Good Evening Friends,

I want to pick up on the thread from yesterday. I can't resist.

As you knew prior to this blog, no doubt, and as we have learned and are learning, there are many, many ways to analyze the political economy: different schools of thought depending on political ideology, "left, right, and center," as it were; different disciplinary approaches, in general terms, quantitative or qualitative in nature; different indices, I believe the term is, that are examined and given more or less weight; different assessment of specific problems, their origin, their nature, and prescriptions for their solution.

And so on and so forth.

There are many different approaches to formulating class theory, as far as how the economic classes relate to each other and the world. We are specifically concerned, here, with how the ruling class, the bourgeoisie relate to each other and the world.

Our approach is literary-mythological-philosophical and it is based on the God-drive. Man is the desire to become God. It is the central idea supporting every argument I have made and, I think, will make in this blog.

If one looks at the corporate world, you can say that they, as a whole, are trying to become gods. I said so yesterday with respect to the recently passed "historic" healthcare legislation, which contains the mandate. All Americans will be required to purchase corporate health insurance (Remember that even the "robust public option" was eliminated).

I said that there will come a time - if it hasn't come already- when, deep in the mythological imagination of the collective consciousness of this sector of the bourgeoisie, they come to see themselves as our very life-givers and sustainers. Gods of medicine and health. Apollo, Dionysus.

The ruling class are trying to become other kinds of gods. The best way I can bring this home is to use Olympian terms. Some of the corporate bourgeoisie want to become Gods of War. Think of Blackwater and Dyncorp and Halliburton and other military contractors. Ares, Athena.

Some of them try to become elemental gods: oil, water, electricity, coal. The utility companies and "Big Oil" corporations. We might think of Poseidon and Zeus, here. When this "green" economy takes off, no doubt these corporate elemental gods will take on solar and wind aspects. Hydroelectric power makes one think of a fusion of Poseidon and Zeus.

Some of them want to become gods of "wisdom," or learning. Think of the parent company of any charter school or private school. I believe Athena and Apollo were, both, also divinities of wisdom.

Some of them want to be gods of the land, agricultural abundance. Archer Daniels Midland. The Supermarket to the World. Big corporate, heavily state-subsized agribusiness. I'm sure there's at least one god for this from the pantheon, but my Greek mythology isn't all it could be. I think Apollo, again, as the sun-god has a role to play.....

Some of them want to become gods of communication. All you have to do is recall the telecommunications act that Clinton signed taking off the antitrust limitations on media consolidation, and the handful of corporate conglomerates that were the main beneficiaries. One thinks of the fleet-footed Hermes.

What about finance? What is the relationship of the bankers and financial institutions to the rest of the economic ruling class? I like to think of Hephaestus (I believe that is how the name is spelled), the forge of the gods in the Greek pantheon. Hephaestus was a very important god. He made the thunder bolts of Zeus; the sun rays and chariots of Apollo; the weapons and armor of Athena. And so on.

Hephaestus enabled the gods in a very important way. His creations helped the other gods extend their power. This has certainly been one of the traditional roles of the bankers, which is so obvious as to preclude any need for comment. Finance and industrial companies intermingle. Production-based companies engage in finance as a means of making money, when their product isn't doing so well on the free market, for whatever reason. Financial institutions buy companies to acutally produce physical goods and services.

In all mythologies there is a trickster god, who works his mischief on both gods and mortal alike. For example, it is said that the financial institutions, in collusion with the bond rating agencies, certainly "put one over" on various large sized institutional investors of one kind or another, with the bundled, "toxic" subprime mortgage -backed securities.

There is a wonderful quote I need to retrieve from Naomi Klein's tenth anniversay edition of her book, NoLogo about branding, and specifically the God-drive present in corporate sponsorship of cultural events.

Let me just end with this. All of these things I've mentioned, are a corruption of the God-drive.*

wingedcentaur