What Links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The Shadowy Network Behind Their Policies

The Atlas Network’s dark-money junktanks are behind neoliberal policies around the world. And you may find its leaders on a resignation honours list near you

By George Monbiot

January 7, 2024

Source: The Guardian

There are elements of fascism, elements borrowed from the Chinese state and elements that reflect Argentina’s history of dictatorship. But most of the programme for government announced by Javier Milei, the demagogic new Argentinian president, feels eerily familiar, here in the northern hemisphere.

A crash programme of massive cuts; demolishing public services; privatising public assets; centralising political power; sacking civil servants; sweeping away constraints on corporations and oligarchs; destroying regulations that protect workers, vulnerable people and the living world; supporting landlords against tenants; criminalising peaceful protest; restricting the right to strike. Anything ring a bell?

Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life.

Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal thinktanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network.

The IEA created, to a remarkable degree, Liz Truss’s political platform. In a video conversation on the day of her “mini” budget with another member of the institute, its then director general, Mark Littlewood, observed: “We’re on the hook for it now. If it doesn’t work it’s your fault and mine.” It didn’t work – in fact, it crashed spectacularly, at great cost to us all – but, thanks to the UK’s media, the BBC included, which continue to treat these fanatical corporate lobbyists as purveyors of holy writ, they’re off the hook.

Last year, the IEA was platformed on British media an average of 14 times a day: even more often than before the disaster it helped inflict on the UK. Scarcely ever was it challenged about who funds it or whom it represents. The three peers nominated by Truss in her resignation honours list have all worked for or with organisations belonging to the Atlas Network (Matthew Elliott, TaxPayers’ Alliance; Ruth Porter, IEA and Policy Exchange; Jon Moynihan, IEA). Now, like US supreme court justices, they have been granted lifelong powers to shape our lives, without democratic consent. Truss also put forward Littlewood, but his reward for wrecking people’s lives was blocked by the House of Lords appointments commission. Argentinians protest against new president Javier Milei’s deregulation decree – video

Nothing has been learned: these corporate lobby groups still mould our politics. Policy Exchange, which, as Rishi Sunak has admitted, “helped us draft” the UK’s vicious new anti-protest laws, is also a member of the Atlas Network. We might describe certain policies as being Milei’s or Bolsonaro’s, or Truss’s or Johnson’s or Sunak’s, but they’re all variations on the same themes, hatched and honed by junktanks belonging to the same network. Those presidents and prime ministers are just the faces the programme wears.

And who, in turn, are the junktanks? Many refuse to divulge who funds them, but as information has trickled out we have discovered that the Atlas Network itself and many of its members have taken money from funding networks set up by the Koch brothers and other rightwing billionaires, and from oil, coal and tobacco companies and other life-defying interests. The junktanks are merely the intermediaries. They go into battle on behalf of their donors, in the class war waged by the rich against the poor. When a government responds to the demands of the network, it responds, in reality, to the money that funds it.

The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these policies and tactics around the world. This is how nominal democracies become new aristocracies.

They also seem to be adept at shaping public opinion. For example, around the world, neoliberal junktanks have not only lobbied for extreme anti-protest measures, but have successfully demonised environmental protesters as “extremists” and “terrorists”. This might help to explain why peaceful environmental campaigners blocking a road are routinely punched, kicked and spat upon, and in some places run over or threatened with guns, by other citizens, while farmers or truckers blocking a road are not. It might also explain why there is scarcely a murmur of media coverage or public concern when extreme penalties are imposed: such as the six-month prison sentence handed in December to the climate campaigner Stephen Gingell for slow-marching along a London street.

But the worst is yet to come. Donald Trump has never developed a coherent platform of his own. He doesn’t have to. His policies have been written for him, in a 900-page Mandate for Leadership produced by a group of thinktanks led by the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is – you got there before me – a member of the Atlas Network. Many of the proposals in the “mandate” are, frankly, terrifying. They have nothing to do with public demands and everything to do with the demands of capital.

When Friedrich Hayek and others first formulated the principles of neoliberalism, they believed it would defend the world from tyranny. But as the big money poured in, and an international network of neoliberal thinktanks was created to develop and articulate its demands, the programme that was supposed to liberate us became a new source of oppression.

