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How Socialism is Gaining Control of American Business

how socialism is gaining control of american business

How Socialism is Gaining Control of American Business.

The weaponization of culture to advance Marxism, or as Karl Marx preferred to call it, “scientific socialism”, started gaining meaningful influence in the American business community in the 1970s. The Fabian socialists were always clear on this point. Their principal discrepancy with classical Marxists was that they had faith that capitalism could be subverted and made to work for their collectivist nirvana. Instead of controlling the means of production by direct ownership, Fabians (as well as Fascists) argued that business could be suited to fit their political purpose and stewarded through cooptation. The ongoing deconstruction of capitalism is evidence that radical leftism has made enormous inroads into the free enterprise system, once one of the West’s most prized possessions.

The fall of Soviet communism hastened the primacy that non-economic elements of Marxist theory would garner. The hegemonic domination of cultural, educational, civil, and legal institutions in democratic societies by advocates of modern (or cultural) Marxism accelerated the proposition that the market could be made to work for socialist objectives. If Vladimir Lenin could do it in 1921 with the New Economic Policy, a hybrid state-private (foreign capitalist) business arrangement that saved the Bolsheviks, the post-1989 Neo-Marxists, after all, were simply following him. This was precisely Deng Xiaoping’s argument in 1977 and 1978 as he rallied his comrades to help build “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (the China Model) and thereby save communism in the world’s most populated country. Marx and Engels argued constantly in favor of the primacy of praxis over theory. By the 1990s, the intellectual and practical notion of privately owned production had been completely revamped. 

The market is no longer a means to prize the most efficient innovators, entrepreneurs, and corporations. This was the traditional means to elevate living and health standards. The market turned out to be a potent poverty fighter. As political ideology and internationalist hegemonic goals grew in power, however, the market has become a global stooge for political actors. It is today a manipulable socioeconomic forum, embedded with international institutions, where socialists, crony capitalists, and statist oligarchs, attempt to impose their ideological tenets and remake man (a/k/a “the new man”).

The market has become a useful tool to propagate illiberal policies and exercise social engineering. This fusion of sinners and good doers has done a lot to advance censorship and repression. The U. S. is a prime example of this encroaching menace that threatens to undermine basic liberties and the very republican system of government, along with democratic practices that have historically made this country a model of success. This is how the socialists are doing it.

The intellectual fodder that underpins woke capitalism is Gramscian and Frankfurt School based. Adaptations from the Marxist Critical Theory series that ransacks critical thinking (a liberal concept) and institutes in its place, a prescriptive moral nihilism, void of objective truth or knowledge, and fanatically aligned with faux interpretations of reality and history. The target is to mutate humanity into Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “noble savage” in his idyllic state of nature. The cultural Marxist abstract weaponry from which the American left is importing its false assumptions and prescribing its toxic social remedies include Critical Race Theory, Critical Queer Theory, Gender Ideology, Critical Legal Theory, Critical Post-Colonial Theory, and Critical Feminist Theory.

The narrative, of course, is not directly labeled or described as such. That would not be smart. After all, the fact that there are over 100 million communist attributable deaths, is clear enough for even the most novice socialist to understand the need to change the label and mask the product. As with communism, the idea needs to appeal to people’s emotions. The woke banners of identity politics, with its deviated interpretation of “justices”, has incorporated political scientism into its propaganda arsenal as well.

Green socialism, another name for radical environmentalism, seeks to mandate pseudoscientific claims about man-made climate change. This, along with fraudulent readings of U.S. history as being an exclusive system of white supremacy and exploitation, as well as the postmodern transgender revolt against nature, God, and science are the main defaults being used to institute Marxist praxis in American workplaces and corporate boardrooms. The designers of this liberticidal endeavor are employing three main conduits for the dismantling of the traditional capitalist market economy system.

The endpoint, as the Fabians sought from the beginning, is to centralize political governance and institute a universal socialist socioeconomic system. The necessary targets achieving this feat are the destruction of national sovereignty, the family, religion, the middle class, and apolitical science. The business community is serving in the wokeness war by carrying out indoctrination campaigns in the workplace, a quasi-credit system to rate compliance with the inculcation, and the control of investment capital.   

The specific methodology for rooting wokeness into business practice consists, fundamentally, on three strategies that are interlinked. The first is called “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). The mechanism to enforce DEI is the tactical Orwellian surveillance by way of “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) categorizations, the second method. The financiers, perhaps the biggest and most dangerous of this three-legged monster, are the third device. Together, they are achieving the purposes of centralizing the economy in ways never imagined possible by Marx and Engels.

DEI is the personification of an oxymoron. It is George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm in living action. Its promoters seek to implement programs and policies in the workplace, as part of official corporate dictum, that claim to advance the representation and participation of people differentiated by groups of races, ethnicities, abilities and disabilities, genders, religions, cultures, and sexual orientation and practices. Following the DEI guidelines typically requires the forceful application of censorship, inequality, discrimination, bullying, racism, and oppression. The assumptions that validate the authenticity of the DEI grievance basis, are rigorously drawn from the fabled identity politics emporium.

