Democrats and the Invisible Hand

Wealth … is like a snake; it will twist around the hand and bite unless one
knows how to use it properly. – Clement of Alexandria, “The Instructor,” 3.6.34

What if Obama is elected and the Democrats win the House and a super majority of 60 in the Senate to prevent filibuster? What might the government look like then?

The odds makers only give one chance in four for a 60 seat working majority, so we are not likely to face this prospect. If it happened, would the Democrats take the opportunity and make major changes in government?

Jimmy Carter had a 60 vote majority to work with and did little with it. Clinton never had the majority, but he was determined to disappoint in any case.

Still, I will do my small part. I'll vote for Obama although the electoral college pretty well assures it is a futile vote in Texas. I'll vote for Noriega. I'll vote for Solomon. But I know we need something bigger.

What I want from the Democrats is an escape from the profit-motive, the afan de lucre, that I believe wrecks human relations and corrupts society.

American politics suffers the grip of the invisible hand about the throat. I've several times tried to wade through Wealth of Nations and I still regard Adam Smith warmly. I do believe the Butcher, the Baker and the Brewer provide benefit to one another by acting out of self interest, but, profit, as a religion, has done a great disservice to Adam Smith. Adam Smith would be shocked by the misuse of his work today, just like Jesus would be shocked by what passes for Christianity.

I do not acknowledge that greed is the best glue to bind society.

"Don't you believe in profit?" Or, "what's wrong with making a profit?" is now the universal conversation stopper. When the war profiteer or the storm price gouger or (most recently) the CEO who has just shut down his company with a golden parachute gets caught, he says pompously, "You do believe in profit, don't you?"

My answer is "No." Profit is nothing more than unjustly withheld wages. Or over-charged clients. Or cheated vendors.

How might we escape this invisible hand? I don't think we can change human nature. But I do believe we can recognize greed for what it is. It is not a virtue; it is a sin.

Let the people take heart and hope everywhere, for the cross is bending, the midnight is passing and joy cometh with the morning. Eugene V. Debs

To the tune of Mammy's little baby loves shortnin':

"Rush," says the boss
"Work like as hoss
I'll take the profit
and you take the loss

I've got the brains
I've got the dough
The Lord himself
Decreed it so."

Mammy's little baby loves union union
Mammy's little baby loves union shop,

etc.


Someday, we will look back on employment in the same way we now look back on slavery. In fact, the term "wage slavery" is not a metaphor. It is a form of slavery that should be abolished. It is not usually as cruel as slavery slavery, but it can be.

This is simple statement of the premise: Everyone should get the full value of his labor. To get any less is theft. To get anymore is theft.

Capital is withheld wages. If a company accumulates capital it means wages have been withheld from those who earned them. Unless these wages go to benefit the labor that produced them, then they have been stolen from the rightful owners.

I know this all sounds dry, and preachy and Marxist.

(May I first say, I am not a Marxist. First, I cannot be an "-ist" for anyone I cannot read and rarely have I found a German author whose work I am able to read. I cannot be a Hegelian either. Or a Kantian or a Heideggerian. All these books sit on my shelf and my son has read them and he recommends them, but it is not likely to happen.

Next, to the extent I can understand the issues, in the great battle between Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, I stand with Proudhon. (Maybe this is just because the French write better.) Proudhon rejected collective ownership in favor of a plan in which the individual worker had ownership and he believed that social revolution could be achieved peacefully.

Also, I have never been the member of any organization that saw the teaching of Marx as an organizing force. I did try to get into the Navy Judge Advocates General Corps once which is publicly owned and operated, but I don't know if they talk about Marx or not, because I didn't get in.

So, unless you are just feeling grumpy, there is no need to call me a Marxist. Also, there is some risk I might begin to imagine that I have read Marx.

Also, it is not really accurate to call me a socialist, either. I am not a fan of collective ownership in most cases, although I would like to see a socialized bank, hospital and insurance company competing with privately owned ones. If we had these things, I would probably use them. However, I think we need privately owned houses to live in. I think everyone should have one. (This is an evolving opinion. I tried going without any property for a while during my Tolstoy period, but it was very inconvenient).

Don't under-estimate the quality of government work. Government prisons are far better than private prisons. The U.S. Army is first rate, I hear, and far better than the private mercenary corporations, at least as far as I can tell from news reports. The best criminal defense law firm in town are the Federal Public Defenders. If I ever get in trouble, I'll admit how broke I am (Kathy wants me to keep this secret), so they will represent me.

I am pretty socialistic in the sense that I would like to see a Year of Jubilee (hit the link in the title)and international equalization of all wealth, but this is more religious than economic. I have read biographies of Eugene V. Debs and if I had been around in 1912 or 1916 or 1920, I would have voted for him. Debs was a socialist, but I don't think I really am. We named our spare bedroom after Debs.

Fighting Bob La Follette was both a Republican and a Progressive and looks to me a lot like a socialist. If he were running this time around, I would vote for him and cast my first Republican vote. This is regardless of the office. Also, I would vote for the Vermont Independent Socialist, Bernie Sanders.