In Argentina, where Milei has stepped into the vacuum left by the gross misrule of his predecessors and is able to impose, in true shock doctrine fashion, policies that would otherwise be fiercely resisted, the poor and middle classes are about to pay a terrible price. How do we know? Because very similar programmes have been dumped on other countries, beginning with Argentina’s neighbour Chile, after Augusto Pinochet’s coup in 1973.

These junktanks are like the spike proteins on a virus. They are the means by which plutocratic power invades the cells of public life and takes over. It’s time we developed an immune system.

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George Monbiot

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain; as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed and No Man's Land. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.

During seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets. He came back to work in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead in Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having contracted cerebral malaria.

In Britain, he joined the roads protest movement. He was hospitalised by security guards, who drove a metal spike through his foot, smashing the middle bone. He helped to found The Land is Ours, which has occupied land all over the country, including 13 acres of prime real estate in Wandsworth belonging to the Guinness corporation and destined for a giant superstore. The protesters beat Guinness in court, built an eco-village and held onto the land for six months.

He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London (environmental science). He is currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University. In 1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has also won the Lloyds National Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a Sony Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent Award and the OneWorld National Press Award.

In summer 2007 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Essex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University.

 

Free Markets & Monopolies

By Thomas Klikauer

January 6, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

The author with his 20,000 obsolete and destroyed Deutsche Marks after DEM was replaced by the Euro.

To the astute observer, it might indeed appear as if the free market is (a bit like) God – for there are many who talk about it, with some even loving it, despite its rather illusive existence. The free market – like God – remains unseen – until today.

In reality, the much trumpeted – at least by the apostles of neoliberalism and others – and the so-called free market, might, in fact, turn out to be defined by an inexorable growth of three central, but also inevitable developments of capitalism. These developments have been turbo-charged by neoliberalism during the last four decades leading to:

Oligopoly: a market structure defined by a small number of firms that operate together in cahoots. They hold the majority of the market share in a specific market, e.g. GAFAM’s five: Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, and Microsoft.

Duopoly: a duopoly occurs when two firms have dominant or exclusive control over a market. Most – if not all – of this, deliberately designed non-competition occurs directly between the two, e.g. Airbus and Boeing.

Monopoly: a market structure in which one single company produces and sells a given product or service in the absence of competition. My favorite example is located a mere 15 minutes’ from my house: the privatized monopoly of Sydney Airport.

What we have seen since the 1980s is not free-market capitalism – as promised by the ideology of neoliberalism – but a predatory form of monopoly or oligarchy capitalism – almost as a natural force of the system. On the consequences of all that, Lux Venture Capital’s boss Josh Wolfe wasn’t too much off the mark when saying,

we are barreling towards an economy

with few lords and millions of serfs.

A good example that shows how the free-market ideology is capable of camouflaging oligopolistic corporations is through the propaganda dogma of the so-called “free sky” sold as an open market with many competing airlines.

In the USA, for example, instead of its neoliberal ideology, the cold intimacy of an oligopoly was created among just four major airlines. Worse, this was spiced up by the fact that most US airlines dominate a so-called local hub – also labeled as the “fortress” hub as they have very little competition or next to no competition – for which they are run as an oligopoly. 

All three – oligopoly, duopoly, and most obviously monopoly – signify the ever-increasing market power of a few domineering corporations. Over time, this has generated less competition. The fact that there are lees – not more – competition needs to be camouflaged by the neoliberal free market ideology. In other words, capitalism depends on ideology to smokescreen what really happens. One might even say:

the more the free-market ideology is pushed,

the more monopolization takes place.

The trend towards monopolization has led to low corporate investments into equipment and machinery, low productivity, less business dynamism, far fewer startups and new entries, higher prices for consumers, low and stagnating wages, and a significant rise in inequality.

One of the prime locations for monopolization remains the world’s most advanced economy. Today, the USA features industrial sectors with only a handful of (not-really) competitors. All too often, they control the entire markets. For example:

• Just two corporations control 90% of the USA beer market;
• Just four airlines dominate airline traffic;
• Often, there are duopolies in regional hubs;
• Five banks control about half of the nation’s banking assets;
• Four companies control its beef market. 

