Rearden Metal - watching Atlas Shrugged continued.
In Atlas Shrugged, rearden metal is supposed to be stronger, lighter, more enduring than ordinary steel. Yet early on in the story its structural integrity is questioned by authorities associated with the Government's Science department. Rand sees this as a plot twist that exposes a sinister plot. Yet in reality metals are tested by scientists, both by the industry & regulator & safety is an objective measure. It is implausible that they'd question the safety and efficacy of "Rearden Metal" unless it failed those tests. So the whole plot twist is absurd.
Anyone can say that their metal is superior. It's like "flex seal" or "My Pillow," part of the sales. Yet safety regulations are part of demonstrating that an assertion is more than a sales pitch. Can you cut a boat in half, seal it with flex tape & then sail it good as new? That is what testing does. Libertarians take the dark view that Ayn Rand describes in "Atlas Shrugged" that science is political.
She paints safety regulations as unnecessary bureaucracy when in fact the testing & replication of science is what makes our lives actually in fact better. In Atlas Shrugged Rearden metal might well have been actually in fact superior to other forms of steel. But in real life, that is a fact that can be proven or disproven with tests. It is something that can be falsified.
False Attribution
Parody Alternative
I was going to write a parody paralel under account where rearden metal turned out to be an alloy made from spent reactor rods, highly toxic & corrosive, and so brittle it would fail the moment sufficient weight was put on it. In that scenario the behavior of the Engineers Union and authorities would have been not only merited but virtuous. The point is the goal is better production actual in fact & scientific based regulation is the business friend not their enemy. Assuming that regulation is the enemy of business, sounds good to those who reject science. But force of will alone cannot make railroads carry the weight of a 50,000 lb locomotive.
Ayn Rand's book is fantasy
In Ayn Rand's book, Rearden metal is truly strong. If she were a realistic writer she'd have had him at least attempt to produce test results in defense of its use. But she was doing propaganda, and "facts aren't facts" when one is promoting an agenda.
Her spiritual successors have banned scientists from discussing issues like global warming, or produced fake studies in order to claim that it is not caused at all by human activity. The anti-science attitude involved in this behavior was planted by Ayn Rand in her cadres of true believers. Ironically science goes into the studies of what messages will fool the public and the people paying to deny global warming, are preparing to a; make money off of it, and b; mitigate its effects on their own fortunes.
The funny thing is that there are people who believe that Rearden metal is a real thing.
Just before Christmas I shared my opinion with Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Congress must open impeachment hearings. At that time I suggested that you do so:
“Not initially into the President, but into Whitehouse and Cabinet officials who, past and present, have abused their office.”
Since then you, Rep Jerry Nadler have been conducting hearings that could be turned into an Impeachment Inquiry. We all support and applaud your efforts.
Impeachment as a Prophylactic on Abuse of Power
It is my believe that this needs to be done and is even more urgent now than before.
“The purpose of Impeachment hearings is not merely to focus on the lawbreaking of these officials, which is obvious, but to stop them from committing high crimes and misdemeanors or the President from using his Pardon Power to help them get away with it.”
I believe that a case can be made that the use of the impeachment power should stop the ability of the President to obstruct justice via impeachment. As quoted in the Meme above, the President
“shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the
United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
With the recent evidence of Trump dangling pardon's to people contemplating breaking the law, it is imperative that something be done to block him from using pardons to obstruct justice. See:
I believe you can make it impossible for Trump to use the Pardon power that way. It is time to open impeachment hearings, starting with inquiries into Bill Barr, Mnuchin and other officials who are violating USA law. Accompanying that I'd suggest you file an injunction with the courts against any impeachments related to those hearings.
Prophylactic Purpose
Time and time again, have gotten pardoned for relatively minor crimes that, however, reflect disregard for rule of law. These people may not have killed anyone, but they have shown that they are not fit for office. Indeed, that is the purpose of impeachment. Not to punish criminal behavior, that is for the courts, but to remove people from government who are a plague to it or a threat to the constitution. Impeachment serves a prophylactic purpose against traitors, grafters, grifters and privateers.
“Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office,
and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
In August 9 1974 Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency. Soon after that Gerald Ford Pardoned Nixon, which shut down a number of investigations, not only into Richard Nixon, but into Nixon's veritable army of co-conspirators, including some minor players who went on to become republican operatives and into bigger and better crimes. At the time we took this to mean that even the President was not above the law. But some of those minor players came back when Reagan was elected, and the Reagan Administration showed even less respect for congress and the rule of law. Ford was able to pardon Nixon, only because he had not been impeached.
Nobody in the Reagan Administration, nor in the subsequent George HW Bush Presidency. Yet there was an investigation from 1986 to 1992. Despite that investigation being impeded by grants of immunity, deliberate cover-ups and obstruction of justice, that investigation detailed the high crimes and misdemeanors of a continuing program of lawlessness that ran from 1985 til the investigation was shut down after George HW Bush pardoned the perps. They got away with it, because nobody in the Reagan or Bush administrations had been impeached.
In 1992, at least partly on the advice of Bill Barr.
“On December 24, 1992, President George H.W. Bush granted pardons to six defendants in the Iran-Contra Affairs. The defendants were Elliott Abrams, a former assistant secretary of state for Central America; former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane; former CIA officials Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, and Clair George; and former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.” [Brown Article]
The experience of the Walsh investigation shows why Congress has a DUTY to impeach those responsible for wrong doing and not to look the other way covered by talk of "moving on." Congress has a duty to impeach officials engaged in wrong doing and not rely on prosecutors and courts because the President has Pardon power and only impeachment limits that power. The President has:
“Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” [COTUS: Article 2, Section 2 1st paragraph.]
If we don't want President Trump to pardon his way out being punished for his criminality, then Congress must impeach the officials involved and open an impeachment investigation. This is necessary, not only to ensure the President is brought to justice, but to prevent him from using the pardoning power to avoid responsibility. If he should start to pardon the perps in this case, any such pardons should be challenged in the Supreme Court. Additionally, if there is evidence of congressmen or of Supreme Court Justices seeking to aide him in obstructing justice, they need to be subject to impeachment hearings too.
Legalized theft and warfare against commerce on the high seas.
Modern Definition
Usurpation of Government or public functions for private profit
Privateers engage in the following:
Filibustering/Privatized Warfare/
Private warfare against unorganized places or countries the country the privateer is at war with. Privateers also were frequently mercenaries in service to anyone who would pay them. In modern times they often masque as providing contracts to "train" or "assist" often hostile foreign governments.
