Message for the new year 

Since the election of Donald Trump as president, there has been a great deal of soul-searching. A number of explanations of this unfortunate event are popular. Some people blame the schools for not teaching children how our democracy works. Others blame the media for misleading the public. Others again blame the voters for making a very unintelligent and uninformed choice.

These and other explanations ignore a very important fact about the American public. Americans live by a number of myths which are widely shared and never subjected to any critical scrutiny.  If the voters have proven ignorant in this election the ignorance is shared among all layers of the population and is supported and perpetrated by the media, by school teachers, and ministers.

No one wants to talk about capitalism. Creating jobs, for instance, was a big theme during the last electoral campaign. All candidates promised to create jobs. No one wanted to talk about why that was a necessity. Donald Trump blamed the export of jobs to Asia and has all kinds of remedies for that. But he did not want to talk about why jobs were exported to Asia. Nor did anybody mention, what should be common knowledge, that many manufacturing businesses are buying more and more robots that replace living workers. Why are they doing that? No one talks about that either.

The truth is that in our economic system profits are the main goal of all enterprises and making a profit is more important then treating good workers decently and preserving their jobs at  a good salary. Jobs get exported to Asia where wages are much much lower than here. Robots replace human beings because robots do not join unions, robots do not go on strike for higher wages or better working conditions. Buying robots increases profits and in our economic system profits come before people.

There is a problem about jobs and pay for the working and the middle class because corporations care more for profits than they care for people. Corporations do not  care more for profits because their managers are any greedier than the rest of us but because they work in a specific economic system which expects them to change well-paying jobs into jobs that pay really poorly, that anyone can do after half a day's training. That way the wage bill is lower and profits higher.

But nobody wants to talk about that. If anyone talks about capitalism they talk about its blessings, the newer and more powerful cell phones and all sorts of other gadgets which are making life easier - except if capital has taken your good job and converted it into one that barely keeps you alive.

For one group of Trump supporters - middle-aged white working-class men who have not gotten a decent raise in 20 years - their experience is totally incomprehensible as long as they're being told over and over again that the economic system is the best there is and is the source of their well-being. If the true nature of capitalism - its motto  " profits before people " - were better understood by the people who are its victims, they would not be as likely to be taken in by Trump’s promises.

But the mythology of the benign capitalist system goes hand-in-hand with another mythology, namely that the U.S. is a democracy.  In a democracy the people are the source and seat of power and they manage the government through the mechanism of periodic elections. But for the white working-class male who has been treated shabbily by the system for a long time that is again very confusing because if he has any  power to change his condition he has not noticed that.

 But, of course, the United States is not a democracy but an oligarchy run by the very rich and by the leaders of the economic system. They managed not only the government but also what everybody is told to believe every day. It is not surprising that the mythology of capitalism and democracy are so dominant.
That is just what a capitalist oligarchy wants everyone to believe.

 While freedom of the press is always in danger it still exists to a considerable extent. If you want to inform yourself and be able to see behind the “great blessings” of capitalism and the US democracy, here is a list all websites that I would recommend. They are more likely than the New York Times, or Washington Post to give you an honest account of our current condition:

Common Dreams Your daily news presented without concealing the problems of the existing institutions.

Democracy Now! - youtube.com/user/democracynow. Democracy Now! is an independent, global weekday news hour anchored by award-winning journalists Amy Goodman and Juan González.

The Guardian.  Latest US news, breaking news and current affairs coverage from theguardian.com

The Nation. The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, and the most widely read weekly journal of progressive political and cultural news, opinion and analysis.

Truthout is a progressive news organization in the United States that operates a web site and distributes original political news articles, opinion pieces.

Look at any of these sources of news and you are less likely to be misled by the dominant myths of our society.

Someone gets rich from your polluted drinking water

 Gen. George Washington had his headquarters in Newburgh, N.Y. Ever since, this town on the Hudson, an hour north of New York City, played a role in American history quite disproportionate to its small size. But in recent years, it has fallen on hard times. Its industry has disappeared. Its population is impoverished and crime-ridden. And now, on top of everything, its water supply contains carcinogenic chemicals. PFOS is an ingredient in fire fighting foam used extensively for training purposes at a nearby military base.