The list goes on, and this is with or without even mentioning the Internet where Google absolutely dominates internet searches. It has almost 90% market share. 

Meanwhile, Facebook holds an 80% share of the so-called social networks. Worse, when put together, these two have a duopoly in advertising with no credible competition or regulation.

Of course, it is one of capitalism’s contradictions to create a free market – at first – and to develop a tendency towards monopolies. In other words, capitalism is a system that, given time, will devour its own future. 

Long before Karl Marx analyzed the monopoly during the 19^th century, Adam Smith (1776) already complained inconsolably about capitalism’s tendency to create monopolies. Smith’s enduring case in point was none other than the infamous East India Company: On which he said, 

this monopoly has an overgrown standing army,it has become formidable to the government, andupon many occasions intimidate the legislature.

While today’s monopolistic corporations have outsourced standing armies to the government, today’s monopolies are as formidable as the governments – if not more so – as their power easily exceeds that of any singly government. And these corporations can – and do – truly intimidate the legislature. 

As a consequence, anti-trust laws are – more or less – a fig leaf. Anti-trust law appears to be merely another ideology masking the existence of more and more oligopolies, duopolies, and monopolies.

It is no surprise that the world’s foremost master investor and $120-billion-dollar-man Warren Buffett loves monopolies and hates competition. Wisely, he invests in companies that have a monopoly or near-monopoly position in a market. 

In other words, the dosh rolls in from an oligopoly, duopoly, or monopoly – not from competition. While the buffoons have been made to believe in the free market and competition, Buffett owned shares in Visa and MasterCard – the central duopoly in global credit card payments. 

It makes perfect sense for the system of capitalism to have a free-market ideology camouflaging the truth. This allows capitalism to plough on without being disturbed. This is a capitalism where monopolies can freely cement their positions. 

And it is also the same capitalism where Warren Buffett was to make $120bn or more – while others believed in the free market. It makes even more sense for him to have owned UPS: together with FedEx, it was a classic example of a duopoly in the USA’s domestic shipping market.

It also makes a lot of sense when Goldman Sachs – the Vampire Squid of Wall Street – recommends to its clients that they should welcome oligopolies and buy them! As for the believers in the free market and competition, it is best to ignore the truth. Just as it is good to ignore one of the foremost writers on management when saying,

a monopoly is excellent for us, because we can exploit it to make and keep people dependent on us. In our economy, businesspeople, professionals and technicians profess gladly to embrace free market competition. Let’s face it: it’s all a sham. Given half a chance, any business would become a monopolist like a shot so that it could set the rules in its own interest.

Of course, the money comes in when you are a monopolistic price maker. This occurs when a corporation you own can set the price of its commodities near to the highest amount that consumers would be willing to pay for them.

Not just the aspiring entrepreneur, but the general public as well have been told over and over again by corporate media that monopolies are atypical for capitalism, that they are unlawful, and that they are the exception. While such misbeliefs stabilize capitalism however, these do not reflect the reality of capitalism.

In reality, monopolies are an almost “natural” part of capitalism. They are usually not illegal but very legal and they are – unsurprisingly – common to our system of capitalism.

These oligopolies, duopolies, and monopolies also emerged while people have been given the illusion of choice. When they go to their local supermarket, for example, there are usually only a highly limited range of choices:

• Sainsbury, Tesco or ASDA in the UK;
• Woolworth’s or Coles in Australia;  
• Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco in the USA.

To make matters worse for free-market devotees, supermarkets tend to carve up a country into regional oligopolies, duopolies, or even local monopolies. Yet, once inside, the unsuspecting consumer finds a sheer overwhelming array of product choices. This aids the illusion of choice and competition.

There are endless aisles of seemingly different products. Yet, all too often, these cosmetically differentiated (or labeled) products are owned by a handful of global corporations: Nestle, Kraft-Heinz, Unilever, Mars, Procter & Gamble, etc. 

Yet, the illusion of choice persists. There might not be a singly house in any OECD countries – 1.4 billion people – without not at least one product sold by either Nestle, Kraft-Heinz or Unilever.

