Libertarian and Conservative Talk

I think that I am finally getting a handle of sorts on the political debate with Conservatives and Libertarians. That handle is this. Conservatives and Libertarians are actually idealists of a kind and they are talking about something that is so far outside of the realities of our situation that meaning is hopelessly lost. The closest theoretical political ally in the last two centuries would be the Marxists. Marx himself was a blatant humanist idealist who could weave a fine tale about the uprising of the Proletariat and the resulting Communist society in which the state would literally wither away. But even when the revolution was finally carried into a real experiment, as we all know, the reality was far different from the idealistic fantasy.

The fact is that societies change over a very long time scale and rarely, if ever, change dramatically because of an ideal destiny. Marx was probably correct in suggesting that society changes because of the "material conditions" and so long as the material conditions remain more-or-less the same our society will continue on its course. That is not a particularly happy course. I am probably no more happy with the present station of government than are Conservatives or Libertarians.

The material conditions of our society have been, for some time, something that might fairly be called "corporate feudalism." In classic feudalism, government was in the hands of the church and monarchy. Beneath them were arrayed a small host of land-owning nobles and a very tiny merchant class. By far the great horde of people were serfs who lived and worked on land owned by the nobles and paid most of their productivity to the nobles in rent. Today, the plight of most people is no different except that corporations have replaced the nobles. A representative government has replaced the monarchy while church and state have supposedly been separated (though it's hard to convince yourself of that at times). As in classic feudal times, very few individual people actually own very much; the great majority of wealth lies in the hands of corporations to whom we all pay rent (though we may like to call these "mortgages" etc.).

Over the last several decades there have been some interesting changes in the material conditions of our society and I believe that these foretell more about our future than any of the idealistic scrabbling. Corporations have become international in a massive movement we endearingly call "globalization." What is cloaked behind the scenes of globalization is the fact that corporations are no longer responsible (or responsive) to any particular society. Hence, what will the so-called nation state hold in its future? Corporations are already arranging for their own military security and they can hide their wealth in any out-of-the-way place in the world.

In reality, it seems to me, Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians, and Anarchists are caught up in a self-destructive fight against each other over something that is quietly fading from view --- civil society in its ideal form. When global corporations rule the roost, none of us will have much to say about the future.