Big changes in the evolution of capitalism, the
basis of our social
contract, occurred just before the beginning of the twentieth century. As
British control of the world dissolved and other captialist countries began
to compete for it, huge corporations - large, integrated industrial and
financial firms - developed as the dominant economic actors. By their very
nature, they expanded beyond national bounds and seized the reins of global
production and consumption. Throughout the next hundred years, the
multinational or global corporations competed for complete control of daily
life everywhere. The winners, among them Citigroup, Bechtel, Carlyle
Group, CehvronTexaco, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman,
companies favored by national governments, threaten all concept of
democratic life, even survival.
"...imperialism occurred not simply through the policies of states
but also through the actions of corporations and the mechanisms of
trade, finance and investment. It involved a whole constellation
of class relation relations, including the nurturing of local
collaborators or comprador elements in the dependent societies.
Any explanation of how imperialsm worked thus necessitated a
description of an entire system or monopoly capitalism."
Harry Magdoff
Imperialism without colonies
Monthly Review Press, New York, 2003
The system of economic progress, capitalism, has produced the alliance,
some protestors say a pornographic union, between government and
corporations such as Bechtel to dominate and profit, by indiscriminate
violence if necessary. Bechtel not only profits from the war cleanup, but
promoted the war itself through advisory roles in the US government and by
contributing $1,297,465 to fderal campaigns and candidates between 1999 and
2002. It is no accident that George Bush, Sr, previous head of the CIA,
then U.S. President, now on the board of the Carlyle Group, and his
associate, Donald Rumsfeld, now his presidential son's Secretary of
Defense, support Bechtel's entry into Iraq as conquistador.
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