Wealth creators, or concentrations of power?

A few highlights from an article about reclaiming the commons:

In practice it is impossible for the modern state to maintain an independent control over the decisions of big business. When the state extends its control over big business, big business moves in to control the state.

It is vital here to distinguish between capitalist markets and markets more generally. Indeed the economic historian Fernando Braudel referred to capitalist markets as ‘anti-market’, because of their secrecy, and their predatory drive to accumulate partly through eliminating and taking over competitors.

The problem is that the ‘naturalisation’ of the capitalist market – the uncritical acceptance of ‘the free market’ and the idea that there are unavoidable ‘imperatives’ of globalisation – has elided this distinction. It has created the impression that we face ebbs and flows as unstoppable as the ocean when in fact we face institutions driven by power struggles and flawed human decision-making, legitimately open to challenge.

[…]

The result has been a lethal gulf between parliamentary politics, where the growth of economic power is hardly debated, and people’s daily lives. […] This induces a feeling of powerlessness and lowers expectations of change.

A fatal problem [is treating]  private corporations as ‘wealth creators’ rather than as concentrations of power.

via Transnational Institute | The resistible rise of corporate power.