Propping Up a Broken Capitalism

[WarOnYouBlog]

Propping Up a Broken Capitalism

By Shamus Cooke

Five years ago it would be unthinkable that a harsh critique of capitalism would attract a mass audience. But this is exactly what Michael Moore’s new movie — Capitalism: A Love Story — has done.  The source of Moore’s success is his willingness to focus on what the media ignores: the human faces behind unemployment, bankruptcy, foreclosures, evictions, etc., and the faces benefiting from this misery — the corporate-elite sitting atop the financial system.

This reality has quickly educated millions of Americans, who now understand that our economic system is dominated by a tiny crust of super-rich individuals, bailing themselves out with taxpayer money while playing deaf to an exploding social crisis.

To combat these truths, the corporate-elite are planning a pro-capitalist media blitz.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an organization where the biggest U.S. corporations come together to chat, organize, and throw money at politicians.  Now, they are launching their “dream big” campaign, with the aim of “…preserving and advancing the American free enterprise system [capitalism].”

This $100 million campaign — as explained on the Chamber’s website — will focus on “national advertising,” “grassroots advocacy,” “research and ideas leadership” [think tanks and universities], and “Citizen, Community, and Youth Engagement” — combining “…outreach to governors, mayors, and young audiences…” with “…online social networking” (Facebook).

Aside from saving capitalism, the campaign aims to save “… the 7 million jobs lost to the current recession and create the 13 million new jobs that will be needed over the next decade.”

But as Albert Einstein pointed out, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  No serious economist is predicting that the economy is going to start pumping out jobs, let alone 20 million of them.

The Chamber of Commerce isn’t the only entity trying to shore up the profit system.  Corporate-oriented pundits and politicians are falling over themselves to sing high praises to our troubled economic system.

Bush gave such a speech shortly after the system crashed, where he admitted that people were beginning to equate the market economy [capitalism] with “…greed, exploitation, and failure.”  This was wrong, Bush claimed.  Instead, regulation was the culprit, a simple, easy-to-fix problem. The giant banks and other mega-corporations — owned and controlled by tiny groups of ultrarich individuals — could remain in place.

Another rescuer of capitalism is Newsweek Editor and savvy politician, Fareed Zakaria, who wrote a Newsweek article entitled, The Capitalist Manifesto.  In it, Zakaria explains, “What we are experiencing is not a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of finance, of democracy, of globalization and ultimately of ethics.”  To further obscure the problem, he concludes that the banks and corporations are not to blame… everybody is:

“… there is enough blame to go around and many fixes to make…But at heart, there needs to be a deeper fix within all of us, a simple gut check. If it doesn't feel right, we shouldn't be doing it.”  (June 13, 2009).
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