Newspaper reports usually focus on a single event. The drinking water woes in Newburgh, NY are reported without mentioning last year's drinking water disaster in Flint Michigan. In each case the story seeks out the guilty parties for this particular problem. In each case it is not too difficult to find the city or state officials or the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency whose negligence seriously endangered the health of the inhabitants in different cities and towns.

    But then you see a small notice that harmful chemicals are found in the water supply in other small towns in New York State where plastic plants are being blamed for polluting water supplies. That raises an interesting question: is the pollution of drinking water a widespread problem in our country? 

    According to the Environmental Protection Agency "threats to drinking water are increasing." The experience of people in Newburgh, NY or Flint, MI are not isolated events. Similar experiences with drinking water pollution are common all over the country.

    Are there common causes of drinking water pollution in these different locations? We can answer "Yes and No" to to that question. In Newburgh NY it was the National Guard training ground for firefighters that used excessive fire fighting foam and thereby polluted the town's water supply. In Flint Michigan corrosive water flowing through old lead pipes raised the lead levels in the drinking water. In a small town in Pennsylvania, Dimock, drinking water wells exploded because the water was polluted with methane from nearby fracking operations. In other places agricultural fertilizers are the pollutants. Elsewhere chemicals from plastic factories show up in drinking water. From place to place, the sources of pollutants differ. Each case appears to be different; each needs to be considered on its own.

    But all these different failures of drinking water systems have a common element: money. If fracking is done properly with all the requisite safety measures in place, drinking water should not be affected. But again and again the drillers, in order to save money, skip a step and therefore chemicals and flammable gas escapes into water supplies, wells and even into basements. Sooner or later drinking water is polluted and wells and even houses explode. Associations of large farmers put serious pressure on the government not to enforce regulations that would make farming more costly. Authorities supposed to oversee the maintenance of drinking water wink at violations. Congressional representatives in order to please local industries submit legislation in Congress that exempts local polluters from government surveillance. The money of the industries speaks louder than the citizens’ votes.

    Conflict over the preservation of clean drinking water pits government agencies and environmental preservation groups against the lobbies of agriculture and industry. Run-off from large farms is blamed for a good deal of drinking water pollution, as are the effects of industry and drilling for oil. In the struggle over clean drinking water for all Americans the well being of all citizens is threatened by private financial interests. 

    Many Americans believe that our economic system, largely run by for-profit businesses serving the private interest of those businesses, is the best there is. But when we consider the widespread pollution of drinking water with chemicals as well as harmful organisms, we can see that the private pursuit of profit may be good for farmers and owners of industries but is harmful for ordinary citizens. The pursuit of private profit is often harmful for the majority of Americans.

    Reporting on individual instances of drinking water pollution as isolated events deliberately conceals the fact that each case of pollution is due to the pursuit of private profit. In order to enrich a small number of owners, the rest of us drink water laced with lead and other harmful chemicals that threaten to shorten our lifespan. If we consider the pollution of the air we breathe, and the degradation of the food we eat, also for the sake of private profit, we can see that this economy--often touted as so beneficial to everyone--demands a very high price from us – years of our lives.

   

Capitalism, populism and the revolt of the working class.

A few days ago, I was cooking dinner and listening to the radio. A talk show was on where the host invites professors and knowledgeable journalists to discuss current issues. That day the conversation concerned industries that, for years, have used inferior parts in their products even after they understood that these defective parts cost human lives. The examples where the GM ignition switch which malfunctioned and killed more than a hundred people. Other examples are the Takata airbags whose malfunction claimed a number of lives. The Volkswagen diesel engines that were set to give false emission information did serious damage to the environment and thereby increased human illness.