Smuggling
Usually private sea captains would do legal trade with whoever they could. But often privateers would engage in illegal smuggling if it made them money. Modern privateers smuggle. For example, arms to South America and Drugs back to the USA.
Slave Trade
Privateers often combined private warfare elements with smuggling by grabbing people for sale like they were any other good for sale. The Navies would even recruit their own sailors by grabbing them from ports and "pressing them" to service. Privateer sailors were often little better than slaves. Privateering always has involved abusing people. Nowadays it is often women and young kids for adoption scams or prostitution.
Piracy
One reason that the saying "Dead men Tell no tales" is that if a privateer took a prize of a ship not at war, if nobody survived to rat them out, and no evidence could be found of a crime, the now pirate could continue to pretend to be a privateer. This led to some confusion among pirate captains. The famous Captain Kidd of the 1700s went to England to argue his case that he had been a legal privateer, not a pirate. He was hung as a pirate. Many pirate/privateers got away with that. A Ship would go "on the hunt" even in peacetime. Most successful pirates avoided the courts.
Private government and colonization.
Private government was always an element in privateering. King James granted them the East India Company charter in 1600. This was the real beginning of the Tory Party and of the movement to modern Privateering. But when Christopher Columbus got his permission to sail west, it was with the aim of establishing private government in the lands he discovered.
Corruption and Bribery
Pirates succeeded because piracy was lucrative. One of the original purposes of Admiralty courts was to adjudicate the sail of "prizes" and shipwrecks. A legal pirate, a privateer, could make himself and the courts, wealthy by selling his prize at auction. Often he would keep a portion of the loot with the prize so that it would look legal. If the prize was not legal he could bribe judges and Port Officials. Bad pirates got hung. Successful ones built Churches or colonies.
Banking and Finance
Privateering and Banking were related. Successful pirates had loot to lend against. So they often founded banks and invested in voyages. Privateering, shipping and smuggling was dangerous and so successful pirates were heavily involved in insuring legal cargos and ships. Insuring and Banking go together as banks don't like to risk their own money and so either use derivative instruments (notes) or create derivative instruments (insurance and exchanges of promises) to spread risk.
Wealth and Pirates
Scratch a wealthy family and you find a pirate or mercenary at the founding; or someone who made money off of pirates, smugglers and mercenaries, as the founder.
Money Laundering and Pirates
Banks and wealthy criminals need to convert traceable loot to "clean" money. This is called money laundering. US banks, financiers and monied people are experts at doing this.
I fell in love with the Garden of religious & spiritual delight. But there are really 2 gardens. One is one of discovery & spirituality. The other is the dark Garden. The peril of the one is that it can be so inspiring & illuminating it can burn ones spiritual retina if one gazes too long. The other garden, the dark garden is one illuminated by the moon. The moon of delusion, desire, illusion & dark fantasies. They can be the same place by day.
Pretense
The Religious can easily be lured into the dark garden. It is a place of unreliable authorities, where compulsion replaces deep truth. Authorities compel belief, but the initiate pretends to believe so he/she can enjoy all the dark pleasures of the dark garden. They make the mistake of seeing a symbol, something like water, and calling it water.
Authoritarianism and Fanaticism
The dark garden is a place where the truth is defined by a hierarchy of lies. Those at the top of the hierarchy know the truth but are trapped by their own lies. It is possible to become so entranced by the fantasy and abstraction that one fails to eat or tend to one's needs.
Repression.
The dark garden is marked by repression & self repression, masked by the words discipline & faith. True faith is marked by belief founded on self evident revelation. The dark garden is a place of violent faith & hypocrisy. People can become insane.
Darkness
Oppression
Suffering
The Dark PaRDeS traps those who fail to listen to the warnings of the Story.
Iran/Contra should be back in the news due to the fact that Bill Barr is being nominated to be the new Attorney General. The mix of pardons and classifications of information made much of the material from Watergate a secret until fairly recently. It also successfully buried the Iran Contra Scandal and enabled a number of the perpetrators to escape true justice. William Barr was Attorney General at the time of these pardons and was a principle agent in engineering them. He was successsful at obstructing justice then. We should be alert he will do so again if Congress lets him get away with it.
At the time the Prosecutor:
“President Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office -- deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.” [Iran Contra Pardon]
Again Trump is seeking people who will protect him, not justice in the United States. This reminds us that George HW Bush was no saint.
It is hard to keep up with everything happening. I gave up trying to report on all of it. Instead I'm focusing on the most important things to me, things I noticed, or reactions I want to share. I'm writing this on the MARC train. The internet sucks and there are no plugins, so my time is limited. The nice thing is that I can see the towpath from the vehicle. It is almost winter and the leaves already fall. So the view includes the potomac through the trees.The Potomac is high and muddy. Looks almost more like the Mississipi as I remember it than the Potomac I'm used to. Normally the water is boiling and swirling over rapids here. But it looks tranquil right now. The Sun only recently came up. I can hear snips of conversation from commuters. To me this is very peaceful. I never expected my legs to give out the way they did. One of the things I loved the most was walking. Never was good at running. But I could walk for miles. Now it hurts to walk half a mile. So I don't go to DC as much as I planned to when I moved to Brunswick. I'm only 63 years old. Maybe this will improve. Passing point of Rocks. Went under the Bridge that marks route 15.
I should have given you permission to skip this post. But indulge me please
How would I do Mars? I'd start by setting up a support system for humans. We've done a lot. We need to do more surveying and to put into place an infrastructure for communications and information.
Step One
Need to pre-position:
GPS, Weather, Ground imaging and communications satellites. Put 8 in Polar orbit and 8 in Mars-Synchroneous equitorial orbit; minimum. That would cover the entire surface.
Also satellites have to be in orbit that image our Sun and with Earth. These can be part of the ground imaging satellites.
We need supplies in orbit. Including vessels for emergency return to Earth. The first landers sent to Mars should be empty and sit in orbit.
We need to pre-position enough equipment, gear, vehicles and supplies so that they will already be there when humans arrive.
Continue exploration
Drones to explore and hunt for lava tubes, resources, and map out landing sites and mineral resources.
Including flying explorers, tunnel exploring unmanned vehicles, etc...
First Milestone
No humans until shelter, water supplies and minerals are mapped out.
Step Two
Pre-Position habitat, energy production, and similar resources near the best located site for a human settlement. A mix of equipment in kit format that can be assembled by humans and equipment assembled by robots.
Send Robots to assemble what is needed
Assemble, power, energy, water, fuel storage and generation abilities.
