Confederation of Corrupt DictatorsBoard

Author: Sir Andreas Bombardone HCS of Ridnez

A short time ago, several notable Imperial Senators launched into a vigorous protest upon reading certain provisions of The Confederation Stock Market Act 2021, authored chiefly by Vice-President Balthazar Sturm of The Cursed Burning Legions of Hellslayer. That the content of this bill should provoke such loudly voiced objections is somewhat surprising to me, as I have taken great pains to elucidate certain key aspects of the economic thrust of Zendirism on a variety of past occasions. It seems odd to certain individuals like the Senators Kuo and Javehin of Regna Loreau and MineLegotipony that the bill grants such unrestricted license to intervene in the operation of the stock market, apparently thinking it contrary to the proper function of markets for the state to take such an involved role in structuring it. The specific complaint that this bulletin seeks to address is the objection to the powers extended to the Department of Finance which permit it to put a cap on dividends of private businesses and compel reinvestment of surplus profits. Excusing myself for the loquacious dialogue for which I have become infamous in some circles, I seek to lay a down a basic statement of Zendirist economic principles which has informed these provisions in the law, and for which I am thusly credited as co-author.

The Zendirist attitude towards economic questions can be broken down to the following:

1. Distrust of Economic Liberalism

   Before this point is further elaborated upon, it is critical to address that the Confederation member states represented by the two Senators with the fiercest objections are also among the most comparatively liberal of the Confederation's constituent territories with respect to their philosophy of governance. Although assertion of monarchic primacy is guaranteed by both the Loreauans and the horse-people, there is a system of parliamentary assemblies, an affirmation of freedom of the media and of opinion to some degree, and importance is placed upon the preservation of the private sphere as a pillar of society. It should then not be of any surprise that these two countries' Senators cannot conceive of any motive to restrict the profit motive, regarding such decisions as "stupid." Even if they would deny the charge, it is clear that in relative terms Regna Loreau and the MineLegoEquestrian empire are beholden to doctrines of economic liberalism.

   How then should we define economic liberalism? I once issued a bulletin where I gave a comprehensive and systematic dissection of liberal ideology, specifically its emphasis upon agency of the individual in abstraction, by derivation of supposed natural right, and in utter contradistinction to the principles of hierarchy, society, and public interest. Economic liberalism follows this line of logic, maintaining that the autonomy of the individual to claim resources as private property and to grant this property whatever function or use maximizes utility for its possessor. It follows therefore that actors in markets, bringing their resources of land, capital, and labor with them, can cooperate on a voluntary basis to increase their wealth by forming associations through employment and monetary transactions. The interference of government in this system, to the economic liberal, is seen as a bugbear which can only throw the market into disequilibrium and distort the automatic mechanisms whereby price signals, consumer demand, and competition achieve a balance that satisfies the utilitarian end of producers and consumers both. Where the involvement of the state in economies is permitted, it is still authorized and staged on a guarded, ad hoc basis, and to achieve limited objectives which even then are seen as outstanding necessities for broader free-market functionality.

   This is the rubbish that destroyed the Ridnezite economy 20 years ago and brought my glorious nation to the brink of ruin, and it is to the benefit of the entire Ridnezite national community that economic liberalism has been so vehemently spurned and refuted. As it is in the New State, so the Integral Social Vanguard of the Confederation seeks to accomplish on a pan-national basis for the benefit of all the constituent populations and for the unity of the whole spiritual organism which we insist that the Confederation comprises, if not in present actuality, then at least in unrealized potentiality. The current administration seeks to realize that potential, as such, and more perfectly integrate the Confederation around a social principle. That is the reason for the ISV's nomenclature, which has confused more than a few into misunderstanding our ideology. The autonomous operation of the market economy can only ever in fact accomplish three things.

   The first of these is to fuel a degenerate race to the bottom, whereby economic actors bid their resources under the threshold of one another to seize upon a competitive advantage. For the working classes, this results in the decline of wages and salaries in exchange for job opportunities and occupational security. For businesses, this means that the quality of the goods and services in highest demand must be undercut in order to facilitate the production of these for cheaper, while the winners of the rat race of the free market form insular, exclusive cliques who create new markets for overly ostentatious "luxury goods," which typically demand more exorbitant price levels due to the nature of the luxury goods industry's clientele. Proceeding from this first phenomenon come the second and the third. The second is the waste of the resources of the national organism to support manufacture of those product categories which consumer demand has arbitrarily chosen. Once the stupidity of the "invisible hand" is accurately comprehended, then the wisdom and justice of permitting it to be the directive instrument of resource allocation throughout the market economy becomes suspect to the mind of the observer. The third phenomenon to observe is that the intersection of the profit motive with the drive to get everything done on the cheap results in an inevitable gulf between the winners and the losers of the liberal economy, in which the worker's forcible acceptance of diminishing wages and the small businessman's inability to profitably compete grind into poverty while plutocrats are given free rein to indulge in excess and eventually to restructure markets around their trivial, wasteful whims.

