“politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.”

[welshTerrier2]

Do you believe democracy is possible given the power of corporations in America? Do you believe it's possible to nominate and elect candidates who put the people's interests ahead of corporate interests? Do you believe American foreign policy is engineered to make the US safer and wealthier? Do you believe that the many domestic problems we face such as poverty, racism, health care, education and pollution can be solved even while spending so much of our national budget on defense? Do you believe that we, as citizens, are truly empowered to direct the course of the country through our votes?

I don't.

The empowerment of corporations through corporate-personhood and the access to the political system by billion dollar corporations make it impossible for any form of real democracy to exist. If we are to restore power to the people, we will all need to come to an understanding of these truths. If you already understand them, you need to do more to convince those who do not. Until we fight back against the deeply ingrained corruption of our political process by big money by instituting publically financed campaigns and supporting non-corporate candidates for offices at all levels of government, we will remain servants under the dark cloud of big business.

source: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/29/2181/

Corporations dominate the power structure and hence US politics. In the US this is even more so the case than in other countries because of the much more brutal suppression of labor. Quoting Dewey, Chomsky noted that in the absence of economic democracy, “politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.”

Since the state, having become so thoroughly co-opted by corporate interests, is part of the problem, it is difficult to significantly change it from within through elections or public policy reforms. While short-term, pragmatic change remains possible and desirable, systemic change would require a transformation of power relations within society through a democratization of economic decision-making.