,” Politico, February 2, 2019.
- 3.
Thus, absent Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, and any link to 9/11, absences which were, as per “The Downing Street Memo” of 2002, apparent to British intelligence (MI6) prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it seems not unreasonable to maintain that the necessary, although perhaps not sufficient, condition of the 2003 invasion was the fact that Iraq possessed 100 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, and, it was speculated, another 200 billion unproven. A view made all the more credible by the fact that the three countries that opposed the invasion were France, Russia, and China, all of which had oil extraction contracts with Iraq, (while Washington’s candidate to lead the new regime was the largely exiled “Iraqi National Congress,” which had signaled its intention to critically reconsider Iraq’s existing oil contracts) and by the fact that the two major protagonists were the US and the UK, both of which had extensively underutilized oil extraction capacity and technical know-how. Nor is this view rendered any less credible by the fact that the first priority of the invading army was to secure the oil fields, and extinguish fires set by a retreating Iraqi army, rather than ensuring the security of Iraq’s civilian population—large numbers of whose grotesquely tortured bodies, resulting from massive inter-sectarian conflict, were turning up daily in Bagdad and other major Iraqi cities—the alleviation of whose suffering, under the ruthless dictatorship of Saddam Husain, was nevertheless touted as a major reason for the invasion. And let us not forget that the first and most significant action of Paul Bremer, “proconsul” of the occupational force, was to pass a series of orders and laws opening up Iraqi assets to foreign ownership. Nor that one of the three reasons that Osama bin Laden—who in fact, despite the US administration’s claim to the contrary, proved to have no links to Iraq and Saddam Husain, whatsoever—gave for the destruction of the World Trade Towers, which housed many US investment banks and financial institutions, was that the US had stolen the resources of the Arab world. A pattern certainly discernable in the US return to Syria to protect its oil fields, following its abandonment of its Kurdish allies there (see Chapter 13, footnote 2).
- 4.
For a more detailed exposition of these latter consequences and externalized costs see, for instance, Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014).
- 5.
Apparently, the original US manufactured regimen required taking a cocktail of different pills at different strategically determined times, while the foreign variants were much simpler to administer.
- 6.
The drug companies would, of course, argue, that by reducing potential profitability such reduced patents would result in reduced investment in, and thus slow down innovation of, even more effective drugs. An argument which, so far from providing justification for increased protectionism, in the view of many is why the drug industry should be largely government owned and funded, on the grounds that by cutting out profit taking, the industry could directly reinvest almost all, if not all, the wealth it generated, in further R&D; R&D aimed at optimizing health outcomes rather than maximizing profits! While this argument may, of course, also be made in favor of a National Health Care, or socialized medical, as well as a socialized medical insurance, system; an argument which seems to be justified by the fact that although the US spends about $10,000 per capita per year, or about 2.5 times more per capita on healthcare than any other nation on earth (and, given that around 30 million remain uninsured, considerably more on those who are actually insured) it currently ranks around 34th in healthcare outcomes! Moreover, although the US government is, through Medicare and Veterans’ healthcare, a major consumer of drugs, which should give it some leverage in drug price negotiations, it is precluded, by virtue of legislation passed by the best politicians that money can buy, from negotiating down drug costs in the interests of we the people, whose interests it and they are supposed to represent!
- 7.
“Green ” technologies in general being those which are non or minimally polluting, and utilize renewable or recyclable resources, while green energy technologies are those such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, current, wave, and geothermal power (which, as clean, additionally enable extensive, environment friendly, resource recycling). However, as a consequence of the capture of the political process by the economic elite, the US government’s current annual subsidies to oil and gas corporations are far greater than total US investment in all alternative energy technologies combined.
- 8.
Such is the infiltration of government by corporations that The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), never immune from political pressure from a Congress dominated by corporate interests, was previously headed by President Trump’s appointee, Scott Pruitt, who, prior to this appointment filed no fewer than 14 challenges to the EPA’s clean air and water rules. Scott Pruitt whose affiliated political action committees received campaign contributions from Peabody Energy, the Southern Power Company, and Murray Energy among others. Thus while almost 2 in 5 of the US population is currently predicted to contract cancer, between 80% and 90% of cancers being environmentally produced—[see, for instance J. Higginson, “Developments in Cancer Prevention Through Environmental Control,” in Cancer Detection and Prevention, C. Maltoni (ed.), (Amsterdam Excerpta Medica, 1974) pp. 4–5 and Sir Richard Doll; Prevention of Cancer: Pointers from Epidemiology (London: Nuffield Provincial Hospital Trust), p. 106, cited in Ibid, and, more generally, Samuel Epstein, The Politics of Cancer Revisited (Hawkins NY: East Ridge Press, 1998)]—Scott Pruitt, clearly knowing who he was working for, busily rolled back a host of EPA regulations, and removed several scientists from EPA advisory panels. Nor has the situation improved under his successor, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist. Here again then we have a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house!
- 9.
So complete was the domination of government by capitalist, and in particular fossil fuel, interests that having largely financed the election of George W. Bush they were able, at least in respect of the executive branch of government, to dispense with the cost of financing the campaigns of political intermediaries altogether, and to assume direct control. Thus, not only was the President, like his father, an owner of an oil company, but his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, had been the CEO of oil logistics company, Halliburton—which profited greatly from no-bid government contacts to provide logistical support for US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan—while no fewer than 8 of Bush’s leading advisors and executive appointees were, or had been, either owners of, and/or leading executives and/or lawyers for, oil or gas corporations. Nor, it should be added, can it be credibly denied that the rise of the so-called Imperial Presidency is entirely unconnected to capitalism’s increasing influence upon, and indeed often near domination, of this post.
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Glynn, S. (2020). Political Regulation of the Formerly “Free Market” and the Greater Efficiency and Social Utility of Technological Development Under Socialism. In: The Economic Logic of Late Capitalism and the Inevitable Triumph of Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52667-2_19
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