COASTAL POST
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Feb , 2000
Viagra + Prozac = Corporate Capitalism
The holiday season saw a greater than usual credit buying orgy,
augmented by what was once called the information highway and has now
become a buyers boulevard . An electronic hope for democracy is being
turned into nothing more than a road to the market. The transformation
of this electronic thoroughfare into an electronic strip mall is
called e-commerce , as though it were something new . Sure.
The electronic market has less material form and more metaphysical
substance, leading to incredible profits derived from even more
incredible losses. And it has brought corporate capital supreme
influence over what gets into our heads under the guise of
information. The mergers of already massive corporations have brought
us to a point at which six monopoly mammoths exercise almost total
control over the global flow of information.
By managing every step in the process of production, distribution and
consumption, these giant conglomerates reduce economic competition to
quaint mythology. Companies market products by getting their news
operations to “report” on how desperately important it is for everyone
to own, rent, lease, eat, drink, drive, watch, imitate or use these
products , or be found lacking as consumers.
As the insane stock market creates fantastic profits for firms that
are actually losing money, it is making many people rich, but sinking
many more into debt. More workers are earning a paycheck than ever
before, but they also have more financial obligation than ever before .
And there are more people in jail than ever before, though not
necessarily because of debt.
We have the world’s most serious drug problem, and it begins with our
political economic system. But our immoral war on only certain drugs
does nothing to solve that problem and only makes matters worse . It
unjustly expands the prison population and promotes human misery,
sinks billions of dollars into the business of weapons, banks and
jails, while meddling in the governing policy of other nations .
Whether the drugs used are legal or illegal, millions of Americans must
be drunk, stoned, blissed or otherwise medicated in order to get
through the average day without being comatose consumers. If their
dealer is a doctor or an HMO selling synthetic dope from the labs of
multi-billion dollar drug corporations, it’s okay. But if their dealer
operates on the street , with more organic dope , it means jail time,
especially if they are lower income or non-white.
Morality, justice and sanity are all losers in a culture dominated by
market forces that keep a majority of the people in a corporate induced
state of artificial intelligence.
This economy is performing like a flaccid male member under the
influence of a drug to make it act like a strong machine rather than a
weak organ. And our politics are democratic in the way that life
seems beautiful to people dosed with an anti-depressant to keep them
smiling and shopping.
The drugged state of so many people is an aspect of the unreal nature of
a system of political economics. Its definition of democracy is rich
people buying government, and it defines success as minorities getting
rich while majorities fall into debt, poverty and depression.
We might as well all be medicated , given the hallucinatory nature of
what our consciousness controllers sell us as reality.
The market is treated as though it were a force of nature, but it is a
human construct, dominated by corporate minorities who maintain control
by keeping the majority of people in a state of near unconsciousness.
This arrangement makes consumption relatively easy, until the bill
becomes due. But it makes citizenship extremely difficult, until the
crisis becomes clear.
That crisis is both economic and political. The dwindling percentage of
Americans who bother to vote will need heavier medication than usual to
feel inspired about the elections in November. The ridiculously
expensive and mostly irrelevant campaigns have been going on since
1998, yet any excitement seems to depend on a new candidate entering the
race, or a juicy scandal surfacing.
The campaigns have been conducted with little interest expressed by any
but activists and corporate media. Pundits and reporters, employed by
firms bloated to gargantuan size by mergers, perpetuate the myth of
democracy, even as it is denied by a public showing understandable
disdain for the entire farce.
A society based on democracy and sociability is more possible than
ever, but there needs to be a confrontation with the anti-democratic
and anti-social nature of our commerce .The metaphysical market cannot
be allowed to make decisions that should be arrived at by democratic
consent. And the earth and its people cannot continue to be treated as
simple commodities to be bought, sold, rented, leased, hired and fired.
Americans need to face two very important facts: 1) neither
corporations nor capitalism are part of our constitution. and 2) our
war on drugs is an integral part of sustaining corporate capitalism.
This system manufactures injustice, pollution and death , based on the
production of waste and the distribution of lies. It reduces its
people to commodity consumers, shopping without happiness and voting
without purpose .
Recreational and therapeutic drug use are a part of life, but the
profitable war on some drugs is about death , as is too much of the
culture of commerce. Corporate capitalism is destroying democracy,
ecology and sanity. Its power is dependent on continued ignorance of
its danger and acceptance of its inevitability .
Our politics and economics are legal drugs that do infinitely more
damage than illegal drugs. They are a pathology that is maintained by
addicting their subjects to dishonesty and immorality. Becoming a truly
drug free culture means becoming a society free of the capitalist
culture of commerce.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.
This text may be used and shared in accordance with the
fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be
archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
the author is notified and no fee is charged for access.
Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on
other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the
author .
frank scott
http://www.marin.cc.ca.us/~frank
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225 laurel place, san rafael ca. 94901
(415)457 2415 fax(415)457 4791
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