Category: Capitalism

Ecosocialism: The “Green-and-Red Agenda” to Eradicate Capitalism

Not all environmentalists are motivated by a desire to destroy capitalism. But some are. See below.

(p. 26) Joel Kovel, a former Freudian psychiatrist who evolved into an apostle of what he called ecosocialism, a so-called green-and-red agenda against the environmental evils of globalization and in favor of the nonviolent eradication of capitalism, died on Monday [April 30, 2018] in Manhattan.
. . .
Whenever he launched an ideological crusade, he did so zealously — even if, as in the case of ecosocialism, its very definition and the collateral demand for an appealing alternative to capitalism were not self-evident.
Under ecosocialist theory, income would be guaranteed, most property and means of production would be commonly owned, and the abolition of capitalism, globalism and imperialism would unleash environmentalists to vastly curtail industrialization and development whose pollution would otherwise cause catastrophic global warming.
“Capitalist production, in its endless search for profit, seeks to turn everything into a commodity,” Dr. Kovel wrote in 2007 on the socialist website Climate and Capitalism. “It is plain that production will have to shift from being dominated by exchange — the path of the commodity — to that which is for use, that is for the direct meeting of human needs.”

For the full obituary, see:
Sam Roberts. “Dr. Joel Kovel, a Founder of Ecosocialism, Is Dead at 81.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 6, 2018): 26.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date May 4, 2018, and has the title “Dr. Joel Kovel, a Founder of Ecosocialism, Is Dead at 81.”)

Individualistic Cultures Foster Innovation

IndividualismProductivityGraph2018-04-20.pngSource of graph: online version of the WSJ commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) Luther matters to investors not because of the religion he founded, but because of the cultural impact of challenging the Catholic Church’s grip on society. By ushering in what Edmund Phelps, the Nobel-winning director of Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society, calls the “the age of the individual,” Luther laid the groundwork for capitalism.
. . .
(p. B10) Mr. Phelps and collaborators Saifedean Ammous, Raicho Bojilov and Gylfi Zoega show that even in recent years, countries with more individualistic cultures have more innovative economies. They demonstrate a strong link between countries that surveys show to be more individualistic, and total factor productivity, a proxy for innovation that measures growth due to more efficient use of labor and capital. Less individualistic cultures, such as France, Spain and Japan, showed little innovation while the individualistic U.S. led.
As Mr. Bojilov points out, correlation doesn’t prove causation, so they looked at the effects of country of origin on the success of second, third and fourth-generation Americans as entrepreneurs. The effects turn out to be significant but leave room for debate about how important individualistic attitudes are to financial and economic success.

For the full commentary, see:
James Mackintosh. “STREETWISE; What Martin Luther Says About Capitalism.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Nov. 3, 2017): B1 & B10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 2, 2017, and has the title “STREETWISE; What 500 Years of Protestantism Teaches Us About Capitalism’s Future.” Where there are minor differences in wording in the two versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Case Study of Effects of Closing a Factory

(p. B1) Perhaps the most illuminating business book of the year, for me, is Amy Goldstein’s “Janesville: An American Story.” If you really want to understand what’s going on in today’s real economy — beyond the headlines about new stock-market highs, tax policy or the latest list of billionaires — spend some time with this true tale of what happened in the middle-class town of Janesville, Wis., after General Motors closed a factory there.
Ms. Goldstein admirably shows all sides of this story, capturing in microcosm all of the issues that so many communities across the United States are facing. You will probably be left doing some hard thinking about what is driving the politics of the moment, although Ms. Goldstein brilliantly, and respectfully, paints the book’s characters with such nuance that readers from across the ideological spectrum are likely to arrive at different conclusions about heroes and villains.
In crafting this deeply reported and riveting read, Ms. Goldstein spent considerable time in Janesville. As a result, you get a palpable sense of what life is like there; of the financial and psychological impact that a major plant closing has; and of the knock-on effects such an event has on other businesses and institutions. She paints vivid portraits of characters who include laid-off workers seeking retraining, union officials and local politicians, Speaker Paul D. Ryan among them. If you liked “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” J. D. Vance’s best-seller about growing up in Ohio and the decline of the industrial Midwest, I think you’ll find that “Janesville” makes these issues real in a new and compelling way.

For the full commentary, see:
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. “DEALBOOK For a Year Filled With News, A List of Books Worth a Look.” The New York Times (Tuesday, DEC. 26, 2017): B1 & B3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date DEC. 25, 2017, and has the title “DEALBOOK; In a Year of Nonstop News, a Batch of Business Books Worth Reading.”)

The Goldstein book mentioned above, is:
Goldstein, Amy. Janesville: An American Story. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.

