News

Pan-Corporatism: Culture of Repression and Deprivatization.

by Antifascist

We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain free. (George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937)

I will discuss “corporatism” differently to understand another characteristic of corporatism other than the merging of Industry with the State—that other characteristic is corporatism's “repressive” quality. Let us examine the power of State Corporatism to use cultural values, norms, and customs to repress members of society. Marcuse calls this “surplus repression.” This repression is “surplus” because it goes beyond the basic repression of instincts required for civilization and survival. “Surplus” repression is required for streamlining tyrannical domination for exploitation and total control directly, or indirectly through proxy.

I use the term, “Pan” (the Greek word for “all”) to describe the all invasiveness that the corporation has in our personal lives—the personal life is “deprivatized” using classic marketing tools evolved by the public relations industry and polling think tanks. The living room and the bedroom are invaded by “public opinion” polls telling us what is and is not the norm. It is the total administration of our private life by outside forces that persuade us to sacrifice personal goals and dreams for the sake of endless manic production and the pursuit of monetary profit. Quite moments by the ocean that inspire the soul and re-generate creative energy are only rare and transitory just as personal happiness is transitory.

Even labor is designed to be exhausting so leisure “off hours” time is passive and promotes continued consumerism. So the personal inner life is “repressed” at the expensive of creativity (Adorno as Antidote). I am amazed not so much by the talent an artist might have since everyone is creative, but rather that such creativity is not completely destroyed, or repressed by the socialization process meant to manufacture authoritarian persons that unquestioningly accept legitimized authority and demand others to submit also.

The private personal life is the property of the parasitical corporation--a state created surrogate proxy for control--by virtue of its right to make profit from the life activities of its citizens (U.S.A., Inc.). Even gratuitous free personal time during unemployment is documented and scrutinized by State created privatized corporate administrative tyrannies maintaining a running worker profile and history to share with other private tyrannies. Surveillances by either a private tyranny, or a State agency are still an invasion of the private Human space—the private individual is always viewed as an object of production and exploitation. The fascist alliance of private corporate tyrannies and State authority is able to “deprivatize” individual Human existence (MATRIX). Any restriction placed on private corporations is circumvented by State power: correspondingly, private tyrannous corporations overcome any regulatory restriction by appealing to State power resulting in a total administrative-bureaucratic apparatus for planning, management and domination of every aspect of Human life (ChoicePoint has 10 billion records on individuals and businesses). Technological advances in cybernetic are not adopted to create human leisure time and reduce the necessity of wage labor, but are instead utilized to reinforce the work-income relation and streamline financial exploitation in the form of fees, fines, taxes, and total surveillance in a digital Police State. Not even the most repressive Communist totalitarian state has had this capacity of total bureaucratic-administration of private Life. Everything from one’s computer, to one’s buying habits, illnesses, education, and even one’s “free time“ belongs to the Corporation euphemistically as marketing research “data.” Privacy is an illusion, but the language of counterfeit privacy is all-pervasive as in “my democracy,” “your vote,” and “my supervisor.”

The urgent issue here is how government is using private industry as proxy to setup a global digital Police State (Venezuela Floridated). Cybernetics is the central element is construction of a surveillance state to control and monitor the actions and thoughts of its citizens. There is a swarm of activity and major revolutionary changes going on in the court systems for total administration of the private life. All the current legislative activity dealing with bankruptcy laws, tort reform, Supreme Court justice selection, and civil right laws are preparatory legislative groundwork to build a legal infrastructure for this digital police state (Surveillance on the Job). The media is silent. Like wheat growing in the field, one day soon it will be over our heads.

The Mind is de-mystified by the emphasis on technical thinking, or calculative thinking. True spirituality is the first casualty of total domination of the developing individual. The economic process is damaging to the individual's self image by labeling persons by their able to calculate and produce “results” according to the strict framework of corporate culture. Corporate business models go far beyond production and apply to all spheres of human existence. They legitimize their constructed proprietary meanings of efficient, educated, moral, successful and intelligent. Individual potential is arbitrarily limited by authoritarian expectation of mindless conformity and obedience for "market" needs--not human actualization. Psychological QI tests are designed to detect and enforce conformity, obedience, and stereotyped thinking that is both controllable and controlling. Rationality means the ability to control the production process and follow orders unquestionably. Good moral character is “obedience.” So domination becomes internal as well as external so that the individual internalizes these patterns of social control and acts in a way they believe that social powers and institutions require them to act. The subverted inner-self becomes self-deceptive, distorted, anxious, unhappy, and confusingly frustrated by becoming its own jailer (BTK)
(Psychopaths and the American Dream).

The body is de-sexualized through violence, and discipline for discipline’s sake to mold a “professional” person needed by corporate tyrannies to create a ready, submissive, and abundant labor force. The “gender police” make sure through peer pressure and economic punishment that conventional gender roles are maintained primarily for reproduction and not for pleasure, self-actualization, or self-fulfillment. Non-conformity to gender roles- especially masculine roles-is viewed by Authority as the ultimate act of rebellion precisely because it is the most private sphere of an individual’s life. Sexuality is localized to genitalia to de-sexualize the rest of the body for use as an instrument of production. Sexuality re-emerges in the psyche as the will to power, aggression, and exploitation. Sex depersonalized is tolerated as a commodity. The fascist state is interested in sexuality only as a mechanism for social control--an object of academic cultural research to explore sexual identity as an effective method of torture and personality profiling.

I think of the many billions of horses born and used as labor animals. They are born into the Harness, and live a life of toil and unfreedom, never to develop self-consciousness and become aware that their suffering is from the Harness. Likewise, our fellow Human Being is unconsciously stupidified in modern American society by a popular culture of moronization, bureaucratic repression, and Pan-Corporate Fascism.

Life could be as wonderful as our Dreams and as beautiful as Art if we only resolved to make it so.

Pan-Corporatism: Culture of Repression and Deprivatization.

by Antifascist

Further Reading