2. Acceptance of the State as the Pillar of Economic Life

   Zendirism is an ideology that, in spite of the ISV's good fortunes in the Imperial Senate, is scarcely comprehended in its full sense by the majority of the Confederation's movers and shakers. This is a tragedy, for it is exactly that reason which compels me to restate the same talking points to make myself understood. The very first plank of the Zendirist Manifesto pronounces that the state is to be seen as not a creature of assemblies and paperwork, but as an emanation of a transcendental law which binds the destinies of all citizens to a common focus of willpower. In short, the Zendirist idea of the state is a moral construct which exists to imbue communities with shared cultural experiences and ethnic attributes with a real volition all its own, which surpasses yet encompasses the sum of the individuals and any other groups of socially or economically defined particular interest. The collective will to an aggressive self-consciousness, which has the potent, animating impulse to make its claims to rights felt in the material world, is the very fact of the state, never mind about written laws and constitutions. Laws and constitutions are actualized in the ethical mind of the national organism before they are ever put to paper, and it is precisely at that moment that they fall out of validity that the ink and paper of the written law ceases to possess any meaning.

   In the dimension of economic life, and in light of the insufficiencies of economic liberalism, the state must be the crux of all subsequent activity, and all activities and actors which participate in commercial relationships must do so only if it is at the pleasure of the state and for the state's objectives. All other concerns about economic organization are secondary to the assertion of the state's rights before the rights of the actors within the markets, for if the nature of the state is to consolidate the general will of national society, then it must surely follow that it falls under the appropriate functions of government to coordinate the actions of private agencies to correspond with the arrangement that best safeguards the public welfare. The liberal philosophy, in denying the rights of the state to arbitrate ultimately the whole life of the people, allows social life to fall into degeneracy and decay and promotes the atomization of the individuals and fractious interest groups which make up society. The same follows with the liberal economy, simply contextualized within terms which are exclusively concerned with economic matters. The dissolution of the national organism and the implosion of the state then are an accomplished fact. No Zendirist government shall permit these things so long as it stands; ergo, the true Zendirist way shall always amount to commitment to statist control of the economy.

3. Qualified Defense of the Private Mode of Industrial Organization

   The renunciation of the functional operation of the liberal economy should not be used to conflate the Zendirist model with the state-socialist economy of a state such as Daulmark or VlaRiSsiA. Unlike revolutionary socialist creeds, which insist upon a dialectical model of progression of class dynamics and posit a usurpation of the means of production by the working classes alone through liquidation of the propertied classes, Zendirism affirms that the institution of private property is an essential component of high civilization, representing the personal responsibility for the management of land and resources assumed by the owner. Zendirism also observes that the structural layers of the market economy are more useful and efficient for production and distribution of goods than the bureaucratized central planning model, wherein agencies of the state itself are tasked with the employment of all labor and the manufacture of all products, from those which the state holds a position as exclusive consumer to the most trifling of consumer goods. In this system, the slightest miscalculation can result in horrific consequences; famines caused by logistical insufficiencies in the management of supply chains or over-extraction of value from collectivized agricultural projects are common errors of this method. Zendirism believes that a nation represents a community's line of historical continuity under the developmental aegis of the state. The entrepreneurial class has been formed in every civilized country by these processes just as certainly as the laboring class has been. The problem of capitalism to Zendirism is not the separation of capital and labor, per se, but the frightful vacillations between the two interest groups caused by the tug of war between them for the particular gain of each to the expense of the other. Where liberal capitalism ends in plutocracy and renders the workers unto destitution, then socialist ideology takes seed and prompts a destructive reaction in the form of the communist revolution. Both excesses end in much the same miserable circumstances, and as the New State has found, dissentious and unreliable nationalities flock to these like moths to a flame. Deterministic forces compel the likes of Ziconeans and Heisenians to dismantle civilization with the chaos of the war orchestrated between capital and labor, and it is in the service of protecting civilization that the New State has learned how to deal with these antisocials.

   To the Zendirist system, private property is conceived not principally as a right, but as a responsibility, this being a responsibility to utilize all productive assets in processes which serve the public interest grounded in state policy. Entrepreneurs are the best-suited appointees of the state to manage industrial capital because history has instructed them to handle their wealth with shrewdness and care. This business acumen is an indispensable strength for the national community -- once relegated to its proper place and orientation in the hierarchy of economic priorities. Economic liberalism praised self-interest and so tipped the balance in the favor of capital, destroying the small entrepreneur and subjecting the world to the avaricious dictates of the large plutocrat, who at that level can no longer be called an entrepreneur or industrialist to the extent that either term indicates a personal attribute of industriousness. It is precisely in the name of curbing the class-struggle and prioritizing the rights of the state, the welfare of the public, and the stability of the national community that Senator Sturm's motion to enact a public stock exchange contains the provisions empowering the Department of Finance to cap the dividends and direct the investments of private enterprise. The state alone, as final arbiter of the life of the whole people, must determine to what extent private profit to shareholders is warranted by the degree of the contribution and to which extent the profits of the enterprise ought to be reinvested to further goals of increased industrial productivity and capacity.

