CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE ---Episode 14

 THE WHOLE POINT OF PRIVATIZATION IS TO TRANSFER 
 WEALTH FROM THE PUBLIC PURSE --- WHICH COULD 
 REDISTRIBUTE IT TO EVEN OUT SOCIAL INEQUALITIES
 ----- TO PRIVATE HANDS TO INCREASE THE BOTTOM
 LINE OF THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY RICH 


   The proponents of corporate libertarianism damned near shit in their knickers when the Soviet empire finally keeled over and died in 1989. They viewed the demise as an opportunity to press forward with their cause. They whooped and hollered over the thought that the world was finally becoming a global consumer society. 
   The governments and corporations of the West quickly reached out to urge Eastern Europe  and the countries of the former Soviet Union to embrace the lessons of Western success by opening their 
borders and greening their economies. Armies of Western experts were fielded to help these and other "transition states" write laws that would prepare the way for Western corporations to penetrate their economies. 
 Simultaneously, the industrial West intensified its effort to create a unified global economy through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), establish a powerful World Trade Organization (WTO), and create regional markets through such initiatives as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Maastricht (the European common market), and the Asia-Pacific Economic Community (APEC). Anxious to please powerful corporate interests, feeling Robert Rubin's tongue in his ear, and otherwise clueless about what else to do, President Bill Clinton embraced economic globalization as both his jobs program and his foreign policy.
   Marxist socialism died an ignoble death. However, it is no more accurate to attribute the West's economic and political triumph to the unfettered marketplace than it is to blame the U.S.S.R.'s failure on an activist state. Contrary to the boastful claims of corporate libertarians, the West did not prosper in the post-World War II period by rejecting the state in favor of the market. Rather, it prospered by rejecting extremist ideologies of both Right and Left in favor of DEMOCRATIC PLURALISM : a system of governance based on a pragmatic, institutional balance among the forces of government, market, and civil society. 
   Driven by the imperatives of depression and war, America emerged from Word War II with government, market, and civil society working together in a healthier, more dynamic, and more creative balance than at any time since the pre-Civil War years. A relatively egalitarian income distribution created an enormous mass market, which in turn drove aggressive industrial expansion. America certainly was far from socialist, but neither was it 100 percent laissez-faire capitalist. We might more accurately call it pluralist. This is the America that readily withstood the challenges posed by the Soviet empire to emerge as the Cold War victor. The America of democratic pluralism and equality defeated communism, not "free" market America. 
   Although the specifics differed, similar patterns of democratic pluralism prevailed in most of the Western industrial democracies. Some moved more toward public ownership and management of nationalized industries than others but within a pluralistic framework in which both market and government were strong players. 
   In contrast, the Soviet system embraced an ideological extremism so strongly statist that the market and the private ownership of property were virtually eliminated. The same ideology resulted in eliminating the civic sector's essential public oversight role. This left only a hegemonic and unaccountable state. Lacking the pluralistic balance and civic accountability afforded by the civic and market sectors, the Soviet economy was both unresponsive to popular needs and inefficient in the use of resources. The consequent suffering of the Soviet people was not a consequence of an activist state. It was the consequence of an extremist ideology that excluded everything except the state. 
   The West is now on a similar extremist ideological path ; the difference is that we are captive to detached and unaccountable corporations rather than to a detached unaccountable state. It is ironic that the closer the corporate libertarians move us toward their ideological ideal of laissez-faire capitalism, the less responsive the economy becomes to the real needs of people and planet. Ironically, the reasons for the failure are virtually identical to the reasons the Marxist economies failed : 

*   Both lead to the concentration of economic power in unaccountable centralized institutions --- the state in the case of Marxism, and the transnational corporations in the case of capitalism.

*   Both create economic systems that destroy the living systems of the earth in the name of economic progress. 

*   Both produce a disempowering dependence on mega-institutions that erodes the social capital on which the efficient function of markets, governments, and society depends. 

*   Both take a narrow economistic view o human needs that undermines the sense of spiritual connection to the earth and to the community of life essential to maintaining the moral fabric of society. 

   An economic system can remain viable only as long as society has mechanisms to counter the concentration and abuse of both state and market power and the erosion of the natural, social, and moral capital that such abuses commonly exacerbate. Democratic pluralism isn't a perfect answer to the governance problem, but it seems to be the best we have discovered in our imperfect world. 


   

EMMA AND THE OTHER PHILISTINES --- Episode 10

             More About Flaubert's Use Of Structural Transition 
             {Continuing With Scene Where Leon Leaves For Paris} 


     Emma's apparent virtue frightens off Leon so that when he leaves for Paris the way is clear for a more forward lover. The transition is going to be from Emma's illness following Leon's departure to her meeting with Rodolphe and then the scene of the county fair. The meeting is a first-class illustration of structural transition which took Flaubert many days to compose. His intention is to introduce Rodolphe Boulanger, a local country gentleman, at heart exactly the same kind of cheap vulgarian as his predecessor, but with a dashing, brutal charm about him. The transition goes as follows : Charles hd invited his mother to come to Yonville in order to decide what to do about Emma's condition, for she is pining away. The mother comes, decides that Emma reads too many books, evil novels, and undertakes to discontinue Emma's subscription at the lending library when she passes through Rouen on her way home. The mother leaves on a Wednesday, which is the market day at Yonville. Leaning out of the window to watch the Wednesday crowds, Emma sees a gentleman in a green velvet coat(green is what Charles picks for her pall) coming to Bovary's house with a farm boy who wants to be bled. In the study downstairs when the patient faints Charles shouts for Emma to come down. (It should be noted that Charles is consistently instrumental, in a really fateful way, in introducing Emma to her lovers or helping her in continuing to see them.) It is Rodolphe who watches (with the reader) the following lovely scene : "Madame Bovary began taking off his tie. The strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and for a few minutes her light fingers kept running about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief ; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. The yokel revived . . . 
   Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the movement she made in sinking to a squatting position, her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) ballooned out around her on the stone floor of the room ; and as Emma, stooping, swayed  little on her haunches as she stretched out her arms, the ballooning stuff f her skirt dimpled with the inflections of her body." 

                           THE COUNTY FAIR EPISODE 

   The county fair episode is instrumental in bringing Rodolphe and Emma together. On July 15, 1853, Flaubert wrote :"Tonight I have made a preliminary sketch of my great scene of the county fair. It will be huge --- about thirty manuscript pages. This is what I want to do. While describing that rural show (where all the secondary characters of the book appear, speak, and act) I shall pursue . . . between its details and on the front of the stage a continuous dialogue between a lady and a gentleman who is turning his charm on her. Moreover, I have in the middle of the solemn speech of a councilor and at the end something I have quite finished writing, namely a newspaper article by Homais, who gives an account of the festivities in his best philosophic, poetic, and progressive style." The thirty pages of the episode took three months to write. In another letter, of September 7, 1853, Flaubert noted :"How difficult it is . . . A tough chapter. I have therein all the characters of my book intermingled in action and in dialogue, and . . . a big landscape that envelops them.  If I succeed it will be most symphonic." On October 12, 1853  : "If ever the values of a symphony have been transferred to literature, it will be in this chapter of my book. It must be a vibrating totality of sounds. One should hear simultaneously the bellowing of the bulls, the murmur of love, and the phrases of the politicians . The sun shines on it, and there are gusts of wind that set big white bonnets astir. . . I obtain dramatic movement merely through dialogue interplay and character contrast." 
   As if this were a show in young love's honor, Flaubert brings all the characters together in the marketplace for a demonstration of style : this is what the chapter really is about. The couple, Rodolphe (symbol of bogus passion) and Emma (the victim), are linked up with Homais (the bogus guardian of the poison of which she will die), Lheureux (who stands for the financial ruin and shame that will rush her to the jar of arsenic), and there is Charles (connubial comfort). 
   In grouping the characters at the beginning of the county fair, Flaubert does something especially significant in regard to the moneylending draper Lheureux and Emma. Some time before, it will be recalled , Lheureuxwhen offering Emma his services---articles of wear and if need be, money ---was curiously concerned with the illness of Tellier, the proprietor of the cafe opposite the inn. Now the landlady of the inn tells Homais, not without satisfaction, that the cafe opposite is going to close. It is clear that Lheureux has discovered that the proprietor's health is getting steadily worse and that it is high time to get back from him the swollen sums he has loaned him, and as a result poor Tellier is now bankrupt. "What an appalling disaster!" exclaims Homais, who, says Flaubert ironically, finds expressions suitable to all circumstances. But there is something behind this irony. For just as Homais exclaims "What an appalling disaster!" in his fatuous, exaggerated, pompous way, at the same time the landlady points across the square, saying, "And there goes Lheureux, he is bowing to Madame Bovary, she's taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm." The beauty of this structural line is that Lheureux, who has ruined the cafe owner, is thematically linked here with Emma, who will perish because of Lheureux as much as because of her lovers ---and her death really will be an "appalling disaster" The ironic and the pathetic are beautifully intertwined in Flaubert's novel. 

