Dionne Defends the Concentration of Political Power

In this article, Whose Supreme Court is it?, EJ Dionne Jr. demonstrates the vital importance of understanding the diametrically opposed natures of economic and political power.

My commentary:

Zemack wrote:

To understand the sinister purpose behind those that attack the “concentration of economic power”, one must first understand the difference between economic and political power.

Economic power derives from the ability of a person or organization of persons (a corporation) to produce economic values. It is benign and benevolent, in and of itself. The economic power of a business, no matter how big, is granted only by the voluntary consent of those who buy its products, fill its job positions, or buy its shares. Economic power is non-coercive, but only in a free market.

Political power is the power of physical force, because government alone has the power of law. It can force you, literally at the point of a gun. The concentration of political power is the danger, and the only danger. That is why a constitution is needed to restrict government to use its monopoly on physical force - its power of the gun – to protect the individual rights of its citizens. All of them, including those “regular, average” folks associated with corporations. When government steps outside of those restrictions, it becomes the tool of special interests seeking the power of the gun – political power.

When “private corporations … dominate the state” and “buy government”, it is not economic power that is at work. It is political power. That alleged “concentration of economic power” is made possible by the very power progressives love, the alleged “right” of “our government's elected branches to legislate and regulate” at the behest of the special interests with the most political clout of the moment, which progressives call “the public interest”. To the progressives, corporations are not “the public interest”. Unions and wealthy individuals like George Soros are.

Since political domination of the economy is the goal of progressives, individuals who assert their First Amendment rights through corporations become the enemies of the state. When progressives seek to empower “the political system to protect itself against corruption” and attack “corporations virtually unlimited rights to spend money to influence elections”, it is seeking to protect the political elite from accountability to the people, the ones who disagree with them, and consolidate the concentration of political power.

This article is classic postmodernism, or the use of language as a weapon to cloud the issues to advance a statist agenda. Progressives seek to rein in the “concentration of economic power” in order to increase their own concentration of political power over “regular” people. The only system that can prevent benign economic power from being converted into malignant political power is laissez-faire capitalism (the separation of economics and state). The alternative is totalitarianism. That is the ultimate choice we face. It’s economic power and freedom, or political power and tyranny. Take your pick.