The United States of America used to be the home of the brave and the land of the free. Not anymore. Now, it is the home of the rich and fatuous and the land of unfettered greed. With the Donald Trump administration in place, capitalism once again has run rampant.
Historically, capitalism evolved from the mercantilism of the early modern era, from the 16th Century to the 18th Century. Mercantilism involved a group of entrepreneurs who formed a trading company and subscribed a specific amount of money to purchase shares in whatever venture the company proposed. If the trading venture proved successful, the investors received a return on their investment in proportion to the number of shares they held. If the venture failed, the investors lost everything. Trade was a risky business in those days, and one had to weigh all the factors involved.
Capitalism differed from mercantilism in that (1) subscriptions were replaced by purchases of stock in a company, (2) mostly manufacturing was involved, (3) a stock market was established to monitor the value of a given stock according to various external factors, and (4) the stockholders profited or lost as the value of their portfolios changed from day to day, but did not necessarily lose their entire investment. A stock at times could be quite volatile, resulting in either bull markets (booms, or profitability) or bear markets (busts, or loss).
Capitalists claim to have been inspired by the book The Wealth of Nations, written by Adam Smith and published in 1776. The subsequent history of capitalism, both in the U.S. and in other Western nations, clearly suggests that they did not read Smith very carefully or, more likely, perverted his ideas. Smith was one of the seminal writers of the 18th-Century Enlightenment, that era which strongly influenced the Founders of the new Republic in the Americas. Whereas most of the Enlightenment figures dealt with political science and the law, he concentrated on the dismal science, economics; he spoke, not to the wealth of individuals but to the wealth of humankind as a whole. He proposed a system of public investments by government so that the lives and well-being of the people would be improved (cf. the appropriate phrase in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution).
One of Smith’s devout disciples was Alexander Hamilton, the new Republic’s first U.S. treasurer. He endeavored to translate Smith’s ideas into actions by using the public purse to make the necessary investments. His chief accomplishment was to establish a National Bank to receive government revenues, to pay the Nation’s bills, and to create public works. He was opposed every step of the way by the capitalists who saw government as an unwanted competitor.
The economic history of the United States has been a long series of unmitigated disasters. There have been as many (if not more) recessions and depressions as there have been wars in which America has participated. And, in point of fact, more often than not, economic history and military history have gone hand in hand as capitalist greed fomented the former and profited from the latter. Americans never have lived in a democracy so much as they have lived in a plutocracy.
Now comes the Donald Trump administration which wants to return the U.S. to the halcyon days of the 19th-Century robber barons. The recent monster tax cuts are just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the scenes, the president’s minions are busily and cheerfully dismantling the administrative state, i.e. reversing every financial regulation imposed by previous administrations. Their particular target has been the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the government’s watchdog, so that corporate bottom lines will increase and the election-campaign contributions will continue to flow.
To counter this reversal, the Coddington Agenda recommends the following:
• Revive the regulations cut by the Trumpians and incorporate them into the rule of law.
• Re-establish the National Bank as the sole depository for all Federal revenues and as the lender of choice for all public and private loans.
• Democratize the Federal Reserve System and attach it to the National Bank.
• Replace the Securities and Exchange Commission with a Federal Economic Planning and Development Commission.
• Abolish all stock markets, commodity and currency exchanges, and boards of trade and return economic activity to pre-capitalist methods.
Just a thought.