Victorian Britain Was “the Most Innovative, Advanced, Sophisticated and Prosperous Economy on the Planet”

(p. A19) Britain rose to global power over a long 18th century that began in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution and closed at Waterloo in 1815. Decline marked the 20th century, especially with the loss of both empire and commercial dynamism under the strain of two world wars. David Cannadine’s “Victorious Century” charts the period between–one in which Britain could be seen as the most innovative, advanced, sophisticated and prosperous economy on the planet.
. . .
Mr. Cannadine presents the liberal spirit of progress as the hero of his tale. It guided Britain through conflicts, social disparities and political transitions while pointing toward a better society.

For the full review, see:
William Anthony Hay. “BOOKSHELF; The Spirit of Progress; Britain managed to balance change and continuity as turmoil and revolution overtook the Continent. Still, the change proved decisive.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018): A19.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 19, 2018, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Review: The U.K.’s ‘Victorious Century’; Britain managed to balance change and continuity as turmoil and revolution overtook the Continent. Still, the change proved decisive.”)

The book under review, is:
Cannadine, David. Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906, The Penguin History of Britain. New York: Viking, 2017.

The Only Duty of a Firm “Is to Produce Profits”

(p. B1) On Tuesday [January 16, 2018], the chief executives of the world’s largest public companies will be receiving a letter from one of the most influential investors in the world. And what it says is likely to cause a firestorm in the corner offices of companies everywhere and a debate over social responsibility that stretches from Wall Street to Washington.
Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of the investment firm BlackRock, is going to inform business leaders that their companies need to do more than make profits — they need to contribute to society as well if they want to receive the support of BlackRock.
. . .
(p. B3) Companies often talk about contributing to society — sometimes breathlessly — but it is typically written off as a marketing gimmick aimed at raising profits or appeasing regulators.
Mr. Fink’s declaration is different because his constituency in this case is the business community itself. It pits him, to some degree, against many of the companies that he’s invested in, which hold the view that their only duty is to produce profits for their shareholders, an argument long espoused by economists like Milton Friedman.
“What does it mean to say that ‘business’ has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities,” Friedman wrote, almost rhetorically, back in 1970 in this very newspaper. “Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.”

For the full commentary, see:
Sorkin, Andrew Ross. ”DEALBOOK; A Demand For Change Backed Up By $6 Trillion.” The New York Times (Tues., JAN. 16, 2018): B1 & B3.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JAN. 15, 2018, and has the title ”DEALBOOK; BlackRock’s Message: Contribute to Society, or Risk Losing Our Support.”)

The Milton Friedman classic article mentioned above by Sorkin, is:
Friedman, Milton. “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., Sept. 13, 1970): 32-33, 122, 124 & 126.

Marx Liked Bourgeois Modernity Better than Feudal Despotism

(p. 24) In his early writings and well through the 1860s, Marx propounded a theory of history that extolled the heroic achievements of the bourgeoisie as the collective agent of global change. Before the proletariat could develop into a mature class and become truly conscious of its revolutionary task, he reasoned, it was first necessary for capitalism thoroughly to modernize the world. All remnants of feudalism would dissolve; local custom and tradition would be swept aside, and industrial production would surge, condensing the two remaining classes into radically opposed groups in anticipation of capitalism’s final crisis.
This theory implied a certain inevitability to the gathering processes of historical change. It also left little room for the possibility of independent revolution in less developed regions around the globe, in the east or in the outer reaches of Europe’s empires. Marx’s universalism found its classic expression in “The Communist Manifesto,” which declared that all nations must submit “on pain of extinction” to the forces of bourgeois modernity. Elsewhere, Marx celebrated the introduction of steam power into India and the consequent dissolution of the archaic “village system.” And in the first volume of “Capital,” completed in 1867, he still reserved special disdain for what he called “ancient Asiatic” forms of production, condemning them as symptoms of a despotism that must be swept aside on the way to revolution.

For the full review, see:
PETER E. GORDON. “Call Him Karl.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, October 23, 2016): 24.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date OCT. 21, 2016, and has the title “A New Biography Focuses on Karl Instead of Marxism.”)

The book under review, is:
Jones, Gareth Stedman. Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Over-Regulated, Quasi-Governmental Health Sector Is Often Slow in Face of Crisis

The nurse interviewed in the passages quoted below, also appeared at about the same period, on Anderson Cooper’s CNN 360 show. On that she had a wonderful riff on how the hospital was irresponsible in taking so long to get the right protective gear. She says that they could, and should, have gotten it overnight through Amazon Prime.

