Food, Inc.

When I was younger, milk was delivered to our home in bottles by a man in a truck. Was this natural milk, made by a cow and squeezed from her by hand that very morning? We thought so. Yet, then as today, almost everything was processed by machines. Even the cows were pumped by machines; and the milk had gone through a pasteurization process before being delivered by a truck that had been manufactured in a factory. Even the glass containers for the milk were made in a factory.

To get fresher milk and eggs back then, you might have had to live next door to a fellow who had a cow and chickens. Or you’d have to have your own cow and chickens. If you wanted fresh meat, you’d have to kill one of the animals with your own hands, cut them open, cut them up and put them on the grill right away…a pretty messy process. I’ve seen it done on many occasions. To avoid disease from spoiled food, you would need a refrigerator if you could afford one. The only refrigerators we could afford back then were little metal “boxes” where my father placed a block of ice. Today this is all done in factories so we don’t have to get our hands dirty, spill blood all over the place and work three times harder just to be able to eat.

Being a commentator today, even a self-appointed one like me, is a grave responsibility. It involves more than merely thinking emotionally about important issues. It involves understanding how ideas work in the real world and how basic premises influence the various views in the public arena. When I write about ideas that influence people, I should assume a high standard and be responsible about what I say. However, the same should apply to those other people who also comment on the issues. There is only one reality and because of this there is only one truth. We can’t all be right. Some of us are wrong.

For instance, my view of man is that he has the capacity and the need to use reason in order to survive. And as an economic participant in society, he must purchase the best products for the best prices. He must do business with people who offer products that provide tangible benefits at prices he can afford. This is the seldom-discussed “consumer” side of an economic transaction; not only does a thoughtful person want the capitalist to provide products that benefit him, but he insists on it. He will not do business with someone who is harming him.

This view of man is based on a more fundamental premise that each entity operates according to its own nature, according to the defining characteristics that it possesses. The view that man survives by means of reason does not imply that each man is rational in everything he does. Nor does it imply that man is infallible or omniscient. What it means is that each person has the capacity to use reason, and more importantly, he cannot survive without the use of reason. His reasoning capacity is his distinguishing characteristic; it is what makes him different from all other animals. And since survival is the key motivation for all living creatures, the need to survive requires that man use reason in his dealings with reality and with other men.

As I wrote in my blog post Anti-capitalism, the Evil Idea Part 3, “Capitalism is based upon a moral principle that each individual has a right to keep the product of his labor. That labor consists, not only of the precious time a person spends to make his product or deliver his services, but also of the value that his thinking is able to bring to the purchaser. The transfer of money in a voluntary trade makes it possible for the purchaser to get value from the seller and for the seller to purchase valuable products as well. This is not a zero-sum transaction; it is plus-plus.”

If you think correctly, you will also realize that reason is fundamental to man’s survival. This means that man can only survive when his reasoning capacity is allowed the freedom to function. This view leads to the development of man’s rights, especially property rights, capitalism and limited government.

Yet, today, we are told that capitalists cheat us and get rich with no economic consequence to themselves. All they need to do is use clever advertising and we’ll buy their worthless and unnecessary products. And, we are told, because of mass production, they are doing it on a massive scale. Unbridled capitalism is a scourge to the common man, they say. It takes his money, leaves him spent and then forces him to go to work so he can spend even more money on their unnecessary junk. The road to capitalism is strewn with the dead bodies of exploited workers and consumers. Everywhere there is devastation while the fat cats light their cigars with dollar bills. Is this true?

Those who hold this view of capitalism usually believe that there must be a select “few” men who can protect you from the damage done by greedy capitalists. You would be supported in this view by your teachers and university professors who would tell you that man’s senses are incapable of understanding true reality and only the state can ever really know what is good for the collective. Yet, the price of being protected by those few “specialists” is the sacrifice of your freedom and a limitation on the number of products that are available to you. This is the attitude of many government bureaucrats today and especially those on the left who want a “nanny” state to ensure that people are taken care of.

