subsidies, protection, etc.—just as they do w hen they move into a
T hird W orld country or the U S.
George Soros, the billionaire financier, has w ritten several articles
expressing his view that the spread of brutal global capitalism has
replaced communism as the main threat to democratic societies.
It’s not a new point. Working people 150 years ago w ere
struggling against the rise of a system they saw as a great threat to
their freedom, their rights and their culture. T hey w ere, of course,
correct, and Soros is correct insofar as he reiterates that view.
On the other hand, he also makes the common assumption that
the market system is spreading, w hich just isn’t true. W hat’s
spreading is a kind of corporate mercantilism that’s supported by—
and crucially relies on—large-scale state pow er. Soros made his
money by financial speculations that become possible w hen
telecommunications innovations and the government’s destruction
of the Bretton Woods system (w hich regulated currencies and
capital flow ) allow ed for very rapid transfers of capital. T hat isn’t
global capitalism.
As w e sit here, the World Economic Forum is being held in Davos,
Sw itzerland. It’s a six-day meeting of political and corporate elites,
w ith people like Bill Gates, John Welch of GE, Benjamin Netanyahu,
New t Gingrich and so on.
T he companies represented at this forum do something like $4.5
trillion w orth of business a year. Do you think it’s a significant event
that w e should pay attention to?
Sure, w e should pay attention to it, but I frankly w ouldn’t expect
anything to come out of it that’s not pretty obvious. W hether or not
there’s anything serious being discussed there, w hat reaches us w ill
be mostly vacuous rhetoric.
We should also pay attention to the T rilateral Commission, but
w hen you read its reports, they’re rather predictable. T he only
really interesting thing I’ve ever seen from them w as their first
book—not because they w ere saying anything new, but because
they w ere saying it so openly.
It’s unusual to see an almost hysterical fear of democracy and a
call for repressive measures to combat it expressed so explicitly. I
suspect that’s w hy the book w as taken off the market as soon as it