How Business Sides With Fascism

[Leo Gura]

42 minutes ago, T_i_m said:

Isn't it called democracy? You vote for who you like, you support who you like. Even if it's based on your financial profits, it's your constitutional right.

Democracy turns into fascism when people follow financial profits and self-interest in the face of someone like Trump.

If this needs to be explained to you, you're really not bright.

[T_i_m]

10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Democracy turns into fascism when people follow financial profits and self-interest in the face of someone like Trump.

If this needs to be explained to you, you're really not bright.

I see. If someone votes for a party that Leo doesn't like, he is a fascist.

[DocWatts]

24 minutes ago, T_i_m said:

I see. If someone votes for a party that Leo doesn't like, he is a fascist.

If someone votes for a reactionary political party that's actively working to end democracy, they're supporting fascism (regardless of whether they're ignorant of the consequences of their actions).

[LSD-Rumi]

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

How so? He is typical orange, he wants his freedom of expression. His values simply do not align with the green aspects of the progressive party, which lately have grown quite dysfunctional anyways. There will be a backlash to stage orange and this is an expression of it.

Guys you should stop bringing up spiral dynamics and use in a bad way. Spiral dynamics have nothing to do here. Musk is just acting selfish here, he doesn't want unions. Many other stage orange figures could acted different to what Musk did, Gates for example. Musk has no honor doing this low move. 

[DocWatts]

Since there seems to be some confusion what fascism actually is, here's one of the better definitions I've come across for it.

And for anyone curious, this definition came from a comparative politics series that gives an in depth analysis on fascism; why it's a symptom of failed democracy, why it has its roots in aggrieved populism, and how it differs from other forms of authoritarianism.

https://youtu.be/m6VSdwInpnc

Edited May 20, 2022 by DocWatts

[UnbornTao]

How could someone so smart and "truth- advocate" vote for a pathological liar like Trump?

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by UnbornTao

[Rokazulu]

I will translate the tweet:

"I use to vote for oligarchy blue, but they started acting like fascists, so now I am voting for oligarchy red."

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Rokazulu

[gettoefl]

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

How could someone so smart and "truth- advocate" vote for a pathological liar like Trump?

It's a rethorical question.

 

will it benefit our bottom line, our equity holders and our business interests

it's a rhetorical answer

[Happy Lizard]

fascism is rising in places like Europe, Turkey, India, Russia, some part of Japan I heard and who knows where else..

One would think that the US has it's particular problems and culture wars and that's why it's having this phenomenon arise, but why is it also arising in all of these other countries like this ? 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Happy Lizard

[abundance]

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/utes3n/spacex_paid_250000_to_a_flight_attendant_who/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

 

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-25/black-tesla-employees-fremont-plant-racism-california-lawsuit

 

There are some pretty dusturbing and aerious trends with Elon Musk and his companies. I never saw him as a genuinely good person and things like this only validates it for me. Its amazing how many people worship this guy. 

[Danioover9000]

   I'd say it depends on the person's value systems, cognitive and moral development, psychology, states of beings/becoming, and life experiences so far, along with genetic makeup. In this case, Elon Musk is hyper logical, because in most of his interviews, he looks left quite a lot, even sometimes turning his head to the left when thinking. This means that Elon's cognitive patterns are hyper logical, rational and I'd say autistic, which filters a person's reality differently than most with are not as left brain active like Elon. He also has an upper class upbringing in South America, which seems to effect his morality about other people. because similarly to Trump's parents, he has absorbed this attitude of competition from his family and inherited their stage blue/mostly stage orange values. I don't know fully his personality traits, but he exhibits introversion quite a lot, which means he has a lot of compartments and mental boxes to categories different parts of reality. Given his life experiences it makes sense why he treats people on the left more differently than the right political spectrum, likewise with employees versus employers.

   He could also be trolling as well, which given the nature of the internet he has fallen victim to. 

[T_i_m]

1 hour ago, Happy Lizard said:

fascism is rising in places like Europe, Turkey, India, Russia, some part of Japan I heard and who knows where else..

