What if Henry Ford had become U.S. President?
We’d all be driving F-150s
Read “Canadian Fascism, Part 1,” here
Read “On Canada Day, let’s face the ugly truth” here
Fascism should more appropriately be called ‘Corporatism’ because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” –Benito Mussolini
For more than a decade, I have been watching smart, hard-working people with a lifetime of Taxi industry experience struggle to regain their footing in business after the arrival of Uber. The very government which regulates them decided, inexplicably, to hand almost all competitive advantage to an American corporation which was flouting every existing Canadian law.
Why?
Why had the Democratic system Taxi had supported so fervently failed them so utterly? I believe it is because Canada is no longer a functioning Democracy, and no longer has any interest in even pretending to be a Capitalist economy.
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Most of what I learned about Capitalism, I learned in Detroit.
I was born in the Motor City, the city that Henry Ford built. After he developed an automobile that could be affordably mass-produced, Ford invented the 40-hour work week and doubled wages to $5 per day so that his workers could afford to buy his cars. Legendary inventor Thomas Edison’s work powered the systems in which Ford’s factories operated.
Edison was reputed to frustrate associates with some of his impractical ideas, and Ford was considered an impatient asshole; but neither of them ever had to run for office and ask voters to like them so it worked out OK for Ford, Edison and the American public alike. Their spirit of can-do entrepreneurialism and shameless, committed Capitalism permeates Detroit to this day.
For those of us born in North America during the 20th century, the largest threat to our desirable, democratic, capitalistic way of life was generally assumed to be Communism. I used to believe that.
However, over the past decade in Canada, I have spent a fair amount of time observing the business world and trying to figure out in which economic system we are struggling to survive. I do not believe it is Capitalism – not the Henry Ford/Thomas Edison kind of Capitalism I grew up with, anyway.
I also don’t believe it is a Socialist or Communist system. For all that we pay half our income in taxes and are subject to lots of the mind games and propaganda, I don’t think Canada is at risk of Communism because some corporate interests, particularly those that have close connections to government, seem to do extremely well in Canada’s current business environment and are easily able to dodge taxes by spiriting their profits away to other nations.
Surprisingly, despite all the accountability and conflict-of-interest rules we think we have, sitting politicians ALSO seem to do very well in both politics AND business, at the same time. As Democracy Watch’s Duff Conacher told Taxi News, “We have laws, they just don’t work very well. Canada’s ‘Conflict of Interest Act’ should probably be called ‘The Impossible to Be In a Conflict of Interest Act.’ The law is so bad, it does not apply 99 per cent of the time.”
Perhaps the term “Crony Capitalism” is a better descriptor than “Communism” or “Socialism,” but this is more than cronyism. It’s a form of Crony Capitalism in which the cronies not only get preferred access to government business, but they also get to re-write laws to their benefit and to the detriment of their competitors. It’s beyond Crony Capitalism into something more nefarious.
From what I have seen, when most people think “Fascism” they think mainly military might and authoritarian crackdowns. Certainly my son leans this way, and after our earlier conversation around Canada and slavery, he generously brought me his copy of “Fascism: A Very Short Introduction” by Kevin Passmore.
This could explain, for example, why Uber was able to operate for years without insurance. It’s also why John Tory re-wrote Toronto’s Taxi by-laws for Uber, while Doug Ford re-invented the concept of work to allow for “active time” or “engaged time,” leaving gig workers unpaid for about half of their workday to the benefit of corporations.
The Taxi industry witnessed this “merger of state and corporate power” in technicolour in 2016, when municipal Vehicle for Hire by-laws in Toronto and Ottawa were re-written. Last year, Toronto collected $25 million in per-trip fees from Uber, making it a “full corporate partner,” according to George Wedge, president of the Rideshare Drivers Association of Ontario.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think it’s an “either/or” situation. Yes, historically Fascism was based on militarism, involving both soldiers and police. But it’s worth remembering that Benito Mussolini himself said “Fascism should more appropriately be called ‘Corporatism’ because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
It’s good to be government, with the power to re-write laws and re-define words to improve prospects and profitablity for your business friends, and yourself. It’s the whole bundle of sticks, with the ax in the middle: the fasci. How can you lose?
Imagine for a moment that Henry Ford built the Ford Motor Company in Canada. He wouldn’t just be a Capitalist. Henry Ford could be the Prime Minister, if that’s what he wanted to be.
Henry Ford as Prime Minister wouldn’t have to divest himself of his businesses, but simply put them in a blind trust – even though we’d all know the trust wasn’t “blind” at all.
He’d be able to re-write laws to benefit Ford; for example, all vehicles would only come in black, or have eight cylinders, or run on biofuel from his own biofuel plants. He could write laws dictating that these would be the only kinds of cars Canadians could buy.
Henry Ford would be able to tell consumers they no longer have the power to decide what kind of vehicle they want to drive: Ford would decide for them. He’d write it into law. And he would profit by their purchase.
This is not some outlandish dystopian vision of a distant future. This is Canada in 2025.
Canadian businesses are now struggling to survive not in a Capitalist system, but perhaps more likely in a Fascist/Corporatist one. Government isn’t even putting up a pretense of being separate from business: as Dan Knight wrote on The Opposition News Network on July 12:
“Prime Minister Mark Carney’s official conflict-of-interest screen has been released by the Ethics Commissioner—and what it reveals is nothing short of staggering. Not five entities. Not a dozen. One hundred and three. That’s how many corporate and financial interests Carney has quietly acknowledged are too conflicted for him to touch.
At the center of this web? Brookfield Asset Management, the $1 trillion global investment firm where Carney was Vice-Chair before walking straight into Canada’s top political office. The very same Brookfield that owns energy projects, pipelines, nuclear companies, real estate empires, carbon offset schemes you name it, they’ve got a piece of it. And now, they’ve got a former executive running the country.”
That’s not Capitalism. It’s Corporatism.