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE---Episode 13

                              ECONOMIC DEMAGOGUERY---continued

   A belief in the possibility of unlimited growth is the very foundation of the ideological doctrine of corporate libertarianism, because to accept the reality of physical limits is to accept the need to limit greed and acquisition in favor of economic justice and sufficiency. This would require a fundamental reorientation of economic priorities to focus on equity rather than growth. 
   The propensity of neoclassical economists to choose their assumptions to fit their conclusions is revealed with particular clarity in the computer simulations they use to demonstrate the economic benefits of lowering trade barriers. During the public debates on the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA ) , the proponents of the agreement aggressively brandished the results of computer simulations, known as general equilibrium models, as proof that NAFTA would create large numbers of new jobs for each of the participating NAFTA countries : Canada, Mexico, and the United States. 
   Economist James Stanford examined the models used to generate these projections and found that each one incorporated assumptions from classical trade theory sharply at odds with economic reality. To illustrate the contradictions, he related the following hypothetical discussion between an auto worker in the midwestern United States and one of the pro-NAFTA economic modelers. The worker related to the modeler her fears that : 

    If NAFTA is approved, Ford will surely move its Taurus plant to Mexico where it can hire workers for a tenth of my pay with no independent union and export cars back to the United States. With the labor market already depressed in this part of  the country I don't see any prospect of finding a job at comparable pay.

   The economic modeler, looking surprised, assures her that he is an expert on the subject of trade and that her fears are entirely unfounded: 

     Don't worry. I've constructed a computer simulation that shows you will actually benefit from the trade agreement because of the new jobs NAFTA will create in America. Here's how it works. In my model I assume capital is immobile. Therefore, Ford cannot move its plant to Mexico. Nor would it want to, because I assume unit labor costs are the same in both countries and in my model Americans have a clear preference for U.S.-made products, even if they are more expensive.
   My model also assumes full employment and specifies that anything imported to the U.S. from Mexico must be balanced by American exports, so new export industries will necessarily spring up here to replace any industries that might be displaced by Mexican imports. Since you earn above-average wages at Ford, you obviously possess valuable skills. With full employment you will certainly find another job very shortly in one of these new export industries, probably with higher pay than your current job. So NAFTA will be great for you. 

   A worker confronted with such an explanation might conclude that the economic modeler had just arrived from an alien planet with little knowledge of affairs on Earth. Although the discussion is hypothetical, the assumptions articulated by the economist (in bold type identification) are not. Each of them is built into one or more of the economic models that trade experts used to prove that the United States would realize employment gains from NAFTA. In comparing the models and their results, Stanford found a direct relationship between unrealistic assumptions and favorable job projections---the less realistic the assumptions, the more optimistic the projections. The more realistic models predicted either negative or negligible economic consequences for at least one of the partners.
   Those who use these models to press their case make no mention of the underlying assumptions. The misrepresentations are so flagrant and persistent that one sometimes suspects an intent to misinform the public. For example, during the NAFTA debates, the unabashedly pro-free trade New York Times took the unusual step of presenting a trade economics primer on its front page. The primer provided a textbook explanation of the theory of comparative advantage to bolster its editorial position in support of the NAFTA legislation. No mention was made, however, of the underlying assumptions of the theory, let alone of how those assumptions diverge from reality. Letters submitted by readers to the editor of the New York Times pointing out the omission were not printed. 
   Those who engage in such distortion lend legitimacy to flawed economic policies that advantage the greediest among us to the disadvantage of the rest. 


      HOW THE CORPORATE LIBERTARIANS JUSTIFY THE
                                              INJUSTICE 

   The moral philosophers of market liberalism perpetuate similar distortions by neglecting the distinction between the rights of property and the rights of people. Indeed, they equate the freedom and rights of individuals with market freedom and property rights. The freedom of the market is the freedom of those with money. When rights are a function property rather than personhood, only those with property have rights.

   It is a basic premise of democracy that each individual has equal rights before the law and an equal voice in political affairs --- one person, one vote. We can rightfully look to the market as a democratic arbiter of rights and preferences only to the extent that money and property are equitably distributed.  Although a market can allocate efficiently with less than equality, when 358 billionaires enjoy a combined net worth of $760 billion---equal to the net worth of the poorest 2.5 billion of the world's people --- the market is neither just nor efficient and it loses all legitimacy as a democratic institution. 
   Publications such as Fortune, Business Week, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist---all ardent advocates of corporate libertarianism --- rarely if ever praise an economy for its progress toward eliminating poverty or achieving greater equity. Rather, they regularly evaluate the performance of economies by the number of millionaires and billionaires they produce, the competence of managers by the cool dispassion with which they fire thousands of employees, the success of individuals by how many millions of dollars they acquire in a year, and the success of companies by the global reach of their power and their ability to dominate global markets. 
   Take for example, the cover story of the July 5, 1993, issue of Forbes, trumpeting the extraordinary accomplishments of the free market under the banner "Meet the World's Newest Billionaires" :

     As disillusion with socialism and other forms of statist economics spreads, private, personal initiative is being released to seek its destiny. Wealth, naturally, follows. The two big openings for free enterprise in this decade have come in Latin America and the Far East. Not surprisingly, the biggest clusters of new billionaires on our list have risen from the ferment of these two regions. Eleven new Mexican billionaires in two years, seven more from ethnic Chinese. 

   Taking a slightly more populist view, Business Week presented a special report titled "A Millionaire a Minute" in its November 29, 1993, issue. It included this breathless account of hat the free market has accomplished in Asia : 

     Wealth. To most Asians just one generation ago, it meant moving to the U.S.----or selling natural resources to Japan. But now, East Asia is generating its own wealth on a speed and scale that probably is without historical precedent. The number of non-Japanese Asian multimillionaires is expected to double to 800,000 by 1996. . . East Asia will surpass Japan in purchasing power within a decade. And with the savings increasing $550 billion annually it is becoming the world's biggest source of liquid capital. "In Asia," says Olarn Chaipravat, chief executive of Siam Commercial Bank, "money is everywhere." . . . There are new markets for everything from Mercedes Benz cars to Motorola mobie phones to Fidelity mutual funds. . . To find the nearest precedent, you need to rewind U.S. history 100 years to the days before strong unions, securities watchdogs and antitrust laws. 