My friend, Dan Boyd, suggests I am an anarcho-syndicalist. I like the title. From the web, it appears anarcho-syndicalists also call themselves libertarian socialists, I guess as opposed to authoritarian socialists or libertarian economic oppressors. Brownsville, though, appears to have not anarcho-syndicalist clubs or political parties. I don't know much about the Rotarians or the Kiwanians or the Knights of Columbus. These may all be anarcho-syndicalists, but I am deterred by the funny hats. I read the Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood one of the founders of the Wobblies. I am a fan. We named our kitchen after Haywood.

I am still a Democrat. You can be these other things and still be a Democrat. In fact as Bill Clinton is now trying to prove again, as George Wallace showed before, you can be a racist and be a Democrat. You can also be these things and be a Republican, or at least once upon a time you could. The racism is easy for a Republican, as David Duke recently demonstrated and Woodrow Wilson earlier established. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican and by his last race he was at least a progressive. Fighting Bob La Follette was both a Republican and a Progressive and looks to me a lot like a socialist.

My friend and tax man, Bill Fulcher, is both a Democrat and statewide treasure of the socialists. Where but Brownsville can you find a socialist tax man? I also have a socialist barber. God, I love this town.

The problem with me being a Democrat, though, is I am usually angry with most Democrats who grab office and, also, given a chance, I sue them a lot.

Another problem: I have strong doubts that voting matters at all. As my son Austin argues, "If voting made a difference, it would be illegal." That is probably right. I quit voting for a while because I worried about Matthew vii, 1 and thought maybe Jesus was instructing us not to vote in the Sermon on the Mount. It makes sense and that is how the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mennonites interpret it. Fan, again. I have never met a Witness or a Mennonite I did not like, but no rooms have been named after them.

My greatest concern is that voting in a non-democratic format such as plebiscites for Napoleon or Hitler or in the Electoral College or in the Democratic Super-delegate system uses up energy that could be more effectively directed to something important. Like writing in a blog, for instance.

My two favorite magazines are the Economist and the Socialist Worker. The Economist is an English, capitalist magazine and the Socialist Worker is an American (and obviously socialist) magazine. Both promote a economic interpretation of history and the world. In fact, they are very similar, except for the last paragraphs of the articles. The Economist describes a world in which money governs everything and that's OK. The Socialist Workers describe a world in which money governs everything and that's not OK. Anyway, I think both are more trustworthy for predictions of political races and economic trends than those confused magazines such as Nation, Texas Observer and National Review (yes, I read that one on-line) that think ideas are more important than money in predicting social behavior. (OK, OK, I may also occasionally read People, but it doesn't count here).

Treat all of this as a long digression, Uncle Toby. People often ask me why I don't run for office. The tirade above should put that to rest. I don't expect anyone to care what my politics are. I just throw it in to anticipate questions about where this labor opinion comes from and because I very much enjoy talking about myself.

Now, where does this opinion come from?

1. I have been an employer, and not a very good one.
2. I have been an employee and it was a bad fit.
3. I tried to start a coop and we never got off the ground, because it lost more money than it made--tens of thousands of dollars more.

I have tested the limits of the employer-employee relationships off and on since I got fired from my job as a paperboy for trying to organize a union.

These issues also include some skeletons that I must toss out of the closet. Bear with me, readers true. Sorting all of this out may be as hard as all of that time I have done in therapy.

Why not Hillary?

Kathy is supporting Hillary. I think she thinks men are not fit to run anything, much less the country. Maybe she's right.

Hillary’s not my first choice because I stayed disappointed with Bill all the time he was running and in office. Remember when he went back to Arkansas as governor to execute the retarded guy? It seemed like, if I remember correctly, he was trying to shore up the white male vote in South Carolina. Then he gratuitously attacked some woman African American singer to work on that base some more.

After he got in office, he wiped out aid for dependent children, brought us the anti terrorism and effective death penalty act, bombed an aspirin factory in the Sudan and built a wall across from Tijuana. With friends like these….

So maybe Hillary will be better. We can always hope, but her performance so far has not been very encouraging.

Maybe she will act faster to get everybody some health care, but I am not encouraged by her first effort.

Also, I don’t trust that she won’t move to the right during the general election and her presidency and make sure we have plenty of more years of war.

The right-wingers keep promising me that both Barack and Hillary are secret socialists. I doubt that. With all of the banking and defense contractor money sloshing around, I suspect they are both what they seem to be: cautious conservatives.

So why don’t I just avoid the process? No way. Hey, I even voted when we had two frat brothers from Yale running against each other last time. Both were rich kids with apparently limited skills, but I sucked it up and voted for the one with long catsup stained face rather than the one with the drooling Hapsburg jaw.

In truth, I think this may be more of a choice than we have had in a long time. I am willing to aim low enough to vote for Barack first, and then Hillary, if need be.