I think my view of man is the correct view. Man does indeed survive by means of reason and if you look around, wherever you see benefits to men in society, you see the work of reason and free markets. Tall buildings, even small buildings, super highways, rockets to space, restaurants with delicious foods, televisions, computers, iPhones, iPads, everything that today benefits your life directly was the result of human beings looking at reality and deciding how to create life-saving, time-saving, energy-saving and even pleasure-producing goods. And, since reason is necessary for your survival, you have to be perceptive enough to understand those benefits before you purchase them.

If your view of man is that he is evil or incompetent by nature, then your views on other issues that are derived from this view are cognitively wrong. In fact, any interpretation of reality based on those views, inevitably favors false solutions that do not work. In other words, if your fundamental premise is wrong in the real world, anything you do that is based upon that premise will also be wrong. For instance, the view of Marxists that capitalists are out to make a buck by any means is not verified by history. This view of the capitalist is “cognitively ill-founded” and leads to waging a constant war against capitalism that is destructive of real people. Indeed, this lie leads them to advocate economic and political systems that have been proven to be huge failures throughout history.

A good example of the correct view is provided by Andrew Bernstein in his book, The Capitalist Manifesto. It reveals an appreciation for the true nature of one capitalist named John D. Rockefeller and his accomplishments:

“…Rockefeller was a stickler for cutting costs. He built his refineries efficiently and saved on insurance. He employed his own plumbers and “almost halved the cost on labor, pipes, and plumbing material.” Barrels for oil cost $2.50 a piece; but by buying his own timber, kilns and wagons for transportation, Rockefeller reduced the cost per unit to 96 cents. He plowed his profits back into the business, buying bigger and better equipment, generating significant economies of scale. He hired chemists to develop hundreds of new by-products from each barrel of oil, including paint, varnish and lubricants.”(1)

Other commentators on Rockefeller would say that he cut prices in order to drive his competition out of business or to absorb them into his own business and that he was a thief who knew how to monopolize the industry of oil production. Which view is correct? I suggest you consider the views of the people who bought his kerosene product. They bought his products because it was in their self-interest; it was the moral thing to do.

Bernstein tells us “The final result of Rockefeller’s genius was inexpensive oil for the common man.”(2) Certainly, Rockefeller helped the common man of his time, but even today, he is helping you. Bernstein:

“…Rockefeller wrote one of his partners: ‘We must…remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.’

Millions were now illuminating their homes for ‘one cent an hour’ with the inexpensive kerosene made available by Standard Oil – and for many Americans ‘working and reading became after-dark activities’ for the first time. By the 1880s oil stoves were widely used in the United States, particularly in rural regions, and also depended largely on Rockefeller’s company for affordable fuel. Later, Standard’s supply of cheap gasoline played a significant part in Henry Ford’s ability to dramatically upgrade American’s system of personal transportation….”(3)

As you can see, Bernstein’s view of Rockefeller and other capitalists is that they were benefactors who gave us a number of free gifts in return for the pennies we spent on their products. Not only did they provide products we needed but they also gave us additional benefits for which we did not pay. His kerosene product cost less than that provided by other companies and this made American’s buy more of it so they could read at night and, when Henry Ford came along, he made it possible for those same Americans to have the gift of liberated human energy through a new invention that transported them from place to place. It gave every American more freedom, more leisure, more pleasure, more privacy and even the ability to earn more money, all within the budget of the common man. The common man did nothing to receive these gifts; but he would never have received them without the existence of men like Rockefeller and Ford.

But, we are told, these men stole from us and made us poor. They were liars, thieves, cheats and lustful debauchers of the American fabric. In fact, Rockefeller’s company was forced by government to be split into a number of other companies, many with which we still deal, because the government thought he was creating a monopoly. This brings me to a similar attitude now being advanced regarding the food industry through a movie called Food, Inc., that I recently watched on my computer screen. This movie showed me the negative view of the people who run large food processing facilities and it reveals that the lie about capitalism continues in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Early scenes in the movie showed huge factories where Tyson chickens were processed. The intent was to “expose” the company for creating “artificial” chickens that are raised to be larger and processed according an automated process that reduces costs. Pictures of desiccated meat presumably sent for consumption, food poisoned with feces as well as the camera crew’s unsuccessful efforts to take shots of deliberately darkened rooms intended to signify secret doings and possible animal cruelty, populated the screen while commentators talked about shifty practices and low standards of food preparation as if they were reporting facts rather than carefully arranged images.

