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Posted on 20-11-08 Malignant Market Mania
By Alan Marston, 20 November 2008
I hereby nominate Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) as the
greatest economist of the 20th Century and Catch-22 as its textbook. It
has taken me exactly 42 years, since being introduced via readings of
Catch-22 by my english teacher in the Otago Boys High School Library, to
realise how completely accurate is his portrayal of post-WW2 capitalism
and the consequences of its global conquest. Not a word, not a deed, not a
characterisation in that book, first published in 1961, has not not come
to fruition in the inexorable spread of that cancer of modernism, `the
market'.
Lets be specific.
Heller observed, "Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being
crazy. Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts – and the question is:
What does a sane man do in an insane society?" For 42 years I've been
asking myself that question and for 41 of them I've been trying to answer
it, so far unsuccessfully. My latest attempt is about 18 months away. I have
great hopes for it but then, I had great hopes for hippydom, socialism,
world peace, greenism, sustainability. Only disappointment has been
predictably certain.
Heller diagnosed as terminal what I have called Malignant Market Mania,
and listed all the symptoms in sub-human form as presented by his
character Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder. Milo is the mess officer at a U.S.
Army Air Corps base during WW2 and he becomes obsessed with expanding mess
operations and trading goods for the profits of the syndicate, in which he
and everyone else "has a share". Think, Stock Market. Milo was thought to
be a satire of a modern businessman as the living representation of
capitalism having no allegiance to any country, person or principle unless
it pays him. We now know Milo was no satire, he is the modern businessman
incarnate with his complete immorality, total ignorance of ethics and a
reliance on circular, contradictory logic plastered over by layers of
`public relations' or spin as it is now called.
Milo's enterprise becomes known as "M & M Enterprises", with the two M's
standing for his initials and the "&" added to dispel any idea that the
enterprise is a one-man operation. Milo travels across the world,
especially around the Mediterranean, trying to buy and sell goods at a
profit, primarily through black market channels. Everyone has a "share", a
fact which Milo uses to defend his actions, stating that what is good for
the company is good for all. Think America. For example he secretly
replaces the CO2 cartridges in the emergency life vests with certificates
for shares in M & M on the assumption that a downed airman needing that
vest in the future to save his life will instead be happier to be
instantly compensated for its absence in the present, ie., the present is
worth everything the future, nothing. As an aside, that was and is the
philosophical base of all nomadic warrior tribes, what we now call gangs
who produce, distribute and sell illegal drugs.
Milo even begins contracting missions for the Germans. Eg. fighting on
both sides in the battle at Orvieto and organising the bombing of `his' US
squadron at Pianosa. At one point Milo orders his own squadron's fleet of
aircraft to attack the American base where he lives, killing many American
officers and enlisted men. Sound familiar? Think every war since 1914. He
finally gets court-martialed for treason. Think `Enron' and any future
trials of corporate heads. But because M&M Enterprises proves to be
incredibly profitable he hires an expensive lawyer who is able to convince
the court that it was capitalism which made America great and the court
absolves Milo when it hears of the enormous profit he made while dealing
with the Germans.
Not ironically, accurately, his company's phrase, "What's good for M&M
enterprises is good for the country" mirrors a phrase Mussolini often
used; "What's good for Fiat is good for Italy", or the similar "What's
good for General Motors is good for America". Not a phrase one has heard
much of recently but which will be heard again soon as those companies go
begging to public funding to bail them out of the soup of their own
making. However it's unlikely you will read in the `media' how Ford
Motors, like Milo, avoided getting its factories blown up in WW2 by
exploiting business connections in Nazi Europe. Those same companies of
course are trying to avoid implosion today, and seek to employ their
business connections again, this time in Neo-capitalist USA.
Milo's business is incredibly profitable, that's what places him at the
center of the current global unconscious. The single exception to
hyper-profitability was his decision to buy all Egyptian cotton in
existence, which he cannot afterward unload (except to other
entrepreneurs, who sell the cotton back to him because he simply ordered
all Egyptian cotton) and tries to dispose of by coating it with chocolate
and serving it in the mess hall. Need I say `convenience food'. Later
Yossarian gives Milo the idea of selling the cotton to the government,
since "the business of government is 'business'."
Milo is a friend of the novel's protagonist, Yossarian, tending to trust
him more than he trusts anyone else after Milo learns that Yossarian can
have all the dried fruit he wants and he chooses to give it to friends in
the squadron. Based on Milo's logic "anyone who would not steal from the
country he loved would not steal from anyone" Milo proceeds to exploit
that noble sentiment ignoring in the process Yossarian's pleas for help
because his preoccupation with running M & M Enterprises has usurped his
psyche. Think, the modern family, the psychological advice business, 21st
Century `me first' patriotism. Milo ultimately betrays Yossarian by
striking a deal with Colonel Cathcart: Yossarian's squadron must fly
additional missions for which Milo gets the credit. When Nately's Whore's
Kid Sister, a young girl for whom Yossarian comes to care deeply, goes
missing, Milo agrees to help him find her but abandons the attempt in
order to smuggle illegal tobacco. Such is the post-modern.
The exact size of Milo's syndicate is never said. At the beginning of the
novel it is merely a system that gets fresh eggs to his mess hall by
buying them in Sicily for one cent, selling them to Malta for four and a
half cents, buying them back for seven cents and finally selling them to
the mess halls for five cents. Soon however it is revealed, without any
evidence of growth, to be a large company, and then becomes an
international syndicate, including Milo being the Mayor of Palermo,
Assistant Governor-General of Malta, Shah of Iran, Caliph of Baghdad,
Mayor of Cairo, and the God of corn, rain, and rice in various pagan
African countries. Think bank CEO. Whenever Milo appears in one of his
cities, it's declared a holiday, with impromptu parades forming around him
everywhere he goes. Think visit by Microsoft CEO.
So whose happy now? Well, Warren Buffet seems pretty chipper. How about you?
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