I’ve been e-mail back-and-forthing with a Libertarian who contends taxation is immoral coercion and that we can secure all the liberty we need through free-market capitalism.
I thus turn with relish, ketchup, and mustard to my neighbor Travis Kiefer’s latest AAN column, in which he points out what America would be like if we ran our country like a free-market corporation:
…All power in the government would be issued from a top-down central committee.
…Failure to submit to any order may result in instant exile.
…There is no freedom of speech [see also Donald Trump’s effort to sue Steve Bannon for “breach of his written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement“].
There is no right of association, and attempts to associate may result in exile (i.e. unionizing).
…There is pervasive surveillance of movement and electronic communication.
…The society is heavily regulated, in which many employees are told when, where, and how many times a day they can go to the restroom.
…Individuals are citizens “at will” and may lose citizenship for any reason without just cause.
…Anything newly discovered or invented is the sole property of the corporation and ownership rights are forfeited by the individual [Travis Kiefer, “The Perils of Country as Corporation,” Aberdeen American News, 2018.01.03].
Ah, yes, the free market: hotbed of liberty.
One of the problems with the views of people who think the free market is the Holy Grail to solve all problems is that they fail to understand that there are very few truly free markets that do not depend upon government regulation and intervention to maintain their “freedom.” Without regulation such as anti-trust provisions, market participants strive for power over the market that is the antithesis to freedom, i.e. monopolistic power. Some market participants have built in advantages in terms of wealth and power that so overwhelm market forces that there is little or no freedom left–think labor markets without labor unions and no labor laws that govern corporate behavior. Libertarians that want to remove the government from the equation to let the free market rule are either accepting that a few people will benefit to the detriment of the many or they are delusional.
Libertarians need to read Karl Marx and study why the Marxist predictions of capitalism’s demise have not come to pass. It wasn’t that Marx was wrong about unfettered capitalism resulting in the concentration of wealth among the 1%. Marx’s predictions of capitalism run amuck and its ultimate failure have not come to pass precisely because we regulate the excesses of capitalism through government regulation. Although we seem to have a lot of foxes in Washington guarding the hen house right now.
If the choice is an unfettered free market absent regulation and subject to the manipulations of the wealthy and powerful or the choice of a regulated market established by elected representatives of the people that is not free of government regulation but is fair to market participants, I will advocate for the latter.
Nice comment Darin. Your point about government regulation interfering with Marx’s predictions seem dead on. Marx did not anticipate a middle class nor any safety net for labor. Those developments appear to be the most important reason we have not yet seen the predicted revolution. Taxing the rich to provide for a safety net, and regulating business are a foundation for reducing poverty and increasing upward mobility, and thereby relieving the natural tensions that Marx predicted would lead to a labor uprising.
On the other hand, if Republicans and Libertarians are able to eliminate the government regulation and oversight of businesses, and remove the safety net in the future, our children may well see Marx’s predictions come true.
Groucho Marx wrote “Many Happy Returns: An Unofficial Guide to Your Income Tax Problems” in 1942.
“Why does the government need money? Well, a steam engine will run only if you throw coal into it. Wouldn’t you run if someone was going to throw coal into you?”
When you are at war with 39% of the whole world’s countries, you need to keep fleecing the sheep. http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/costofwar_projectmap_large1.jpg What makes corporate America work is not freedom or liberty, it is fear. We have been pouring taxpayer dollars into Afghanistan for 18 years and we are worse off than we were in 2001. We just got through telling Pakistan that we are not gonna pay them to fight our enemies because we gotta pay off corporate America to keep that pig feed. Our wages are stagnant, our farms and ranches are disappearing into big corporate entities. Fear is a strong deterrent, but one of these days, fear ain’t gonna matter. That will be when reality is gonna set in and we are gonna tell them no…for the sake of liberty.
Corporate America like Intel, is crooked. Intel’s CEO dumps his stock when he learns that Intel is flawed. http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-krzanich-sold-shares-after-company-was-informed-of-chip-flaw-2018-1 There is no liberty in corruption, is there? I this where we are in terms of capitalist business practices? Corporate America does insider trading while we taxpayers pay for the sham. In China, they would have taken this boy out and put a ringer behind his ear.