   Such stories do not simply glorify the pursuit of greed, they perversely elevate it to the level of a religious mission. Never mind that although a few Asians have made vast fortunes and a tiny minority of Asians have risen to the overconsumer class, the suffering of the 675 million Asians who live in absolute poverty continues unabated. In a special 1994 issue, "21st Century Capitalism," Business Week confirmed that market economics is a class issue and that corporate libertarians are clear as to whose class interests they are advancing : 

     The death throes of communism clearly gave birth to the new era, leaving most nations with only one choice ---to join. . . the market economy. . . Almost 150 years following the publication of the Communist Manifesto, and more than half a century after the rise of totalitarianism, the bourgeoise has won. 

   It seems the corporate libertarians are a god deal more concerned with making money for the rich than with meeting human needs. Even the oft-cited claim of neoclassical economics to "value-free objectivity" supports this bias as it rests on the questionable premise that a decision is objective and value free if it is based solely on financial return. Never mind that such calculations almost always work to the advantage of those who have money to which the returns are being calculated at the expense of those without money. 




   

EMMA AND THE OTHER PHILISTINES---Episode 9

                           Continuing With Structural Transition 

   In Yonville just before Leon leaves for Paris, a more complex structural transition takes place from Emma and her mood to Leon and his, and then to his departure. While making this transition Flaubert, as he does several times in the book, takes advantage of the structural meanderings of the transition to review a few of his characters, picking up and rapidly checking, as it were, some of their traits. We start with Emma  returning home after her frustrating interview with the priest(seeking to calm the fever that Leon has aroused), annoyed that all is calm in the house while within she is tumult. Irritably, she pushes away th advances of her young daughter Berthe, who falls and cuts her cheek. Charles hastens to Homais, the druggist, for some sticking plaster which he affixes to Berthe's cheek. He assures Emma that the cut is not serious but she chooses not to come down to dinner and, instead, remains with Berthe until the child falls asleep. After dinner Charles returns the sticking plaster and stays at the pharmacy where Homais and his wife discuss with him the dangers of childhood. Taking Leon aside, Charles asks him to price in Rouen the making of a daguerrotype of himself that in his pathetic smugness he proposes to give to Emma. Homais suspects that Leon is having some love affair in Rouen , and the innkeeper Madame Lefrancois questions the tax collector Binet about him. Leon's talk with Binet helps, perhaps, to crystallize his weariness at loving Emma with no result. His cowardice at changing his place is reviewed, and then he makes up his mind to go to Paris. Flaubert has attained what he wanted, and the flawless transition is established from Emma's mood to Leon's mood and his decision to leave Yonville. Later, we shall find another careful transition when Rodolphe Boulanger is introduced. 

      ________________________________________________


{ On January 15, 1853, as he was about to begin part two, Flaubert wrote to Louise Colet : "It has taken me five days to write one page . . . What troubles me in my book is the insufficiency of the so-called amusing element. There is little action. But I maintain that images are action. It is harder to sustain a book's interest by this means., but if one fails it is the fault of style. I have now lined up five chapters of my second part in which nothing happens. It is a continuous picture of small-town life and of an inactive romance, a romance that is especially difficult to paint because it is simultaneously timid and deep, but alas without any inner wild passion. Leon, my young lover, is of a temperate nature. Already in the first part of the book I had something of this kind : my husband loves his wife somewhat in the same way as my lover does. Both are mediocrities in the same environment, but still they have to be differentiated. If I succeed, it will be a marvelous bit, because it means painting color upon color and without well-defined tones." Everything, says, Flaubert, is a matter of style, or more exactly of the particular turn and aspect one gives to things. 


   Emma's vague promise of happiness coming from her feeling for Leon innocently leads to Lheureux (ironically a well-chosen name, "the happy one," for the diabolical engine of fate). Lheureux, the draper and moneylender, arrives with the trappings of happiness. In the same breath he tells Emma confidentially that he lends money ; asks after the health of a cafe keeper, Tellier, whom he presumes her husband is treating ; and says that he, too, will have to consult the doctor one day about a pain in his back. All these premonitions, artistically speaking. Flaubert will plan it in such a way that Lheureux will lend money to Emma, as he had lent money to Tellier, and will ruin her as he ruins Tellier before the old fellow dies ; moreover, he will take his own ailments to the famous doctor who in a hopeless attempt is called to treat Emma after she takes poison. This is the planning of a work of art.
   Desperate with her love for Leon, "Domestic mediocrity drove her to luxurious fancies, connubial tenderness to adulterous desires." Daydreaming of her school days in the convent, "she felt herself soft and quite deserted. like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it." { About the scene with the cure' Flaubert wrote to Louise Colet in mid-April 1853 : "At last I am beginning to see a glimmer of light in that damned dialogue of the prism priest scene . . . I want to express the following situation : my little woman in a fit of religious emotion goes to the village church ; at its door she finds th parish priest. Although stupid, vulgar, this priest of mine is a good, even excellent fellow ; but his mind dwells entirely on physical things (the troubles of the poor, lack of food or firewood), and he does not perceive moral torments, vague mystic aspirations ; he is very chaste and practices all his duties. The episode is to have at most six or seven pages without a single reflection or explanation coming from the author (all in direct dialogue). " We shall note that this episode is composed after the counterpoint method : the cure' answering answering what he thinks Emma is saying, or rather answering imaginary stock questions in a routine conversation with a parishioner, and she is voicing a kind of complaining inner note that he does not heed ---and all the time the children are fooling in the church and distracting the good priest's attention from the little he has to say to her. 

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE ---Episode 12

    THE BETRAYAL OF ADAM SMITH AND DAVID RICARDO
                                             (A Continuation) 


    We now move on from Adam Smith to David Ricardo, and discuss how corporate libertarians confuse the truth with fiction. We've seen the way libertarians contradict the truth of what Adam Smith advocated. Now we look at David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, which corporate libertarians regularly invoke as proof of their argument that unrestrained free trade advances the public good. This theory, originally articulated by Ricardo in 1817, provides an elegant demonstration that, under certain conditions, trade between two countries works to the benefit of the people of both. Three conditions, among others, are fundamental to this outcome : (1) capital must not be allowed to cross national borders from a high-wage to a low-wage country, (2) trade between the participating countries must be balanced, and (3) and each country must have full employment. 
   When these conditions are met, investment in each country will tend to flow toward those activities in which each has a comparative advantage based on differences in their natural endowments. To use Ricardo's example, because of difference in climate it may be relatively more efficient to produce wine in Portugal and woolen goods in England. In the event of open trade between the two, the hapless vintner in England who finds himself unable to compete with imported Portugese wines will convert his grape fields to pasture lands for sheep and his winery to a woolens mill employing the same people. 
   In Ricardo's time, most trade involved the exchange of finished national goods, produced by national enterprises. Today, products are commonly assembled using components and services produced in many different countries. Global corporations, rather than national companies, are likely to be the coordinating units, with the result that roughly a third of the $3.3 trillion in goods and services traded internationally in 1990 consisted of transactions within a singe firm. A growing portion of international is intraindustry, meaning that countries are exchanging the same product --- as when the United States and Japan sell automobiles to each other --- making it difficult to argue that natural comparative advantage is involved and rendering trade theory irrelevant in assessing the consequent costs and benefits. 