Yet, these scenes looked familiar to me. They reminded me of my own industry which was UPS transportation services (for 27 years). I recalled the smooth efficiency of a UPS sort facility where millions of packages are processed nightly and sent on their way to their recipients. I recalled that the UPS system, as efficient as it is, was still not perfect. Nightly some small percentages of packages were damaged which resulted in lost merchandise and damage claims.

I remembered the care that UPS took to notify customers of damaged packages and the ease with which a customer could receive a claim number and be reimbursed. This was customer service, the department where I spent many years issuing claim numbers and inspecting damaged packages in order to help our customers reduce future damages. I learned that even in highly mechanized industrial processes, every system has problems that, in the overall scheme of things, are minute in comparison to the overwhelming value provided by these processes.

The first thing you are told in the Food, Inc. film is that food production today is only about branding, not the quality of the food, not the authenticity of “natural” farm-raised animals, but advertising that creates a false image of quality, natural farming and close-to-the-earth values. The Food industry, according to Food, Inc. is making us believe that their food is all about American values; that it is clean and naturally made. Instead, they say, the truth is that most of our foods are made in huge factories and produced in large quantities at a rate that boggles the mind. Once you see what is really happening, they think, you will realize that Madison Avenue food branding is nothing but deception.

Not only is the branding for processed foods deceptive, they tell us, the quality of the food is poor and we are buying food that makes us sick, makes us fat, and is priced low because of farm subsidies. The alternative? Natural organic farming that produces quality foods in the old trusted ways.

What does all this have to do with John D. Rockefeller? Well, he and a few other fellows such as Carnegie, Ford and Casey made it possible for us to live today. They pioneered the development of the assembly line and reduced the cost of producing hundreds of different products while also increasing the quality of those products. Our lives are immeasurably better because of these processes and products.

But because our educators and politicians have a bias against capitalism, we believe the lies in movies such as Food, Inc. They tell us that capitalists are nothing more than unscrupulous scoundrels out for the buck. They have denigrated and ridiculed these people so much for so long that we’ve lost the ability to look at reality and see them for the great benefactors they were and are. And because we believe that man is an imperfect creature by his very nature, it is easy for us to conclude that the enemies of capitalism are right, man can't possibly create anything beneficial, man is essentially a fake.

Gordon Gekko is not a capitalist but a pardigm for the left’s view of capitalists. Because of the movies, many Americans have come to believe that the pardigm is reality. It seems so obvious to them that business people are nothing but a bunch of crooks that deserve ridicule and regulations. What a perfect scheme for the shakedown artists in government who want to demagogue the issue of capitalism and freedom.

True capitalists were and are hard working dynamos with the intelligence to creatively use capital investments, natural resources and factories to produce needed products of high quality delivered to your local store so you can drive a few blocks, pull out a little plastic card and cheaply buy those products that feed you. In fact these men were so successful that you can now cheaply buy a book manufactured through a similar highly efficient production process about “Robber Barons” and learn to hate the very men feeding you.

As for me, I have a different cognitive perspective. I look at the full meaning and history of capitalism and not at the propagandized version based on Marxist lies. I see the full value of capitalism and I admire the people who are creating these massive factories that feed so many millions of people. I am proud that I live in a country where so many people can be fed so nutritiously for so little expense. Today’s food processors are following in the tradition of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Jim Casey when they create these impressive facilities that reduce the prices of our food and make them more nutritious, not less. It is truly impressive and magnificent what Tyson has accomplished.

The technique of Food, Inc. is called "muckracking". Muckracking is based on the lie that there are unintended consequences to the practice of improving production. Muckrackers focus on a small part of a business process and distort its meaning and intent in order to gin up a scandal. The basic philosophy beneath muckracking is the Marxist idea that business people are charlatans who would sacrifice the well being of their customers for the sake of a buck.

But is it true that businessmen are willing to sacrifice peoples’ lives for the sake of making a profit? As with UPS sort facilities, most manufacturing processes are carefully planned and built to last. If a particular company is using poor practices, these practices show up on the products they make and the consumers will become aware of them as they compare those products to others on the market. As a business person, you would never want to sell something defective or improperly labelled because you know that lawsuits could develop and customers can stampede to other products if you are caught. The best regulator in the free market is the capitalist who is taught by the consumer what he wants, how he wants it and at what price. Government could never be as efficient.

