I was recently engaged in an online conversation in which an article titled The Corporate Alliance with Political Radicalism: A Great Deal of Ruin in a Nation by Carl F Horowitz was brought up with the following quotation:
Why are so many corporations, especially those that provide information technology, promoting political radicalism? A growing number of people, at least on the Right, must be wondering about all this, especially as the business community continues to line up in solidarity against President Donald Trump. For it hardly can be denied that the corporation, partly out of self-interest and partly out of conviction, is becoming an adjunct of the hard Left. And equally to the point, the hard Left is becoming an adjunct of corporations. This alliance is anything but benign. In the long run, it even may jeopardize the existence of the United States.I had no idea what the author was saying, mainly because in the above, Mr Horowitz speaks in labels and I am not familiar with his code. I scanned the first few paragraphs and determined that Mr Horowitz is referring to the resistance to Trump's immigration agenda, when he uses the identifier, "the hard left". The pure identification of the "hard left" with opposition to Trump's immigration policies defines Mr Horowitz as the "hard right" and highlights anti-immigration as the most cherished value of the "hard right".
A few days later I decided to read the article. The purpose of the article as stated at the beginning, is to uncover the core purpose for which the corporate world sides with the "hard left" against President Trump, in the world view of the author.
Mr Horowitz has a background as a Washington DC Consultant. In 2001 Mr Horowitz published a paper on Immigration and crime opposing multiple sources of research which concluded that there is no evidence supporting that immigrants commit more crimes than native born citizens, arguing that the research lacks cultural depth. The only way to refute research is with further research but Mr Horowitz's argument is prone to speculation rather than discipline. Mr Horowitz's paper states "Many immigrant crimes are not reported, and possibly in greater proportion than the crimes that the U.S.-born commit." There may be some truth to the first part of the rational but the second part is only a "perhaps". Whatever arguments are to be made for unreported criminal activity, there is no reason to suppose that the same is not true for crimes by the native born. The reasons and type of criminal activity may differ but unreported means below the radar, suspected, not substantiated. Since one can zero in on any culture looking for the hidden truth, there is no way to substantiate that hidden truths are more prevalent in one culture than in another.That is not to suggest that Mr Horowitz speculations are unconvincing, but that his speculations are made in support of a comparison between one group of people and another, but there are no speculations being applied to the comparison group and so there is no comparison to be made. What is patently true is that Mr Horowitz has held his beliefs about immigrants for a long time. As The Corporate Alliance with Political Radicalism: A Great Deal of Ruin in a Nation progresses, it becomes apparent that Mr Horowitz's beliefs are based in his need to protect the supremacy of his own cultural identity. Mr Horowitz never identifies what that cultural identity is but pursuant to his repeated inclusion of the race qualifier in his argument, it is fair to extrapolate that the culture which needs to be protected in Mr Horowitz's world view is white America.
When Mr Horowitz refers to the "far left", he means anyone who does not support Trumps immigration policy, which he perceives to suit large corporations. Mr Horowitz's portrait of the corporate motivations makes a convincing account of the mindset that drives the global corporate state, the same that has become deeply entrenched in Maine over the last forty years.
By comparison Horowitz says that "Radicals, by contrast, act out of emotional self-interest. They crave total multiculturalism in one nation" The first part of the sentence is true, but Mr Horowitz fails to include the right wing radical in his code. I respond emotionally to Trump's border policies and so by that measure alone, I meet the Horowitz's qualification for the "hard left", so dear are the anti-immigration policies to the hard right. However my visceral response has nothing to do with multiculturalism. My reaction has to do with humanity, My identity with America are with the values of humanity common to all. A child torn from parents sickens me to the core. This is the human dimension which I have found absent in my encounters with supporters of Trump's immigration policies, who argue "rule of law" with the same mechanics that Germans were reported to justify their response to the genocide under Hitler's rule by the argument that they were "just following orders".
Mr Horowitz writes that the hard left craves multiculturalism which he conflates with a will to throw out national sovereignty, an apparent projection on Mr Horowitz's part. Mr Horowitz associates corporate rhetoric which holds multiculturalism to be an environment fostering innovation, as a cover for a hidden agenda in which "corporate executives must establish and enforce a policy that tries to squeeze every last vestige of racial and ethnic homogeneity out of their respective companies". It is easy to support the connection between diversity and innovation. An influx of different ways of being is indeed a stimulus for different ways of thinking, but it is clear that if one desires to maintain "racial and ethnic homogeneity", the twain shall never meet. However, Mr Horowitz's argument occludes America's history as a melting pot,and the fact that when the white race arrived in America, there was a pre-existing Indian race.
