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The Paradox of Capitalism & the State

The anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon pointed out in his book, What is Property?, one of the many paradoxes that exists between Capitalism and the state. That paradox is thus: Even as the most ardent supporters of the former clamor for the minimization of the latter, they deny the fact that with the greater accumulation of wealth by the capitalist comes an ever greater dependence upon both laws promulgated by the state, and the state itself to enforce those laws, and always at tax payer expense.

The wars America wages around the world, then, from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Syria, are always clothed in the same verbiage of liberty and freedom. Such terms were used even by the Founding Fathers. By ringing the Pavlovian dinner bell of freedom and liberty, in other words, the average colonialist was lead frothing at the mouth to do the bidding of his financial masters, and hypnotized by their "beliefs" in God, they fought and died to overthrow the rule of King George from abroad for the "freedom" to be ruled even more tyrannically by an aristocracy from within.

And today, we see this same charade going on in every war being waged by America, as tax payers and soldiers of the working classes, are equally spent on fighting to expand the wealth and power of various industries - energy and financial chief among them -  while clothing such wolfish aims in the lamb like language of freedom and democracy. This was no less true during World War I, where the protection of loans doled out by American financial institutions to fund our allies agaisnt Austria and Germany was sold to the American populace, who were subsequently convinced to rush off and kill and die for God and country, as the gravest threat agaisnt "freedom" and "liberty" the world had ever seen. (see details in Operation Mockingbird and the Creel Commission, etc.)

The state does this by first claiming ownership to all property under its control, then taxing all those who live within its jurisdiction for the privilege of doing so, and then using those proceeds to both create the propaganda that is used to hypnotize the masses into believing in the benevolence of their rulers and especially their wars, and fund the military campaigns that are waged everywhere to expand the wealth and power of its wealthiest minority, and always with the lives of the poorest majority.   

 And while political parties and distinctions are used to hide this lie by always convincing the majority of Americans to blame their ills on those from the other side of the political fence, we are sold the religious myth of American exceptionalism to assuage our slavish sufferings from debt, and to convince ourselves that the "fears"we wage our wars to defend agaisnt are always worth any price.   

Private property, in other words, can only exist if there is a first a state that claims to "own" such property in the first place, and then ensure that such property can be further held in the hands of private owners, as a consequence. And as the inequality of wealth that such an arrangement necessary produces, grows exponentially with compounding interest - a fact that has served as the underlying thread of perhaps every conflict through history in one way or another - so the need for some publicly funded system of laws and enforcement is relied upon to defend it, first through propaganda, and then through force whenever and wherever necessary. 

The Church and the state have always agreed, in this respect, to sell everywhere the idea of the virtue of private property ownership, along with the need of hierarchical systems of power that protect such ownership. However opposed the two may be on various issues, they agree completely on the necessity of power over the many being vested in the hands of the few or the one. Communism, capitalism, and Christianity all worked in complete agreement, in this respect, to destroy anarchism during the Spanish Civil War, before they would then agree to turn on each other over which system would ultimately prevail over the spoils.

In his book, The Globalization Paradox, Dani Rodrik, pointed out that a similar problem exists on a global level, as the privatization of all property in the hands of financial and corporate powers, along with the ever increasing inequality of wealth and thus leisure that accompanies such an arrangement, necessitates ever greater governing bodies who can enforce the "justice" of such systems, through both propagandist PR and force. In this, Church and State have been in complete agreement since Constantine wed the two together in their mutual quests for absolute power. 

In this respect, Christianity would only outdo Barabbas in conquering the state from within, by turning the philosophy of Christ into a quest for wealth and power that is indistinguishable from the ultimate aims of capitalism or the state.  

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