One would think that the US has it's particular problems and culture wars and that's why it's having this phenomenon arise, but why is it also arising in all of these other countries like this ? 

We are on the verge of something very interesting. 

[Crane Bahnsteik]

Elon is highly manipulative and very rarely speaks with any degree of sincerity, behind his every word there is always a hidden agenda which he calculated some moves ahead in a logical sequential manner.

[Hojo]

And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.

12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.

13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,

14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

 

If trump comes back to twitter maybe Elon will be in control of it. They would believe anything it says.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Hojo

[Leo Gura]

It's not that Musk is insincere. It's just that he is biased by his business pursuits. And I don't even mean money. His is biased by his desire for control over his companies. He doesn't want to share that control democratically.

I'm sure in Musk's mind he thinks he can do more good for the environment by having full control over his businesses vs having government lead the effort. Which is how he justifies to himself voting for Republicans who don't give a damn about climate change. Such are the biases of oligarchs.

But none of this is healthy governance.

To sacrifice democracy just because of SJWs and unions is a deep mistake, one that will tarnish Musk's entire legacy in the future. History will remember those who enabled Trumpism. No amount of Telsas or Starships is worth that.

[Recursoinominado]

Musk and Brazil's alt-right nazi-fascist president Bolsonaro.

[DnoReally]

Stop watching BreadTube Leo its rotting your brain

[Preety_India]

I feel like Musk does everything for his own benefit only. 

 

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

I feel like Musk does everything for his own benefit only.

That's not the case at all. But he is biased towards his business projects.

[Fleetinglife]

On 20/05/2022 at 7:50 AM, Leo Gura said:

On 20/05/2022 at 7:43 AM, Hello from Russia said:

Would you consider Russia to be a fascist state at this point? I have my own opinion about it, but very much interested in yours. 

On 20/05/2022 at 7:50 AM, Leo Gura said:

Mafia state

http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-20702018000300067&script=sci_arttext#fn7

The mafioso state and the fascist state are not mutually exclusive phenomenona and concepts, as per some authors, as historical trends and formations forming in political economies of certain political constellations in certain countries. 

For example the Frankfurt school Critical Theory thinkers and actual debates about this on universities during the zenith of WWII by cutting edge intellectual and political thinkers of that time regarding this subject actually illustrates the extent of these two phenomenona often intertwining and being almost one and the same:

Critical theory and the unfettered capitalism:

"In exile since the early 1930s, due to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, the Institute of Social Research found itself in the United States in the early 1940s. Since the beginning of his period as its director, Max Horkheimer had sustained that the task of the Institute was to analyze and critique the historical present.... 

the Institute organized a debate at Columbia University in November and December of 1941, which was attended by Friedrich Pollock, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirchheimer, Arcadius R. L. Gurland and Herbert Marcus.

The positions taken up within the Columbia debate can roughly be divided in two major groups.

"According to Pollock, the monopoly economy that followed the free market system of the 19th century was gradually transforming into State capitalism, conceived as a fusion of private monopolies and government intervention. In the words of Pollock, State capitalism meant “the transition from a predominantly economic to an essentially political era” (Pollock, 1941a, p. 207). Its central feature was the introduction of the planning principle into the economic process. Pollock argues that the planned economy lessened the risk of economic crises and increased social domination."

Neumann, Gurland and Kirchheimer developed their analyses in a closely bound way that deviated from Pollock’s interpretation:

"considering National Socialism to be a totalitarian system. Nevertheless, they insisted that it entailed a private monopoly economy, and not a State capitalist regime: even though the State had assumed authoritarian features, it continued to be capitalist. All the basic capitalist drives, such as the profit motive, were at work in Germany and capitalist contradictions were increasing rather than being dealt with. Cartelization and monopolization were not to be seen as a denial of competition, but rather as another form of it. According to these three and to Marcuse, National Socialism facilitated accumulation for big capital and acted as an intensifier of social contradictions"

At that time, Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, who did not take part in the debate as lecturers, were starting their collaboration that resulted in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, concluded in 1944. This book can, to a large extent, be seen as a response to the Columbia debate. But shortly before as well as in the years following the 1941 conferences, texts authored by both of them began:

"considering the authoritarian changeover in capitalism as representing the system freeing itself of its fetters or inhibitions [Hemmungen]"

In his 1939 article, “The Jews and Europe”, Horkheimer approaches Fascism:

"as an unfolding of free trade liberal society, as capitalism that has overcome its political constraints and made use of direct forms of control and violence over the ruled. He claims that “the totalitarian order is nothing else than its predecessor that has lost its inhibitions (Horkheimer, [1939] 1988, p. 116).