Why did these companies not improve their products once the evidence pointed to serious damage done to consumers? The discussions on the talk show pointed out that companies want to improve their profit margin and using cheap parts was one way of doing that. Were these companies--Takata, GM, Volkswagen-- led by particularly greedy CEOs? Here the discussants faltered. Increasing the profit margin in any way possible is the job of the CEO. These and other companies operate in a capitalist system where companies are primarily supposed to make as much money as possible and not to hesitate to injure consumers in order to improve their bottom line. But in this discussion no one wanted to say that.

I mention this as one example of the extreme reluctance of public intellectuals and pundits to point to the damages that capitalism does to us every day. Bernie Sanders who is willing to say this openly is characterized as "extreme" and most people don't want to be extreme.

To be sure, capitalism is enormously productive. But what no one talks about is that capitalist enterprises need constant supervision to make sure that they do not harm consumers. We need elaborate government supervision of food to make sure that the supermarkets does not sell us meat or vegetables that are no longer safe to eat. We need elaborate supervision of appliance manufacturers to make sure that our toaster or hairdryer will not electrocute us. Pharmaceutical companies cannot be trusted to produce medicines that are safe without careful supervision by the government. Workers need to be protected by the government against unsafe working conditions, against overwork. Their employers cannot be trusted to look out for the workers' welfare.

Why is capitalism so dangerous to our life and limb? Are capitalists less moral than the rest of us? Of course not. But they are under systematic pressure to make more and more money, or lose their job. The imperative to make more and more money is often best satisfied by producing unsafe appliances, saving a few pennies on an automobiles switch or airbag, or selling meat that is no longer fresh.

Instead of being very clear about this downside of our economic system, people on talk shows, people on TV, in the newspapers never tire of singing the praises of capitalism.
The Donald Trump phenomenon, the exit of Britain from the European Union, the growth of various right-wing organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan in the US, are a result of this misrepresentation of the facts.

In our country, in Britain and in Europe, many working people are genuinely suffering. Their wages are stagnant, while prices go up. Government support for people whose income is not sufficient for a decent life, is constantly being cut while businesses get better tax deals, or are allowed to not pay any taxes at all. In a recent poll, the majority of persons asked agreed that the economic system is rigged. Matters are arranged so as to increase corporate profits at the expense of ordinary working men and women whose economic situation is steadily deteriorating.

The explanation of this development is clear. The capitalist system demands greater corporate profits and is willing to achieve that goal at the expense of the public. But for most people that explanation is not available because they are being told every day how great capitalism is. So they are faced with the unquestionable evidence that their lives are becoming more difficult and their economic outlook is quite negative, but they don't understand how that could happen. The correct explanation that this is the result of capitalism is not available to them and so they are willing to accept any explanation whatsoever.

The favorite explanation is: Immigration. Working people in the United States and in Britain are being persuaded that their living standard is going down due to competition from immigrants and thus their enmity and wrath is is turned on immigrants. They support Donald Trump’s hostility to immigrants and his promises to keep them out. In England working people voted to leave the European Union because they too believe that immigrants are the source of their problem. They are willing to believe that Donald Trump will bring jobs back from Asia and Latin America because they don't understand that outsourcing of jobs is a central capitalist strategy for increasing profits. As long as capitalism is sacred, jobs will be outsourced to low-wage countries and to robots. Should immigration be reduced, capitalists will find other ways to lower their production costs at the expense of working people here and in Britain.

People in the know believe that England will be worse off once it leaves the European Union. Many of us in the US believe that we will be much worse off with Donald Trump in the White House.

But working people will support Trump in the US, as they supported an anti-immigrants stand in England, because the people whose job it is to inform the public have systematically lied and concealed the destructive effects of capitalism. If the voters are not well informed democracy will not have good outcomes.

It is high time that pundits, journalists, professors, so-called experts tell everyone the truth. Capitalism, however productive, needs to be very tightly supervised if it is not going to do large damage to the majority of the population. The fully justified discontent of working people in the Western capitalist democracies is largely the fault of capitalism and the failure of governments to regulate it much more tightly.