And, equally as important, capitalism is based on the scientific process. By utilizing highly expert people in planning and designing manufacturing systems, producing highly nutritious foods through scientifically-developed knowledge, capitalists are able to participate in the process of constantly improving their products – in order to beat their competitors at gaining customers. This process has been going on since the advent of the capitalist age and the result is the ability of capitalists and customers to have better, more successful lives and constantly diminishing prices. In the process, they also happen to create jobs.

Capitalism encourages honesty and good intentions because it is based on the freedom of all parties, but especially on the freedom of the purchaser to buy products that are in his self-interest. An intelligent buyer must, as a matter of self-interest, buy products that are good for him. As a consumer, it is my responsibility to myself to know about the products I buy, how they are made and whether they are healthful. If I decide that something is not good for me, I will not buy it and no one can make a dime by deceiving me. This is called the free market and the most important person in that market is the intelligent consumer who decides for himself what is in his best interest. As Rockefeller correctly understood, I want it “cheap and good”.

When you see muckracking movies like Food, Inc., you should know that there are two sides to every story and this movie only shows the side of the anti-capitalists who produced it. Look to your own experience. Like myself, some of you have worked in factories and know them to be based on one goal, to provide the absolute best product for the lowest cost possible. I've worked in factories where they made brain probes and these facilities were hospital-room clean...and it was my job to make sure the product met the highest standards.

The muckrackers are haters of human progress. Their goal is not to help you live a better life but to diminish the value of the capitalist system in your mind. In effect, they are creating anti-branding in order to accomplish their anti-life goals. Were these people able to know a truly better way to make food, they would have started their own companies and competed against those they criticize. Since they can’t be adequate judges and since their basic premise is that man is incompetent to judge and decide, they can only deceive you about the great accomplishments of capitalism.

Consider what would happen if the public decided to stampede away from processed foods and toward “natural” foods. The increased demand for “organic” foods at lower prices would require that the makers of these foods find more advanced and more automated production processes such as those that Tyson Foods uses today.

And here’s the basic hypocrisy. This movie and the makers of it are doing nothing more than another form of “branding”. In fact, the movie is about creating a new (or old) brand known as “natural” foods which have been around for decades. Presumably, organic farming is better, more healthful and it can be delivered to you for twice the price.

(1)The Capitalist Manifesto, Andrew Bernstein, UBA, paperback
(2)Ibid
(3)Ibid

The Cause of War

This is a revised and expanded version of a previous post entitled "The 'Inevitable' Victory of Socialism".

There has never been a time for us living today when war was not a constant threat. Today we may be ending one war while we are in the throes of another in Afghanistan that may take years to win. I’m not sure that our President has the desire or the resolve needed to win this war. I'm thinking, if you don't know what to do, Mr. President, let's bring them home so we can prepare for the defensive war ahead.

The cause of these two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) is not the United States but dictatorship. In Iraq, we had a dictatorship that openly sought to weaken the USA. Saddam supported terrorists and financed attacks against Israel. He lied to the world and started several wars in his region. He was taken out by the freest country in the world. Yet, we were wrong, says the left, when we sought to depose Saddam.

In Afghanistan, we are fighting a brutal gang known as the Taliban; a group that gave refuge to Al Queda and Osama bin Ladin. The Taliban refused to help the United States bring these terrorists to justice so they were removed by the militaries of freer nations. This is a just war, we are told by the left (today), because we are trying to kill bin Ladin. Today, the Taliban continue their fight as they vie to restore their brutal domination over the country. Killing bin Ladin doesn't seem to be on the table.

