Big Business

Big business interests whose profits depend on direct subsidies and protections from the state are, in fact, a part of the state. If Marx was right in calling the state “the executive committee of the ruling class”–and I think he was–then the owners and managers of the corporate economy make up the lion’s share of that ruling class. Corporate directors and senior management from the state capitalist sector constantly shuffle, in classic revolving door style, into political appointments in the state apparatus and then back to “private” employment.

Brad Spangler put it this way:

…one robber (the literal apparatus of government) keeps you covered with a pistol while the second (representing State-allied corporations) just holds the bag that you have to drop your wristwatch, wallet and car keys in. To say that your interaction with the bagman was a “voluntary transaction” is an absurdity. Such nonsense should be condemned by all libertarians. Both gunman and bagman together are the true State.

Large corporations are neither passive victims nor passive beneficiaries of the state; they act through the state. Or rather, to a large extent they are the state. It makes about as much sense to separate them from the state, as it would have made to separate the landholding class from the state in Medieval times.

And here’s how the Libertarian Alliance’s Sean Gabb described the model of fake “privatization” promoted by the Adam Smith Institute:

As reconstructed in the 1980s – partly by the Adam Smith Institute – the new statism is different. It looks like private enterprise. It makes a profit. Those in charge of it are paid vast salaries, and smugly believe they are worth every penny….
But for all its external appearance, the reality is statism. And because it makes a profit, it is more stable than the old. It is also more pervasive. Look at these privatised companies, with their boards full of retired politicians, their cosy relationships with the regulators, their quick and easy ways to get whatever privileges they want….
As with National Socialism in Germany, the new statism is leading to the abolition of the distinction between public and private. Security companies, for example, are being awarded contracts to ferry defendants between prison and court, and in some cases to build and operate prisons. This has been sold to us on the – perfectly correct – grounds that it ensures better value for money. But it also involves grants of state powers of coercion to private organisations. All over the country, private companies are being given powers of surveillance and control greater than the Police used to possess.
….There has been no diminution in the economic power of the State, only a change in its mode of operation….

(Kevin Carson on Naomi Klein's 'Disaster Capitalism')