Why does racism persist?

One of the genuine accomplishments of 2015 was bringing the persistent presence of anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-woman emotions and attitudes into the open where it is there for everyone to see. Another encouraging fact  is that many whites, and many men have taken to the streets to demonstrate their opposition to racism and sexism.

But do we understand what the problem is? Why are racism and sexism apparently ineradicable? We have seen significant changes. We have a black president. We have many eminent African-Americans in positions of authority. We have made changes that will allow the American Society to benefit from the work of many extremely talented  women and persons of color.

 But the bulk of all persons of color and women are still second-rate citizens in different respects--with respect to their earnings, with respect to the positions they are allowed to fill. Young black men are the predominant victims of police shootings. They are disproportionately unemployed, incarcerated, or under supervision of the criminal system.
Why does that not change?

The most common answer is that many Americans are prejudiced. They hold negative beliefs about persons of color or about women. These are beliefs which are demonstrably false but that does not affect the many people still adhering to those beliefs. In other words, to put this very bluntly, we believe that a large proportion of the American citizenry are not very intelligent and wildly irrational. Facts do not impress them. But  their beliefs are highly emotional, motivated by fear, by distrust of strangers, by uncritical echoing of the beliefs of their neighbors.

While that may be true in some cases and in some situations, it is not the complete explanation. It is important to see that the economic system--capitalism--which many of us are so proud of for producing clever electronic devices at prices that many people can afford, is at the same time consistently encouraging racist and sexist distinctions and divisions.

Our economic system is unable to create full employment except under abnormal conditions such as a World War. What is more, unemployment is in the interest of employers for when jobs are scarce, workers are willing to work for less because it is better to have a poorly paying job than no job at all. A significant number of the unemployed are people of color--people widely believed to be lazy, to be unskilled and unemployable. This racist mythology conceals the failure of capitalism to create jobs.

At the same time, racist distinctions allow employers to pay people of color less than whites. Women in many locations earn significantly less than men. Women of color, earn significantly less than white women. Men of color, if they work at all, get the worst jobs.
Racist and sexist distinctions are in the interest of the business owners.  This does not imply that the owners of enterprises approve of the murder of young black men or the many brutalities of racism and sexism. They do not approve of family violence, especially if it ends in murder. But they are sufficiently interested in racist and sexist distinctions that they are willing to support various police organizations. So far there seem to be no business organizations dedicated to combat racism and sexism.

Today many big city police departments appear to be at war with Black communities, aided and abetted by the criminal justice systems, the public prosecutors, and grand juries. But it is useful to remember that as long as workers have organized to better their condition at work, the police, as well as the state militias, the National Guard, have been deployed to suppress workers’ efforts to organize themselves. The history of American Labor records many bloody attacks on labor by police and the state militias.

The motto of police is often ” To Protect and to Serve.” Considering the history of Labor it is clear that it is the interest of the big employers, the capitalists, that determines who is to be protected and who is to be served. It has always been the employers, the rich, the economically powerful men in any given community.

What was true then, is true today.

The lesson is clear: Our society is corroded by racist and sexist prejudice. Anti-racist and anti-sexist training for police and criminal justice personel may well open the eyes of some and may, in doing that, be useful. But the scourges of racism and sexism will not disappear as long as the groups with greatest power in the society--the banks, Wall Street, business enterprises large or small--derive tangible profit from race and gender denigration.

Thanksgiving and World Hunger

It is Thanksgiving time. Colleges all over the US have Hunger Day festivities designed to acquaint them with the facts of World Hunger. At best they might also learn that 14.5 million households in the US suffer from hunger. There are close to 16 million children in those underfed households.

But in these Hunger Day events no questions are raised about the causes of all this poverty. We are certainly rich enough that no one need go hungry.

Nevertheless poverty is rampant, at home as well and abroad. In my last blog I pointed out that domestic poverty is due to the failure of our brand of free market capitalism to create enough jobs and to create jobs that pay enough to allow people to have sufficient food.

