One of the key distinctions between a capitalist and a non-capitalist (socialist, feudal, absolutist state) economy is the separation of state and private enterprise. In a capitalist state, economic enterprises are supposed to operate according to market principles, seeking to maximize profits and expand market shares. The state is supposed to act on behalf of capitalist enterprises, ensuring their protection and furthering their pursuit of profits and markets.
Recent history of foreign relations provides ample evidence that the reverse is true: private corporations, especially banks, have been converted into adjuncts of the US state , serving as transmission belts of US military policy, by sacrificing markets, profits and opportunities for future economic growth, another important reason for keeping US multinational corporations out of a country. Moreover, the state both in the US and Europe have seized billions in private investment funds and dispossessed their owners, in the process scuttling major financial transactions adversely affecting the biggest Western financial houses.
The dispossession of private capitalists and the harnessing of private firms to state policy have grown in scope and depth over the current decade, revealing the growing subordination of private capitalism to a militarist imperialist state. Sacrificing private profits and free markets to the edicts of state officials has been implemented via state coercion and severe sanctions against any transgressors.
How and why the world’s biggest propagandist of “free enterprise” and de-regulated capitalism has successfully converted major international financial and industrial enterprises into tools of foreign policy at enormous costs to their bottom line is yet an untold story. Given the enormity of the historical change in the relation between state and market, the shift in power has enormous consequences for peace, prosperity and freedom.
