Question Everything

The decision by the Supreme Court supporting the seizure of personal property for "development" purposes ("Primitive accumulation") is a classic example of class warfare and how the Supreme Court generally acts in the interests of business. Governments can directly steal anything working people own and give them to the wealthy & their corporations; effectively legalizing robbery if the robber happens to be a company. The rich get richer & the poor get poorer. If capitalists really followed their "free market" rhetoric they could just negotiate with the residents of the land they want and buy them out, but why pay market price when you can just rob working people?

The ruling also shows that liberals aren't necessarily the "lesser of two evils." It was the more liberal & moderate justices who made the ruling. The conservative justices voted against it. Had there been one more conservative on the court the ruling would have gone the other way. Keep that in mind the next time a liberal starts hyperventilating about how we must vote for the Democrats because allowing Republicans to nominate Supreme Court Justices will bring about the end of the world.

"Primitive accumulation" is nothing new, these kinds of seizures have been going on since the dawn of capitalism. When capitalism first started in England there was the enclosure movement, where land previously held in common and used by peasants was stolen by the capitalists. Everywhere capitalism took hold it used some means, usually legalized theft, to take away land owned by peasants and give it to capitalists. This is the only way for full-fledged capitalism to come about because if everyone has access to the means of production (like land) they can produce their own food and don't have to make their living working for capitalists. As a result, capitalism remains stunted or nonexistant until it drives the people off their land and puts them in a situation where they must sell their labor to capitalists or starve. The process of "primitive accumulation" continues even after full-fledged capitalism has been established, as is the case with the military-industrial complex, imperialism and other policies that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.

The institutional structure of capitalism means "primitive accumulation" like these seizures is pretty much inevitable in some form. All companies seek to maximize profit, regardless of any kind of ethical considerations. If the management of a company doesn't attempt to maximize profits then it will lose market share to its competitors, find getting investment difficult and be defeated by its competitors. If the company is publicly owned any management that doesn't maximize profits will first face a great deal of pressure from the stockholders & board of directors to do so and, if that doesn't work, those same people will remove the managers and put in place managers who will maximize profits. If it isn't publicly owned the company will still face pressures to maximize profits from competition, which will most likely drive that company out of business if it doesn't do everything it can to maximize profit. Even if it does find a way to survive in the marketplace without maximizing profits (unlikely) it will only constitute a small portion of the marketplace, while companies that do attempt to maximize profits end up dominating it. So capitalist economies as a whole are driven to maximize profits, even if doing so ruins the enviroment, kills lots of people or results in other unethical results. You would get the same result even if the most altruistic people in the world were put in charge of the main corporations because it's inherent in how the system is set up. Since obtaining land (or other things) by stealing them from working people is usually cheaper than paying market price capitalism inevitably creates a drive to seize personal property and give it to capitalists & their corporations, since that maximizes profit. Usually they don't try to steal from each other since they have lots of money to hire lawyers & lobbyists to defend themselves, making stealing from workers or sometimes small businesses much more cost effective.

Governments usually help capitalists impose "primitive accumulation" for several reasons. The one most frequently cited is that it increases tax revenue. Governments can often make more money by taking business's side which creates an institutional incentive to do so no matter who's in power. In other words, governments and capitalists have a common interest; governments get a share of the loot when they help corporations rob workers. The complement of this is the threat of capital flight. If a government implements policies that aren't sufficiently favorable to business then, because capitalism seeks maximum profit, investment will dry up, businesses will move where there's higher profit and the economy will generally go downhill. This negatively impacts the government because it will have fewer tax revenues or other resources to achieve its goals and, if its a representative government, will result in it being voted out of office and probably replaced with pro-business candidates. In practice its usually not necessary for capital flight to actually come into play, the mere threat of it is enough to keep politicians implementing pro-business policies, including seizing workers' homes and giving them to corporations. A third factor is the revolving door between corporations & the government. Most politicians & top government officials go back & forth between high level government positions and high level corporate positions. Since they come from the capitalist class and will probably be back in charge of a business in a few years its in the interests of the government to implement pro-business policies. Even when they aren't just following their own self-interests the fact that leaders of government predominantly come from the business class means they tend to see things from a business perspective and sympathize with it more than with a working class perspective, which means they're more likely to implement pro-business policies. The fourth and final factor is bribery, which in the US is called campaign financing. Since large corporations have more money they can easily outcompete workers or small businesses in this category and get their way. All this factors are inherent in the system. Electing someone who's more hostile towards business interests won't change the government's support of business interests because capital flight & these other factors will force the government to continue doing the same policy no matter who is elected. Primitive accumulation is the inevitable result of capitalism, the only way to stop it is to change the politico-economic system. The Supreme Court's ruling shows the need for a revolution to end capitalism.

The changing media coverage of the Downing Street Memos provides further evidence in favor of the propaganda model. The media is reflecting the views of the rich & powerful, emphasising and ignoring facts that conform with or contradict their views. Initially, the memo was ignored. The first memo was ocassionally mentioned in coverage of the British elections, but that's it. The low level of coverage reflected the perspectives of the US power elite - none of them were saying anything about it and so the media said little. Some of the British power elite, a close ally of the US power elite, were saying things about it, though, so there was the ocassional rare mention in coverage of Britain. On June 7 the memo came up in a joint news conference with Bush & Blair. Bush made a few comments on it, and as a result coverage of the memo increased. The media act as a megaphone for the powerful: when the powerful were saying nothing about the memo they said nothing, when the most powerful man in the country said something about it they all started covering it. A few relatively powerful people (compared to the average American) - mainly opportunist Democrat politicians - started bringing it up and criticizing Bush over it. Last week they held an informal hearing on the subject. The subject has thus recieved some media coverage, more than before a few politicians were talking about it. However, the vast majority of the power elite haven't been criticizing Bush over the memos or even saying anything about them. The result is media coverage has been fairly low (compare coverage of the memo to coverage of the much less important Michael Jackson trial), only the first memo is mentioned when there is coverage, and a substantial percentage of that coverage has been quite hostile towards Bush's critics. Many editorials take on a defensive tone, making up lame excuses for their lack of coverage. Few journalists will admit what they really are: steinographers of power.

"We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power" - Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Reporter and former assistant managing editor