Economists are fully aware that the free market system is imperfect. Markets provide all those commodities that some enterprise can make a profit producing. But some of our major needs are not met by for-profit enterprises: most of our schools are not for profit. The record of for-profit education is inglorious. While many health care providers—insurance companies, physicians, drug companies, and medical appliances companies make plenty of money, they cannot produce health care that the majority of Americans can afford. People have to go without health care or receive government subsidies. For-profit health care is not a success because it is not accessible for most of Americans.

Police and fire protection are not for profit, neither are bridges and roads. Parks, museums and symphony orchestras are non-profit. Building public monuments, Boy and Girl Scouts, Youth sports, the Ymca's and Ywca's are not profit making undertakings. Large parts of our lives are not serviced by the market.

We have known this for a long time. Corporate leaders and the “experts” in their pay are the only folks who deny this. But their opinion reflects self-interest, not facts. There is absolutely no evidence for their claim that the free market solves all economic problems.

But now we are discovering another market failure of our capitalist system: it does not provide enough jobs, let along enough jobs that pay enough for people not to go hungry.

These failures of the market account for poverty at home. Widespread hunger abroad is due to hypocritical and unscrupulous interference with attempts of other countries to feed their hungry populations.

Countries such as India and South Africa have food security programs that buy the farmers' crops at “administered prices” above market value, to stabilize prices and pay struggling farmers a living wage. Crops purchased by the government feed the poor.

The United States and other developed nations want to place harsh restrictions on these subsidies and on efforts to reduce the hunger of the poor. They decry it as restraint on the free operation of the market. Developed countries produce agricultural products more cheaply than small farmers in the underdeveloped world. They can undersell local farmers, put them out of business and add to the poverty in places such as India or South Africa. The developed countries try to prevent poverty reduction in the under-developed world because it hinders their unfettered pursuit of profits for themselves. Mass starvation is of no interest to them as long as they can make more money. In their pursuit of profit, first world agricultural producers are completely unscrupulous.

But their attempts to limit anti-hunger efforts in poor countries is also utterly hypocritical because the US and other developed countries also support agricultural prices through subsidies to farmers. At home they are willing to compromise their enthusiasm for the free market, at least when it benefits large agricultural corporations, but when it comes to saving the poor from hunger abroad, free markets come first.

Millions of people go hungry and die young because capitalist markets fail us in important respects. Pretending to be devoted to free markets and free trade when all they are looking to is their private profit, capitalists make their economic system even more destructive.

When they come around to tell you about the blessings of the free market, run the other way.

Blinding ourselves with ideology.

Roland Merullo is a Cuban-American, a novelist who supports himself in part by writing stories for a golf magazine. On his return from a recent trip to Cuba he argues for an end to the American embargo of Cuba. He recognizes that the existing Castro regime in Cuba has produced a highly educated population, and a medical establishment that rivals any in the first world. But he also deplores the pervasive, extreme poverty of the Cuban people. If we allowed Cubans to visit the US, and Americans to visit Cuba freely, the Cubans, he thinks, would recognize the blessings of capitalism and jettison their own socialism. (Boston Globe,April 13, 2013.)

Merullo is clearly an open-minded person, but in the end he falls back on the purely ideological contrasts between socialism and capitalism, where socialism is bad even if it has some successes, and capitalism is good even if it sometimes fails.

But that comparison is an extremely destructive way of comparing the experiences of two different countries and their peoples and cultures. Cuba's education system is impressively successful. Ours, by contrast, is, as every talking head keeps repeating, "broken." One personal experience to illustrate that: I recently asked one of my classes at the local state university what capitalism is. At first there was profound silence. No one knew. Then one student volunteered that capitalism had to do with buying and selling. That's all they knew. I am sure they would all have agreed that capitalism is good and socialism bad. The educational system in our capitalist country has not served them well.

Similarly, Cuba's medical establishment is first rate, in spite of the pervasive poverty. The United States medical system is more expensive than any other in the world. Yet in listings of international comparisons of medical systems, ours comes in in 37th place. Cuba ranks 39^th. (http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html) Cuba spends a fractions what we spend on medical care.