   In the pursuit of free trade, corporate libertarians actively promote the removal of restrictions on the transfer of factories across borders and the free international movement of money, belittle trade balances as irrelevant, and look to unemployment as a beneficial brake on inflation --- in each instance disregarding essential conditions of the trade theory they invoke to support their cause. In truth, the "trade agreements"advocated by corporate libertarians are not about trade ; they are more about economic integration. Although the theory of comparative advantage applies to balanced trade between otherwise independent national economies, a very different theory --- the theory of downward leveling --- applies when national economies are integrated. 
   When capital is confined within the national borders of trading partners, it must flow to those industries in which its home country has a comparative advantage. When the economies are merged, capital flows to whatever locality offers the maximum opportunity to externalize costs through cash subsidies, tax breaks, substandard pay and working conditions, and lax environmental standards. Income is thus shifted from workers to investors, and costs are shifted from investors to the community. It seems a common practice for corporate libertarians to justify their actions based on theories that apply only in the world that by their actions they seek to dismantle. 
   Economist Neva Goodwin suggests that neoclassical economists have invited this distortion and misuse of economic theory by drawing narrow boundaries around their field that exclude most political and institutional reality. She characterizes the neoclassical school of economics as the political economy of Adam Smith minus the political and institutional analysis of Karl Marx: 

     The classical political economy of Adam Smith was a much broader, more humane subject than the economics that is taught in universities today. . . For at least a century it has been virtually taboo to talk about economic power in the capitalist context ; that was a Marxist idea. The concept of class was similarly banned from discussion. 

Adam Smith was as acutely aware of issues of power and class as he was of the dynamics of competitive markets. However, the neoclassical economists and the neo-Marxist economists bifurcated his holistic perspective on the political economy, one taking those portions of the analysis that favored the owners of property, and the other taking those that favored the sellers of labor. Thus, the neoclassical economists left out Smith's considerations of the destructive role of power and class, and the neo-Marxists left out the beneficial functions of the market. Both advanced extremist social experiments on a massive scale that embodied a partial vision of society, with disastrous consequences. 

       THE DEMAGOGUERY OF U.S. TRADE AGREEMENTS 

   On the evening of December 1, 1994, a lame-duck session of the U.S Senate approved by a margin of seventy-six to twenty-four the Uruguay round agreement of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that created the World Trade Organization. Responding to their corporate financial sponsors, a broad coalition of Republican and Democratic senators supported the measure in defiance of widespread and growing opposition among those Americans familiar with the agreement and its threat to jobs, the environment, and democracy. The strong and unequivocal backing of the agreement by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore (and their friends at Goldman Sachs, et al) deepened the chasm between them and their core labor and environmental constituencies. 
   C-SPAN, a cable television news channel, held a telephone call-in session following the vote. Doug Harbrecht, the trade editor of Business Week, was the guest resource person. As caller after caller phoned in to express outrage at the politicians who voted for the agreement in support of big-money interests and total disregard of the of the popular will, Harbrecht  commented that the pro-GATT position represented impeccable economics but bad politics. As did many of his colleagues, Harbrecht mistook free-market ideology for good economics.  The global economic integration advanced through GATT and the World Trade Organization is at odds with the most basic principles of market economics and puts in place an economic system designed to self-destruct at an enormous cost to human societies. The can scarcely be considered the practice of "impeccable" economics. 
   How can neoclassical economists advocate economic integration if it advances conditions that are at odds with those required for efficient market function ? An important part of the answer is found in their legendary ability TO ASSUME AWAY REALITY.  Anyone who has dealt with economists to any extent know that they have n unlimited ability to assume. When the real world diverges from the conditions necessary to support their preferred policy options, economic rationalists are prone to solve the conflict by assuming the conditions that support their recommendations. 
   Take the case of the obvious reality that the human economy is embedded in and dependent on the natural environment. As far back as 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus suggested that environmental limits might make population growth a problem for the future of humanity. Neoclassical economists have dealt with this inconvenience by adopting an analytical model that assumes economies consist of isolated, wholly self-contained, circular flows of exchange values (labor, capita,. and goods)between firms and households without reference to the environment. In other words, they avoid the problem of environmental limits by creating a model that assumes the environment doesn't exist. They then conclude from this model that the economy does not depend on the environment and dismiss those who challenge the possibility of infinite growth on a finite planet with the stinging epithet "Neo-Malthusianism ! " 


   

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE ----Episode 11

        CORPORATIONS LOVE TO EXTERNALIZE COSTS 

   Neva Goodwin, ecological economist, head of the Global Development and Environmental Institute at Tufts University, and an advocate of cost internalization, puts it bluntly : "Power is largely what externalities are about. What's the point of having power, if you can't use it to externalize your costs---to make them fall on someone else ?" { Recall "economies of scale," a non-economists's  term for theft.} 
   Corporate libertarians tirelessly inform us of the benefits of trade based on the theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. What they don't mention is that the benefits the trade theories predict assume the local or national ownership of capital BY PERSONS DIRECTLY ENGAGED IN ITS MANAGEMENT. Indeed, these same conditions are fundamental to Adam Smith's famous assertion in The Wealth of Nations that the invisible hand of the market translates the pursuit of self-interest into a public benefit. Note that the following is the only mention of the famous invisible hand in the entire 1,000 pages of The Wealth of Nations : 

     By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he (the entrepreneur) intends only his own security, and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and his is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. 

   Smith assumed a natural preference on the part on the part of the entrepreneur to invest at home where he could keep a close eye on his holdings. Of course, this was long before jet travel, telephone, fax machines, and the Internet. Because local investment provides local employment and produces local goods for local consumption using local resources, the entrepreneur's natural inclination contributes to the vitality of the local economy. And because the owner and the enterprise are both local they are more readily held to local standards. Even on pure business logic, Smith firmly opposed the absentee ownership of companies.

     The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own,it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own . .. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less in the management of the affairs of such a company. 

   Smith believed the efficient market is composed of small, owner-managed enterprises located in the communities where the owners reside. Such owners normally share in the community's values and have a personal stake in the future of both the community and the 
enterprise. In the global corporate economy, footloose money moves across national borders at the speed of light, society's assets are entrusted to massive corporations lacking any local or national allegiance, and management is removed from the real owners by layers of investment institutions and holding companies. 
         

Corporations Are Not Humans : Not Even Close ---Episode 10

               The Corporate Libertarian Alliance ----continued

PROPERTY RIGHTS ADVOCATES : Ardent property rights advocates, sometimes called "market liberals,"commonly present themselves as libertarians dedicated to the defense of individual rights and freedom. While true libertarians seek to defend individual freedom against intrusion from coercive institutions of any kind, market liberals are mostly concerned with protecting the rights from public accountability. This highly elitist ideology in effect apportions rights to people in proportion to the property they own. According to Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute, a libertarian thinking tank in Washington, D.C., market liberals believe that "rights and property are inextricably connected. . . Broadly understood. . . property is the foundation of all our natural rights. Exercising those rights, consistent with the rights of others, we may pursue happiness in any way we wish." In the exercise of these rights individuals form voluntary associations with others through the mechanism of the contract. In the eyes of a market liberal, the only responsibility attached to the rights of property are to respect the same rights of others, obey the law, and honor contractual agreements. Those without property have no rights that the market liberal is bound to respect. 
   Like the neoclassical economists, market liberals make little distinction between individuals and corporations. Corporations are presumed to have the same right as an individual to use their property in any way that suits their self-interest. Market liberals give corporate libertarianism its cast of moral legitimacy. In return, corporate interests give leading proponents of market liberalism, such as the Cato Thinking Institute, the same financial support and political leverage they give to the neoclassical economists. 

