Are THEY capitalists and free traders?

[Jane]

Eco-They: 

Kartell, Firm, Syndicate, Management, 
Political-They: Empire, Corporate state, Ruling Elite-the
degenerate aristocracy. 
Allusions and Personifications: The Elect, The Studio, the
Octopus, Adenoid, Dracula. 

THE ECONOMIC THEY

Soldiers stand every few yards, a loose cardon, unmoving, a
bit supernatural. The Battle of Britain was hardly so
formal. But these new robot bombs bring with them chances
for public terror no one has sounded. Jessica notes a
coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited
civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.
      
 "Who're they?"
      
 He shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot."
[GR.40]

Does GR pin down or name an unequivocal source for the evil
it portrays? 

Who are THEY? Are THEY Capitalists? Free trade advocates? 

"From overhead, from a German camera-angle, it occurs to
Webley Silvernail, this lab here is also a maze, In it
now...behaviorists run these aisles of tables and consoles
just like rats 'n' mice...But who watches from above, who
notes their responses?" 

This terrible description, dark and grim is subverted by a
sill song-PAVLOVIA. [GR.229]


There is a universal conspiracy in GR. They appear under
every imaginable manifestation of power. Ultimately, all of
these are subordinated to

 "the needs of technology...a conspiracy between human
beings and techniques...these needs are understood only by
the Political They or the "ruling elite." 


THE ECONOMIC: The Kartel, The Syndicate, The Firm, The
Management

In economic terms, They are "the growing organic Kartel",
the "IG" that Smargd says is "ours" but which Herr
Rathenau, from the expanded, though not perfect view from
the "other side" says is "only another illusion." 

Rathenau seems to know more about who They are, but he can't
tell. He can only tell what the questions are: 

"You must ask two questions. First, what is the real nature
of synthesis?
And then: what is the real nature of control?" [GR.166-167]

That's Blicero's realm. Blicero is the key and he is not a
Capitalist and he is not a free trade advocate. 

Pointsman, the profane Pavlovian Knight, knows that the
"agents of the Syndicate... wait in the central chamber" of
the labyrinth, that "its only a job they have..." And to
fund
his project and keep Mexico, he will do a job on Pudding and
R&J. 

Pointy is not Capitalist and sure ain't no free trade
advocate.  

Funding the War and the Laboratory is expensive. Men and
women can be very valuable assets to The Firm. 

 When the  Reverend Dr. Paul de la Nuit argues that the MMPI
only
"tests for whether a man will be a good or bad soldier," and
not any "human values," Pointsman, not a Capitalist, 
replies, 
"Soldiers are much in demand these days, Reverened Doctor."
[GR.81]

Of course,  The Firm is particularly interested in any
soldiers that possess special talents or "gifts." 

Brian
McHale says the opening dream scene of GR is a "paradigm of
problematic passages throughout Gravity's Rainbow: the
reader, invited to reconstruct a 'real' scene or action in
the novel's fictive world, is forced in retrospect -
sometimes in long retrospect - to 'cancel' the
reconstruction he or she has made, and to relocate it within
a character's dream, hallucination, or fantasy." 

Pirate's gift for "getting inside the fantasies of others
is
a gift the Firm
has finds uncommonly useful."  

Nixon is only a pawn in THEIR game. 

They put together and take apart Presidents like FDR and the
murder leaders like Malcolm X and JFK. 

Are THEY the
CIA/Capitalists/Free-trade/globalization-greedy.....? 

Come on, it's satire and of course the reader is being led
by the nose right into these rediculous paranoid
connections. btw, nothing PoMo about it, it's good old
fashioned American Literture.  

Does Pirate save Europe from the Balkan Armageddon? 

Why does the Firm only allows him "tiny homeopathic doses of
peace?" 

Oh, They control the Jungian collective consciousness too. 

Why don't THEY let Pirate save Europe from World War II? 


The Firm uses men or women to get what They want. 

Roger Mexico knows that the War is his mother and that the
business of
the War "is buying and selling." Buying and Selling. That
was going on long before the Benedictines invented time and
capitalism. 

Well, not time, but, well not even the clock, but, well they
were a good working order and still are. 


Is it true that the principle of the right to own property
in conglomerate form
for the benefit of those with a shareholder's undivided
interest in the whole was a basis of the American corporate
system that developed in the 19th Century even as it
dismantled the Indian
system that was based on that same principle? 


What is the only investment not subject to the law of
diminishing return? 

Jane