Bradford C.

Walker
MLS600-Capstone Proposal
4/23/2010

Inequalities in the Global Economy: Why Do So Few Decide For So Many?

Introduction

It is no secret that the economies of the world, domestic and international alike, possess

inequalities in their distribution of resources that impoverish the majority of the communities of

the world while concentrating wealth into the hands of a very few. The disparities of economic

resources parallels the disparities of power across the globe, within as well as between peoples,

as the two reinforce each other in a feedback loop. The two disciplines most relevant—political

economy and international relations—rest upon a philosophical paradigm that clouded its own

historical origins such that a solution cannot arise out of those disciplines so long as the origins

of this paradigm remain hidden history. I intend to fix this error.

The Reason for Why This Should Be Done

Within the disciplines of political economy and international relations there is a great

deal of talk about the specifics of these realities, which reveal—both by what is as well as what

isn‟t said—a great deal of understanding regarding the problems created by these disparities.

Language that would otherwise seem to refer to criminal enterprises, past and ongoing, is

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commonplace; talk of imperialism, colonialism, making the Other into something not human

somehow as justifications for these and similar injustices—in turn justifying inequalities

regarding those Other figures—are, when scaled down to individuals, talk of criminal activities

using justifications that would not be accepted in a court of law. Concerns for justice are quite

common, as are examinations of specific circumstances within the larger system; aside from a

notable minority, the discourse is honest and earnest in seeking solutions to the problems of the

world‟s inequalities. Yet issues persist, and I think that the boundaries of the discourse are very

much a contribution to the problem- both that they exist, and how they are enforced.

Both of these disciplines rest much of their dialog in the paradigm created by the trinity

of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Adam Smith. These three figures of the English

intelligentsia of the 17th and 18th centuries are the pillars upon which a then-emerging Anglo-

Dutch Establishment created the precursor to our present regime of globalization, the European

(later, with the addition of the United States, “Western”) colonialism regime that came to

dominate the global up through the middle of the 20th century. Though rejected as often as

supported, nonetheless the terms and conceptions that these three men popularized became the

normative paradigm for discussion on both economic and political matters- these philosophers

created the boundaries of acceptable thought despite the resistance of men such as Gottfried

Leibniz, Friedrich Schiller, Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List.

This resistance was not defeated honestly, but rather by force and fraud. The

aforementioned Establishment, sensing a threat, does what any institution does when it perceives

a threat: it deploys mechanisms designed to contain that threat, neutralize it and then restore

control over whatever it dominates. At that time, this Establishment used its domination of

banking (and, therefore, credit) to seize control of governments by first bankrupting them and
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then buying them up- this is how the Bank of England (hosted in the City of London) came to be.

Now with control of the national central bank, they use control of the money to shape the laws to

their desires.12 Those desires include marginalizing and silencing threats to their power, using

their money to buy agents and access to make that happen- and the Establishment did that with

aplomb. They are, as a class, patient and possessed of a perspective that one usually does not see

outside of the biographies of elites such as Cecil Rhodes.3

Today the current Anglo-American Establishment uses its ownership of institutions—

public and private alike—such as the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, The Round Table,

Council on Foreign Relations, etc. as well as private media companies (NewsCorp, NBC/Time

Warner, etc.), to constrain the flow of information.4

They still have, and use, control over the financial institutions to dissuade dissent by way

of control over the economy, and we have corruption of democratic political institutions—

recently made explicitly legal due to the Citizens United ruling of the Supreme Court of the

United States5—to guard against pressure by the world‟s communities to put a stop to such

depredations. If they can‟t bribe you, and they can‟t marginalize you, then they can and will kill

you- under cover of law or otherwise. John Perkins, Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill show

1
"Committee of Finance and Industry 1931 (Macmillan Report) description of the founding of Bank of England "Its
foundation in 1694 arose out the difficulties of the Government of the day in securing subscriptions to State loans.
Its primary purpose was to raise and lend money to the State and in consideration of this service it received under
its Charter and various Act of Parliament, certain privileges of issuing bank notes. The corporation commenced,
with an assured life of twelve years after which the Government had the right to annul its Charter on giving one
year's notice. '''Subsequent extensions of this period coincided generally with the grant of additional loans to the
State''. Books.google.ca. Retrieved 07-31-2010.
2
“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws.”-Mayer Amschel Rothschild.
3
Rhodes was a unapoligetic imperialist, white supremacist and chauvinist whose vision of such a future is rather
close to reality.
4
This control of information is most distressing for the elite, as the Internet currently undermines that control in
ways that increasingly find public expression through the attacks on Internet media outlets from all quarters of
society- attacks that are often financed by them.
5
The SCOTUS Blog has the opinion at its Scribd account.
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how this is done- but the Establishment has been at this far longer than the creation of Public

Relations nearly a century ago 6.

