![]() They define capitalism as the freedom to exploit people into economic ruin the freedom to assassinate unions the freedom to prey on unprotected consumers, workers, and environments the freedom to value quarterly profits over climate change the freedom to undermine small businesses and cushion corporations the freedom from competition the freedom not to pay taxes the freedom to heave the tax burden onto the middle and lower classes the freedom to commodify everything and everyone the freedom to keep poor people poor and middle-income people struggling to stay middle income, and make rich people richer. In doing so, these conservative defenders are defining capitalism. They say efforts to provide a safety net for all people are “anticapitalist.” They say attempts to prevent monopolies are “anticapitalist.” They say efforts that strengthen weak unions and weaken exploitative owners are “anticapitalist.” They say plans to normalize worker ownership and regulations protecting consumers, workers, and environments from big business are “anticapitalist.” They say laws taxing the richest more than the middle class, redistributing pilfered wealth, and guaranteeing basic incomes are “anticapitalist.” They say wars to end poverty are “anticapitalist.” They say campaigns to remove the profit motive from essential life sectors like education, healthcare, utilities, mass media, and incarceration are “anticapitalist.” “I use “anticapitalist” because conservative defenders of capitalism regularly say their liberal and socialist opponents are against capitalism. Despite the verbal parallels, government power is in fact power, since individuals do not have a free choice as to whether or not to obey government laws and regulations, while consumers are free to ignore the products marketed by even the biggest and supposedly most 'powerful' corporations in the world.” by saying that businesses have 'power' because they have 'control' of their markets, this verbal virtuosity opens the way to saying that government needs to exercise its 'countervailing power' (John Kenneth Galbraith's phrase) in order to protect the public. will be said to 'control' three-quarters of the market, even though consumers control 100 percent of the market, since they can switch to another brand of widgets tomorrow if someone else comes up with a better widget, or stop buying widgets altogether if a new product comes along that makes widgets obsolete. ![]() In other words, when consumers decide that particular brands of products are either cheaper or better than competing brands of those products, third parties take it upon themselves to depict those who produced these particular brands as having exercised 'power' or 'control.' If, at a given time, three-quarters of the consumers prefer to buy the Acme brand of widgets to any other brand, then Acme Inc. Thus business enterprises who expand the public's options, either quantitatively (through lower prices) or qualitatively (through better products) are often spoken of as 'controlling' the market, whenever this results in a high percentage of consumers choosing to purchase their particular products rather than the competing products of other enterprises. The basic concept of freedom as not being subjected to other people's restrictions, and of power as the ability to restrict other people's options have both been stood on their heads in some of the repackaging of these words by intellectuals discussing economic issues. 'Freedom' and 'power' are among the most common of these repackaged words. “One of the many signs of verbal virtuosity among intellectuals is the repackaging of words to mean things that are not only different from, but sometimes the direct opposite of, their original meanings. No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason they were marching off to kill and die.” Our boys were sent off to die with beautiful ideals painted in front of them. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. I helped make Honduras right for American fruit companies in 1903. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. ![]() Thus, I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. And during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. ![]() “I spent 33 years and 4 months in active military service.
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