CORPORATIONS AND MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATE
CLASS :  Corporations and members of the corporate class ---such as corporate managers, lawyers, consultants, public-relations specialists, financial brokers, and wealthy investors ---comprise the third pillar of the corporate libertarian alliance. Some are drawn to corporate libertarianism purely by financial self-interest or because they are paid to do so, others by moral conviction. Although few members of the corporate class have a serious interest in the fine points of academic theories or moral philosophy, they find a natural common cause with those who provide an intellectual and ethical case for freeing corporations from the restraining hand of government and absolving them of moral responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of their actions. Furthermore, they have the financial resources at their disposal to handsomely reward those who legitimate their power. 
   This combination of economic theory, moral philosophy, and elite political interest makes for a powerful alliance. Yet in many ways it has served even its own members poorly, as its corrupting influence has not been limited to the broader society. It has led neoliberal economists to seriously debase the integrity and social utility of economics by reducing it to a system of ideological indoctrination that violates its own theoretical foundations and is deeply at odds with reality.  It has similarly engaged libertarians in a cause that violates their own commitment to individual freedom, as corporations infringe on the property rights of real people and use their growing power to suppress the individual freedoms of all but society's wealthiest members. The enormous success of of the alliance in shielding corporations from public accountability has created a monster that even the members of the corporate class no longer control and is creating a world that they would scarcely wish to bequeath to their children.
   As pointed out a couple of weeks back, the contemporary corporation exists as an entity apart --- even from the people who work for it. Every member of the corporate class, no matter how powerful his or her position within the corporation, has become expendable, as many top executives have learned. As corporations gains in autonomous institutional power and become more detached from people and place, the human interest and the corporate interest increasing diverge. It is like being invaded by alien beings intent on colonizing our planet, reducing us to serfs, and then eliminating those of us they don't need. 


   BETRAYING ADAM SMITH AND DAVID RICARDO 

   It is ironic that corporate libertarians regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint, since it is obvious to even the most casual reader of his epic work The Wealth of Nations that Smith would have vigorously opposed most of their claims and policy positions. For example, corporate libertarians fervently oppose any restraint on corporate size or power. Smith, on the other hand, opposed any form of economic concentration on the ground that it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital ; to produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers; and to optimally allocate society's resources. 
   Through trade agreements, corporate libertarians press governments to provide absolute protection for the intellectual property rights of corporations. Smith was strongly opposed to trade secrets as contrary to market principles and would have vigorously opposed governments enforcing a person or corporation's claim to the right to monopolize a lifesaving drug or device and to charge whatever the market would bear. 

   Corporate libertarians maintain that the market turns unrestrained greed into socially optimal outcomes. Smith would be outraged by those who attribute this idea to him. He was talking about small farmers and artisans trying to get the best price for their products to provide for themselves and their families. That is self-interest, not greed. Greed is a high-paid corporate executive firing 10,000 employees and then rewarding himself with a multimillion-dollar bonus for having saved the company so much money. Greed is what the economic system being constructed by the corporate libertarians encourages and rewards.
   Smith strongly disliked both governments and corporations. He viewed government primarily an instrument for extracting taxes to subsidize elites and intervening in the market to protect corporate monopolies. In his words, "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all." Smith never suggested that government should not intervene to set and enforce minimum social, health, worker safety, and environmental standards in the common interest or to protect the poor and nature from the rich. Given that most governments of his day were monarchies, the possibility probably never occurred to him. 
   The theory of market economics, in contrast to free-market ideology, specifies a number of basic conditions needed for a market to set prices efficiently in the public interest. The greater the deviation from these conditions, the less socially efficient the market system becomes. Most basic is the condition that markets must be competitive.  An Economics 101 professor might use the example of small wheat farmers selling to small grain millers to illustrate the idea of perfect market competition. Today, four companies ---Conagra, ADM Milling, Cargill, and Pillsbury ---mill nearly 60 percent of all flour produced in the United States, and two of them --- Conagra and Cargill---control 50 percent of grain exports. 
   In the real world of unregulated markets, successful players get larger and, in many instances, use the resulting economic power to drive or buy out weaker players to gain control of even larger shares of the market. In other instances, "competitors" collude through cartels or strategic alliances to increase profits by setting market prices above the level of optimal efficiency. The larger and more collusive individual market players become, the more difficult it is for newcomers and small independent firms to survive, the more monopolistic and less competitive the market becomes, and the more political power the biggest firms can wield to demand concessions from governments that allow them to externalize even more of their costs to the community. 
   Given this reality, one might expect the neoliberal economists who claim Smiths tradition as their own to be outspoken in arguing for the need to restrict mergers and acquisitions and break up monopolistic firms to restore market competition. More often, they argue exactly the opposite position ---that to"compete"in today's global markets, firms must merge into larger combinations. In other words, they use a theory that assumes small firms to advocate policies that favor large firms. 
  Market theory also specifies that for a market to allocate efficiently, the full costs of each product must be born by the producer and be included in the selling price. Economists call it cost internalization. Externalizing some part of a product's cost to others not a party to the transaction is a form of SUBSIDY that encourages excessive production and use of the product at the expense of others. When, for example, a forest products corporation is allowed to clear-cutgovernment lands at giveaway prices, it lowers the cost of timber products, thus encouraging the wasteful use and discouraging their recycling. While profitable for the company and a bargain for consumers, the public is forced, without its consent, to bear a host of costs relating to water shed destruction, loss of natural habitat and recreational areas, global warming, and diminished future timber production. 
   The consequences are similar when a chemical corporation dumps wastes without adequate treatment, thus passing the resulting costs of air, water, and soil pollution to the community in the form of health costs, genetic deformities, discomfort, lost working days, a need to buy bottled water, and the cost of cleaning up contamination. If the users of the resulting chemical products were required to pay the full cost of their production and use, there would be a lot less chemical contamination in our environment, our food and water would be cleaner, there would be fewer cancers and genetic deformities, and we would have more frogs and songbirds. If the full cost of producing and driving cars were passed on to the consumer we would all benefit from a dramatic reduction in urban sprawl, traffic congestion, the paving over of productive lands, pollution, global warming, and depletion of finite petroleum reserves. 
   There is good reason why cost internalization is one of the most basic principles of market theory. Yet in the name of market, corporate libertarians actively advocate eliminating government regulation and point to the private cost savings for consumers whir ignoring the social and environmental consequences for the broader society. Indeed, in the name of being internationally competitive, corporate libertarians urge nations and communities to increase market distorting subsidies---including resource giveaways, low wage labor, lax environmental regulation, and tax breaks ---to attract the jobs of footloose corporations. An unregulated market invariably encourages the externalization of costs because the resulting public costs become private gains. In the end it seems that corporate libertarians are more interested in increasing corporate profits than in defending markeyprinciples. 

Emma And The Other Philistines ---Episode 8

    Continuing With The Conversation At The Inn When Emma 
                       First Arrives In Yonville ----continued 

Just as Homais's speech is a jumble of pseudoscience and journalese, so in the third movement the conversation between Emma and Leon is a trickle of stale poetization. "At any rate, you have some walks in the neighborhood ?" continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.
   "Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset." 
   "I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed, "but especially by the side of the sea." 
   "Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon. 
   "And then does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite,

the ideal?"
   "It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. 

   It is very important to mark that the Leon-Emma team is as trivial, trite, and platitudinous in their pseudo artistic emotions as the pompous and fundamentally ignorant Homais is in regard to science. False art and false science meet here. { In a letter to his mistress on October 9, 1852, Flaubert indicates the subtle point of the scene : "I am in the act of composing a conversation between a young man and a young woman about literature, the sea, mountains, music, and all other so-called poetic subjects. It may all seem to be seriously meant to the average reader, but in point of fact the grotesque is my real intention. It will be the first time, I think, that a novel appears where fun is made of the leading lady and her young man. But irony does not impair pathos ---on the contrary, irony enhances the pathetic side." } 
   Leon reveals his ineptitude, the chink in his armor, when he mentions the pianist : "A cousin of mine who traveled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, log cabins suspended over precipices, and a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy ; and I no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site." How the sights of Switzerland must move you to prayer, to ecstasy ! No wonder a famous musician used to play his piano in front of some magnificent landscape in order to stimulate his imagination. This is superb !
   Shortly we find the whole bible of the bad reader---- all a good reader does not do. " My wife doesn't care about gardening," said Charles ; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room, reading."
   "Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" 
   "What, indeed ?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide upon him. 
   "One thinks of nothing," he continued ; "the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy to see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, toys with details, or follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes." 
   "That is true! that is true !", she said.
   