Horkheimer and Adorno argued that: "Nazism was not to be seen as a historical detour but rather as a consequence of capitalist drives. They understand fascism as a form of capitalism extended to its ultimate limits, as a return to practices of violence and oppression at the very roots of this system – a parallel can be made here with Marx’s primitive accumulation. This was followed by an attempt at ‘humanization’ through liberalism and social-democracy."

One important element in this interpretation of the unfettering of domination is Horkheimer and Adorno’s sketch of the racket theory. 

Horkheimer wrote a fragment, likely in the year 1942 (the same year he published his essay “Authoritarian State”), entitled “The rackets and the mind” ([~1940] 1985b), borrowing the term from the urban crime underworld (In American sociology, policy-making and the press of the 1920s, petty organized crime, which flourished in cities like Chicago, was referred to as racket) and applying it for his own interpretative purposes:

"In the hands of Horkheimer, rackets refer to closed groups that could be found throughout human history. “History = a struggle of rackets” wrote Horkheimer in one of his notebooks.

"Rackets distinguish between those who are within and those who are outside of their group, recognizing and protecting the insiders. In essence, rackets pursue particularistic goals. Even though Horkheimer thought that the racket pattern could have an extended historical background, the approach was conceived in order to depict the mechanisms of monopoly capitalist society constituted by groups possessing economic and political power, immersed in constant disputes and agreement-making."

"Horkheimer’s racket theory claims that monopoly capitalism is regulated in a mafia-like fashion." 

"Moreover, Horkheimer and Adorno saw the rackets as a subdivision (Untergliederung) of social classes, since the each social class is itself composed of ruling and weaker groups. Class division and opposition as proposed by Marx – bourgeoisie versus proletariat – must be reconceived in the monopoly period so as to recognize that, within the bourgeoisie, there exists a ruling elite that not only opposes the proletariat but also the weaker members of the class. For its part, the proletariat contains an upper echelon that negotiates with the elite connected to the monopoly, and whose interests oppose those of the rest of the proletariat."

"The concept of class, writes Adorno ([1942] 1972, p. 379), is as real and, at the same time, as fictitious as liberalism itself." 

"Racket theory highlights the “self-consciousness of the system in regard to its own perpetuation” (Idem, p. 386)

Furthermore, racket theory highlights the undemocratic character of narrowing and limiting the decision-making processes, which take place within increasingly exclusive groups. Economic and political concentration, which is a result of liberalism itself, unfolds as monopolization, and the rackets run the resulting social whole. Horkheimer and Adorno see the liberal period as one in which more direct and immediate forms of domination represented in the racket pattern weaken and a more ‘humanized’ capitalist rule prevails. Yet, the mafia-like form of rule under the rackets accords to the process of economic and political concentration that takes place in monopoly capitalism."

Capitalism today: cronyism, mafioso State, rackets:

"Following the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Western scholars and market actors disseminated the term crony capitalism, referring to the fact that the crisis “brought opaque business transactions to the forefront” (Khatri et al., 2006, p. 61).

According to the advocates of the crony capitalism approach, a “purported primary contributor to the crisis was the reportedly widespread practice whereby executives in Asian financial institutions funded questionable business transactions by family and friends” (Idem). Crony capitalism, as magazines such as The Economist and Asiaweek claimed, had “subverted economic competitiveness” (Idem, ibidem).

Naresh Khatri et al. define crony capitalism as:

“a reciprocal exchange transaction where party A shows favor to party B based on shared membership in a social network at the expense of party C’s equal or superior claim to the valued resource” (Idem, p. 62).

