Embodiments
Persons, corporations, parties
Most all wealth is representational. Capital steps out of motion in only a few forms: Sometimes as a material object, and as money (value) taken out of circulation. When capital is transformed into a means of production, it remains in motion. When it becomes a nonproductive good (surplus that cannot realize profit) it expires. Capital that is not in motion becomes—by design—less valuable.
So when it is said that a company or a person is “worth” some dollar amount, that is to say they have become the embodiment of that value.
A corporation is a body, a human has a body.
There is a difference; though American courts do not accept what conceptually and linguistically, we know to be true. One who has a body would never say a corporation also has the same type of body.
It is in the embodiment of value that the Supreme Court recognizes corporate personhood, not in the way a person (“Thomas”) and the particular body we know to be Thomas are understood to be one and the same.
Corporate political parties, with their proportional dependence on Capital, have fully monopolized and thus corrupted the democratic character of the polis. Their members and policies represent and work in favor of bodies that are not people. A corporation (“BlackRock”) and the particular body we know to be BlackRock are not human. Corporate bodies have extra-human capacities and inhumane needs. They need not exist for the sake of societal benefit, but are instruments for maintaining control and mobilizing people, to the benefit of a few.
The liberal democratic nation-state would, ideally, serve as a counter-weight to the dominating capacities of production, allowing mediation and remediation of social class conflicts through law and policy. The goal of state socialisms was to incorporate mass productive capabilities under the state such that there would be no privately-owned corporations. Social ownership of the means of production through the state concentrated power of production and the state in a small class which became dominated by an even smaller subset of that class.
Private ownership of the means of production concentrated power in a small class which came to dominate the political system in America, and now that political system has become dominated by an even smaller subset of that class.
Presidential campaign strategies are as fine-tuned as they have become due to an intentional and definitive narrowing of the market. Rather than pitch a holistic, general philosophy, the parties have increasingly turned to apparently-singular issues to sell to small segments of the population.
The single-issue voter is a product of the political discourse, of divvying up portions of the electorate based on motivators. What cultural phenomenon, value, ideal, or symbol will influence a person to take the time and make the effort to vote in the right way? When a topic is highly motivational, we see both corporate capitalist parties split the issue; see health care, gun control, and sexuality.
However, these issues do not produce the same degree of motivation to vote across the voters’ political spectrum. “Defending” Medicare/Medicaid, opposing unregulated gun sales, and permitting all eligible people to obtain marriages licenses does not drive potential voters to the polls to the same degree that others are motivated by threats to their choice of doctor, their gun ownership, and their religious bigotry.
It is obvious the Republican party’s long-term strategy is to suppress voter turnout. The SAVE Act is the most recent, nationwide incarnation. If women would only favor Republicans more, the party would be less inclined to suppress their vote, but college educated women insist on being autonomous and the party doesn’t cotton to that.
The Democrats are not very different. They win with larger voter turnout, that is well-known, and for a long while there it seemed that they had the Black and Latino votes sewn up tight (some might say they were taken for granted). Looked at another way, it is not a larger turnout of all voters they seek, but low-motivation potential voters are more likely to vote for Democrats.
There remains a plurality of Americans who did not vote for either corporate candidate, going back many election cycles.
They can be brought to the polls by policy proposals they believe will benefit them, but the corporate parties serve the role of marginalizing and suppressing those very positions. While Republicans offer huge tax cuts to the wealthiest and their corporations, Americans are seeing what a paltry $150 billion in DOGE cuts from social services actually did for them.
All those devastating cuts to governmental administration of Social Security, all the cabinet departments, the National Parks, the Veterans services, and other harms to the General Welfare, cost us less than $500 bucks apiece. And that was WITH a shitty, rigged tax system that lets billionaires off the hook.
But where are the Democrats with proposals to tax the shit out of those who are McLovin It? Print the 1958 tax rates on one of those posters, as Trump did with the fake tariffs. Show everyone what a 92% graduated income tax on the top 1% of earners will look like, and how little they will have to pay, by comparison. Say the words “Nationalize foreign-held assets.” You don’t have to mean them, but put the idea out there that patriotic American business owners are harming MAGA by stashing cash overseas. Then show them how much.
They will not. It will offend their sponsors. Instead, they will retreat on the culture war front, say nothing as white supremacy becomes ensconced in federal policy (they will tell themselves that this becomes a LEVER—assuming racial minorities retain suffrage), and say they can do nothing of significance until 2026, and then only if you vote Democrat. So it is more important now than ever before to send whatever money you can, while you can, before Donald Trump does a million other bad things. Remember, without the Democrats, what other choice do you have?
And that’s what a corrupted democracy looks like.
#BankruptElon