This is a system of control, an invisible empire, used to manipulate and control entities

that may present challenges to said empire‟s domination. If it is done to subvert or destroy the

world‟s political and economic institutions, then it is ridiculous to think that it will not assert

unwarranted and illegitimate control over academic disciplines that could recognize the true

nature of the Establishment and—this is the point that determines whether or not the empire

moves against you or not—creates viable alternatives that threaten to eliminate the empire.

Both the discipline of International Relations and Political Economy possess this potential, and

the latter has already proven itself to be such a threat once in the late 18th century with the

creation of the American System of Political Economy.

The same few people that dominate the international system of economy as well as

political discourse also exert such power over policy with regard to global warming and other

hot-button topics- influence that they exert to their advantage, as was the case with eugenics just

a few generations before, and to the cost of common people everywhere. This is not some

theoretical concern; this is a concrete threat that is before us here and now, and is already more

than theoretical in much of the globe. The elite claims that there is scarcity, and austerity is

necessary, but past claims of this sort are now coming out as fraudulent- they made no such

sacrifices; if the current elites would lie to protect their privilege, why wouldn‟t past ones- and

thus, why not challenge the past elites‟ claims in the same fashion? Our lives depend upon it.

Personal Significance

6
Edward Bernays, author of “Propaganda”. See Works Cited.
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I am not part of the elite. No one in my family is part of the elite, despite the beliefs of

certain of my relatives. I‟ve made the acquaintance of certain officials, but being elected to a

state or Federal office doesn‟t make you one of the elite, despite the assertions of certain people.

I come from a working class family, raised by a union man for a father, and thus quite aware of

both the existence of class as well as conscious of my own class identity. The interests of the

oligarchy are not my own; I find that their interests are actively detrimental to myself, my friends

and my family- and, by extension, to common people everywhere in the world.

In attempting to address these issues, I found that discussion constrained. There was a

boundary of acceptable opinion that did not hold up to critical inquiry; the boundary had no basis

in reality, but instead—as I later discovered—arose out of the efforts of agents (knowing or not,

usually the latter) serving the elite‟s interests. Some worked in academic institutions, controlling

the parameters through the pushing of one school of thought over others by means foul and not-

so-fair. Others worked in the media, exerting power by control of editorial decisions- usually in

the form of control of the outlet‟s purse strings or access to official sources.i Going outside that

accepted arena, into “the fringe”, mean risking ostracization and thus being rendered impotent to

influence events.ii This does not serve the interest of a free, independent and democratic society;

it serves the interest of a bound, colonized and despotic oligarchy in maintaining invisible power.

We are now awash in 31 flavors of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Such an environment is

favorable to a elite that‟s known to exploit such a zeitgeist to expand their own power at the

expense of common people.iii This has, without a doubt, already occurred; the PATRIOT Act is

a most blatant example of elites exploiting tragedy for their own benefit. If the freedom of
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common people across the globe is to be preserved, the stranglehold that the elite maintain by

way of their international system of inequality must be brought down.

To do that successfully, the very paradigm upon which that system rests must be

challenged and changed to a different one more favorable to the fostering of free, independent

nations and perfectly-sovereign states that safeguard those free nations‟ rights against all threats-

foreign and domestic alike. This change to the areas of political economy and international

relations through historical assessment and philosophical inquiry can be done, and it must be

done if the implied threats by the elite against the people are to be thwarted. Economic and

political justice must be had if freedom is to be kept. It‟s all or nothing.

The Body of Work for Inquiry to Date

To date, I‟ve procured print copies of Muppidi‟s “The Politics of the Global”, Blaney and

Inayatullah‟s “Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism” as

well as “International Relations and the Problems of Difference”, John Perkins‟s “Confessions of

an Economic Hit Man” and Napoleon Hill‟s “The Law of Success”. I have, in addition, found

copies of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri‟s “Empire” in the Hennepin County library as well

as Chomsky‟s “Manufacturing Consent” here at Metropolitan State‟s library. As for electronic

resources, I have sitting on my external hard drive ebooks by Howard Zinn, Edward Said,

Jeremy Scahill and John Perkins. Library requests are in place for others.

The reading to date is very much like a group of blind men running their hands across

different parts of an elephant. Each one talks about a part of the greater issue, but few of them
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make the effort to put together more than one element into the greater context in order to better

understand their specific issue or concern.