Including solar panels, cleaning robots, fuel cells, wind mills and the like.
Stockpile backup parts and backups to the backups.
Continue exploration, including new drones.
Run power, communications between the assets
Prepare a landing site.
Lay guidance and communications assets at each site.
If tunnels available, put assets in the tunnels. Bury what can be buried.
Second Milestone
Go/No go based on whether enough supplies are pre-positioned for Marsnauts to use and live on.
Garcia Lorca should have lived a long and productive life had he not been shot down in a fusilade of bullets along with other "rebels" in 1936.” There are real parallels.
Darn! I'm not done. Oh no! Oh My! “Charlie Chaplin was in many ways our Garcia Lorca!”
Garcia Lorca, knew with a massive dread that his days were probably numbered. Yet he soldiered on in his project to improve the live of Spaniards and Spanish people in general.
The Athenians were driven to put the vetting job into jury functions or ruling councils by experiences with demagogues or military rule. The difficulty of controlling officers was such that Athenian born philosophers came to be somewhat cynical about the prospects for survival of Democracy. But the lesson of history, including recent history, is that without formal vetting and accounting, monarchy, dictatorship, oligarchy and plutocracy all degenerate into tyranny, kakacracy (rule by the worst) and kleptocracy (rule by thieves); and resulting violence, inequity, & misery. There really is no good alternative to creating a system of scrutiny that has integrity.
Vital to our Survival as a Nation and a World are:
Tomorrow is the midterm election. Both Maryland and National Republicans are transparently lying with claims that they'll be "bi-partisan" and moderate. Kathy Afzali is running ads attacking David Trone as an insider, bashing County Executive Gardner for the over-growth in the county and pretending that she's not an insider. The whole party is running a campaign of blatant lying. Trump and his Trumpers country-wide are suddenly for the ACA they spent the past 8 years trying to end and claiming they are for protecting people against Insurance Companies messing people up over pre-existing conditions, blatant lies. I'm writing on this on the website "The Brunswick Democrat" but I'm worried. This sort of lying works. It is known as the Big Lie. Trump practices it. He learned it from a long series of dictators and demagogues.
One reason I started latching onto José Antonio Primo De Rivera and Federico Garcia Lorca, is that after fascism fails in a country, no one usually will admit they ever were fascist. That is not so much the case with José Antonio Primo De Rivera. To Spanish speaking Fascists, Primo de Rivera is still a hero. Why? Because he too died at the outset of the Spanish Civil war. General Francisco Franco made Primo De Rivera a hero, and thus he became enshrined in Catholic, Falange, Fascism ever more, as a hero. He was no hero. Spanish Fascism didn't originate with Primo De Rivera it originated as much with his father and King Alfonso.
Lessons Learned
There are three main lessons to be learned from Rivera, his life, and his death:
General Fancisco Franco was doing what Fascists do; creating myths.
Killing the leader of a totalitarian group does not stop the movement.
I started reading a biography of Federico Garcia Lorca as a diversion from what is going on with Trump and his Trumpers. With Horror I soon realized that what was going on in Spain was so similar to the present that reading that book was no longer a pleasure but something I had to dive into. The reason? The Right Wing in the United States is looking more and more like the 1930s Falange down to the details. The result was that I had to study the Falange down to its details, before I could digest what happened to Garcia Lorca. They murdered him. For more on this:
Falange was fascism in a pure form. In the end, whether it is falangism and its offshoots, Nazism, Stalinism, Pol Potism, Maoism, or whatever, these ideologies are authoritarian, kleptocratic, kakacratic and violent. They were and are driven by a cruel mood of the citizenry and their leadership and a viciousness that is not even masked by the pretend glories and righteousness of the totalitarian movements that conduct the viciousness. The Falange went to war with liberals, progressives and people of good will in Spain. They went to war with principles of ecumenicism, equality, liberty, fraternity, good will, multiculturalism. They saw different dialects as an enemy of the State. They saw religious liberty as heresy. And they saw human freedom as perversity. Ironically that dogmatic authoritarianism led the Fascists to go on a vicious and blood thirsty rampage.
People of fundamental good will, like Federico Garcia Lorca, never had a chance of surviving the raw power of such hate. Even so killing Lorca made him a hero and a martyr to a cause and his name still stands for something opposite of the fascism of the Falangists and of Franco. Franco is now a name remembered by most people with Shame. Lorca is now celebrated by much of the Spanish Speaking World. He is still a difficult subject for people with rigid beliefs. He was to the left, and gay. For more:
The Word Falange comes from the Spanish for "Phalanx". Similar fascist movements in other countries have a similar meaning. I have a series of posts on Falangism:
I was going to update this later within the post. But I found myself exploring a maze of related subjects and things happening in the United States kept taking me down new rabbit holes. So I've got a number of separate and related posts now, instead.
First, piracy is a term for theft and the thieves who commit those thefts. It is also used in other contexts, such as labeling those who use copyrighted material without permission. People usually restrict the meaning to thieves operating on the seas. Piracy has been a feature of world history since at least the 14th century BC, when pirates were described in Egyptian and Canaan correspondences. The Sea People's who disrupted Minoan and Mycenaean life, were pirates. So were both the Greeks and the Trojans.
When an entire nation engages in piracy, it is considered legal by the State and the term for that is “privateering.” The distinction between privateers and pirates is often a corrupt barely legal one.
Privateering and Admiralty courts
Moreover, the term itself "private + teering" implies private warfare, private government, and government sanction and allocation of loot. In the European World and the British one, specifically, Admiralty courts adjudicated loot from the sea, both that acquired through privateering and "salvage." Admiralty courts and similar, through auctions served the role of legitimizing loot, slavery, salvage, and thus laundering proceeds from smuggling, buccaneering, piracy, "filibustering (private warfare), traditionally, for centuries. They have ranged from laundering implicit corruption (we didn't know!) to explicitly corrupt money laundering.
Letters of Marquee
The vehicle for traditional piracy was the "letter of marquee." That was a contractual instrument that granted and individual or bearer, the right to "take prizes" from ships belonging to a country the contractual authority, government, was at war at. The concept of "letter of marquee" was also behind some early corporations such as the East India Company, from around 1601, which is one of the models for the modern corporation. They would grant the company or bearer, the power to wage private warfare, on the seas and often on land as well, to raid, steal, attack and capture enemy ships. Sometimes pirates would have letters of marquee from both sides of a conflict so they could simply attack anyone passing thru a chokepoint.