    Books are not written for those who are fond of poems that make one weep or those who like noble characters in prose as Leon and Emma think. Only children can be excused for identifying themselves with the characters in a book, or enjoying badly written adventure stories ; but this what Emma and Leon do. "Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of your own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment ?" 
   "I have experienced it," She replied.
   "That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." 
   "Stillin the long-run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature."
   "Yes, indeed," observed the clerk, "works, o touching the heart, miss , it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness." 

   __________________________________________________


     Flaubert set himself the task of giving his book a highly artistic structure. In addition to the counterpoint, one of his tricks was to make his transitions from one subject to another within the chapters 
as elegant and smooth as possible. In Madame Bovary there is a continual movement within the chapters. Some scholars call this device structural transition. We shall inspect some of the examples of it. 
   

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMAN : NOT EVEN CLOSE ---Episode 9

      Corporate Libertarians Are Deeply Capturing Human Society


   In the quest for economic growth, free-market ideology has been embraced around the world with near-religious fervor. Money is its sole measure of value, and its practice advances policies that are deepening social and environmental disintegration everywhere. The economics profession serves as its priesthood.  It champions values that demean human spirit. It assumes an imaginary world  divorced from reality. And it restructures our institutions of governance in ways that make our most urgent problems more difficult to resolve. Yet to question its doctrine has become heresy, invoking risk of professional censure and damage to one's career in most institutions of business, government, and academia. In the words of Australian sociologist Michael Pusey, it has reduced economics to "an ideological shield against intelligent introspection and civic responsibility," and infused the study of economics in most universities with a strong element of ideological indoctrination. 

                     THE SANCTIFICATION OF GREED 

The beliefs espoused by free-market ideologues are familiar to anyone conversant with the language of contemporary economic discourse : 

   + Sustained economic growth, as measured by gross national product, is the path to human progress.

   + Free markets, unrestrained by government, generally result in the most efficient and socially optimal allocation of resources.

   + Economic globalization, achieved by removing barriers to the free flow of goods and money anywhere in the world,  spurs competition, increases economic efficiency, creates jobs, lowers consumer prices, increases consumer choice, increases economic growth, and is generally beneficial to almost everyone. 

   + Privatization, which moves functions and assets from government to the private sector, improves efficiency, lowers prices, and increases responsiveness to consumer preferences. 

  + The primary responsibility of government is to provide the infrastructure necessary to advance commerce, maintain public order, protect property rights, and enforce contracts. 

 These beliefs are based on a number of explicit, underlying assumptions embedded in the theories of neoclassical economics :

   + Humans are motivated by self-interest, which is expressed primarily through the quest for financial gain.


   + The action that yields the greatest financial return to the individual or firm also yields the most to society.

   + Competitive behavior is more rational for the individual than cooperative behavior and ultimately more beneficial for society.

   + Human progress and improvements in well-being are best measured by increases in the aggregate market value of economic output. 

To put it in plain ole English, these ideological doctrines assume that : 

   + People are by nature motivated only by greed.

   + The drive to acquire is the highest expression of what it means to be human.

   + The relentless pursuit of greed and acquisition leads to socially optimal outcomes. 

   + The interests of human societies are best served by encouraging, honoring, and rewarding the above values. 


  A number of valid ideas and insights about markets have become twisted into an extremist ideology that raises the baser aspects of human nature to a self-justifying ideal. Although this ideology denigrates the most basic human values and ideals, it has become so deeply embedded within our values, institutions, and popular culture that we accept it almost without question. This pervasive ideology plays a critical role in shaping nearly every aspect of public policy. It plays to the declining economic fortunes of the majority and to well-founded public distrust of big government to build a populist political constituency for agendas with decidedly non populist consequences. 
   Reminiscent of twentieth-century Marxist ideologues, advocates of this extremist ideology seek to cut off debate by proclaiming the inevitability of the historical forces advancing their cause.  They tell us that a globalized free market that leaves resource allocation decisions in the hands of giant corporations is inevitable, and we had best to adapt to the new rules of the game. They warn that those who hold back and fail to get on board will be swept aside ; the rewards will go only to those who acquiesce. 
   The extremist quality of their position is revealed in the stark choices they pose between a "free" market unencumbered by any form of governmental restraint or a Soviet-style, centrally planned, state-controlled economy in which government makes all economic decisions. They countenance no middle ground, such as a market that functions within a framework of democratically determined rules. 
   Similarly. they divide the world into two groups : "free" traders who would remove all economic borders to allow goods and money to flow unimpeded by public oversight ; and protectionists who would build impenetrable walls around countries, cutting off all trade and exchange with others. Again, in defiance of history and logic they recognize no middle ground, such as the possibility that government might establish appropriate rules to assure that cross border exchanges are fair and balanced to the mutual benefit of people on both sides.
   In its various guises, this ideology is known by different names--- neoclassical, neoliberal, or libertarian economics ; neoliberalism, market capitalism, or market liberalism. In Australia and New Zealand, Michael Pusey's book Economic Rationalism in Canberra has popularized the term economic rationalism and injected it into the public debate. Latin Americans commonly use the term neoliberalism. However, in most countries, including the United States, it goes without a generally recognized name. Unnamed, it goes undebated, and its underlying assumptions remain unexamined.  
  The more descriptive label for those of this ideological persuasion, however, is corporate libertarianism, because whatever they call themselves, the "free" market, "free" trade policies they advocate do NOT free trade, markets, or people. Rather they free global corporations to plan and organize the world's economic affairs to the benefit of their bottom line, without regard to public consequences. 

         THE CORPORATE LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE

   Three major constituencies have joined in a powerful political alliance to advance the ideological agenda of corporate libertarianism with a dogmatic fervor associated with religious crusades. 

Neoclassical Economists --- Most mainstream economists align with the neoclassical school of economic rationalism. Rationalism is defined as "the doctrine that knowledge comes wholly from pure reason, without aid from the senses." This is the underlying doctrine of contemporary mainstream economics, which builds its economic models deductively from first principles, without reference to the real world. This commitment to rationalism has given economics its standing as the only truly objective, value-free social science --- and led it to conclusions that often defy both common sense and observable reality. Most of the profession embraces two first principles as fundamental articles of faith. One is that individuals are motivated solely by self-interest. The other is that individual choice based on the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest leads to socially optimal outcomes. IT IS IMMEDIATELY EVIDENT TO MOST ANYONE WITHOUT ADVANCED TRAINING IN ECONOMICS THAT BOTH PRINCIPLES ARE DEMONSTRABLY FALSE.
   Mainstream economists also treat corporations the same as individual people and presume that maximizing the freedom of corporations is the same as maximizing the freedom of real people----ignoring the reality that the corporate charter is a vehicle for creating massive concentrations of authoritarian power, and that more freedom for corporations inevitably means less freedom for most people. Through this distorting bit of intellectual sleight of hand, neoclassical economists provide corporate libertarianism with a patina of intellectual legitimacy. In return, corporate interests provide neoclassical economists with generous funding and a powerful political constituency. 

   

Emma And The Other Philistines---Episode 7

           AREN'T THERE ANY GOOD GUYS IN THE NOVEL ?