Of those that do, such as Blaney and Inayatullah, the discourse runs up against walls that

should not be there given both the questions asked and the concerns at issue; questions of

national autonomy necessitate addressing Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay and Friedrich List

because they created, deployed and then exported (respectively) a practical system of technique

based upon earnest and rigorous examination of accepted figures such as Adam Smith and

rejecting the imperial intentions that underlay Smith‟s conceptions and yet there is not one word

said about any of them or their accomplishments towards the very ends desired by scholars and

academics as the two aforementioned.

It is possible that the discourse participants are ignorant of these men, their deeds and the

effect that those deeds had upon the world; as George Orwell shows in 1984, information control

leads to control of the present through control of what people know of the past- and information

on those three men is quite controlled indeed. (Only in recent years have they returned from the

virtual oubliette, thanks in large part due to the emergence of the Internet and sites such as

Wikipedia, prompting publishers to start digging up archives and republishing their works.) For

similar reasons, and by similar means, it is possible that misunderstanding of their relevance

exists and has not been rectified. Establishment financial control and influence, directly to

various university and college institutions and indirectly via lobbying and exertion of influence

via control of media outlets is enough to make this happen- and it has, often, as most of the
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employers of International Relations and Political Economy scholars are Establishment fronts

such as the American Enterprise Institute.7

Then there is something far more likely to trip folks focused on the big picture. For the

disciplines I‟m using, due to the existing body of work, and its size, it is difficult to write a paper

addressing a very specific concern or question. A tendency exists that prompts one to rely upon

a common intellectual paradigm as a form of shorthand to be understandable.iv The risk is that,

by overusing such shorthand, one leaves oneself open to manipulation by people operating as

gate keepers to control discourse for reasons that have nothing to do with proper scholarship and

everything to do with social control- and the earlier this can be achieved, the more likely that

such control can be exercised both invisibly and deniably.

Muppidi runs into this problem in the conclusion of “The Politics and the Global”. Here

he makes a useful criticism of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) ad campaign before

the 1999 round of World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle, Washington:

“The politics of the ad revolves around arguing that this historically established binary of identity and

difference, of Self and Other, of home and abroad, of domestic and foreign is now under threat of erasure from the

homogenizing force of globalization. Globalization is threatening to erase the differences between „our‟ places and

„theirs‟.” (96-97)

The shorthand is in the use of globalization as a concept. The assumption made here is

that globalization is not a deliberate agenda enacted by people, but instead is just an outgrowth of

economic development. “The NGOs do not ask whether Cairo might want highways like Los

Angelas.” (97) The fact that there was, within living memory, an alternative approach to both

colonial and globalist paradigms of international relations and political economy is a flaw in

7
And you thought that John Perkins had no relevance!
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Muppidi‟s work; that alternative approach was the combination of the Works Project

Administration and the Lend-Lease Policy.

This was proposed by Franklin Roosevelt as World War II hit its downstroke and the

defeat of the Axis Powers became perceivable. Yet this is not even mentioned. Given his

perception of Roosevelt through appropriation by Clinton in 1999, this error is understandable;

institutional memory of Roosevelt‟s Good Neighbor policy is lacking.v This is a failure to

confront the premises of one‟s paradigm, and with it a removal of options to issues in the

discipline that otherwise would be able to show its merit.

Others are not immune. Blaney and Inayatullah‟s “Savage Economics” runs into a more

difficult form of the same problem. From the Epilogue:

“The performing economist‟s favored trick is the production of scarcity—the coin suddenly vanishes and

what we see is a bare hand. (…) The content of scarcity is simple: there is only so much stuff while our needs are

never-ending.” (202)

It‟s a brilliant observation, and not to be dismissed in any event. The problem is that this

criticism bases itself on Anglo-American Establishment political and economy philosophy, on

criticizing a paradigm that‟s based on Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Adam Smith. Not one

attempt to attack the matter comes from without that paradigm! No mention of Jonathan Swift‟s

attacks through satire, of Bernard Riemann‟s attack on the axioms of the Establishment that

derived from Paolo Sarpi‟s assertion of positivism, or Leibniz‟s attack through his use of the

calculus (the creation of which, contrary to most claims, is not Newton‟s deed; this is still in

dispute).
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Why is the paradigm accepted as self-evident, when it wasn‟t in the United States as late

as Franklin Roosevelt‟s administration and criticisms and analysis derived from a truly

independent approach to the discipline? Instead, you have control over opinion and the result is

an impotent opposition and a neutered discourse. This control comes through wielding the purse

as a weapon to fund entities friendly to the Establishment, and bankrupt opposition to it, through

which further control comes by imposing agents and policies upon those accepting Establishment

funding; this is the prime method of establishing and maintaining control by which a narrative

and discourse favorable to the Establishment comes about.