Bear, I’m sorry I didn’t catch it sooner, but that’s a really interesting closing comment you make, that if we didn’t have government tempering the excesses of capital, we might see labor rise up in Communist rebellion and seize the means of production much sooner. Did Marx miss that? Did he not consider that sensible government could defuse his historical inevitability (as surely as citizens of the Foundation made aware of the workings of Hari Seldon’s psychohistory could unravel his mathematical certainties)?
Cory, to the best of my recollection there were virtually no meaningful protections or safety net for workers in Germany, or the US for that matter, during the period when Marx developed his theory of historical dialectical materialism.
Indeed, for Marx, communism was going to be the first sensible government, as it theoretically was supposed to provide the safety net for everyone that was missing under 19th century capitalism.
Psychohistory is a new one to me, but it seems on a different level than with Marxian predictive analysis. Marx was looking for universal truths applicable from history and approached the problem by extending Hegal’s idea of the dialectic from the realm of predicting or explaining subjective thought to using the dialectic to analyze, explain and predict known human economic history.
Asimov used the term psychohistory in his Foundation novels to describe his fictional notion that one might predict history through statistical analysis of vast populations (i.e., the Galactic Empire, consisting of millions of worlds with 500 quadrillion residents). A decade or so later, the term came into use to describe the actual study of psychological motivations in history. That’s my nerd note of the day.
So did we beat Marx to the punch? Capitalists read Marx, saw the threat to their dominance, and compromised, crafting a safety net within the existing governmental structures that provided just enough socialist protection to keep the working class from completely overturning the capitalist machine? Did Marx underestimate the decency of capitalists? Or was the social state within capitalism a temporary aberration, unsustainable against the inevitable grasping greed of the Trump class?
“Why a four year old child could understand this.
Run out and get me a four year old child,
I can’t make head or tail out of it.”
Groucho Marx, Duck Soup.
My note for the day since this subject is way over my pay grade- American Pie is the only song I can remember that uses Marx as a lyric- Lenin read a book by Marx.
Great questions Cory!
I don’t think that capitalists, per se, modified their behavior to ward off the Marxian prediction. For example, some argue capitalist Henry Ford paid decent wages to labor so they could afford to buy the cars he made, thereby increasing the rate of return on investment. On the other hand, when the depression took hold, had Republicans been able to stop government efforts to assist the unemployed, our 1930’s may well have followed Russia’s lead a few years earlier in violently seizing political power and nationalizing all capital and the bank accounts of capitalists.
As for underestimating the decency of capitalists, I question the role of capitalist decency in improving labor’s circumstances. History will ultimately determine whether Marx’s prediction eventually comes true and whether
bcb, it certainly was not for the lack of trying by the conservatives, including deadly violence. https://www.salon.com/2014/04/18/the_plot_to_overthrow_fdr_how_the_new_deal_sent_conservatives_into_a_rage_partner/ We were very very close to being taken over by the right wing radical agenda…history does repeat itself.
jerry, what an interesting Salon interview – thanks! Had either the assassin or the bankers been successful in stopping FDR, we might already have experienced the violent overthrow that Marx predicted.
“to each according to his pull.”
Some where among libertarians I heard someone say that the reality of Marxist ideaolgy is that people who are inclined to use “pull” are always going to thrive in the (welfare – warfare) culture. Those of us not inclined to use “pull” are advised to find some Amish friends.
Another valuble rule of thumb I picked up from libertarians is to always judge a social institution by its parking arangement. It is sort of like the three factors of real estate – (location – location – location.)
Ron Paul did a great service when he tried to let people carry a few gold and silver coins in their pocket.
I always found the libertarian chant “taxation is theft, conscription is slavery and war is the health of the state” to be rather charming.
I found some provocative holiday reading from Carolyn below.
http://carolynyeager.net/why-revisionism-historical-necessity
thanks,
Jerry
A valuable rule of thumb from libertarians? I didn’t know that crew was capable of any practical advice. They certainly aren’t capable of translating any practical advice into effective political action.
Taxation is not theft: it is the price of admission to civilized society.
And be careful, everybody: Jerry’s “provocative” article is really just old, stale excusism for the Confederacy, Hitler, and other white-supremacist faves from a woman who calls Elie Wiesel a “con” and puts the Holocaust in mock quotatoin marks. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, this woman of “leaden stupidity” says Auschwitz was really a “luxurious” place for “reform, re-education and rehabilitation.” She says, “I was drawn to National Socialism as a viable alternative, learning about its true nature as opposed to the lies I had been taught.” Let’s not go down that road.