    Who are the "good" people of the book ? Obviously, the villain is Lheureux, but who, besides poor Charles, are the good characters ? Somewhat obviously, Emma's father, old Rouault, somewhat unconvincingly, the boy Justin, whom we glimpse crying on Emma's grave, a bleak note ; and speaking of Dickensian notes let us not forget two other unfortunate children, Emma's little daughter, and of course that other little Dickensian girl, that girl of thirteen, hunchbacked, a little bleak housemaid, a dingy nymphet, who serves Lheureux as clerk,  a glimpse to ponder. Who else in the book do we have as good people? The best person is the third doctor, the great Lariviere, although we might hate the transparent tear he sheds over the dying Emma. Some might even say : Flaubert's father had been a doctor, and so this is Flaubert senior shedding a tear over the misfortunes of the character that his son has created. 

         ___________________________________________   

A question : can we call Madame Bovary realistic or naturalistic ? Good question. 
   A novel in which a young and healthy husband night after night never wakes to find himself clutching, or being clutched by,  his beautiful wife ; never hears the sand and pebbles thrown at the shutters by a lover ; never receives an anonymous letter from some local busybody. 
   A novel in which the biggest busybody of them all, Homais ----Monsieur Homais, whom we might have expected to have kept a statistical eye upon all the cuckolds of his beloved Yonville, actually never notices, never learns anything about Emma's affairs ;
   A novel in which little Justin---a nervous young boy of fourteen who faints at the sight of blood and smashes crockery out of sheer nervousness --- should go weep in the dead of night (where ?) in a cemetery on the grave of a woman whose ghost might come to reproach him for not having refused to give her the key to death ; 
   A novel in which a young woman who has not been riding for several years---if indeed she ever did ride when she lived on her father's farm--- now gallops away to the woods with perfect poise, and never complains of any stiffness in the joints afterwards ;
   A novel in which many other implausible details abound---such as the naiveté of a certain cabdriver ---such a novel has been called a landmark of so-called realism, whatever that is. 
   What a given generation feels as naturalism in a writer seems to an older generation to be exaggeration of drab detail, and to a younger generation not enough drab detail. The isms go; the ist dies; art remains. 

        ________________________________________________

   Flaubert had a special device which may be called the counterpoint method, or the method of parallel interlinings and interruptions of two or more conversations or trains of thought. The first example comes after Leon Dupuis has been introduced. Leon, 
a young man, a notary's clerk, is brought in by the device of 
describing Emma as he sees her,  in the red glow of the fireplace at the inn which seems to shine through her. Farther on, when another man, Rodolphe Boulanger, comes into her presence, she is also shown through his eyes, but Emma as seen through Rodolphe's eyes is of a more sensual quality than the on-the-whole-pure image that Leon perceives. Incidentally, Leon's hair is described later as brown ; here, he is blond, or looks so to Flaubert, by the light of the fire especially kindled to illume Emma. 
   Now comes the contrapuntal theme in the conversation at the inn on the first arrival in Yonville of Emma and Charles. In Flaubert's biography, we learned that exactly one year after his starting to compose the book, Flaubert wrote his mistress Louise Colet on September 19, 1852 : "What a nuisance my Bovary is . . . This scene at the inn may take me three months for all I know. At times I am on the brink of tears --- so keenly do I feel my helplessness. But I prefer my brain to burst rather than to skip that scene. I have to place simultaneously, in the same conversation, five or six people (who talk), several others(who are talked about), the whole region, descriptions of persons and things ---and amid all this, I have to show a gentleman and a lady who begin to fall in love with each other because they have tastes in common. And if I only had enough room ! But the fact is that the scene should be rapid and yet not dry, ample without being lumpy." 
   So in the large parlor of the inn a conversation starts. Four people are involved. On the one hand, a dialogue between Emma and Leon, whom she has just met, which is interrupted by monologues and sundry remarks on Homais's part, who is conversing mainly with Charles Bovary, for Homais is eager to get on good terms with the new doctor. 
   In this scene the first movement consists of a brisk interchange among all four : "Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his cap, for fear of catching a cold in the head; then, turning to his neighbor ---
    "Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'Hirondelle'." 
   "That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like change of place." 
   "It is so dreary," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same places." 
   "If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the saddle ---"
   "But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant (than to ride) ---when one can," he added. (The horse theme slips in and out here.) 
   The second movement consists of a long speech by Homais, ending in his giving some tips to Charles about a house to buy. "Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world . . . for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the druggist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few men of ninety in our parish. The thermometer falls in winter to 4 degrees, and in the hottest season rises to 25 or 30 degrees Centigrade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur at the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit, not more. And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the Saint-Jean hills on the other ; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapors given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone) , and which pumping up the humus from the soil, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a bundle, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long-run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata ---- the heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or whence it should come ---that is to say, the southern side ---by the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia." 

   In the middle of the speech he makes a mistake: there is always a little chink in the philistine armor. His thermometer should read 86 Fahrenheit, not 54; he forgot to add 32 when switching from one system to the other. He almost makes another fumble in speaking of exhaled air but he recovers the ball. He tries to cram all his knowledge of physics and chemistry into one elephantine sentence ; he has a good memory for odds and ends derived from newspapers and pamphlets, but that is all. 

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE ---Episode 8

       ASCENDANCE AND REVERSAL OF PLURALISM

   By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, business excesses of the1920s, the depression, and the resulting plight of farmers, laborers, the elderly, blacks, women, and others had produced a wave of political and cultural radicalism throughout the United States. Roosevelt feared that without dramatic action, this radicalism might overwhelm the entire structure of government. He set about to save the system by pushing through an epic agenda of social and regulatory reforms. Congress's passage of his National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was key, as it gave government a mandate to play a more active role in achieving an economic recovery that market forces alone were unable to manage.
   On May 27, 1935, the SCOTUS voided the NIRA and ruled that states could not set minimum wage standards. This decision continued a century-old pattern of Supreme Court defense of business and corporate rights over civil and human rights. The 
Supreme Court's action on NIRA and the minimum wage radicalized a furious Roosevelt, motivating his commitment to a sweeping reform of American institutions. He set about to break up the business trusts, strengthen the regulation of business and financial markets, and push through legislation providing stronger guarantees for worker rights. Programs of public employment were started, and a social safety net was put in place.
   Roosevelt attacked the Supreme Court with a vengeance and tried to expand its membership with new appointments of his choice. His attempt to "pack" the court failed, but his charges had a distinct impact on the justices themselves, and the majority became more supportive of progressive initiatives. In the end, Roosevelt's long period in office allowed him to appoint justices to fill seven of the Court's nine seats, setting the Court on a liberal course that lasted until the 1970s, when Republican President Richard Nixon began to re-create the Court in its earlier pro-business, anti-human image. 
   World War II brought the government into an even more central and politically accepted role in managing economic affairs. The government placed controls on consumption, coordinated industrial output, and decided how national resources would be allocated in support of the war effort. A combination of a highly progressive tax system put in place to finance the war effort, full employment at god wages, and a strong safety net brought about a massive shift in wealth distribution in the direction of greater equity. In 1929, there were 20,000 millionaires in the United States and two billionaires. By 1944 there were only 13,000 millionaires and no billionaires.  The share of total wealth held by the top 0.5 percent of U.S. households fell from a high of 32.4 percent in 1929 to 19.3 in 1949. It was a great victory for the expanding middd class and for those among the working classes who rose to join its ranks. 
  Pluralism flourished into the 1960s, a period of cultural rebellion in the United States. A new generation, the flower children, vocally challenged basic assumptions about lifestyles, the military-industrial complex,foreign military intervention, the exploitation of the environment, the rights and roles of women, civil rights, equity, and poverty. The U.S. corporate establishment was badly shaken by the apparent threat to its values and interests. Perhaps most threatening of all was that the young were dropping out of the consumer culture. This generation was rebelling not so much against poverty and the deprivations of exploitation as against the excesses of affluence. This rejection of materialism by a new generation of Americans in some ways presented a more fundamental threat to the system than had earlier generations of angry workers seeking a living wage and safe working conditions.
   The names of consumer activist Ralph Nader and environmentalist Rachel Carson became household words. Liberal Democrats had firm control of Congress and were passing important legislation to strengthen environmental protection and product and worker safety. The government was aggressively pursuing antitrust cases to break up monopolies and keep markets competitive. 
   Abroad, U.S. corporations were under attack on two fronts, Japan and Asia's newly industrializing countries { NICs }---Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong --- had become enormously successful in penetrating U.S. markets. At the same time, U. S. corporations were being prevented from fully penetrating Southern economies, including those of the NICs, by aggressive government support of domestic industries, protectionism, and foreign investment restrictions. U.S. corporations felt these Southern government policies put them at an unfair disadvantage. With hight taxes on corporations and investor incomes and rigorous enforcement of environmental and labor standards at home, U.S. corporations cried foul and demanded the creation of "a level playing field." 
   