Another paradigm, one that doesn‟t assume the very paradigm of the colonist/globalist

elite as given, is not only possible- but necessary. However, breaking out of the present one

requires first that it exists- and the academic reading to date comes close, but fails to achieve that

pre-condition. The problem of inequality in society, economic and political, cannot be solved

until the control mechanism is broken; likewise, the effective discourse desired by Muppidi,

Blaney and Inayatullah cannot be achieved until this happens.

Issue of Investigation

Why are the disciplines of political economy and international relations so tied to a

paradigm created and defined by the very group of international elites that many within these

disciplines criticize and seek—rightly—to change for the benefit of common people around the

globe?

These two disciplines rest upon a set of philosophical concepts that do not permit the

very reforms and humanization that scholars like Muppidi, Blaney, Inayatullah, Zinn and
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Chomsky seek (or sought, respectively). It is also what binds the hands of journalists such as

Jeremy Scahill, who likewise seek to end this system and change the world to a more humane

and democratic, cooperative model.

This mechanism of constraint is not nonsense. Noam Chomsky exposed it over 20 years

ago with “Manufactured Consent”, building upon the “engineering of consent” that Edward

Bernays confessed to in his 1928 book, “Propaganda”. John Perkins built upon it by acting on it

directly in his previous employment, as he explains in detail with “Confessions of an Economic

Hit Man”. Long before the private military contractors—Perkins‟s “jackels”—come for

dissidents, the power of social disapproval and peer pressure are brought to bear to keep people

from following lines of inquiry that the elites do not want pursued through financial bondage of

governments and the looting of national resources, including academic resources. The lack of

historical and philosophical inquiry into the basis of the paradigm governing these disciplines is

appalling, and I seek to answer the question of why this is so.

Methodology

In seeking to understand the seeming impotence of both disciplines to achieve the aims of

many within them to improve the conditions of common people, reduce or eliminate inequality

and thereby produce justice in real and tangible terms for those people and their communities. It

is necessary for me to become familiar with the conversation within these disciplines, so I shall

continue to read deeply of them; I already know where they come from, so this is mostly a matter

of tracing the history of the disciplines‟ primary lines of argument and discourse.
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Yet, as I noted above, it is also necessary to revisit the philosophers that are the basis for

these two disciplines and review the evolution of thought through to the present. This will

require the exercise of historical inquiry, resolving intermediary questions such as “How did

Locke and Leibniz‟s dueling conceptions of happiness result in widely varying policies of

economy in the United States and Europe?” before getting to questions such as “Why was

Leibniz‟s part of the 18th century discourse on political economy scrubbed from the record, for

all intents and purposes, due to rare references to it?”vi

This also means revisiting the development of philosophical inquiry. The Hobbes-Locke-

Smith triad came to serve the interests of Anglo-Dutch interests, interests that are now Anglo-

American and were at one time Venetian.vii The intermediary questions are similar in tone:

“How did the H-L-S triad come to ascendency in political economy and international relations,

and by what roads did they travel to get there?” being chief amongst them.

By tracing the changes of the disciplines from their point of emergence as distinct

academic fields to the present, and comparing those points of change and development to the

points where figures and entities—individuals and institutions—create foundations, institutes,

etc. or recruit significant figures into government or related entities (in other words, by seeing

where these two disciplines and their practitioners exist within and interact with the larger

context of history), I intend to map out where the intervention of outside influences intersect with

and interfere with the development of the disciplines- adulterating them for the benefit of the

interloper. It is the same idea that law enforcement and intelligence agencies use when trying to

find the origins of a suspect group‟s goals and motivations (e.g. the CIA and FBI vs. Al-Qaeda),

so I know that it can be done and done within the time allotted.
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Conclusion

The absence of skepticism regarding the very basis of the premises underlying the

disciplines of political economy and international relations is disconcerting because it shows a

major weakness in both disciplines with regard to addressing the very problems that many in

both fields seek to resolve- many of them being matters of inequality. They face opposition in

the form of a series of social control mechanisms that, for some, can include violence and death;

for many more, the ruin of one‟s reputation and ability to provide for oneself and one‟s family is

as threatening as being shot or stabbed- and just as effective.

