Corporations more dominant in US than other capitalist countries.

Capitalism is destroying the planet.

I recently wrote a book called "The Donegal Woman." I was doing a reading for it in Ireland. In the course of the discussion I said that living in the US was very difficult because the corporations were more dominant than in other advanced capitalist countries. A member of the audience asked me what I meant. This came back to me when I heard of the flight attendant who reared up against his work conditions.

The US has two mass political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. Both are capitalist parties, bought and sold by the privately owned profit addicted corporations. They totally dominate US politics and no law of any substance gets passed without the agreement of the corporations. US capitalism has a monopoly of US politics. The US is not democratic. At the same time the mass media is totally dominated by the major privately owned profit addicted corporations and their TV, radio and newspaper propaganda machines with all the censorship that goes with this. The censorship can be seen everyday by what they decide to select and not select. When was the last time you saw a socialist view point explained? And of course behind this political and propaganda power stands the power of the capitalist state, the military, cops, prisons and courts.

What is the result of this corporate/capitalist power in peoples lives? It is very concrete, very real. We have to work harder and holidays are less than other advanced capitalist countries, we have less respect on the job, health care and education is much harder to get, overall our lives are much less secure than in other advanced capitalist countries. Mass poverty, a very high work rate, high insecurity, this is the result of the extreme dominance of the corporations and their capitalist system in US society.

The discontent that flows from this is seen everyday in the explosive actions of individual workers who cannot take it anymore and strike out blindly. However it could instead be the basis to build a mass movement of workers, to organize the unorganized and to build a mass working peoples party. But the union leaders refuse to take the initiative on these fronts instead bowing down to the corrupt capitalist criminal system. And left groups are paralyzed by left sectarianism and tend to be part of the problem not part of the solution. So working people have no positive mass channel through which to express themselves, through which to organize and fight to improve their lives. The result is that the stress and insecurity of US workers' lives increases and increases.

What we need is a mass working peoples party and a mass movement to unionize the majority into unions which would be democratic and prepared to take on the bosses and their system. This is the way to reduce the domination of the corporations in US life and improve the quality of our lives. It is also the way to move towards a system which would would put the corporations in their place, that is extinct, and establish instead a democratic socialist society.