The “diversity” aspect of the DEI notion would lead one to believe that this is about bringing together diverse groups, each with their individual particularities, to serve the noble aim of social harmony. This is not the case. The “diversity” factor instigates an attempt to indoctrinate anyone not belonging to the alleged “oppressed minority” into collective guilt reflections. This emulates the practice in authoritarian belief system promotional propaganda. 

“Equity” is the antithesis of equality. Here, inequality must be practiced so that equity and redistributive justice can be achieved. The stated goal of “fairness” mandates unfairness and injustice to groups categorized as being “privileged” by the existing “oppressive” system. “Inclusion”, instead of meaning of the opening up of spaces for all, is about segregating groups into identity capsules and separating for “safe” environments. In other words, “inclusion” under the DEI formula signifies in praxis the policy of segregation. Ironically, this practice was outlawed as a matter of state policy with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, the discriminatory business practice dictated by the DEI commissars in the workplace, escapes constitutional scrutiny by the masterful deceit of its language formulation.

ESGESG are non-financial factors that are increasingly part of a metrics system of analysis that rates a company’s record and position on the three prejudiced components. The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) are important institutions that are diligently working to deepen the politicization of business. SASB, GRI, and TCFD are fast becoming the determiners in establishing standards and norms to influence investment and corporate policies. They are fully onboard the green socialism bandwagon. The concern for human rights that these far-left entities have, is not about crimes against humanity committed in China, Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea, but rather perceived “injustices” in the fields of the tainted radical environmentalism, transgenderism, or other Critical Theory Marxist posits.  

The “environmental” component of the ESG element deals with keeping scorecards, according to the posture set by the eco-socialist conspiracy theories, that include a company’s carbon emissions, its contribution to air and water pollution, levels of deforestation, the management of waste, water usage, and applicable green energy initiatives. The “social” element of ESG incorporates the full spectrum of cultural Marxist dogma grievances into its considerations of “human rights” and labor violations. Notions of employee “diversity”, sexual harassment allegation procedures, and fair labor practices all follow the outline understood by claims based on Gender Ideology, Critical Race Theory, Critical Queer Theory, and Critical Feminist Theory. Cuba’s neo-slave labor scheme, for example, does not seem to offend the ESG political bosses.

The ESG triad concludes with its “governance” feature. This part deals with scrutinizing the “diversity” of its board of directors, the destiny of its political contributions, corruption levels, executive pay, and the nature of its lobbying. It is easy to see the dangers of attempting to stifle any opposition to leftist politics by rating poorly any company that donates to conservative causes or lobbies on its behalf. Here “diversity”, again, seeks to extend authority to powerful external entities in the determination of a corporation's hiring practice.

The third and most important outlet for abetting socialism into the American economy and the social relations that stem from it, is the control of investment funds. Currently, three mega-investment emporiums control between 80% to 90% of shareholder investment capital in the Standard and Poor's 500 (S&P 500), which comprises the leading 500 American publicly traded companies. They are BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. Known to many investors as the Big Three, the current leadership of these financial powerhouses are grounded in the Neo-Marxist belief system. Enabling the radical left’s environmental, social, and political policies has become their raison d'etre.   

Converting shareholders into the politicized “stakeholder” category is part of the objective. Profits and gains in market share, according to the Big Three’s directives, is now a secondary function of investing. Investors are expected to become, whether they like it or not, in financial supporters of leftist causes. Given the complexities of mutual funds, pension funds, indexed funds, and other bundled investment instruments, it is quite often difficult to know where the money is going. Additionally, in the case of employer-sponsored retirement and pension plans, which are a large source of investment capital, most participants have little or no say in the matter. The fund managers/investors of the Big Three decide that.

If a company that BlackRock, Vanguard, or State Street deems unworthy of receiving investment because it does not pass their ideological litmus test, they could cash starve them. Effectively, these private entities form a non-elected shadow government, where they are allowed to dictate power premised on cultural Marxist whims. This is the reason so many companies appear to be going insane by publicly embracing ultra-left causes. 

The free enterprise system is in peril, as is the republican mode of government. The “Fabianization” of the American economy must be stopped. This unethical denaturalization of the capitalist model must not be allowed to continue. The market does not exist to facilitate tyranny. Lawmakers have the power to disallow these subversive commercial practices. After the November midterms, it becomes a now or never.

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J M Shiling autor circle red blue🖋️Author Julio M. Shiling 
Julio M. Shiling  is a political scientist, writer, columnist, lecturer, media commentator, and director of Patria de Martí and The CubanAmerican Voice. He holds a master’s degree in Political Science from Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He is a member of The American Political Science Association, The PEN Club (Cuban Writers in Exile Chapter) and the Academy of Cuban History in Exile.

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