                      ELECTION OF RONALD REAGAN 

   The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 ushered in a concerted and highly successful effort to roll back the clock on the social and economic reforms that had created the broad-based prosperity that made America the envy of the world and to create a global economy that was more responsive to U.S. corporate interests.
   In his insightful book Dark Victory, Philippine economist Walden Bello provides a Southern perspective on the Reagan agenda : 

       A highly ideological Republican regime in Washington . . . abandoned the grand strategy of "containment liberalism" abroad and the New Deal modus vivendi at home. Reaganism in practice was guided by three strategic concerns. The first was the re-subordination of the South within a U.S. -- dominated global society. The second was the rolling back of the challenge to U.S. economic interests from the NICs, or "newly industrializing countries," and from Japan. The third was the dismantling of the New Deal's "social contract" between big capital, big labor and big government which both Washington and Wall Street saw as the key constraints on corporate America's ability to compete against the NICs and Japan. 

   The debt crisis of 1982 provided the opportunity to address the threat of prospective new NICs. The U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund moved to restructure the economies of debt-burdened Southern countries to open them to penetration by foreign corporations. The structural adjustment policies imposed by these institutions rolled back government in economic life in support of domestic entrepreneurs, eliminating barriers to imports from the North, lifted restrictions on foreign investment, and integrated Southern economies more tightly into the Northern-dominated world economy. Trade policy was the weapon of choice for imposing similar reforms on the NICs. 
   
  The Full Political Resources Of Corporate America Were 
  Mobilized To Regain Corporate Control Of The Political 
  Agenda And The Court System 

  High on the political agenda of the crowd that took over Washington D.C. in 1981 were domestic reforms intended to improve the global competitiveness of the United States by getting government "off the back" of business. Taxes on the rich were radically reduced and restraints on corporate mergers and acquisitions removed. Enforcement of environmental and labor standards was weakened. The government sided with aggressive U.S. corporations seeking to make themselves more globally competitive by breaking the power of unions, reducing wages and benefits, downsizing corporate workforces, and shifting manufacturing operations abroad to benefit from cheap labor and lax regulation.
   As these measures took hold in the United States, unemployment became a chronic problem, and labor unions lost members and political clout. Wages began to decline, as did the incomes of the poorest households. A fortunate few profited handsomely. The earnings of big investors, top managers, entertainers, star athletes, and investment brokers skyrocketed. The number of billionaires in the United States increased from one in 1978 to 120 in 1994. Lending abuses by a deregulated savings and loan industry left U.S. taxpayers with a bill for $500 billion to clean up the mess. These were hard times for ordinary citizens. Greed had a field day. 
  As the Reagan initiatives took hold abroad, backed by similar conservative revivals in other Western nations, the same patterns emerged in most of the other Western nations, as well as the indebted countries of the South. Inequality increased within and between countries. Unemployment rose to alarming levels, and many indicators that had shown steady improvement over the previous three decades stagnated or in some instances began to decline. Many of the indebted Southern countries fell even further into international debt.The number of billionaires in the world increased from 145 in 1987 to 358 in 1994. 
   The Reagan Administration had pledged to arrest U.S decline. However, it made a number of strategic blunders that strengthened U.S. military might and economic growth in the short term, but seriously weakened the U.S. position in the global economy over the longer term. First, massive deficit spending on the military contributed to making the United States the world's leading debtor nation. Second, by denying any government role in economic planning and priority setting, the Reagan bunch left the economic future of the United States entirely in the hands of corporations that were being pressed by the capital markets to focus only on short-term profits.  Third, by allowing corporations to pursue their anti-labor strategy, the United States squandered its key resource in the global marketplace --- its human capital. Overall, however, the strategy has worked brilliantly for for the largest corporations, their top managers, and their wealthiest shareholders --- at the expense of the planet and most of the world's people. 

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS : NOT EVEN CLOSE --- Episode 7

                 Picking Up After the Erroneous Spin Placed On
                 The Santa Clara Case By Legal Commentators 

   Thus corporations came to claim the full rights enjoyed by individual citizens while being exempt from many of the responsibilities and liabilities of citizenship. In being guaranteed the same right to free speech as individual citizens, they achieved precisely what the Bill of Rights was intended to prevent : domination of public thought and discourse. The subsequent claim by corporations that they have the same right as any individual to influence government in their own interest pits the individual citizen against the vast financial and communications resources of the corporation and mocks the constitutional intent that all citizens have an equal voice in the political debates surrounding important issues. 
  The latter 19th century and early 20th century were times of violence and social instability brought on by the excesses of capitalism that Karl Marx described to powerful political effectWorking conditions were appalling, and wages scarcely covered subsistence. Child labor was widespread. By one estimate, 11 million of the 12.5 million families in America in 1890 subsisted on an average of $380 a year and had to take in boarders to survive. Both organized and wildcat strikes were common, as was industrial sabotage. Employers used every means at their disposal to break strikes, including private security forces and federal and state military troops. Violence evoked violence, and many died in the industrial wars of this era.
   These conditions gave impetus to a growing labor movement. Between 1897 and 1904, union membership rose from 447,000 to 2,073,000. Unions provided fertile ground for the thriving socialist movement that was taking root in America and called for the socialization and democratic control of the means of production, natural resources, and patents. These were times of open class warfare, with zealous new recruits joining the army of the dispossessed in growing numbers, ready to fight and sacrifice for the cause. Socialists who sought to organize labor along class lines vied for primacy with more conventional unionists who 
preferred to organize along craft or industrial lines.
   These movements united ethnic groups. An emergence of black pride and culture began to unify blacks. The women's movement took hold,with women forming their own labor unions, leading strikes, and assuming active roles in populist and socialist movements. In 1920, female suffrage was guaranteed by a constitutional amendment. 
   In the end, the conditions of chaos and violence that characterized the period of explosive free-market industrial expansion were not conducive to the interests of either industrialists or labor. Competitive battles between the most powerful industrialists were cutting into profits. There was considerable fear among industrialists of the growing political power of socialist and other popular movements, which threatened to bring fundamental change that might eliminate their privileged position. 
   This set the stage for consolidation and compromise, which transformed social and institutional relationships among the corporate barons. Industrialists merged their individual empires to consolidate their power and limit competition among them. Formerly bitter rivals, J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller joined forces in 1901to amalgamate 112 corporate directorates, combining $22.2 billion in assets under the Northern Securities Corporation of New Jersey. This massive sum was equivalent to twice the total assessed value of all property in thirteen states in the southern United States. 
   Eventually, major industrialists came to realize that by providing better wages, benefits, and working conditions, they could undercut the appeal of socialism and at the same time win greater worker loyalty and motivation. There was a parallel interest in regularizing loosely organized, craft-based production processes tot take greater advantage of the methods of industrial engineering and mass production. This meant organizing around more highly structured, rule-driven production processes that demanded worker stability and discipline.