The Twin Devils of Communism and Capitalism

This is one of the best, most concise but penetrating descriptions of the similarities between Communism and Western Capitalism (and its therapeutic state appendage) that I’ve ever seen:

“In practice, then, ownership is illusory since there are a bunch of
government agencies, insurance agencies, and mortgage contracts that
tell people what they can or can’t do with their property; and it is
conditional in that missing just a couple of payments, getting sued,
or getting in the crosshairs of the government will terminate even
the illusion. What an owner really has, instead of ownership, is
temporary exclusive use within a set of guidelines established by
mortgage companies, insurance companies, and numerous governmental
entities.”

“Communism is often described as a system in which ownership of
the “means of production” is vested in the state as a proxy for the
people; which in practical terms means that control of the means of
production lies in the hands of powerful elite. Capitalism is
supposed to be different in that ownership, and therefore control,
lies in private hands. In practice, though, this is not the case
since control lies with government rather than the “owners” whose
signatures are etched upon controlling documents. In a democracy,
elections are controlled through media perception; so whoever
controls the media controls elections in the main; and so, in
practice, control by government also translates into control by a
small elite.”

“Control of private business becomes vested in the government through
the clever mechanism known as “incorporation. ” Unincorporated
businesses vest liability in the individuals within that business,
especially the owner. Long ago, lawyerly notions of tort and “joint
and several liability” created an environment in which no individual
would be able to do business productively since all of his profits -
and then some - could be gobbled up by lawyers at the drop of a hat.
Thus came the idea of incorporation - in which the state created a
corporation - an artificial person - in law which, at least in
theory, the owners could control as a proxy while limiting their
civil liability. The problem lies in the fact that a corporation is
actually a creation of government rather than the creation of an
individual, and therefore, once created, has to live under laws of
government that would affect corporations but not individuals.
Natural persons have rights, however imperfect; but corporations do
not.”

“Capitalism, like Democracy, is an idea that was foisted upon Western
peoples through linguistic subterfuge. The word “Democracy” never
appears in the U.S. Constitution, and neither does the
term “Capitalist. ” The United States was designed to be a Republic,
in which the responsibility of the government was to secure the
blessings of liberty for the posterity of the country’s founders. The
founding fathers abhored democracy as a horrible system that would
allow the best and brightest - who are always fewest in number - to
be dominated legally by mob rule. They so abhored the notion of debt
that is so integral to modern capitalism that they mandated a gold
currency in the constitution, and even wrote bankruptcy as relief
from debt and the abolition of debtor’s prisons into the constitution
as well.”

http://www.wvwnews. net/story. php?id=201