Capitalism: Servant or Master?

By John Womack

Capitalism pretends to be free enterprise, but this book shows it destroys free enterprises and seeks control over all the governments of the world. Atlas Shrugged and Wealth of Nations are discussed and shown to be deeply flawed as a source of economic guidance. Some of the catch phrases often used to dismiss the effectiveness of government action, such as “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”, or “I will run government like a business”, or maybe “Greed is really good for everybody”, and a number of others are discussed. When they are mentioned, often accompanied by a chuckle and laughter, they sound dismissive. Here is a different look at those comments. What is the trade-off between production and the concept of “profit”? The book also shows how many politically powerful corporations need wars to fight and prisoners in prison to increase their profits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Soliloquy Press
• Release date: Jul 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9780965554695

Book preview

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1 The Great Extinction

  It is widely believed in America that capitalism is an American concept, a form of democratic enterprise, a cornerstone upon which our way of life has been built, that it is a product of free speech, and dependent on private ownership of property, free markets and self-determination. We understand it to be simply another name for the Free Enterprise System.

  But if you believe any of that, you believe a carefully crafted illusion.  Capitalism is not American, but European in origin; it’s not democratic in any sense, but a relic of the feudal system; not private but corporate; and the free market it claims to value so highly will be destroyed and buried by capitalism itself when it no longer needs it.

  Capitalism is NOT free enterprise even though it proudly claims it is.  Its purpose is to accomplish two objectives.  To accumulate more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands, and to supplant national governments with a ruling economic hierarchy.  It intends to control all of mankind.

  Look at America.  A great extinction of free enterprises has taken place across our country over the past thirty years.  Corner grocery stores, city newsstands, coffee shops and hardware stores, along with butcher shops, bakeries, radio stations, funeral parlors, banks, and endless groups of other small businesses are now gone.  Mom & pop grocery stores, diners and restaurants, family farms, all these and many others have been swept away by the great expanding giant we know as capitalism.  No communist commissar, no foreign potentate, no invading military army could ever have wrought the devastation upon the American free market like that brought about by Walmart, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Clear Chanel Radio, BB&T, and many other capitalistic corporate industries.

  As the twentieth century came to a close, capitalism was being exported from the United States to the rest of the world.  American political and corporate leaders proudly proclaimed this would bring freedom and democracy to downtrodden masses everywhere and give them the experience of learning marketable skills and receiving paychecks.  But many of the people in those countries call this process Globalization and see it as a totalitarian invasion returning them to a form of colonial status, while foreign autocratic leaders with their own circle of executives, administrative staffs, and trained professionals impose an alien, and for some even immoral, way of life upon them.  Their own governmental officials may profit from this process but the people there often work for these American corporations under sweatshop conditions where female discrimination and child labor is common.  Indigent economies are swept away, their environment is skimmed of resources, the people themselves are caught and processed, the fruit of their labor becomes someone else’s profit, then they are abandoned as American and international corporations move on to other countries where resources are more easily available or labor is cheaper.

  How can capitalism continue such a rapid expansion if its effects are really that bad? There must be something we are missing.  Let’s take a closer look. 

  One thing stands out immediately.  Capitalism has a good press going for it in America.  It begins with the basic Horatio Alger promise that hard work will pay off, and you can start at the bottom of a company and rise to its very tip-top if you are just willing to work hard.

  People are glad anybody can still do it!  The success of people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett only serve to prove that I could STILL make it BIG myself.  Or maybe my kids will be rich, or my grandkids, or maybe somebody I know will make it.

  It is widely accepted in America that government cannot be trusted.  It is understood that government is stupid, arbitrary, always grasping for power over helpless citizens, whereas businesses are safe, reliable, trustworthy,  and a friend of everyone.  It is general knowledge that everything that government tries to do it does badly and expensively, and business can do the same thing smartly, efficiently and very cheaply.  We are taught that business is always benevolent.  It can always be trusted and wants to help each one of us if we can just get government out of the way. 

  Phrases haunt our vernacular such as I’m from the government and I want to help, or The best government governs least, or Government should be run like a business; and there are others.  These phrases are rich in innuendo and part of every American’s understanding, and they help capitalism ascend into power.

  Americans also understand that free enterprise and capitalism are the same thing, identical to each other and they are the ONLY alternative to socialism, communism or anarchy.  Finally, no matter how badly things may go under capitalism, it is completely understood and agreed that under any other system it would have been worse.

  It is also known that You can’t fight city hall.  There is some secret power that accrues to government that is too great for any individual to confront.  That power is also seen in church organizations and in some secret groups like fraternities and so on.  But it is never present in business organizations.  Or so it is claimed and widely understood to be true.

  Capitalism even comes with its own prophet.  Adam Smith wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and he published it in the seemingly prophetic year of 1776.  In that book, commonly called Wealth of Nations, and sometimes treated as gospel by a large number of capitalistic commentators, he imprinted the concept that greed is actually an economically benevolent gift wealthy people should bestow on poor people by not trying to help them in any way.  He pointed out how one did not have to actually BE selfish, just ACT selfishly with your MONEY – and he seemed to claim we all SHOULD do that because then the Invisible Hand of the Market will take over and work it all out better for everybody than if you actually tried to help people with your money.

  Some people thought capitalism seemed to fit well with the concept of the survival of the fittest, as being a product of the laws of natural selection.  Darwin had pointed out that the fittest he described referred not just to a species but to their habitat as well.  He pointed out while successful change did take place irresistibly, it was also gradual, and incremental.  Evolution naturally occurs, not as a suddenly over-enveloping event or deformation, as happened with the industrial revolution, but as a continuing process taking place on the edges of its environment, in the form of small changes that provide a survival advantage to only a few atypical individuals who can now survive and function better in this slightly different environment. The successful creatures, in Darwin’s understanding, are still part of their environment and while they do help change it, they do not destroy it.  That is not the way capitalism was thrust upon the world.  Nonetheless, some people today still point to Darwin’s theories as being another proof capitalism is a natural, desirable, irresistible outcome not just of the free market, but also a revelation of nature’s great plan for development and an unavoidable part of human destiny.

  In 1957, Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged. She apparently thought capitalism was the only remaining hope for the entire world. She believed there were a few great people who KNEW what to do, these were the entrepreneurs, the producers of things the world needed.  Her book advocates that since excessive and stifling governmental regulations and taxes always take money away from those productive people who earned it, and give it to people who don’t even want to work, those great people should withhold their contributions of inventive creativity, quit making their brilliant discoveries and produce no more wonderful new items, just go on strike, not produce anything for a while, and let the useless people fade away.  Then apparently, government might also fade away.