Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Capitalism, Marxism and Black Americans

Richard Ebeling emails:

Dear Bob,

An article of mine on, “Capitalism, Marxism and Black Americans,” was recently posted on the “Capitalism Magazine” website.

One of the most successful Marxist political tricks was to assert that workers were not free under capitalism, because the “bourgeois” freedoms of the press, of speech, of religion, or association were illusionary freedoms that hid from view the actual “wage slavery” of exploitation under private enterprise. Only under socialist common ownership of the means of production could workers and mankind have “true” freedom.

One of the more recent versions of this is that African-Americans are not really free in America, because in spite of formal civil liberties, the private businessman uses his control over the workplace to racially discriminate against black people. Only government intervention and control can assure “real” freedom and justice for minority groups such as the African-American community.

Like the Marxian method of submerging every individual into membership of a collectivist mass of either capitalist exploiter or worker wage-slave, so this newer variation on the Marxist theme reduces every individual human being into racial tribes of “white privileged” and “black abused.”

And in both cases, the villain institution is “capitalism.” But the competitive, free market system is fundamentally an economic system that compels people, over time, to ask only one question: what’s the color of your money, not your skin pigmentation?

Any businessman who allows his racial prejudices to rule his hiring and firing decisions runs the risk of forgoing the employment of qualified and trainable employees who will be potentially hired by market rivals more concerned with profit-margins and market share.

Thus, the competitive market penalizes business hiring decisions that do not ask one question: how might I produce to make the better product at the lowest price, in the face of rivals who are attempting to obtain the same consumer business as myself?

What explains much of the economic misfortune and failed opportunities for betterment in society for minority groups, including still too many in the black community? The answer can be found in the interventionist-welfare state, with its policies of minimum wage laws pricing the unskilled out of the labor market, regulatory rules and restrictions that hampers those living on modest incomes from starting their own businesses or being hired by others who cannot easily afford the initial interventionist costs of hiring those with limited employment experience, and a welfare system that fosters redistributive dependency and makes difficult an escape to a market-based life of self-responsibility.

Tragically, these types of barriers and obstacles to a real, functioning, free market capitalist system is what harms many in society, including those in the black community.  
 
http://capitalismmagazine.com/2017/02/capitalism-marxism-and-black-americans/

Best,
Richard

2 comments:

  1. --- [...] regulatory rules and restrictions that hampers those living on modest incomes from starting their own businesses [...] ---

    Licensing laws being perhaps the most insidious of regulations that keep American blacks from entering the formal Market, yet paradoxically the most defended of all regulations under the guise of "protecting the consumer", under the paranoid assumption that the unlicensed are out to get you while, at the same time, arrogantly thinking that the consumer is a dupe who needs the help of wiser overlords.

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  2. Obviously racist whites are the only reason that blacks are not successful. There needs to be a minimum wage for all non whites of $15/hr to make up for the oppression.

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