It is difficult for us to recognize the most common cause of war. My view is that wars are started by authoritarian governments over weaker or freer countries. And since most of these governments are at constant war with capitalism, you can be sure that they are not friends of individual rights. This means they have an incentive to denigrate and “go after” other countries rich in natural resources. As Ludwig von Mises puts it:

“Durable peace is only possible under perfect capitalism, hitherto never and nowhere completely tried or achieved. In such a Jeffersonian world of unhampered market economy the scope of government activities is limited to the protection of the lives, health, and property of individuals against violent or fraudulent aggression. The laws, the administration, and the courts treat natives and foreigners alike. No international conflicts can arise: there are no economic causes of war.”[1]

Yet, the representatives of authoritarian governments gain credibility when they posture as defenders of peace while criticizing the United States as a warlike nation. It is a common scam that has been run by countless dictators from the Soviets to the Taliban. It is based on the Marxist lie that capitalism is about stealing the labor and resources of people in order to make the “evil” profit. Yet, as Mises explains, there has never been a fully capitalist system; any examples that they denigrate are mixed economies (or worse) where the governments have driven the the country into poverty through massive interventions; governments very much like those advocated by the critics of capitalism. Their scam is to blame the United States for being a war monger which justifies their making war against the United States without having to actually declare war.

The question is: why were most of the wars of the last two centuries started by dictatorships or authoritarian governments? The best way to understand this is by analyzing the types of governments that start wars.

For instance, why would a country that has open trade with the world want to go to war? As long as free markets prevail there is every incentive for peace. And as Mises points out, free market governments are limited to protecting the lives and properties of all citizens. By design, they have a respect for freedom and free peoples; likewise for the citizens of other countries. Free people want to make profits so they can live well. They are creative and “life-serving” by nature because they know that they must provide benefits and improvements to people in the form of products and services. They can’t make a profit if their customers and suppliers are dead or in chains.

On the other hand, a government that keeps a cold hand on the activities of its citizens, that wants to muscle in on the profits of businesses, will find every reason to restrict free trade and dishonor other countries. One such type of government is called an oligarchy where rich families use the government to control major industries and restrict free competition. This is called “muscling in” on markets and is not a hallmark of capitalism but of dictatorships. These governments covet other resource-rich territories because they want to monopolize those resources and charge prices above the level of the free market. If they can corner the markets for such resources as oil, minerals, diamonds, etc., they can charge exorbitant prices and make millions. They instigate wars so they can add these countries to their control. Such oligarchs divide the country into two factions: 1) their friends and 2) the impoverished and neglected masses who have no choice but to buy their necessities from them. Within their countries, they fight a constant war against the citizens; and outside their countries, they fight wars against other country’s citizens...in the name of peace.

What about our policies? How will they impact our future actions regarding other nations? For instance, our government has violated the terms of NAFTA for the sake of union drivers. It has raised certain tariffs as a way of "protecting" American workers and, most worrisome of all, it has created massive budget deficits that threaten to weaken the dollar around the world. This move has brought about the threat of higher prices due to the Fed's increasing of the money supply (inflation). This massive expansion, that takes money right out of the pockets of productive citizens, is intended to enable the government to takeover large banks and manufacturing firms, create non-productive jobs, strengthen control over the people through Health Care and Cap and Trade as well as make other political payoffs to unions and political cronies. Of course, we mustn't forget another big killer of trade which is the expansion of union memberships advocated by President Obama and SEIU among others. This policy will most assuredly result in lower product quality, higher product prices and loss of productive jobs. All of these moves will create an oligarchy in our country made up of people like George Soros, friends of Barack Obama, other leftists and companies that either willingly participate in "muscling in" or are forced to participate out of fear of Obama's pitchforks. The result will be impoverished masses (you and I) and very possibly a warlike nation with diminishing economic power?

Understanding the cause of wars today is difficult because of the influence of Marxism. This philosophy seeks to mask the desire for plunder among many countries by claiming to fight for the supposed “victims” of capitalism. Using doublespeak and the Big Lie, they convince people that capitalist production is theft. American college professors are routinely teaching college students from around the world that wars are caused by capitalism and specifically by America. Routinely, they tell us that capitalist countries have a penchant for captured markets and resource theft. It is typical of the left to accuse the opposition of doing the very things the left is doing.

How do they get away with teaching these lies? Early Marxists created the perfect scam to convince people that there was indeed something evil about capitalism. It is called the dialectical process or dialectical materialism which was a mystical assertion that capitalism was the thesis that was being replaced by the antithesis which is socialism. A historical struggle was falsely postulated and by selective analysis, the Marxists claimed to “prove” that capitalism was doomed to destruction at the hands of the “workers of the world.” This idea of an inevitable historical process that would cause the replacement of capitalism by socialism was not to be doubted, they told us, and, they claim, there is no reason to fight it; instead we should hurry the process along. This is how progressives today convince people that they have no choice about the coming socialism. Educate the people about the inevitability of socialism and you destroy opposition to it.

