I was recently inspired by this idiotic Internet debate (yes, yes, I know, that’s redundant!) on one of Democracy Now!’s Facebook threads. One of the commentators espoused the idea that „corporatism“ is not capitalism, because capitalism means economic freedom! Duh! I’ve heard this dubious „argument“ invoked by a number of libertarians as a means of defending the free market against the statist form of capitalism. But the problem, of course, is that „corporatism,“ like most libertarian concepts, is totally meaningless and leads to a logical contradiction. I’ll offer an incredibly pedantic proof below:

Libertarian points of presupposition:

• Human freedom is defined as the ability of individual actors to trade commodities freely in the free market.
• Corporations are individual actors.
• Corporatism is opposed the free-market.

Proof:

1. Regulation, because it curtails the free market, also curtails human freedom.
2. Campaign Finance Reform (CFR) is a form of regulation.
3. Campaign Finance Reform curtails the free market, ergo CFR curtails human freedom.

Conclusions:

Now, let’s say we want to abolish CFR because we’re libertarians and it would only be logically consistent to do so because, as demonstrated above, regulation curtails human freedom or liberty or whatever you want to call it (in other words, it curtails the free market and corporations conceived as individual actors). This would allow corporations to use their money—earned of course through acumen, risk, and entrepreneurship—to lobby and sponsor politicians, elected officials of the state who represent the people. On behalf of these corporations, politicians pass laws to benefit them, since money establishes a contractual obligation between patron (elected official acting as an agent of the State) and client (private corporation) in which the client receives benefits for their payment. These laws of the State—passed by elected officials on behalf of corporations paying them money as an expression of their vote through the free market, money which was earned through acumen, risk, and entrepreneurship—in turn, secure the ability of said corporation to make money, since the primary goal of all corporations is to maximize profits.

So, if you are a libertarian you must be against Campaign Finance Reform—or, you must be pro-liberty and pro-free market and anti-regulation—because it curtails human freedom and the free-market. On the other hand, if you are a libertarian, you must also be pro-corporatist because it is an expression of the selfsame logic of the free-market, an extension of patron-client networks based on the free exchange of money for services (corporate profits generated through state laws). Ergo, if you are a libertarian, you must be both for and against the free-market.

I suppose the only way the idea of corporatism makes any sense is if you accept the idea that one could implement a free-market outside of any visible state apparatus. But then you get into all sorts of subtle metaphysical conundrums, like how to print money, secure property rights, etc. I suppose you could just return to bartering or something and then stockpile a bunch of machine guns in your home. Oh, I see.