Mr Horwitz portrays the corporate response to the combined refugee crisis and the separation of families as a US border policy, by companies such as AirNub and Facebook, as an attempt to "drive out country’s historical identity and (by implication) force employees to go along." Although the support offered to ease the human suffering of refugees and other immigrants at our border may be a case for compassionate corporatism, Mr Horowitz compares it to “cultural Marxism.”, which defines the capitalist-worker relationship as nothing more and nothing less that exploitative. This may certainly be true in some cases but is by no means a rule. Further more, Mr Horowitz conflates all businesses with publicly-held companies, which must, by law, prioritize profit over all other values. In today's world new legal models have emerged such as the benefit corporation which allows a company to legally balance profit with other values. Companies without stockholders have that option already, but, Mr Horowitz's argument consistently falls back on collective generalities, which occlude the individualism which the American political philosophy protects. Ironically Mr Horowitz described corporatism in the cultural Marxism model as "in their pursuit of profit, pay their workers poverty-level wages for long hours, viewing them as nothing more than means to an end. As a consequence, workers become alienated from work, family, and society.", begging the response: What can be more alienating from work, family and society than the separation of children from parents?
When Mr Horowitz launches into the evolution of Marxism, he makes some valid points:
In three key ways, Marxists have gone off the original script. First, they regularly use law, policy, and the courts as a means of building socialism. They are willing to pursue “bourgeois parliamentary reforms” of the sort Marx disdained, especially in such areas of material well-being as pensions, health care, and housing. Second, they recognize that capitalists, at least with a certain amount of coaxing and threatening, can evolve into natural allies. In other words, capitalists may wind up absorbing the lessons of their critics to the point where they are not so much capitalists as financial agents of revolution. The Corporate Alliance with Political Radicalism: A Great Deal of Ruin in a NationLike everything else Marxism has evolved. Those who try to qualify Marxism by its origins live out side the transformation continuum in which of all political philosophies merge and reemerge, reinvented.
Mr Horowitz's description of racial politics informs why the white nationalist movement has grown strong in the wake of the Obama administration, insightfully explaining the conditions which lead to the white nationalist back lash.
In the section titled Global Salvation Inc., Mr Horowitz identifies the global corporate world order, as a world without borders. Mr Horowitz associates the profit motives of a borderless corporate world and opposition to Trumps border policies, but makes it perfectly clear that the corporate order has no agenda except profit. It is not left, it is not right, it does not care about racism and it does not care about multiculturalism, it cares about political policy or movement which will advance its profit making goal, wanting no government intervention. and thus no borders between countries, Borders give way to countries and countries create government.
The brand name chosen for global corporate state by Mr. Horowitz is "Global Salvation Inc". As some readers know, I have made it my point to record the history of Maine GSI AD* since the corporate state was deemed into existence in 1976 through the actors of Governor Longley and his extra special board of the wealth power elite of Maine, selected to "lead the Maine Legislature" in replacing Maine's constitutional government with the corporate state, run by and serving the interest of public-private relationships. From the start and every step of the way the activities of the corporate public-private state were deemed to be selfless acts done in the service of the public good:
Words from The Financial Authority of Maine corporate charter:
The authority will serve a public purpose and perform an essential governmental function in the exercise of the powers and duties conferred upon it by this chapter. Any benefits accruing to private individuals or associations, as a result of the activities of the authority, are deemed by the Legislature to be incidental to the public purposes to be achieved by the implementation of this chapter. [1985, c. 344, §5 (AMD).]Mr Horowitz tells of a very close relationship between Google and the Obama administration with over 250 employees leaving one to work for the other, and a "more than incidental use" by Google of White House Office of Science and Technology.
As Mr Horowitz moves away from the immigration issue and discusses global corporatism, his thinking becomes less binary. He gets closer to the central issue of our times, when he writes this:
Capitalism Alongside National Identity: The Prospect
Difficult as it is to resist the temptation, it is important not to panic or get cynical. Business still does many terrific things that we take for granted, certainly a lot more often than socialism. And not every businessman has joined the multicultural ride. That said, capitalism may be planting the seeds of its own demise, putting national identity in harm’s way. This is not a new observation. Seventy-five years ago, Austrian-born Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter, in his classic book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,22 argued that capitalism is ultimately unsustainable. Unlike Marx, he did not welcome this outcome. But he feared that it would come to pass anyway. In brief, Schumpeter argued that the monopoly-seeking tendencies inherent in capitalism would alienate the general population, but that rather than resort to revolution, voters would elect anti-capitalists to office who in turn would transform their economies into social democracies.It does appear, on the surface, in this contemporary moment, that the world, and the USA are evolving into social democracies. I see that as a perceptual binary obstruction to the multiplicity of directions in which the world can evolve. The binary choices do not offer a promising outcome so let the binary give way to the multiplicity, which is to say, in diversity, there is hope.
*Global Salvation Inc AD
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