Many visitors to Cuba report on extensive poverty. But the ideological view of the two countries – "socialism bad, capitalism good" – suggests that poverty is not a problem in our country. But consider these facts:

In Massachusetts the minimum wage is $ 8.00 an hour. A single person being paid the minimum wage may fall short as much as twelve thousand dollars a year below the federally defined poverty level. The outlook for a female-headed households in Massachusetts is that they do not earn enough to pay their bills for themselves and their children. Four out of ten two-parent households in the state will not bring in enough money to make ends meet. Six out of ten families in Massachusetts live paycheck to paycheck.

These facts are cited by the Senate president of the Massachusetts legislature Therese Murray. (Worcester Telegram and Gazette, April 12,2013:6).

To visitors from the US, the face of Cuban poverty never fails to impress. But the United States also has a terribly serious poverty problem.

It is worse than useless, it is outright destructive to approach these facts blinded by the "socialism versus capitalism" ideology. Instead we need to ask questions in the hope of learning. What do Cubans do right in education that we have not managed to do? How do they manage to have a first rate medical system at a much lower cost than ours? What attempts at mitigating poverty have been made in Cuba and in the US? Why did both fail?

Thinking ideologically that capitalism is, of course, good, we are blinded to the terrible failures that affect the lives of large percentages of US citizens. We cannot even begin to think intelligently about ways to improve our record with respect to poverty, with respect to education, with respect to the cost of medical care as long as we are tethered to uncritical and unthinking cheerleading for capitalism.

Merullo may well be right that Cubans who are more freely exposed to the experience of Americans may learn from that exposure. But surely Americans would profit also if we used comparisons between the countries in order to improve how we run our own country instead of reiterating the mantra that capitalism is good.

Yes, let's open Cuba to American visits by abolishing the Embargo. But let's also take off our blinders and visit other countries in order to learn, not in order to reinforce our prejudices.

Capitalism or Socialism

According to a recent Associated Press story, the weeks before the election sent many Americans scurrying to their dictionary to look up all sorts of things. According to Merriam-Webster's the words most often looked up were "capitalism" and "socialism."

We see in Merriam-Webster that in a capitalist society the means of production – farms, factories, laboratories, – are owned by private parties (or corporations). In a socialist society, according to Merriam-Webster's, means of production are controlled and owned by the state.

If you put it that way, it is clear that capitalism is preferable. But these two definitions completely distort the nature of both capitalism and socialism. The contrast is not between the free decision-making of private owners and a society where the government funds everything. Capitalism as we know it would do tremendous damage to many of us, if the government were not trying to protect consumers against unhealthy food, dangerous appliances, and medications that might well kill you.

Capitalism cannot function without a strong government--what many people call "socialism."

Capitalism, as we know it, leaves the control of means of production to the owners of factories, of farms, of research laboratories. More precisely it allows only a small subgroup of owners to control production and the protection process. The bulk of means of production is owned by private parties who have saved up their money and invested it in the stock market or by pension funds and others that invest money on behalf of private parties. These owners of stock do not manage the factories which they own a part of. They are called once a year to attend a stockholders meeting. Before the meeting management instructs stockholders how to vote their stock. The issues that come up for a vote usually have very little to do with actually running the company.

Here is an interesting example: a friend told me that some stockholders of a company in which she had invested some of her life savings, proposed a resolution for the stockholders meeting that would have instructed management to tell the stockholders of political contributions management made with company funds. Management refused to put this resolution on the agenda of the stockholders meeting. Management can do that. The stockholders have no recourse.

Capitalism leaves control of our productive machinery to a very small number of people. The law instructs these managers to increase stockholder value as much as they can. Making a greater profit demands sharp competition with competitors – lowering production costs, cheapening products, and reducing the wage bill either by cutting wages or by laying off workers.