4. Tripartite Corporatism

   Aside from qualifying the rights of property owners upon the service of state policy and national objectives, Zendirism sees that the most rational administration of the economy should bring together the three general categories with which economic decisions are concerned. In the first place is the interest of labor, which by exercising its creative power upon nature transforms the bounty of the material world into products of industry; in the second is the interest of capital, without which the solvency and autonomous managerial capability of any industry is bound to fail. And finally, in the third and last place is the government, which has an effect upon structuring the economy by guaranteeing the conditions under which resources and property may or may not be organized, and under what circumstances capital may be invested or transacted within the realms of commerce and high finance, in addition to having economic concerns uniquely all its own as an incorporated entity entrusted with the public coffers. In the liberal economy, struggles between particular economic interests, chiefly labor and capital, though also government, manifest themselves in such ways that disrupt the organic interconnectedness of the national economy to service these particular interests. For instance, workers form trade unions to collectively represent their interests before the doom of declining wages, cheaper foreign labor, and outsourcing, and they assert their grievances against their employers by going on strike, resultantly having the potential to cripple entire sectors of industry and hold the nation ransom to their demands. Alternately, the capitalist enterprise has a number of recourses open to it for retaliation. Companies can force lockouts to dissolve the power of organized labor, or more often, they use focus groups to lobby corrupt democratic assemblies to implement policies and regulations that one-sidedly favor them, crushing small and medium-sized business and declawing the power of the union by inviting a sort of government "mediation" that dissolves the autonomous capacity for action of the union and subjects it to electoral concerns which are far from its original purpose. The madness of disunion among the three principal economic agencies yields naught but chaos, in which the unity of the people behind the nation and the state is finally dissolved. So once more we see the evils inherent in the "rugged individualism" characteristic of the laissez-faire liberal approach.

   To the true Zendirist, the proviso of emancipation is not realized in unrestricted action, but in submission to hierarchy and the power of the state, so that a higher capacity for free action, as a vital member of a totally unified, progressively oriented society, may come about. This implies that the goals and grievances of capital and labor must be respectively organized on the plane of state-facilitated collaboration. The necessary step to achieving this is that each sector of the national economy and each field of professional activity must be recognized before the state as a unitary entity with the exclusive and special privilege to discharge that category of professional activity within that sector. Or in other words, the state must absorb and integrate all particular interests of capital and labor into its apparatus in order to reconcile them with one another and also with the greater public interest. This does not imply state ownership or management of all industry, to reiterate, but what it does imply is that the state must incorporate private enterprises and unions into statutory associations whose responsibility shall then be to control the affairs of the specific industries with which they are respectively concerned. These associations shall then be incorporated in turn into the state mechanism to bring the separate elements of the national economy, both the sectors and the professional categories, together. Through discussion and planning, the associations shall arrive at a singular aim of action, and the task of government regulation from then on should be to systematically coordinate the activities of the associations to agree with that aim, thereby guarding the alliance between capital and labor under the banner of national solidarity represented therein.

5. Contempt for Speculation, Rent, and Lending

   The final attitude about economic questions that is key to comprehend if one wishes to understand Zendirism is the total disdain for those uses of capital unassociated with discrete, palpable productive activity. While the Zendirist mentality recognizes the contribution of private property and private capital insofar as their ends are subjected to the prosperity of the political community, no toleration is extended towards manipulations of property and capital which are regarded as parasitic, in that their chief utility to the owners are to create debt or to collect rent. Zendirism has responded to the problems inherent in these forms of economic activity by asserting the involvement of the state more vigorously than even its corporative industrial policy. The notion of lending capital to a less fortunate comrade of the national community in order to exploit him in the future for an increased return on that capital is to renounce any claim of camaraderie under the national community whatsoever. Much the same applies for exploiting the necessity of individuals and groups to utilize the land itself by charging for continuous use of that land. In addition, Zendirism holds contempt towards speculative activities for much the same reason, in that financial gains made through speculation on stocks and currencies is a fundamentally unproductive pursuit that takes advantage of forces which dictate the fortunes of others, while making no meaningful beneficial impact upon those fortunes in an immediate sense. Once more, it is important to note that Heisenians in Ridnez were infamous as the masters of financial exploitation, a vicious, miserable tribe constituting the bulk of the rentier class and the banker elite, who held all of industry and even domestic life ransom to their selfish vice. It was their fault that the nation of Ridnez was brought to heel, and its noble race reduced to the debauched state of living. It is better that we Zendirists have learned how to deal with the vermin of that ilk. The Powers monarchy of New England INC is inhabited by a similar people, whom I similarly detest.