Readers over a certain age may remember the book, IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, written in 1935 by Sinclair Lewis. In this, the U.S. had become the “Corpo” State, a play on the NAZI state that Germany had become. Place this into the unrest by workers whose votes were aggressively sought by ideologues of diametrically opposed political groups and you have a picture of Europe where Communist totalitarians battled National Socialist totalitarians while crushing centrists and democrats between them. The “Corpo” State that Lewis created was the American descent into the same “fix” that overcame Germany. What I see here is that the idea of folks who wished to avoid “criminal syndicalism” accepted domination of our government by the corporate model that placed power into the hands of capitalists who pressured consolidation of businesses into cartels and monopolies that the Nineteenth Century had produced. That same fin-de-cie-cle produced the Populist Party that brought Socialist ideas seasoned by agricultural interests as a contrast the to urbanization and “worker” needs that are still unsolved today.

The end of rural domination over politics (what is good for farmers, is good for America) was replaced by what is good for business is BEST for America. The workers in the factories never linked effectively with farm workers and a dream dissolved. And then there were the many variations on this theme. A radical idea about representation was to change from two Senators from each state and population based representation in the House of Representatives. Syndicates of industries and workers would replace the original conception. The idea was a simple one. All the automobile producing companies and their workers would send representatives to a new Congress.  All canned soup companies and their workers would send their representative to that Congress, and so on. This idea was based on the mutuality of interest of the managers and the workers. What happened was that the “OLD” Congress wrote a measure that became a law criminalizing syndicalism. The final result was that the CORPO State that Lewis satirized has become the model for America and the world in the 21^st Century.

Most of the struggles for human rights during the 20^th Century have revolved about the failure to limit the power of cartels and monopolies and the loss of the dreams of the Populists. Human rights have been extended so that the misery of workers in the factories of the Industrial Revolution has been alleviated but replaced by modern sweatshop conditions in Third World nations. We will never have a Syndicalist America but we do have a Corporate State where what is good for business is good for America. The decline into a NAZI State could follow if we do not watch out. The lesson to be learned here is that government of the people will be replaced by government by the corporations. Mr. Bush is working on this.