Posted on 01/06/2020 3:43:38 AM PST by Kaslin
Ralph Benko and Bill Collier have written the free market antidote to The Communist Manifesto, titled The Capitalist Manifesto. They reveal some fascinating insights that you probably have never heard of. I always said that capitalism only works if tempered by Christianity. While I still believe that, and this book does not say anything to contradict that, it will give you a fresh new perspective on how capitalism by itself is a good thing.
Benko is an early Kemp-era Supply Sider and former Reagan White House official, who founded the Prosperity Caucus, is the co-founder and chairman of The Capitalist League, co-author of The Capitalist Manifesto, founder of The Prosperity Coalition and a weekly political columnist and sometime freelancer. Collier, as described by the iconic Arthur Laffer (one of the chief architects of world prosperity, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Trump), is "an Internet and social media progeny" poised to play a big role in the future of the supply-side movement.
Their book destroys several myths about capitalism, and nails what is wrong with socialism and communism. First of all, it states that socialism, not capitalism, is the embodiment of cronyism. Socialism is cronyism on steroids. Those at the top receive special benefits, privileges and high incomes, while everyone else fights for a small remainder. Because there is little incentive to put in a healthy day’s work under socialism, there aren’t enough goods and services to go around. The country of Venezuela is a classic example of this. Its leaders live surrounded by vast wealth while the rest of the country stands in bread lines. Capitalism is a threat to the hegemony of their elites.
The authors make the interesting observation that socialism and communism are merely disguised and mechanized forms of feudalism. They ask, “What do cronyism, socialism, fascism, communism and even national socialism have in common? They are all variants of feudalism.” Feudalism rewards people based on their social status. Capitalism rewards people based on their contribution to the general welfare. Feudalists keep people under their control through fear and empty promises.
Perhaps the most interesting observation by the authors is that “Greed is not the foundation of capitalism.” The way it works is capitalism rewards people in proportion to their service to others. A businessman who provides jobs to people will prosper. It is the opposite of greed. Notably, consumerism isn't capitalism. Buying more and more goods simply because you want them is closer to greed, not capitalism.
The resurgence in the popularity of socialism currently is due to the abuses of capitalism, not capitalism itself. Big business today is often in cahoots with big government. And the true name for the mixture of big business with the State is fascism.
Crony capitalism is an oxymoron. If there is cronyism in capitalism, then it’s no longer capitalism. Capitalism is opposed to cronyism. Crony capitalism is a monster that uses the rhetoric of free markets to defend special privileges.
The authors say that calling someone discriminating is a compliment. Discrimination based on legitimate factors makes one discriminating, not discriminatory. Discriminatory means based on prejudice, an invidious quality.
They admit that some success under capitalism is due to luck; not every well-off person got where they’re at due to a Horatio Alger story. But this is still far better than the alternative. Feudalism doles out privileges as a function of elite status.
The authors point out that social insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security are not welfare or entitlements, they are social insurance. They are acceptable. Medicare for All, on the other hand, is welfare.
The German communists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were clever how they pushed people toward communism. In The Communist Manifesto, communism pitted the workers against the middle class, so they’d think the solution was treating everyone exactly the same. Marx popularized the term capitalism and used it as a pejorative. Marx and Engels promised a withering away of the state. But “perversely, their path to eliminating the state was to create a monstrous, overbearing, and monolithic state.”
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. The workers can also make more money as the wealthy make more money. Wealth is not static. Whereas under feudalism, if one person makes more money, another will make less.
The authors make the interesting observation that people’s health, education, and welfare are becoming recognized as capital. Therefore, it is a function of capitalism for business to invest in these areas regarding their employees.
Finally, the authors note that religion, racism, tribalism, and fanaticism have proven less the cause of war and destruction than feudalism — most notably communism. Unlike other economic systems, capitalism is the only economic system which anyone honestly can point to and say, “it has made substantive progress toward its seemingly utopian aims.”
This sounds like a book worth reading, especially for those in college - fat chance that will ever happen.
Here’s the money quote IMHO: “Marx and Engels promised a withering away of the state. But ‘perversely, their path to eliminating the state was to create a monstrous, overbearing, and monolithic state.’”
They might read it if it gets tweeted to them 2 or 3 sentences at a time.......
Sounds to me like they are still missing the key difference between capitalism and socialism, namely the former is actually selfless, the latter, selfish.
I did a lesson on this at my www.wildworldofhistory.com site.
If parents get this, and can teach their kids this simple 5-minute lesson-—which has nothing to do with supply, demand, cronyism, or any of that-—no kid would ever be a socialist because they don’t want to be thought of as “selfish.”
Free market capitalism ends at the border. Sorry Free Traitors™ but that is the way it works.
I’d be curious to know whether the book addresses the fact that the United States is not currently operating under Capitalism. For several decades we have been operating under a perverse form of fascism where the economic entities who best master the art of lobbying Congress get the playing field tilted in their direction and regulatory shackles placed on potential competitors.
economic entities = globalist Free Traitors™.
bump
So, who gets the blame for this? I am not intending to be rhetorical here. There must be an answer.
My thought is that it comes back to the voter, you and me. But in reality it is a deceived voter that does not have a clear view of the character and misdeeds of the candidate. An in this vein the press is not an antidote. The press hides the misdeeds of a candidate they approve of and make up misdeeds and attribute them to a candidate they do not like.
I believe that by the time a politician reaches the national level, he/she has had to compromise their principles so many times (first small then big) to move ahead, that by the time they reach DC they have no principles other than what they can get for themselves. They tell us, "It's complicated." And we believe them and we vote for them.
Yes, this is a broad brush but I trust very few of them.
Capitalism is compatible with a rational metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. Socialism contradicts them.
This will be worthwhile reading.
I recommend Hillsdale College's "A Capitalist Manifesto", understanding the market economy and defending liberty. It accompanies a free on-line course, Economy 101.
Capitalism exist in All forms of government, ALL.
Capitalism is about capital and government is about who owns and controls the capital. Under America's Constitution the people own and control their capital and are encouraged to acquire more.
“What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.”
Arthur Jensen - Network
So, who gets the blame for this? I am not intending to be rhetorical here. There must be an answer.the fact that the United States is not currently operating under Capitalism
My thought is that it comes back to the voter, you and me. But in reality it is a deceived voter that does not have a clear view of the character and misdeeds of the candidate. An in this vein the press is not an antidote. The press hides the misdeeds of a candidate they approve of and make up misdeeds and attribute them to a candidate they do not like.
It is the fact that journalism is a cartel which makes your statement about the press correct.People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)Considering that all major journalism is a member/subscriber of the wire services - and that the wire services function as continuous virtual meetings of its members, ongoing since the Civil War era - you have to be "naive as a babe to believe” that journalism is not a cartel.“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.” ― Alexander Hamilton
The first lines of the Communist Manifesto “There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of over production...”
The Capitalist Manifesto- “It’s that “over production” which is responsible for creating the highest standard of living ever and the surplus value that enabled the education of a civilization based upon technology, that is haunting the wreckage called Marxism...”
The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and privileges eVen of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies, into which the state is divided . . .The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
Some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance . . .
Larry, where exactly on your terrific site is the 5 min. lesson you’re referring to? Thanks.
It’s on the VIP side, along with “Money and Time,” and three other lessons in “Enduring Lessons on Life and Citizenship”; and I also have an ongoing video (and written) series, “the Horrible History of Howard Zinn” and “The 1620 Default.” In addition, VIP members get SIX of my video lessons from Patriot’s History of the United States: The Revolution, the Constitution, the Age of Jackson,the Civil War, WW II, and Reagan.
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