Privateering as barely legal piracy
Thus privateering has traditionally represented legalized robbery under cover of contract. Essentially privateering enabled economic royalty, as the companies granted this power could govern their crews as they pleased. Some privateers behaved like pirate ships and treated their crew well. But many employed the sailor as slave model of governance. Privateers, warships and private shipping in general in general, were infamous for beatings, whippings, poor food, low pay and tyranny, (defined by John Locke as power exercised for Private, separate advantage) over thier crews. Pirate ships were often a model for rough democratic governance. Ironically legal pirate ships, not so much. The purpose of privateering was to acquire property for private ownership. The attitude of privateering is anything for a buck.
Thus the enemy of liberty is in fact privateering because privateering is the conversion of what should be ruled for the common good into private property ruled for the advantage of the few. Privateers were pirates, who, operating under a Letter of Marquee, were authorized to engage in private warfare on behalf of the State. Generalizing that meaning, privateers are those who engage in commerce, warfare, theft, espionage or any other action, under the protection of Government. Privateers are private government. That privateers originally were also pirates, often from the point of view of other countries who had issued no such letters, just illustrates the barbarity of the practice. Privateering is as old as piracy. Vikings were only pirates to the people of the lands they predated.
The Rough Democracy of Pirates Versus the Tyranny of Privateers -- Tom Paine
Even classical pirates, lived lives, internally that were governed by democratic rules. When Thom Paine served as a privateer:
“At sixteen, in 1753, he brought it off. He shipped out on a privateer — a private warship authorized by the English government to attack and loot commercial vessels sailing under the flag of any nation with whom England was legally at war.”
He tells of that experience that he experienced good captains and bad captains. The Good captains treated the crew with respect. The bad captains whipped and beat their crew and looked down on them as little more than vermin. The British Royal Navy whipped and beat sailors. Pirates and the better Privateers, motivated them.
A Privateering Tradition As the Foundation of the West
The tradition of both the United States and the British (including Scotland and all of Ireland) is founded on privateering. The major Sea Captain Families even called themselves "Sea Dogs" and they'd later branch out into other businesses. But most of their businesses were or derived from Privateering. Thus Privateering involves the Following Activities, when either barely legal or they don't get caught:
Privateering: Piracy as legalized theft of enemy ships and cargo.
Smuggling: Piracy as semi-legal smuggling, trafficking, which also included the slave trade and enslaving captured persons.
Filibustering: Piracy as waging war, "marines style", on people on land, sometimes as mercenaries. This was termed filibustering
Chartered Privateers: Privateering on large scale via privately or publicly chartered companies such as the East India Company, corporatism
Colonialism as Privateering: Privateering extended into the form of creating colonies, enslaving locals, importing slaves, exploiting slaves, exploring, exploiting and extracting loot from the land so colonized.
Land Pirates, Grifters, Swindlers, Bankers and Monopolists
Financial Capitalism as Laundering ill gotten goods. Most money is either some kind of private debt, or in emergencies it might be recycled loot. It always comes from labor in some way. Financial Capitalism arrogates wealth and uses some of it to generate more wealth. Actual capitalism mixes labor with wealth and winds up a public good even when not intended to be.
European Thievery and Frederick Douglas
Thus Privateering is at the root of the modern world, European Adventurism, and European Thievery. Often it was excused as "saving" benighted souls. But more often the souls that were reduced to abject subjection were originally noble souls reduced by the forces of kleptocracy and kakacracy. From the Point of View of European ship captains and many of their crew, taking slaves on the "Guinea coast" of Africa was simply yet another way to make a living. But from the point of view of their victims, such as Frederick Douglas describes in a famous quote:
“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” -Douglass, p84
An Ideology of Piracy
Privateering has even become an ideology. Modern Pirates don't have peg legs or carry a saber. They wear suits and carry brief cases. They seek to privatize, "enclose the commons;" take what had been an institution, property or service that is intended for the public good, and turn it to private control. This is not "free-market economics" it is free booting economics. The ideology of piracy is expressed by people like Donald Trump who say we did wrong by not seizing Iraqi Oil fields when we invaded Iraq. That is what pirates do.
I've written about this before so I may come back to this post and put in references. I just wanted to make it plain (and relatively succinct) what I'm talking about when I talk about privateering.
Voting is our best weapon. The Greeks didn't trust voting. They used a jury system type government to run judiciary, executive and legislative. They picked citizens by lottery for for offices from those qualified to hold those offices. Voting was used for cleanup operations like ostracizing bad politicians. Nevertheless voting is a means the Romans used for selecting and regulating officers. In a local democracy voting is useful, but it is the participation of citizens that makes the place democratic. Voting is a tool of representative government. In truth It is not our only weapon. Truth is a weapon. Right is a weapon. Reason is a weapon. Our enemies are tyranny, lies & cruelty, and non-participation. Tyranny by definition is as John Locke described it:
The Falange Party Sought Violent National Revolution
“The Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las JONS shall engage in “direct, bold and combative” revolution.”
The Falange like other fascist groups had in common the attachment to violence both as a tool for seeking and maintaining power; and a tool for indoctrination and propaganda. The Word "Falange comes from the Greek Military formation known as the Phalanx. The Falange like the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany, saw themselves as a spearhead for revolution. Jose Antonio Primo De Rivera and Franco, both saw violent revolution as a solution to the problem of “Republicanism” and “Permissivism.”
George Lakoff recommended using the word Privateering to describe klepto political policies like privatization. That term turns out to be extremely appropriate for understanding the modern confidence scheme movement that calls itself "conservative." They like to say they are for "Capitalism" and against "Socialism" but privateering is a bait and switch operation where fake capitalists acquire rents and usurp property they can use to extract loot. It is not what most people think of when they think of "free enterprise."
The Sea Dog Tradition
The term "privateer" ought to push buttons and make alarms go off for people who are paying attention. Our US mob always wants to be legal, so it buys politicians to legalize what would be criminal anywhere else. It turns out our own Mafia is the inheritors of the "Brotherhood of the Coast" and a tradition of piracy (Sea Dogs) that still infects our politics and business. it truly can be seen as an ideology that masques itself as "capitalism."
An Ideology of Privateering
This ideology embraces the following basic principles:
FDR called these the principles of “economic royalism” & hinges on the following beliefs:
The notions that:
that all things, including people, are property that can be owned.
that contracts, even coerced contracts, are sacred.
that people, or their labor, can be owned by a person or corporation thru the power of contract.
that a corporation can usurp personhood.
that private government is superior to public government.
that public government doesn't invest & can't have a positive role in economic or social progress.
that profits come before any notions of public good or responsibility.
