Edward Berge
Corporate capitalism had a huge victory today by buying the Supreme Court (now known as the Supreme Corp, the conservative majority, anyway), who ruled to remove all corporate political financing restrictions. Now corporations are free to literally buy whatever they want with unlimited funding of political ads. But this is how capitalism works, so should we be surprised? I’m really looking forward to seeing the “integral” spin on this one. That is, if they don’t just ignore it as irrelevant, which is more likely.
The argument in favor of this travesty is that corporations are “people” and thus have rights of free speech, which include freedom to contribute money to candidates of their choice. This will make an integral spin especially problematic, since corporations are in the lower quadrants and thus not “dominant monads,” i.e., people with consciousness. Thus the corp should not have the same rights. For those of you with memberships to IL etc. please forward such integral spin here for our consideration.
Fight back at www.savedemocracy.net
Here’s another link to voice your opposition: http://my.barackobama.com/FairElections
This led to further discussion of the Gaia Integral Postmetaphysical Pod in the Integral Capitalism thread. Here are a few excerpts:
Nickeson said:
Edward, do you think Harris in his essay Thoughts towards in integral political economy was in any way influenced by Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844? It has been 40 years since I read that little volume, but I recognized some distinct parallels. If I recall correctly he had an idealized semi-utopian vision there which was dedicated toward the humanistic, self-realization of the individual worker and thus the society at large. It was not too much different than the visions of the early anarchist thinkers. The problem that all of them have is the assumption of a highly advanced, fully industrialized, wealthy political economy as their basis. Later it became axiomatic for Marx that the worker’s revolution had to take place in a nation of advanced industrialization or else the sought for redistribution of wealth would just be a redistribution of poverty that would have a “trickle up” effect from the lumpen into the central government.
I said:
Harris is obviously influenced by Marx, and from knowing Ray he is also influenced by those early anacharists. And yet he is integrally informed so he adds to those theories while not being strictly limited to them.
And yes, all of this revolution of the masses does presuppose a relatively ample economic surplus brought on by the industrial revolution. Yet this revolution is not communist but rather democratic. It’s a fight to introduce democracy not only into politics but into business. Capitalism is not a democratic economic system and is not by necessity wed to our democratic political system, although we can see how it is corrupting that political system by such as the recent Supreme Corp ruling. And capitalism is not by necessity wed to the industrial revolution but one could argue it’s a holdover of feudal aristocratic governance applied to the new forms of market economy that emerged with industrialization. As I said in the spiritual commodity thread, using Wilber using Marx, the economic base advanced much more quickly than the societal worldview, with the latter trying to impose its view on the new economic structure.
Perhaps it’s time for the view to catch up to the economic base? We know that democratic businesses, like credit unions for example, are a very competitive and viable alternative to for profit, capitalistic banks. Same with worker-owned businesses. And these alternatives also create surplus that does not have to go to rugged individualistic shareholders as profit but can be redistributed to members and communities for more beneficial social purposes. Harris ideas about distributing such surplus on each level under the prime directive seem integrally apropos here. All of which seems more suitable expressions of democracy wedded to markets than the aristocratic capitalism currently in power.
Terry Patten of I-I responded to the Court’s decision in his blog. I commented on this blog post at the IPS pod, copied below:
Patten acknowledges that most ads operate on an unconscious level “even though we think we are aware of them and disregarding their influence.” That’s been one of my consistent points about capitalism, that even though we think we’re conscious of its exploitation and can fix it with an integral attitude we nonetheless, by participating in its enaction, unconsciously maintain that inherent exploitation.
Patten does recognize that corporations’ interests “are often (although not always) different from the best interests of the country as a whole, and too often unprincipled.” But he then offers this apology: “It’s not the job or the nature of corporations to lead us to an optimal political future.” And why is it not the job of corporations to create pubic as well as private good within principles of civic responsibility? What makes business immune from this?
Patten seems to give corporations a pass by noting “many corporate leaders are quite enlightened.” Recall David Loy* relating this to the good slave owner rationale. It doesn’t matter if the slave owner is a nice guy, even an enlightened guy, slavery is wrong. As is capitalism, at least in this time and place for a supposed elevated integral consciousness.
I’m glad Patten didn’t ignore the issue, and he made some of my own points. But he still seems to think to get at the root of the problem, for-profit corporate capitalism, is “left-wing-style condemnation of greedy malicious corporate villainy,” implying that it must surely be a mean green meme response. This integral notion that we can make nice with corps and their Republican cronies is the same mistake Obama has made. We should not, and cannot, negotiate with an outdated system like slavery or capitalism to improve it. Some things really need to go the way of the dodo.
By not confronting this Patten & Co continue to not heed his own advice about ads. They continue to brush it under the carpet of awareness, continue to proceed “even though we think we are aware of it and disregarding its influence.”
* Here’s the previous post quoting excerpts from David Loy’s essay “Can corporations become enlightened?” in The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory, Wisdom Publications 2003:
The system has attained a life of its own. We all participate in this process…yet with little or no sense of moral responsibility for what happens, because such responsibility has been diffused so completely that it is lost in the impersonality of the corporate economic system.
One might argue…that there are good corporations….The same argument can be made for slavery, there were some good slave owners…. This does not refute the fact that slavery was intolerable…. And it is just as intolerable that today the earth’s limited resources are being allocated primarily according to what is profitable to transnational corporations.
My Buddhist conclusion is that transnational corporations are defective economic institutions due to the basic way they are structured…. It is difficult to see how…they can be simply patched up to make them better vehicles for our economic needs. We need to consider whether it is possible to reform them in some fundamental way…or whether they should be replaced by other economic and political institutions (100-01).