In the same line, Oh and Varcin proposed the notion of mafioso state in an article from the early 2000s that compared business practices and their relation to the state in South Korea and Turkey. 

Through the notion of mafioso state, they intended to more precisely address this relationship:

"When market actors seek political solutions to market issues, they may hire a lobbyist, a transaction that is unstable and runs the risk of going awry. A mafioso state exists when the state itself assumes the role of this third party. The lobbyist or hit man, as Oh and Varcin call him, is regarded as an agent who acts in a mafia-like fashion. In order to avoid utilizing these agents, the state itself becomes a powerful mafioso operating alongside the monopolist mafia (Idem, p. 717)."

Crony capitalism and the mafioso state clearly address late twentieth-century and contemporary developments in peripheral countries. In these countries, the condemnable intertwinement of business and the state is regarded as an imperfection in legal-rational domination and as a gap that is filled by other forms of rationality connected with traditional rule. And it is precisely for this reason that Weber’s discussion about patrimonialism is revived time and again to analyze these imperfections. 

One of the difficulties in considering cronyism as an aspect of capitalism relates to its ambiguous existence in terms of economic efficiency. Even though it does not receive public approval, it is often taken to be a necessary evil for guaranteeing that certain transformations or investments take place. The “revolving door”, as Salter calls it, is among the core aspects that mark the entanglements and the possibilities of crony relations. A number of almost incestuous relationships have been established, such as those between lobbyists and government... where the concept of lobbying is not as enshrined as in the North and so-called ‘cooling-off periods’ are not in place, i. e., there is no established amount of time before those who exit or enter a government post can assume a position within certain private enterprises or trusts."

Current events, have led us to reread Horkheimer and Adorno’s racket theory along with more recent discussions on crony capitalism and the mafioso state. In the light of these two extreme cases, we believe that contemporary capitalism has entered a new phase, which may be described as a higher stage of neoliberalism combined with more direct violence; and not only in these two countries, as right-wing authoritarian solutions to real or perceived crises are on the rise worldwide. 

"The racket pattern of closed groups competing for the booty (Adorno, [1942] 1972, p. 378) and using the state as a platform for facilitating or fulfilling their private goals is very discernible in the present day. As such, it is no coincidence that approaches such as crony capitalism and mafioso state have been recently proposed."

Concluding Remarks:

"Horkheimer saw monopoly capitalism of his time as ruled by rackets; it represented capitalism that had shed the fetters placed upon it by liberalism through the granting of rights, a respect for differences and the abdication of the use of violence. 

Yet, what has been central in a number of contemporary perspectives is the increase in noting that capitalism does not necessarily demand a democratic political system. This view, an important trait of critical theory, is particularly evident in Horkheimer’s racket theory. “In the true idea of democracy, which leads a repressed and subterranean existence among the masses, the notion of a racket-freed society never completely died out” (Horkheimer, 1985b, p. 291).

"Our effort in this paper has been to build on the interpretation brought forward by critical theory for analyzing contemporary capitalism. Critical theory analyses are strictly bound to a given temporal framework and do not lend themselves to replication. However, we believe that racket theory can inspire analyses of contemporary capitalism, and we present two current interpretations that we relate to it. The unfolding of capitalism since Horkheimer and Adorno’s writings from the 1940s seems to reinforce rather than discredit interpretations that approach it as a system that functions with a logic in line with mafias or cronies.

Although we may not be facing Fascism, such as that experienced by the first generation of critical theory, a feeling of astonishment still persists when dealing with many contemporary social changes, first and foremost the multifarious (re)emergence of authoritarian tendencies. Yet this alone hardly warrants the analogy and the reflexive movement we propose here. Far more pertinent is the idea that the present context is repeatedly being characterized as an exceptional situation, and that, soon or later, provided that the proper measures are taken, ‘normality’ shall be restored. The diagnoses we drew upon, stemming from different empirical examples, lead us to consider that crony capitalism is increasingly becoming a structural element, spreading and upholding different nuances of capitalism."

http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0103-20702018000300067&script=sci_arttext#fn7

 

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Fleetinglife