Privateering As titles of nobility
The Far Right calls a government that provides basic services "socialism", but they practice the privatization of anything that nature provides all of us and its placement into private hands. Land, minerals, water resources, all traditionally belong to “the commons” and yet we give them to private persons or privately owned companies to manage and extract wealth from. If someone by an accident of birth comes to own a part of nature's bounty, that is privilege not effort, labor or merit.
Enclosing the Commons
A privateering ideology is also an ideology of nobility. The constitution says that no titles of nobility should be granted. But it seems that granting property to self appointed nobility, that they can extract rents from, is fine.
When what was previously run for the common good, is enclosed, turned out for profit. The term for that is "enclosing the commons." It is analogous to when land barons started stringing barbed wire across the plains and killing wandering cattlemen (free rangers). It is analogous to giving people "titles of nobility", except it usually is laundered through legal processes.
Titles of Nobility
We give titles of nobility to Owners of;
Sports Team Owners
Communications, energy and transport companies.
Monopolies, copyrights and patents.
Insurance, Health Care.
Extracting Rents from monopoly
And these owners extract profits from profiteering in medicines, health care products, and by overcharging everyone. They don't invest in new medicines or technologies so much as extract rents from existing products. When they do invest in new products they mark up the products so high very little of the investment is actual investment.
A rentier doesn't care if the building, corporation or land he owns is kept in good order, or if people eat or survive. All they care about is extracting their rents.
Criminal Contracts
At the basis of oppression is the enforcement of criminal, unjust or oppressive contracts. US law has always treated criminal contracts as unenforceable. But when government is corrupt, it legalizes what would have been considered criminal in the past. Thus people are saddled with huge debt, with interest, for attending college; with criminal loans for their homes. With unconscionable rents. And have no recourse. This is privateering. It is legalized looting.
Contracts as a Vehicle of Slavery
Our country outlawed slavery, but it comes back to life through abusive contracts and abusive use of the law. Those who can't pay debts used to get put in debtor prisons. The system is trying to bring those back. The government outlawed the use of bankruptcy for dealing with education debts, and people are losing everything to debt for healthcare. Getting an education is a public good, not only for the student, but for society. Health care is a "non-refusable" public good where people will die if they can't get what they are unable to afford. Extracting profits and using debt to enslave people who need those services is engaging in modern slavery. Privateers used to have to grab and smuggle people from Africa. All they have to do now is print money through a bank and loan it to someone in our days.This is legal piracy, loan sharking and enslaving people.
Usurping Personhood
The Federal Government, thru, corrupt legislators and judges gave rights to corporations as artificial persons, in the 1880s, at the very same time they were taking it from the persons that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were intended to protect. Privateers, as economic royalists, love the Royal "we." The Corporation as a "person" asserts the rights to having a religious belief, to telling its employees what to do, and the right to enslave employees, take their labor and stiffing them on promised compensation. Many a CEO claims to speak for all his employees, they often claim to own their labor, innovations and enterprise. And they take a cut of everything.
And thanks to corrupt SCOTUS, they claim a right to bribe and extort politicians into doing their bidding with unlimited corporate money. Monopolies and centralized power are putting pirates in charge of the country.
Government and Investment
A Convincing case has been made that without public investment, there would be little private wealth and it would be so poorly distributed that there would no longer be what we now think of as a middle class. The argument of con artists is that public investment doesn't improve society. This was a Reagan Era trope and is patently false. But it is also an excuse for privateering. The fact is that without public investment; no electrical grid, oil, canals, railroads, roads and highways. In fact no real civilization. The government is not allowed to treat its capital investment as capital due to accounting tricks perpetuated by pirates over a period of centuries. Even our money is privatized by legal pirates. Since the beginning of the country the absurdity of issuing private notes based on treasury notes has been obvious to critics. Yet, we depreciate direct treasury notes and let the Federal Reserve serve as a tongue louse on our financial system.
In a paper published by Edward J. McCaffery titled "The Death of the Income Tax" he explains how the income tax became a wage tax & was suberted by generations of work by armies of lawyers, lobbyists & paid pseudo-schollars. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3242314#.W5DxjAm3U4g.facebook
When the income tax was first proposed, its target was to recoup some of the money created by the use of private money$ (currently Federal Reserve Notes & accounting money$ loaned into existence by banks), Corporate privilege, & Land Ownership.
All of these income was derived from paper (notational) money and the interest on that money. This was unearned income "a.k.a. economic rent, passive income, land values"), from privileges granted by government to a self selected few & mostly earned jointly by the privateers & a crew of commoners from common property; but not shared with the crew, i.e. privateering.
Anyway the income tax made sure financial capitalism generated profit for everyone while moderating the tyrannical impulses of the private separate interests who otherwise would have continued to build massive forces on the backs of labor. It's gradual demise reflects the efforts of those powerful interests & their avatars over a period of more than 70 years.
It was never intended to be a tax on labor. Income from labor is earned, compensation for energy expended & little is net income after food, transport, housing & other taxes (economic rent is a form of private tax). Taxing labor compensation violates basic principles of fairness and is thus unjust oppression, especially when it was never the original purpose of the income tax! But anyway,
Read the article so you'll see for yourself: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3242314#.W5DxjAm3U4g.facebook
I'm publishing now, as this is a small piece of a longer argument.