In fact, the "change" that Obama promises, according to this theory, is the road to the next step of the dialectical process. Change is the new term that will usher in the socialist antithesis to capitalism.

Over the last several decades, however, something seems to have gone wrong with the dialectical process. For some reason, socialism has not yet replaced capitalism. History has stopped being inevitable. Since the big war, Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse and others have been frustrated that the dialectical process did not work as they had thought. To explain this failure, they assert that "reactionary" forces, strengthened by the economic power of the capitalist countries, have tempted the masses away from communism. Their diabolical method of temptation was to give the people products and services that improved their lives...created by mass production and mass marketing (This is why the Marxists (environmentalists and others) are always trying to stop industrial progress and why they hate Madison Avenue). Further, they claim, the capitalist military industrial complex has built massive weapons that have kept the socialist axis at bay. In their view, only something as evil and powerful as capitalism could thwart the efforts of the “good” people (murderous dictators) seeking to stop the dastardly exploitation of the workers.

For the Marxists, the reason that socialism could not advance was the power of capitalism; which is strange since they had thought it would collapse of its own weight. This new circumstance of a powerful, diabolical capitalism has precipitated their efforts to cause it to collapse by stressing it with socialist programs, false charges of Imperialism, reduced military expenditures, violent street protests, bombings and ginned up scandals. Today, the anti-capitalists have captured the universities, distributed to themselves huge grants from the government treasury and perfected the scam of shaking down business organizations by threatening their self-interest. Those businesses who understand the “opportunity” created by the Marxists are the new oligarchs trying to “muscle in” through their fake government/business partnerships. They forget that Marxist theory has doomed them to destruction along with capitalism.

I think it is curious that the Obama administration never discusses dialectical materialism or even Marx or Hegel, yet it is operating on the basis of Marxism. Implicit in everything they do is the idea that socialism is the next form of government for us...while they tell us that it is not really socialism. These guys came out of Columbia University, for God's sake. What else do you expect?

The problem for the Marxists is that the dialectical process, because it is a false idea accepted without proof of any kind, will still not create a successful socialist state...it will do what it has always done...create an oligarchic dictatorship, economic decline and slavery. It will bring us back to barbarism by destroying the only bulwarks against dictatorship: individual rights and limited government. It will also require wars, as a matter of political survival for the leftists. Every dictatorship must have enemies...but our enemies won't be other dictatorships; they will be the former allies that take a more capitalist road.

There is a spark of hope on the horizon. The Tea Parties may save America because we have the power to stop the advance of socialism...we can make the leftists stop all the spending that would collapse our economy. We can say “No” because our production makes possible the purse from which they rob us of our freedom and dignity. We must insist that they create no more entitlement programs, no more social engineering programs, no more ACORN, SEIU, Americorps, no more lies and hate. The Tea Party protesters are the only people who know that our choices going forward are either socialism or freedom. There is no middle way...not any more.

The best way to stop wars is to re-establish the Constitution and reject Marxism and oligarchy in all their forms.

[1] Ludwig von Mises, “Omnipotent Government” Libertarian Press page 284

Why Van Jones Had to Go

One thing is certain, Van Jones was a political liability. But that is not why he should have resigned. Van Jones had to go because he is a communist and communists can do no good for this country. In fact, communists can do no good for any country. Communist philosophy is wrong in every respect, philosophically, economically, Constitutionally, historically, and most importantly, on the facts. There is no possible way that a person operating on the principles of Karl Marx could accomplish anything of value for a country.

First of all, in spite of what Marx said, Marxism is wrong because it is predominantly an economic theory rather than a theory of man. No economic theory can trump the Constitution. That document is not a document of economics; it is a philosophical and political document that defends individual rights. As such, hierarchically, it trumps any economic theory.