In this competitive environment, the sleaziest operator always sets the rules. If you try to provide good value for your customers and a good work environment for your employees, you may have a larger wage bill or pay more for materials than a less scrupulous competitor. If you want to remain in business your costs must be close or equal to those of the less conscientious competitor. In spite of your best intentions you to have to substitute cheaper materials and lower your wage bill.

The result is that in a capitalist, competitive economy some outside agency is essential to make sure that the food you buy in the supermarket will not make you sick, that the car you drive will not kill you, that the cleaning materials you use will not harm you and your family, and that the medicines you take will not at some future time create more serious health problems for you.

The continual pressure for lowering production costs encourages producers to cut corners. Government protection for the consumer is absolutely essential. As products become more and more complicated, and as capitalism produce more and more different products, the government's surveillance apparatus becomes proportionally larger and more complex. Government interference with the economy increases as the economy grows and produces more products that can potentially create serious injuries.

Similarly, the government needs to step in to protect employees for being overworked, underpaid and exposed to dangerous working conditions. Only after many decades of vigorous agitation did workers succeed in getting a guaranteed eight hour working day (instead of a ten, 12, 14 hour day). The government has to forbid child labor and force employers to have a healthy working environment. In 2011 there, in spite of government supervision, were 3 million injuries and illnesses that kept people away from work. Left to its own devices the owners of workplaces would wreak untold havoc.

The growth of government activity in the economy is often called "socialist" by its opponents. But the growth of government supervision of the economy is an integral part of capitalism. Capitalism produces cigarettes, alcohol, soft drinks and fast food that contributes to the growth in obesity and diabetes. Capitalist drug companies constantly produce new medications many of which have serious side effects against which the government tries to protect us. Capitalists produce toys that may kill infants and cars that may seriously injure their parents. They would be even more destructive without some government action.

The progressive involvement of the government in the economy is not the result of "socialist" errors on the part of the government. It is an inevitable part of the capitalist system where competition for greater profits produces a wealth of dangerous products. Here company profits are more important than the well-being of consumers. They can only protect themselves against the capitalist owners by allowing the government to grow ever larger.

If you really are for smaller government, you need to work to put an end to this rapacious capitalism.

Mall of America or American Republic?

The authors of the Constitution, deliberating in Philadelphia in the 1780s disagreed on many issues. But they were unanimous in their opinion that the new Republic they were establishing, would survive only if its citizens were virtuous.

We do not use the word “virtue” much anymore. But it is clear what the generation of the Founders meant: virtuous citizens distinguished clearly between self interest and the common good. They tried to discover what was the common good and to support it. Virtuous citizens were incorruptible. They displayed their dedication to the well-being of the Republic by volunteering to assure its survival.

This spirit of working for the common good, even to the detriment of one's private interests is, of course still with us. Think of the lawyers and law students who spent countless hours researching the cases of convicts on death row and succeeded in proving in a significant number of cases that persons were due to be executed for crimes they had not committed. The unjustly condemned were set free often after long years of incarceration.

The most recent example of this dedication to the common good are the Occupy Wall Street protesters, in New York and 70 other cities, who subject themselves to considerable discomfort and, often, unpleasant confrontations with the police. All this in order to express clearly that they see America turning its back on its traditional ideals in order to enrich those who care only for money, and not for virtue, or for democracy and freedom.

Much has changed since the 1780s. America has gone capitalist. In business you do not consider the well-being of all. You need to protect yourself and your own interest against the threats posed by your competitors. The businessman who thinks too much about the common good may well end up bankrupt.

Most recently we have become a nation of shoppers. We work all week to earn the money to spend it at the mall over the weekend. At the mall you act on a whim. You buy whatever seems attractive at that moment. When you bring it home, your whim may have passed. The next day you return your purchase, following a different whim. In the mall everyone has his or her own opinion. Each opinion weighs as much as the next. You do not need to defend your tastes in clothing, or home furnishings, or food. Do you like caviar or cheeseburgers? It does not matter. Your preferences are clearly yours and yours alone.