In an Article in the Atlantic, Matt Stoller describes how we Democrats inadvertently let our party's guard down, through our blindness towards Banking and Finance. He describes how young reformers in the Watergate fueled Democratic Revolution of the early 70s took down important new Dealers, like Wright Patman, who had been resisting the power of banking and finance. The successes of the labor movement, reform movement, populism, seemed to have tamed banking and finance to the point where many Democrats were blind to its threat enough to feel free to take down the "older generation." Thus unleashing them again. Matt writes:
We had, more or less, tamed the Trusts in the 30s through the modernization and articulation of basic rights arguments that applied equally to the laborer and the wealthy. FDR had established a progressive ideology formed on the fusion of progressive, basic rights theory and populist ideas:
“Underpinning the political transformation of the New Deal was an intellectual revolution, a new understanding of property rights. In a 1932 campaign speech known as the Commonwealth Club Address, FDR defined private property as the savings of a family, a Jeffersonian yeoman-farmer notion updated for the 20th century. By contrast, the corporation was not property. Concentrated private economic power was “a public trust,” with public obligations, and the continued “enjoyment of that power by any individual or group must depend upon the fulfillment of that trust.”[Stoller]
The titans of the day were not businessmen:
“but “princes of property,” and they had to accept responsibility for their power or be restrained by democratic forces. The corporation had to be fit into the constitutional order.” [Stoller]
But most of them had grown up in a world where progressive/populist ideas were the status quo, and no one seriously challenged them. They had forgotten the history of the movement and the blood, sweat, tears and sacrifices that had gotten them access to college, to good jobs:
“Remember, it was the great bankers and managers of the “money trusts,” such as J.P. Morgan, who sat astride wide swaths of corporate America through their investment and lending power, membership on boards of directors, and influence over industrial titans. Among other things, they maintained a sufficient concentration of power to keep prices up, workers disorganized, and politics firmly within their grasp.” [Stoller]
And they had let their guard down. Thus Trump has a three fingered thing going. Taft Hartley had killed he labor movement by defenestrating it's major popular tools (general strike, power to bind employers into closed shops, etc.....). And now Democrats had shifted their focus to the Environment, to Anti-War issues, and to civil rights, all good,
But at the very moment they were reforming the Country on so many levels, the Trusts were gathering their forces, rallying big business (example is the Powell Memo), & buying influence, University Chairs, Think Tanks and "libertarian" or "Supply side" academics. Ronald Reagan, for example, having been a new dealer, fashioned an entire ideology aimed at replacing every single New Deal idea, including “public trust” with something different and darker. He replaced Public Trust with a joke; “Government is not the solution, Government is the Enemy.” He went after labor. He went after access to College for the middle class (to end “permissiveness!”), and nobody in our Party saw it coming because we'd missed a key point of what FDR and Wright Patman had been focused on. And that is that:
“The essence of populist politics is that political and economic freedom are deeply intertwined—that real democracy requires not just an opportunity to vote but an opportunity to compete in an open marketplace. This was the kind of politics that the Watergate Babies accidentally overthrew.” [Stoller]
We Enabled Trickle down Economics by being blind to the power of money and its influence. Our failure to continue to focus equally on protecting genuine free markets and fighting monopoly, let the Financial Industrialists start to move their operations south (in more ways than one) and abroad, use State Law and Taft Hartley to prevent Unions following them, and to undermine the ideology of the New Deal. By the end of the 70s, the counter attack was in full motion and US Democrats never saw it coming. Many in Labor, having, seemingly, been abandoned by progressive politicians, even embraced the Reagan Counter revolution and its overt propaganda promoting the virtues of extreme wealth, selfish property rights theories, Randian "libertarianism" and Friedman's Trickle Down economic ideas. Those coupled with increasing demagoguery on minorities set us back dearly.
We Democrats need to get that spirit back. Government either serves the people or it is tyranny. If "Government is the enemy" it is because that government is behaving in a tyrannical manner. But Patman's generation understood this. Matt writes:
“To get a sense of how rural Democrats used to relate to voters, one need only pick up an old flyer from the Patman archives in Texas:”
“Here Is What Our Democratic Party Has Given Us” was the title. [Stoller]
And the title spoke for itself.
“There were no fancy slogans or focus-grouped logos. Each item listed is a solid thing that was relevant to the lives of conservative white Southern voters in rural Texas: Electricity. Telephone. Roads. Social Security. Soil conservation. Price supports. Foreclosure prevention.” [Stoller]
And he notes:
“Foreclosures protected homes against bankers. Farm-to-market roads allowed communities to organize around markets. Social Security protected one’s livelihood in the form of unemployment insurance and old-age benefits. Price supports for family farms protected them from speculators. And rural electrification and telephones shielded communities from the predations of monopolistic utilities.” [Stoller]
This was the "deliver the bacon" pragmatic heart of Populism. Nobody likes "Obamacare" but everyone wants affordable health care. More importantly, these kinds of service represent empowerment of local communities and the people living in them. That Generation understood the principles of Democracy and Commonwealth. Matt writes:
“Packaged together, these measures epitomized the idea that citizens must be able to govern themselves through their own community structures, or as Walt Whitman put it: “train communities through all their grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule themselves.” Patman’s ideals represented a deep understanding that sovereign citizens governing sovereign communities were the only protection against demagoguery.” [Stoller]
We need to get that spirit back!
PS -- Not Neoliberals
And note, This narrative is why the far left labels the Democratic Party as “neoliberal” but that is a pejorative, stretch and misuse of the term. We may have been collaborators with the pirates, but that is because they are cons and they were promising us all the things we were trying to accomplish; equity before the law, equal opportunity, decent wages and benefits, etc... That once they had rebuilt their monopoly power they discarded all those promises and put on their pirate king regalia, doesn't mean we were with them all the way.
We were had. We were duped.
That is a much more severe judgment, and most of those who are adamant about "neoliberalism" now, were once just as duped as we were. People would rather concoct conspiracy theories than face the truth head on.
Subverting Democracy One Organization at a Time Part I
Our Democracy is being subverted at all levels. In my most recent post "Syndicalism Lives" I was looking at the notion of Syndicalism and how it was used, first to help the labor movement get some representation for the people who work for a living, and then the concept hijacked by Fascists in Europe. While reading and ruminating on this in an article in the Atlantic, Losing the Democratic Habit, by Yoni Applebaum. While reading it I remembered that Democratic Syndicalism originated in the United States. It grew out of habits of Democracy that our forebears practiced. Specifically it was a form of "voluntary association" made necessary by the oppression of businessmen on laborers. We used to practice Democracy in our associations and communities.
The Practices of Democratic Republicanism
The Democratic principles behind the second amendment, volunteerism and Republican forms, were once things that were engrained in our society. In the days of our Grandparents and their forebears, they were habits.
The writer Yoni Applebaum writes in the Atlantic recently that:
“In the early years of the United States, Europeans made pilgrimages to the young republic to study its success. How could such a diverse and sprawling nation flourish under a system of government that originated in small, homogeneous city-states?” Yoni Applebaum: Losing the Democratic Habit
The Answer was that we practiced democracy habitually. In the Atlantic article, Yoni Applebaum asserts that the answer was:
“To almost every challenge in their lives, Americans applied a common solution. They voluntarily bound themselves together, adopting written rules, electing officers, and making decisions by majority vote.”
This was such a habit, that when an organization didn't follow these principles, people would get wary and upset.
Replicating Republican Principles to Children Games
He notes that this way of life started early.
“Children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and to punish misdemeanors which they have themselves defined,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. “The same spirit pervades every act of social life.” Atlantic
I remember those sorts of games when we were kids. I didn't realize that they were less common among my own children's generation.