Marxism starts with a theory of historical development that sees class and economics as fundamental factors in history rather than man and his rights. The critique of capitalism that Marxism advances is wrong historically, philosophically and economically. For instance, a Marxist can claim to understand everything about you by means of identifying the economic class to which you belong. He assumes, under this premise, that you will always seek to defend your class and if you are a capitalist, you have no place in the future; you must be eliminated. Anyone who has this position is blind to reality. This view is completely untenable, it is discriminatory and it is a clear indication that the Marxist is going to make many bad decisions.

The Marxist critique of capitalism is supported by several intellectual tricks; one is called polylogism, the idea that every economic class has its own logic that cannot be understood by people of other classes. This view destroys intellectual debate and assigns some classes to the category of being wrong. The other trick is called historical materialism that assigns the class of “the rich” to a historical role that is supposedly being dissolved by history in favor of “the proletariat” that represents socialism or communism. On this basis alone, how could a Marxist create a “green jobs” program that accomplishes anything lasting or meaningful? At the outset, he is prejudiced about people with skills, training and genius because they are categorically on the wrong side of history.

The Marxist critique destroys intellectual intercourse between rich and poor and opens the door for some of the most vile lies and moral outrage by the Marxists. The intent of this anti-capitalist outrage is to ensure that “workers” (capitalists) who create affluence are not allowed a voice in society and to justify their exploitation or exclusion in society.

There are only two kinds of economic creatures that have a place in a “green jobs” program; oligarchs and racial minorities.

Oligarchs: Only companies that use government to capture markets can participate. These tend to be less productive companies that want to use government to overcome competitive weakness due to poor management or the adoption of obsolete technologies (Remember, the morning before this bill was proposed, an amendment was added to it that earmarked a large portion of new tax revenues for companies that would invest in green jobs specifically in the Midwest. Who are these companies? They are all companies that are involved in research and development of green technology, some of them financed by oligarchs from Russia, who expect to receive large infusions of investment capital from the Stimulus Package and government grants. None of these companies expect to compete in the open market. In fact, they will be propped up by the government that has a stake in their success. The Obama administration is hoping (beyond hope) that these new "green" companies will mitigate the negative impact of the Cap and Trade bill on coal and oil companies. The administration appears to be blind to the very real possibility that not only will this bill destroy those industries, but it will replace those companies with organizations providing less efficient energy alternatives).

Racial Minorities: A Marxist as the “green jobs” master, who has openly stated that capitalism is about white people poisoning black neighborhoods and white destruction of native tribes will operate, not like a capitalist with any eye on efficiency and profitability, but like a commissar. He will command that hiring decisions be based on social goals rather than job skills. He will ensure, specifically, that few competent white people will be given new "green" jobs. This will institutionalize racism as government policy and force these new green companies to hire people who will, in many cases, be less productive union employees with guaranteed jobs. Using Marxist theory, those people who are the "proletariat", meaning racial minorities, will be given preference for those jobs...which amounts to a re-distribution of jobs from coal and oil industry employees, who will not find jobs in the new eco-economy, to previously "excluded" groups. These will be permanent jobs paid for out of tax payer money.

A program like Cap and Trade can only collapse - forcing the government to backtrack on hundreds of unworkable policies in order to "fix" the myriad problems it has created, not to mention the resulting economic devastation and unemployment.

Although Marxists claim to be “scientific” due to their belief that religion is the opium of the masses; they are very religious in some major ways. First, their allegiance to science is really pseudo-science, a fake science that seeks to validate the “historical factors” that they have accepted on faith. For a Marxist, as a polylogist, all truth is “proletarian” while anything that comes from a true inductive process is “bourgeois” meaning capitalist and unworthy of consideration. Under this view, Van Jones would have been focused on science provided by "scientists" living off of government grants, people with a vested interest in bad global science; people who will act to solve a non-problem that has not been scientifically proven - in the name of science. If you don't understand the harm of this policy, you don't realize that real science, when it is free, discards false notions as soon as the facts disprove them. Our government will cling to global warming "science" forever because it will help them achieve "social" goals, not economic goals.