Worse, many of these corporations are in fact duopolies – Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi; McDonalds vs. Burger King; Microsoft vs. Apple; and: Democrats vs. Republicans; Labor vs. Tories – with only two major players controlling the entire market. 

The faked competition between just two players in a duopoly need to be ideologically legitimized. It is generally done by emphasizing competition while, in fact, next to none exists. Operating slightly above the duopoly, an oligopoly with only three or four main competitors emerges. In the USA’s music oligopoly, for example, it boils down to largely three actors: Universal, Sony, and Warner.

The Greek term oligopoly is derived from merging ὀλίγος (olígos or few) – with πωλέω (pōléō or to sell) to get to few sellers. Well over 2,000 years later, it came to define capitalism. 

The evil anarcho-communist magazine, The Economist – recently argued that with just over 15 years (1997-2012) a whopping two-thirds of all American industries were concentrated in the hands of a few firms. 

What the staunchly pro-capitalism The Economist did not want to say is that, capitalism leads – inevitably – to an even greater extreme: corporate cannibalism – the biggest eats the small.

The workings of cannibal capitalism is easily seen in the fact that in 1995, for example, the top 100 US corporations accounted for 53% of all income. By 2015, it was a monstrous 84%. 

Disciples of a belief system called business ethics or corporate social responsibility might also believe that too many corporate leaders are moral midgets who were half-educated in business schools beyond their capacities for good judgment.

Yet, neither cannibal capitalism nor oligopolies, duopolies, and monopolies did emerge because of some malfunctioning or immoral CEO. The three forms – oligopolies, duopolies, and monopolies –are inherent features of capitalism.

In fact, there are wise CEOs pushing oligopolies, duopolies, and monopolies when, for example, the aforementioned Buffett notes, 

in business, I look for economic castlesprotected by unbreachable moatsand when their dealings are described as corporate killer whales that feast on baby seals.

To them, a logical and even rational way – as dictated by capitalism – is when they buy their competitors and then find ever new and ever more sophisticated ways to monopolize their industry.

Historically, the emergence of monopolies and oligopolies is something that Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and even the non-economist philosopher John Stuart Mill knew. Mill’s wrote, where competitors are so few, they always end by agreeing not to compete. Mill’s not to compete pays off even more handsomely when Mill’s few competitors created business cartels.

When looking at 1,040 cartels over 235 years, the price overcharge was 25%. The message is clear, and this is so throughout the history of corporate capitalism: it pays off to agree not to compete. The payoff is an extra 25% in profits. This is a sizable incentive even for the current master of all this: $120-billion-dollar man, Warren Buffett.

Unsurprisingly and supported by Warren Buffett himself, two-thirds of all cartels emerge in sectors where the top four firms hold 75% – or more – market share. Incidentally, four corporations are also the defining firms for the very common food we all consume: poultry – we currently raise and slaughter a staggering 74 billion chickens each year. In the USA for example:

• Only four companies in the USA provide 57% of all poultry;
• 65% produce all pork; 
• 79% control all beef; and,
• 96% of all chickens are raised under production contracts with large companies.

In the end, it becomes abundantly clear that modern capitalism is defined by three key elements: oligopolies, duopolies, and monopolies. Yet, to make all this possible and to carry on undetected, capitalism and PR-sensitive oligarchic corporations need a good ideology. 

This ideology camouflages the oligarchic reality of capitalism. There appear to be just three master ideologies that are highly effective: the free market, competition is good, and you have a choice. These are transmitted on a daily base by corporate media. 

All this gives grounds for what the president of Nabisco Corporation once outlined as the true goal of his world of homogeneous consumption, 

I am looking forward to the day when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate. 

Virtually anyone reading this article has munched Ritz crackers, had drunk Coke, or brushed their teeth with Colgate. I rest my case.

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Thomas Klikauer

Thomas Klikauer has over 800 publications (including 12 books) and writes regularly for BraveNewEurope (Western Europe), the Barricades (Eastern Europe), Buzzflash (USA), Counterpunch (USA), Countercurrents (India), Tikkun (USA), and ZNet (USA). One of his books is on Managerialism (2013).