The System is the Crime
by Frank Scott

It is important that the economic horror stories of Enron and Argentina
are not reduced to personal scandals and individual prosecutions. Both
these financial failures are examples of the breakdown of neoliberal
monopoly capitalism, in its frenzied demand for complete deregulation and
its total dependence on ever increasing debt.

The Enron fiasco may offer a chance for vengeance from a cowardly
political opposition which has until now been hiding under the bed or
limply waving flags during the goose-stepping march into endless war
against terrorists. But seeking criminals at Enron as an end in itself
would be as stupid as sending pretzels to the white house as a way of
getting rid of the president. While the Enron gang gave millions of
dollars to Republicans, it sent plenty to Democrats as well. These
financial manipulators and energy hustlers know that the major corporate
party has two wings, but is really one corporate turkey.

The performance of unregulated Enron executives, protecting themselves
while their employees lost their pension funds, merely duplicates what is
likely to happen if American workers allow their social security funds to
be gobbled up by private capital. Investigating pension fund investment
practices may be a positive outcome of this tragedy, but it will not be
enough.

And the nation of Argentina was supposed to be a prime example of
deregulated prosperity, with foreign capital freely invading its markets
and bringing prosperity to all. Sure. The near idiocy of such
fundamentalist beliefs became a crushing reality of unemployed people
rioting for food, later joined by a middle class whose savings were either
untouchable, or more likely worthless. Sound familiar? Enron pensioners,
meet Argentine savers.

The frenzy of deregulation allowed Enron, like many other companies, to
juggle books and practice creative accounting to fool gullible Wall Street
clergy into transforming an essential hustle into a billion dollar
corporation, with slavish devotees among the nation’s biggest banks and
credit dealers. And these are the financial wizards who would control
social security funds , if they get their hands on them.

An accounting firm that trashed incriminating records while serving as a
consultant to the company whose books it juggled is seen as behaving in a
shocking way. But that’s how such firms can get away with paying no taxes;
it’s business as usual.

As is the conquest of Argentina by foreign capital , and the ensuing
dominance of its economic and political life. Argentineans, in their
desperation, have rebelled against international banks and their minority
controlled government : it remains to be seen what Americans will do about
homeland corporate procedures which are occasionally treated as crimes,
but are actually the practice that business schools preach.

Corporations are paper entities which have been allowed to become stronger
than humans, outliving mortals and exercising power over the political
process that makes the two party system a one-party corporate oligarchy.
The Enron fiasco is a scandal, but that scandal cannot be limited to
isolated marketplace hustlers or political pimps. It is the system through
which these criminals operate that must be confronted.

That system is international monopoly capitalism, euphemized as
"globalization", to make it sound like an ad, instead of a disease. That
system is not only behind the collapse of Enron and the bankrupting of
Argentina; it is pillaging the planetary environment, raping it of its
resources, and endangering the lives of all its people. Even living
through the national tragedy of a minority president who has declared war
on the world, we must confront the fact that the system is the scandal,
not its servants.


Copyright (c) 2002 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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frank scott
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