Capitalism has not only made us into shoppers. It has made us into different kinds of people. It has made us selfish and indifferent to the common good. Being shoppers at the mall has made us irrational. We do not act reasonably. We cannot and do not want to give reasons for what we do or say. Political convictions and policies have become consumer items. We take them up if it pleases us and surrender them when they are no longer new and exciting.

The selfishness of capitalist competition and the self-indulgence of the mall have invaded our political life. Competition for public office is as cutthroat as any commercial competition. The question is no longer: “what does our country need?” but “what is to my advantage?” Commercial competition often skates perilously close to illegality; frequently it employs clearly illegal means. Witness the recent sub prime mortgage scandal. The same is true in politics: no one thinks anything of spreading false rumors about competing candidates – remember Sen. Kerry and the “swift boat” campaign – of avoiding serious deliberation about our problems by encapsulating complex issues in a few snappy words. No one hesitates to mislead voters. During electoral campaigns most candidates tell huge lies. Virtue is not on their mind.

The spirit of the Mall has also invaded our politics. Everyone has his or her own opinion in politics just as they do when they shop for bathroom deodorizers. Giving reasons for one's opinion, researching the facts, thinking carefully and discussing issues dispassionately are no longer part of the citizens repertory. There is no room for being public spirited in the mall because it is all about what I feel like. People make their political choices in the same spirit of self-involvement, refusal to consider facts, or trying to discover what might be good for all.

The Founders believed that if citizens were motivated, not by virtue, but by self interest and their whims, our republic would soon fail and we would lose our freedoms.

They may well have been right about that.

Are Corporations Persons?

In 1886 the US Supreme Court declared that corporations—such as General Electric or General Motors—were persons for the purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment. In this view, treating corporations as "persons" is a convenient legal fiction that allows corporations to sue and to be sued, that provides a single entity for easier taxation and regulation, that simplifies complex transactions that would otherwise involve, in the case of large corporations, thousands of people, and that protects the rights of the shareholders, including the right of association.

That sounds perfectly reasonable. Corporate personhood is a mere legal fiction for the purpose of court actions and taxation.

Today this fiction has ominous political consequences. Last year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission the Supreme Court decided that, being persons, corporations have free speech rights and thus no one may limit corporate political spending. If we tell corporations that they can spend only so much for political campaigns, we are telling them that their ability to speak out on politics is limited and—since they are person—that would contravene one of our most dearly held constitutional principles that all persons are free to speak their mind.

Corporations have a lot more money to spend on political campaigns than you and I. They can engage in a lot more and a lot louder political speech than you and I. In fact this court case may well intensify the corporate ability to drown out citizens' political opinions. Corporations are now the most important “citizens” that get the best hearing because they can yell louder than anyone else. 

 

It is time to rethink corporate personhood.

Obviously, corporations are not persons. Would you like your daughter to marry one? The fact that corporations will not come to your back yard barbecue to drink beer and talk about the Red Sox is only one indication that this corporate personhood is, indeed, a fiction.

More significant even is that persons are moral beings. We do not always do what is morally right, but the question of morality is always there.

Persons do not only have rights; they have responsibilities. Persons owe gratitude to their benefactors, they have obligations to their parents, and their children. They have civic obligations. They are morally obligated to contribute to the community in which they live, that provided schooling for them, that protects them and their property.

Corporations, typically, are not good citizens. They pollute the environment. In the age of the global corporation, they show no loyalty to their nation or do not hesitate to do business with authoritarian regimes. IBM provided the machinery for Nazi Germany to make list of their Jewish citizens thereby enabling mass killings. General Motors and Ford made trucks and tanks for the US military in the US, and trucks and tanks for Hitler's army in Germany. Anyone with money will find corporations in their corner. During the last two years global corporations like General Electric and Exxon paid no income taxes.

That kind of cold-blooded money-grabbing is not acceptable if people do it. If corporations are persons can we let them be completely oblivious to the moral obligations of persons?

We need to demand that corporations live up to the full implications of their personhood or be stripped of it altogether.