"Stakeholder capitalism" is big business with government shareholders . . . and it'll be wicked
G.K. Chesterton wrote about "Hudge and Gudge": Big Business and Big Government.
Here's how the American Chesterton Society describes these two GKC characters:
Chesterton introduced these two in his 1910 book, What’s Wrong with the World. Both Hudge and Gudge were gentlemen of the governing class. Gudge was described as a plutocrat, a Tory, an individualist, and perhaps a slumlord. Hudge was described as a socialist, an idealist, a progressive, and perhaps a vegetarian.
In short, these are none other than the political antagonists we know as the Liberal (Hudge) and the Conservative (Gudge). But there was an important third individual in Chesterton’s discourse, and his name was Jones. He was not a gentleman of the governing class but merely a member of the lower orders of society, the common family man.
The key to Chesterton’s politics is that he refused to take part in the debate between Hudge and Gudge, but rather judged them both by the test of Jones. What, he asked, had Gudge, the industrial-capitalist, done to strengthen the family of Jones? What had Hudge, the socialist-idealist, done to strengthen the family of Jones?
And what do Hudge and Gudge do to help Jones? Nothing, absolutely nothing, and, in fact, they work together to pillage Jones.
"Jones" is the middle class, and Hudge and Gudge have been combining to pillage it since at least the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (when the English central government came under the control of the mercantile interest in Parliament) and has its roots in Henry VIII, when he pillaged the Catholic Church for the fun and plunder of his rich friends (a process described in Section Four of Belloc's The Servile State).
If you want to see some of its nineteenth-century manifestations, check out The Myth of the Robber Barons. Early twentieth century? Look no further than the creation of the Federal Reserve. Late twentieth century? The military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical-regulatory complex. You want to see it today? Check out some Jack Dorsey tweets or ponder how Google got so big so fast.
If you want to see its next manifestation, and one that may prove to be the scariest, check out Michael Rectenwald's description of the Great Reset and its central tenet: "stakeholder capitalism."
In opposing that system, stakeholder capitalism entails corporate cooperation with the state and vastly increased government intervention in the economy.
Proponents of the Great Reset hold “neoliberalism” responsible for our economic woes. But in truth, the governmental favoring of industries and players within industries—what used to be known as corporatism or economic fascism—has been the real source of what Schwab and his allies at the WEF decry.
While approved corporations are not necessarily monopolies, the tendency of the Great Reset is toward monopolization—vesting as much control over production and distribution in as few favored corporations as possible, while eliminating industries and producers deemed non-essential or inimical. To bring this reset about, Schwab writes, “[e]very country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”
Another way of describing the goal of the Great Reset is “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”—a two-tiered economy, with profitable monopolies and the state on top and socialism for the majority below.