The interests served by both the control mechanisms as well as the seeming blindness of

the paradigms acting as foundations are the same: the elites that currently control the economic

and political systems governing the globe. In order to successfully defeat the former the latter

must be successfully attacked, and that requires using the skills of a historian—acting, like

Scahill, as an investigator—revising the philosophical roots of both disciplines in order to root

out the origins and expose them for critical scrutiny. By so doing, it opens both disciplines to an

opportunity to shift their foundational paradigms away from something controlled by the elites

and instead into something wholly within the control of the scholarly community- and thereby let

those well-meaning people to achieve the reforms that they desire to make in the world.

It is therefore necessary to conduct just this sort of investigation, to dig through the

records and figure out just why the scholars of the aforementioned disciplines do not step outside

of the boundaries established by the aforementioned paradigm.

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Works Cited

Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. 1928. Introduction Mark Crispin Miller. Brooklyn: Ig Publishing (2005).

Blaney, David L. and Naeem Inayatullah. Savage Economics: Wealth, Poverty and the Temporal Walls of
Capitalism. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Chomsky, Noam and Edward S. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass
Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

Davis, Leslie. Leslie Davis For Governor Minnesota. 2010. 26 Apr. 2010. http://www.lesliedavis.org

Flint, John. Cecil Rhodes. Little Brown and Company. New York, 1974.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1651. Ed. Edwin Curley. New York: Hackett, 1994.

Leibniz, Gottfried. 1765. completed in 1704. Remnant, Peter, and Bennett, Jonathan, trans., 1996. New
Essays on Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiener III.6 (part).

---. 1714. translated by Nicholas Rescher, 1991. The Monadology: An Edition for Students. Pittsburg:
University of Pittsburg Press.

Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. 1679-1681. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988.

---. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Ed. Kenneth Winkler. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996.

---. Political Writings. Ed. David Wooten. New York: Mentor, 1993.

Muppidi, Himadeep. The Politics of the Global. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. London: Secker & Warburg, 1948.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004.

Riemann, Bernard. 1868.“On the hypotheses which lie at the foundation of geometry” in Ewald, William
B., ed., 1996. “From Kant to Hilbert: A Source Book in the Foundations of Mathematics” , 2 vols. Oxford
Uni. Press: 652–61.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage, 1978.

---. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1994.

Scahill, Jeremy. Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. New York: Nation
Books, 2007.
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Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1776. Ed. Edward
Cannon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

---. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 1790. Ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Zinn, Howard, Paul Buhle and Mike Konopacki. A People's History of American Empire. New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2008.

i
This is where Noam Chomsky and John Perkins become relevant. Noam’s work on media control is very much a
pivotal change, as he and his collaborator exposed how the elite exercises conspiratorial control over people; the
Perkins books expose the systemic corruption of private and public institutions, using international finance as the
focal point for elite control and influence.
ii
Just ask Leslie Davis, founder and president of Earth Protector. He’s been trying to influence things at the state
level for decades, but because he doesn’t conform to the arbitrary boundaries of discourse regarding economic
and political matters—in large part due to his open criticism of Monetarism and advocacy of Hamiltonian
economics—he’s marginalized unfairly. This is not to give the man a pass; it is to say that it is unfair and unjust to
dismiss him because he expresses ideas unwanted by the elite- they attack him, not his ideas.
iii
This too is now within accepted boundaries, thanks to Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” book. Until then, you had
to point to the 1932 Reichstag Fire and risk the stigma of a conspiracy theorist to get this point across- and that’s
as mainstream as it got before Klein’s book.
iv
No one really wants to waste space in a paper when you can just use a bit of jargon or make a reference, as I did
above with the Parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, to invoke a concept well-known amongst the audience.
This is not, inherently, bad. It does, however, make a subculture vulnerable to being boxed in by a faction using an
Orwell-style control of language and content to control people by way of their received thought.
v
Though imperfect, Roosevelt’s commitment to non-intervention in Latin America was a marked improvement in
policy that resulted in improved relations during Roosevelt’s administration. Had he survived World War II, this
would’ve improved to a policy of cooperation through American System credit-based development programs- it
was already policy for Japan and Germany’s post-war recovery.
vi
Politics was no less vicious then than now, as the continuing fight over the calculus shows clearly, so it must not
be assumed that he simply lost an honest debate. Orwell didn’t get his “control the past, control the present” idea
from nothing.
vii
Against Oligarchy goes into this in some depth, but the book is out of print and the author has not responded to
my requests for his bibliography. Hence its exclusion from the Bibliography for this proposal.