The Crimes of Empire?

Max B. Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net
Fri Sep 6 12:16:35 PDT 2002


It's wrong to judge things out of context, but if I do maybe someone could supply some.

I fail to see any connection between the "intellectual roots" of corporations, what I believe Adam Smith called joint stock companies, and Stalinism or fascism. It's hard to find any intellectual roots of Stalinism at all.

Legitimacy is a separate matter. Corporations are creatures of law, so if law is legitimate so are corporations. The fact that corps and totalitarianism are both hierarchical is pretty thin gruel.

mbs

Perhaps not, but he's said things which are close to that.

For example,

Corporations come from the same intellectual roots as the other

forms of modern totalitarianism, namely, Stalinism and fascism.

Corporations have no more legitimacy than any other kind of

totalitarian regime.

That's not equivalent to saying they are fascist, but it's not entirely unrelated either. (It being a pretty understandable misreading of *Chomksy* has, of course, little to do with how accurate it is per se.)

Best, Kendall Clark



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