Economic Liberalism and Market Domination is the modus operandi of Imperial Power in the 21st century

Evidence suggests seismic shifts may be taking place in the political as well as technological landscapes of the world today the likes of which have not been witnessed since the 17th and 18th centuries. Although it is foolish to try to predict the outcome of such changes, democratic societies founded on universal suffrage, human rights, and the rule of law definitely appear to be under threat (Levitsky & Ziblatt 2018; Rich 2017; MacLean 2017). In the shadow of these economic, political, and technological developments, the physical environment is itself becoming less hospitable to biological life and this trend looks likely to intensify as the present millenium progresses. In the context of global climate change, it is gradually becoming accepted that the very survival of humanity may actually be at stake although most writers, scientists and activists understandably choose to focus on the prospects of retrieving the situation before it is too late (Flannery 2010; Gibson, Rose & Fincher 2015; Kaku 2018; Akhavan 2017; Oreskes & Conway 2014).xxxvii Current debates concerning sapiens’ relationships with the natural world are many, however, and undercut many anthropocentric assumptions about the world that have consistently been pedalled by humans to justify our actions throughout history. What can definitely be agreed, at least for the moment, is that planet Earth is the only home humans – as well as every other life form that we know – have. It would be presumptuous to suggest that all life on Earth will cease as a result of human impact, but it is nevertheless reasonable to conclude that dramatic changes will significantly alter the planet’s capacity to maintain a sprawling human population of more than seven billion people as well as sustain the habitats of the vast majority of other living creatures. In the context of political and economic developments, the last century has seen the central role of the Nation-State appear to have been both reworked and eroded. For if at the end of the 19th century, the role of collectively representing individual as well as collective human interests had been assumed by the Nation-State, by the beginning of the 21st century, the interlocked relationship between State and Nation have become significantly weakened and the position of individuals and society as a whole no longer appear to be the primary focus. This is evident in war events and the rise of civilian targets as well as in the evolution of general economic, tax, social welfare, labour and corporate regulation. The instrumental power of the State now appears to privilege the interests of global capital and the large multinational corporations that articulate it rather than “the people’s”. In this emerging scenario, the needs and necessities of “the people”, as can be said also of the needs and necessities of the biosphere in general, are subsumed to the interests and logics of capital. This, however, is only the latest elaboration of the underlying philosophy enshrining “star” fixated economic liberalism (Das 2015:15) that Western culture has doggedly pursued throughout modernity. At national level, the “rugged individualism” of liberalism has realised enormous economic and technological development and innovation but it has come at the expense of ever greater concentrations of wealth and power, environmental and human exploitation. As well as entrenching systemic inequality, economic liberalism has maintain an outward appearance of a broad commitment to the betterment and freedom of humanity in general through the individual. Compounding this, the regulatory systems established for globalisation allows corporations to run up enormous debt in the pursuit of profit but then enables them to shed such debt onto society when the things go sour. The shedding of privately accumulated debt as collective responsibility during times of recession has become an unavoidable consequence of capitalism’s boom/bust cycles and is usually justified by statements that the consequences of allowing such large corporations to go bankrupt are worse than the cost of bailing them out. With privately oriented liberal economics adopted as social policy, communities bear the risks while profits are disbursed to corporate stakeholders, or as Veroufakis puts it, sharing the burden of venture capital at the same time as enabling “public investments” to prop up or become a part of ever growing corporate empires (Veroufakis 2017). The healthy profits private interests accumulate then encourages further risktaking ‘innovations’ and so the cycle continues until such innovations overstep the mark and stock exchange credibility disappears thus unleashing the next crash. Encouraging individual enterprise and greed is, according to Adam Smith and other liberal thinkers, the most efficient way to improve the economic well-being of the community. So large and very large corporations have become the beneficiaries of collective largesse as corporate welfare (though not general social security) has become more prevalent. In practice this means that average taxpayers help line the pockets of the already rich and powerful, bringing into higher relief the fact that many multinational corporations often pay no or negligible rates of tax on income. The global trend towards lower company tax contrasts with the rising tax burden ordinary individuals are being asked to bear in terms of health, education, and social welfare. This exacerbates the shift in tax regimes from income to consumption taxes which obscures how those earning on lower incomes end up paying higher proportions of their salaries on indirect consumption taxes because taxes on goods and services are charged at the same rate irrespective of how much one earns. Add to that the generous allowances and subventions National governments avail to corporations in contrast to the stringent tax enforcement regimes individuals are subjected to, and the imbalance between people and corporate’ tax burdens is even more apparent. Now lets concede that rich corporations and wealthy individuals are best positioned to take advantage of tax avoidance and minimisation accounting practices (West 2019xxxviii) and even the most partial commentator cannot avoid the honest conclusion that inequality is embedded in global regulation that promotes the growing gap between those who have and those who have not.