Corporations Versus Individuals: The End of the Left/Right Paradigm

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.disinfo.com/2011/03/corporations-versus-individuals-the-end-of-the-leftright-paradigm/

Looks like the New World Order isn’t going to be a global Big Socialist Government (unless, perhaps, you count corporate socialism). Barry Ritholtz wrote in September of last year:

Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.

I would like to discuss the paradigm shift that is occurring in politics.

For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.



More at the link --

[Old and In the Way]

1. Conservatives just want to level the playing field, dontchaknow.

The individual vs, the Corporation. SCOTUS seems to be doing their fair share in making this happen.

[robcon]

2. Pure crap.

n/t

[snot]

3. K&R'd. But I think he's missed one crucial point:

Re- the "corporate" side . . . it's not really corps. per se; it's the senior execs who run them for their own benefit.

I'd argue it could be any kind of organization -- a corporation, a government, a union, a religion, even a nonprofit organization. What matters is that it's hierarchical and that it's grown large enough that the few individuals at the top are no longer effectively accountable to the many in the middle and lower layers.

[applegrove]

4. The right has been all about corporations for100 years.

[kristopher]

5. You might want to review the idea of dialectical materialism (Marx)

It is a bit more fundamental to the idea of what right and left mean than the chart you offered. I like that chart but it isn't really about all the glitzy lines etc it is about the popular beliefs that enable the owners of the means of production (corporations) to control everyone else.

FWIW I personally find that Marx is on the right track but he failed to incorporate the idea that there is a feedback system at work among the infrastucture, superstructure and structure of culture (an idea reflected in the graph) that is as influenced by reproduction as it was by production. He believed that the material production related infrastructure was singularly responsible for the entire configuration of culture.

See also: cultural materialism

[Hannah Bell]

6. kr