Yet, even though most Marxists reject religion, they have accepted a basic tenet of religion that “man is his brother’s keeper”; that it is man’s duty to sacrifice for the sake of others. This premise creates some of the most vicious cruelty that any political ideology has ever mustered. If you are a capitalist, in this view, you are a thief (exploitation theory), a liar (polylogism) and a throwback to the past (historical process). The solution for the Marxists is brutal repression and re-distribution. But, as has always been the case when Marxists rule a country, the money re-distributed becomes a shrinking pot that shrivels to nothing and throws the nation into chronic poverty.

This means that Marxist principles result in catastrophe for man. Classism is wrong because it seeks to identify an individual by means of whether he is part of a group. Marxists claim to be against racism of any kind but when they say that white people are the scourge of mankind, they don’t consider that kind of statement to be racist. Yet, the result of this view is the same regardless of whether the excluded group is made up of Jews or white people: social decline and genocide. By this view, you can make any individual into an enemy and justify his destruction. You can do it to Jews, to white people, to Hispanics, to businesspeople or any group that you decide is ripe for hatred. Mr. Jones' statements about white people expose the cruelty and exclusion that is to come from his view of history.

An even worse aspect of Marxism is the contention that Marxism is the only truth; that it can’t be denied, that a defender of individual rights is an enemy of the people, a cruel heartless fascist intent on subjugating mankind and stopping the advance of the next historical phase that belongs inexorably to socialism. Marxists insist that true freedom consists of sacrificing for the collective. Marxists do not question this lie; they act on it ruthlessly, making themselves into some of the most vicious man-hating advocates for the so-called “good” in history.

To justify their brutal repressions, Marxists have another argument to support their altruistic premises. This is called “exploitation theory”. It holds that any form of profit from land, money interest, labor, etc., is theft. For the Marxist, economic value comes only from the labor that is being expended on the capitalist’s property and this means that the capitalist, the owner of machines, factories, housing units, farms, etc. is nothing more than a robber. According to this view, the capitalist exploits the people he hires to work on his property and, because he expends no labor, he has no right to the surplus value created by the worker.

This doctrine created two of the most brutal and hateful dictatorships in human history. It justified the expropriation of every factory in Russia and China and the brutal suppression, murders and other forms of discrimination against the people who once owned these properties. Armed with exploitation theory, Marxists have historically destroyed the very people they need to create a working economy. These wrong headed policies have left Marxist societies without the benefit of the organizing skills and management genius needed to create affluence and prosperity. The result was a society that routinely operated according to the whims of ignorant savages like Stalin and Mao; as well as the decisions of "commissars" who routinely disregarded the principles of supply and demand, creating in the process massive waste, fraud and corruption. All of this in order to ensure that no worker was exploited.

Exploitation theory is a lie. Labor is a factor in production but there are other more important factors. These include capital accumulation (savings), management skills, efficient resource allocation, production planning, technology planning, business process planning and implementation, leadership, effective market planning, logistics, not to mention having the foresight to create and offer the best products for the best price; all of these are skills necessary for efficient production; all of which add value and justify the profits created by capitalists. Property in the hands of efficient managers is what creates value. The recognition of property rights, the very enemy of Marxist theorists, is the single most important factor in the creation of a society that works.

Yet, intellectuals like Van Jones praise themselves with romanticized notions about their being righteous defenders of downtrodden minorities who have been victimized by capitalism, forgetting, in the blindness of fanatics, that the supposed downtrodden also have a right to be left alone, that they have rights, that they should not be required to attend group meetings every night to be indoctrinated and evaluated; that they have a right to the results of their labor but no right to the results of the labor of property owners, and that forcing them to give up most of their production for the collective is immoral. Marxist intellectuals, for some reason, are blind to the fact that the real oppressors of men, the real slave drivers, the real imperialists and militarists, are Marxists.

We have a basic choice going forward as a nation. Should we have an expanding role for government, creating ever larger welfare programs for rich and poor alike? Should we accept the premises of Marxist ideologies while we wonder why things are getting worse and why our “bosses” don’t give a damn about us? Or should we roll all these nearly endless rights violations back and allow private capital and voluntary interests to predominate?

I question why we are having this debate at all. Marxism has been such a miserable failure throughout history that even a Marxist should know better...if there is any honesty left in the world. In fact, we’ve already answered these questions in our founding documents. The answer to Marxist ideas is individual and property rights. Van Jones? You've got to be kidding.