It is almost axiomatic for conservatives to passionately defend the cause of capitalism.

It is seen as integral to the founding of our nation and can even be seen in semi-religious terms.

However, it can be healthy to occasionally re-examine even sacred cows.

While capital can have a broad meaning (such as resources), it is convenient to just think of it as money.  If a person saves his money and starts a business, he takes the risks and should have the rewards.

However, capital can also be aggregated through selling joint shares in a particular enterprise.  As a result, there are two different types of capitalism: the individual and the collective.

My central thesis is that individual capitalism is deserving of all the sentiment and favor that the word "capitalism" inspires.

However, collective or, more specifically, corporate-state capitalism, sometimes known as corporatism, has appropriated this cloak of respectability and has over decades come to destroy individual capitalism.  It is only now slowly revealing its collectivist nature.

Most communist countries are actually some form of socialist collective.  As long as terms are being clarified, fascism needs to be put back in the category of socialism, as it is just a differing form of collectivism.  Fascism can be specifically defined as corporate-state governance.

For decades, those with mom-and-pop-style enterprises, such as hardware stores, grocery stores, and drugstores (individual capitalism), were pointed at by Soviet-style governments as the enemy.  They were "kulaks," "wreckers," and "hoarders." 

However, as the dust is beginning to settle, corporate collectives appear to have been a graver threat to personal survival than any Soviet commissar.

Corporations like Disney are beginning to show that there is an agenda that exceeds the mere greed that leftists attribute to capitalism.

Facebook seems implicated in funding the mules from 2000 Mules.  Twitter seems to have found a way to merge economic objectives with political ones.

Perhaps the merging of Big Government with Big (corporate) Business was inevitable.  The takeaway lesson here is that the collective will always be bigger than — and beat — the individual.

Individual collectives connect a business-owner to a community and his customers.  A corporate collective is supposed to be answerable to the shareholders

However, often the biggest shareholders are other corporate collectives.  BlackRock (with $10 trillion in assets under management) makes no apologies for its social and political manipulations.

This is not just a single rogue player, but a picture of where economic collectivism always leads.

Mom-and-pop dairy farms with 100 cows have been replaced by dairy collectives, with over 1,000 cows and 10–15 illegal alien workers.  A push is being made to get 10,000-cow dairy operations worked with 50 illegals.  If Walmart can be seen as plantation mercantilism, then the return of plantation agriculture is already under way.

Tim Froehlke can be contacted through christianpioneer.com.

Image: Picryl, public domain.