Basic Principles of Democracy Taught on the Playground
I've been saying that "without local democracy" there is no democracy in our Republic. Formal democracy at the local level may have been stronger in New England than in the South at the founding of our country. But it's replication locally nationwide in the form of volunteer associations kept it strong nationwide by exerting pressure on businesses and other groups to respect democratic values. Democracy wasn't only taught in civics class it was practiced on the playground and in back yards.
Well Constituted Republican Forms
If one is going to take an "originalist" approach to the Constitution, then one has to understand the principles that underlay it. The bedrock principles of our Democratic, Federated, Republic, include:
Volunteerism and participatory associations.
Separation of powers, Executive, Judicial and Legislative bodies.
That all people have a right to say in all their governing bodies.
Respect for Majoritarian, rules based and democratic processes.
Republican principles of representation that bind people together bottom up.
Checks and Balances that moderate tendencies to centralize power and resource control.
These are bedrock principles necessary to a well constituted Federated Republican Democracy.
From Obvious to Obscure
If I'd been writing about this, as late as 50 years ago, these principles would have seemed "tautologies." People would have been calling me "Mr Obviousman." That this is no longer obvious is a deliberate result. But first let's use the Wayback machine and look at the past. Yoni's article demonstrates how Democracy was once replicated nearly everywhere. This was true for generations.
Basic Democratic Principles as Bedrock
Not that long ago, people practiced parliamentary procedure, a replication of our Republican forms, as a matter of course. At one time the majority of organizations people participated in were organized on the well constituted principles of Republican Democracy.
Participatory Associations
Yoni Applebaum describes that most voluntary organizations organized on a model similar to that of the USA government:
“Local chapters elected representatives to state-level gatherings, which sent delegates to national assemblies.” Atlantic
Yoni notes that:
“Associations are created, extended, and worked in the United States more quickly and effectively than in any other country,” marveled the British statesman James Bryce in 1888. These groups had their own systems of checks and balances. Executive officers were accountable to legislative assemblies; independent judiciaries ensured that both complied with the rules. One typical 19th-century legal guide, published by the Knights of Pythias, a fraternal order, compiled 2,827 binding precedents for use in its tribunals.” Atlantic
Democratic Associations Win
Organizations as diverse as the KKK, NAACP, or the laborers of the Workers of the World, organized on these principles. For Labor, organizing on these principles gave workers power over otherwise hostile forces. Concepts like the General Strike, Closed Shop, got their power from democracy. A Trade Union, only representing one skill-set had no chance against the combined forces of judicial, law enforcement and private security. But the ability to assert themselves en-mass and achieve common goals like minimum wages, 8 hour work days, and other basic rights. Democracy rules, autocracy drools.
Volunteerism and Participatory Associations
The founders may have argued about who should be a citizen, and didn't always take their own words seriously that "all men are created equally. But the elites who founded the country were not allowed to backslide. The founders included the tens of thousands of citizens who took Jefferson's words seriously. Indeed Jefferson staged an electoral revolution in 1799 that changed the country based on using democratic principles to organize his followers.
Bottom up Democracy
The founding generation of Americans took those principles seriously and asserted that they applied to all of our ancestors equally. Even where the founders ignored their own principles, such as with black people and slavery, the people so ignored refused to be silenced and struggled for, and eventually achieved a place in our republic.
Volunteerism Equals Stepping up
Washington, Jefferson and Adams based their ideas on an engaged and participating citizenry, where ordinary people would step up and take a role in governing themselves. Washington so valued this concept he modeled himself on Cincinnatus, who left the plow to be a General for Rome and returned for it when his duty was done. A fundamental equality is based on everyone stepping up where necessary, and nobody letting tyrants run rough shod over them.
Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances
Separation of powers is the principle that "no man can be his own judge" and that power tends to be corrupt, so it needs to be distributed in a manner that prevents any one person from arrogating it. This is the principle behind "checks and balances". We not only need to separate powers, but people need a place to appeal when power is abused.
Americans practiced separation of powers at all levels not merely the Federal Level, out of respect for these vital principles. If a town had a magistrate who was also the Police chief or Sheriff and also the Mayor, a fundamental wrong was sensed. It is part of our literature of corrupt officials and resistance. And the purpose of democracy is to prevent such corruption. We Knew:
Corruption is bad government.
The Right to A Say
Related to Checks and Balances is the notion that everyone should have a right to a say in the places where he/she lives, labors and participates. This is also a principle of good government. Without the right to appeal inequity, the people who are engaging in unjust behavior assert impunity. People with impunity bully others. This leads to resources being hoarded, misallocated and abused. Moreover, good decision making requires input from everyone who has knowledge of what is going on. The basic right to a say, can prevent bad decision making. History is full of people, like the Greek Cassandra, who spoke truth, were ignored, with tragic consequences. In Germany, which practices our lost principles of democracy, workers help guide management to more efficient and better processes because they have a say in the operations of the companies they work for.
Genuine Rule of Law = Consent of the Governed
When people have a say in government, understand process, then they understand majority rule. Even if they don't agree with the majority, they'll go along with them until they can change their minds. This makes 51% or 60% decisions into 100% peaceful decisions and allows actions even when people don't completely agree.
Respect for Process
Respecting process is the basis of lawfulness. If everyone respects the law, then there isn't as much need for police and coercion. There will always be disagreement and disaffection. But a healthy polity, having a say in the decision making learns to respect rule of law too. People used to understand this better.
Bottom up Representation
Bottom up representation is essential to organizing masses. people who all live in the same place might be able to practice direct democracy, but when people have separate functions and locations they need to come together through representation and organize their demands through local democracy. Successful organizations establish chapters and subchapters recursively and each is run on democratic principles and involves representations from its parts. Our Ancestors understood this. In the modern age we confuse mass opinion with democracy, but successful democracy involves bottom up discussions, legislation and inputs to decisions. Leaders lead better if they have to convince more people than a simple 51% majority of the whole.
Even Corporations were once more Democratic
When I was younger I remember successful minority stockholder challenges of giant corporations via stockholder meetings. As a student of Democracy I remember how FDR supported the right of people to join unions and have a say in their government. People used to experience local democracy not only in Union membership but in various mutual assistance organizations like Moose Lodges and the like. I barely remembered practicing democracy as a child til I saw Yoni Applebaum's reference to Alexis De Toqueville. But I remember endless votes on the rules of the games we played.
