THE GREAT LIE OF CAPITALISM: A CORPORATE MONSTER IN FREE MARKET ATTIRE
It passes itself off as the system of freedom, of individual initiative, of triumphant merit. It cloaks itself in glorious terms: growth, prosperity, opportunity. But dare to lift the heavy velvet of official rhetoric and what do you find? The same, old, putrid alliance between the throne and the altar, between political power and economic power, just with a new name and an expensive suit. Capitalism, as theorized, is a ghost. A noble ether that has never materialized. What we have, what is sold to us every day as the only possible economic truth, is a hybrid monster, a postmodern and hyper-technological mercantilism.
Do not call it capitalism. That term is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has ever opened an economics book without falling asleep after the first page. What dominates so-called Western democracies is a corporatist system, an unwritten but ironclad blood pact between the halls of government power and the skyscrapers of financial and industrial power. It is an obscene ballet where the State is not the referee, but the first, tireless promoter. It distributes privileges, grants de facto monopolies, uses laws to build barriers that protect the already-installed colossi and crush the embryo of competition.
And the big corporations? Ah, they no longer compete in the market. No. They compete in the corridors of power. Their skill lies not in producing better goods at cheaper prices, but in securing subsidies, exemptions, favorable regulations, bailouts when the game gets dangerous. It is socialism for the losers who are too big to fail, and ruthlessly "free" for everyone else, for the small, for those who don't have an army of lobbyists in Washington, Brussels, or Rome. Their profits are parasitic, because they spring not from efficiency or innovation, but from having captured the State and diverted its levers for their own exclusive advantage.
Neoliberalism? A mask. An intellectual fig leaf to cover the shame of a return to the worst kind of clientelist statism. It is the doctrine that provided the philosophical cover for this legalized robbery, passing off deregulation—which allows predators to devour prey—as "freedom." They convinced everyone that the State is the enemy, only to be able to privatize it piece by piece and sell it to the highest bidder among their friends. It is the most colossal sleight of hand in history: while it stares you in the eye screaming against bureaucracy, with the other hand it is already signing the decree that transfers wealth from the public to the private sector, but always into the same, usual, voracious pockets.
This system does not create widespread wealth; it extracts it. It does not build; it plunders. It is a perfect machine for the concentration of wealth and the destruction of true entrepreneurship. The man who opens a shop is strangled by taxes and levies conceived for him, while the global giant negotiates with the tax authority and gets credit at zero interest. Where is the freedom? Where is the merit? It is a cruel joke, told by paid-off university professors and complacent newspapers.
The true free market, the one where a genius idea in a garage can overthrow the established order, has been murdered. And its hired killers are precisely those who wave its flag. We live in the era of crony capitalism, the economy of favors. And the greatest tragedy is that we have even stopped imagining that there could be an alternative to this rigged game.
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🦅 Cheyenne Isa ₿ 🦅