Democratic versus Autocratic Institutions
Yoni Applebaum notes that “Volunteerism” alone doesn't teach Self Government. At least not the way we practice it today. But that was not always the case. Yoni may not know that Militia and even Continental Army Members used to select their own non-commissioned officers. Volunteer organizations used to practice republican democracy too, at least in auxiliary decision making.
He also claims:
“church attendance, and social-media participation are [also] not schools for self-government; they do not inculcate the habits and rituals of democracy.” Atlantic
Yoni probably doesn't know that many early Americans were Presbyterians or Quakers, and many church members practiced democratic forms in their churches, if not in their church management in its social groups. Social media started as news groups where anyone could say pretty much anything. Moderators were found to be necessary because it wasn't constituted with republican principles in mind. It is not the Volunteering, Church participation or social media participation that is stopping the inculcation of democratic principles, it is the disregard for those constitutional principles by the owners, operators, preachers and officers of those institutions that is subverting them. In some of the social groups I was in we used surveys and votes to decide issues. It can be done. That it isn't is intentional. Which makes what is happening subversion.
The Consequences of Subversion
The Destruction of our Democracy by people who's primary interest is personal gain at the expense of others, is an intentional thing. The goal of Exploitive, Manipulative, Amoral and Dishonest managers and owners, is usually a continuance of their dominance and exploitation of the resources they control. It is no accident that:
“as young people participate less in democratically run organizations, they show less faith in democracy itself.” Atlantic
That “The golden age of the voluntary association” is not over, “thanks to the automobile, the television, and the two-income household”, but is under assault by people who saw democracy as a threat to their personal power and influences. Henry Ford envisioned networks of highways depopulating cities. The Television started as a place that provided public services and paid for them with entertainment and advertising. The other institutions and services which are no longer truly representative or run on democratic principles all have the common attribute of being run by and driven by private separate profit motive and people who benefit from an authoritarian population. If Americans are “no longer inclined to leave the comforts and amusements of home for the lodge hall or meeting room.” that doesn't mean they don't long for the sense of comity and community of being involved with others. It is more the fact that these institutions are no longer available, denied to them, or relevant to their current situation. The “revival of participatory democracy” isn't built on “fraternal orders and clubs. &rduqo; [Quotes from Atlantic article]
One thing that is certain is that once power is lost to centralization and hierarchy, it is difficult for people to reacquire it. It will probably take legislation & legal enforcement to take back our voluntary associations from top down hierarchical and profiteering institutions. We have thousands of "Associations" that are essentially subscription services with little voice from the rank and file. But the AARP, AAA, etc... are voluntary associations that would meet the needs of their members better if the members had an actual say in their function.
The real culprits are the spread of authoritarian religion, privateering corporations and just plain authoritarianism in general. When there are 10 TV stations owned by the same monopolists, that is subversion. When people are told what to think and not given an opportunity to discuss the facts, that is authoritarianism.
Yoni is right here:
“Young Americans of all backgrounds deserve the chance to write charters, elect officers, and work through the messy and frustrating process of self-governance. They need the opportunity to make mistakes, and resolve them, without advisers intervening. Such activities shouldn’t be seen as extracurricular, but as the basic curriculum of democracy. In that respect, what students are doing—club sports, student council, the robotics team—matters less than how they’re doing it and what they’re gaining in the process: an appreciation for the role of rules and procedures in managing disputes.” Atlantic
It's not just young Americans, it is working Americans in all walks of life. It is apartment dwellers. It is people living in sprawling developments with no mayor, city council or say over water, sewer, cable or power supply decision making at a local level. School Children need to judge miscreants instead of sending 12 year olds to prison. Class Presidents need to be more involved in School than simply being the prettiest or most popular kids. Democracy is a right not a mere privilege. And Authoritarianism is not an alternative, but a curse. The “the cult of efficiency” is a con.
Syndicalism was a movement, originated by labor, to organize workers so they could defend themselves against workplace oppression and exploitation. The term derived from the word syndicate.
Syndicate, noun: ˈsindikət'
1. a group of individuals or organizations combined to promote some common interest.
"large-scale buyouts involving a syndicate of financial institutions"
verb: ˈsindəˌkāt
1. control or manage by a syndicate.
"the loans are syndicated to a group of banks"
Syndicalism and the Labor Movement
The labor movement used the concept of syndication to organize themselves into general labor groups that worked together rather than against each other. They used various tools to win concessions from business & employers. These tools include The General Strike. Unfortunately, principles that work objectively for one, work for all. Fascists, Organized Crime, and Business all hijacked the concept of Syndicate.
Syndicalism
In the 1930s the Fascists took an idea, syndicalism, that had been a tool intended for the labor movement, even Marxism, and turned it into a tool of repression. After the 30s the tool passed out of the vocabulary of both the left and the right. Why? Because the left saw it as no longer a tool that helped them. The right didn't like the name "Syndicalism" because, even though it had become their tool, it still echoed memories of the labor movement. The term "syndicate" lived on as a description for organized crime. Organized crime had also found syndicalism as a powerful tool. Business and organized crime continued to practice it's principles. But they no longer used the term. A few fanatic "anarcho syndicalists" use the term. You can hear them state what their version of the principles of syndicalism are, but their arguments make no sense (see example here: http://www.politicalsciencenotes.com/articles/top-10-principles-of-syndicalism-explained/394) for an example.
Taft Hartley
In the United States the tool of the General Strike was outlawed in the United States in 1947.
The Taft–Hartley Act prohibited
jurisdictional strikes,
wildcat strikes,
solidarity or political strikes,
secondary boycotts, and mass picketing,
closed shops,
and monetary donations by unions to federal political campaigns.
Taft Hartley didn't kill Unions right away. It simply defenestred them so that they'd whither away over the next years. Meanwhile Businesses organized, and used syndication to gain the power they'd gotten congress to take from power, for themselves.
Syndication for Dictatorship
The core notion of syndicalism; is that people are stronger together. The lesson of syndicalism, is that when people divide, those with the most resources and best organization, prevail. The corporate world used those principles to get control over academia, create think tanks, and mostly to organize themselves. Organizations like the Conservative National Policy group, ALEC, and etc..., exert massive power over our country. Business leaders thought long term. They created the Federalist Society years ago in order to prepare a generation of lawyers to take over our legal system and change our laws. Citizens United removed limits on what businessmen could donate (bribe) but did nothing to rescind Taft Hartley. Hence the imbalance of forces.
Before Taft Hartley made these things illegal, they'd been illegal before and labor had simply ignored them. The General Strike is still powerful. People working together works. Syndicalist principles live on.