(p. B4) DALLAS — A nurse who observed and participated in the care of Ebola patients at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital spoke out publicly on Thursday about what she characterized as inadequate training and infection control there.
. . .
Ms. Aguirre said she and other nurses were “horrified” at the protocols used to care for Ms. Pham. She said they received instruction only once about the proper use of personal protective equipment — gloves, masks, gowns, hoods and shields — before entering Ms. Pham’s room, and then were shown how to remove the potentially contaminated gear while in the room. The garb left a triangle of skin exposed on the front of her neck.
“The very first time I was being instructed to put the stuff on I immediately voiced my concerns,” Ms. Aguirre said. “Why would I be wearing two pairs of gloves, three pairs of bootees, have my entire body covered in plastic, have two hoods on and have an area so close to my mouth and my nose exposed? And they said, ‘We know, we’ve addressed it and basically our verdict on that at this time is we’re taping that area closed.’ “

For the full story, see:
KEVIN SACK. “Controls Poor at Hospital, Nurse Says.” The New York Times (Fri., October 17, 2014): A14.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 16, 2014, and has the title “WHEELS; The Internal Combustion Engine Is Not Dead Yet.” The online version says that the New York print version was on p. A14. My paper, probably the midwest version, was on p. A18.)

Reinvesting Profits Enables the Scaling Up of Success

(p. A17) Muhammad Yunus has big goals: zero world poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions.
. . .
Mr. Yunus has long been a hero of mine for his innovative faith in the resourcefulness of low-income people.
. . .
If you want to motivate support for social enterprise, a utopian promise of “A World of Three Zeros” makes for a better book title than “Helping 60 Albanian Farmers Grow Herbs.” And Mr. Yunus’s paean to entrepreneurship does indeed deliver inspiration about the power of human creativity. But problematic arguments remain, especially his imprecise criticisms of the current economic system and the implausibility of replacing the whole system with social entrepreneurship.
A major problem is one of scale. Mr. Yunus’s many social-enterprise examples are all on the same micro level as the 60 Albanian herb farmers. And while there’s nothing wrong with making a large number of small-scale efforts to help a great many people, it doesn’t qualify as a whole new system for the $76 trillion global economy. Mr. Yunus doesn’t confront the scaling problem. He could have noted, for instance, that successful social entrepreneurs, unlike successful private entrepreneurs, by definition don’t get the high profits to reinvest in scaling up successes.

For the full review, see:
William Easterly. “BOOKSHELF; How to Solve Global Poverty.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 3, 2017): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Oct. 2, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Yunus, Muhammad. A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions. New York: PublicAffairs, 2017.

Free-Market Capitalism Benefits “Ordinary Working People”

(p. A8) MANCHESTER, England–U. K. Treasury chief Philip Hammond on Monday offered a staunch defense of free-market capitalism in Britain, in a speech that underscores the disquiet in the ruling Conservative Party over the rise of the country’s left-wing opposition leader.
. . .
“By abandoning market economics, Corbyn’s Labour has abandoned the aspirations of ordinary working people,” Mr. Hammond said.
Mr. Hammond’s appeal comes amid signs voters in the U.K. are moving away from the embrace of free markets that was ushered in by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and broadly sustained by Labour under Tony Blair.
. . .
A survey of 2,000 adults published Friday [Sept. 29, 2017] by polling firm Populus for the Legatum Institute, a free-market think tank, found widespread public support for nationalizing railways, utilities and banks.

For the full story, see:
Jason Douglas. “U.K. Official Defends Free-Market Capitalism,” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Oct. 3, 2017): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 2, 2017, and has the title “U.K. Treasury Chief Defends Free-Market Capitalism Against Resurgent Opposition,”)

“Authentic” Rees-Mogg Appeals to Texans Deep in the Heart of England

(p. A10) Among the most unlikely developments of this political season in Britain has been that Mr. Rees-Mogg — whose conservative views include a hard line on departure from the European Union and on abortion and gay marriage — is being talked up as a possible Conservative Party leader.
This unfurled in phases all summer. Youth activists coined the term “Moggmentum,” touting him as the only Tory, as Conservatives are also known, with the charisma to match the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn. A 24-year-old man from South Yorkshire had the phrase tattooed on his chest, sending the newspapers into transports of delight. Memes followed. There were online quizzes (“Name Your Child the Jacob Rees-Mogg Way”) and T-shirts (“This fellow is a Rees-Moggian teen”). Someone recorded electronic dance tracks called Moggwave.
. . .
An interview on a morning TV show highlighting Mr. Rees-Mogg’s position on abortion — he opposes it even in the case of rape or incest — was expected to put an end to the chatter. But it appeared, for many, to have the opposite effect.
Voters understood that his positions were to the right of his party, but they had found a quality in him that mattered more than positions. He was, they said, “authentic.”
A decade ago, many Conservative Party leaders wanted nothing to do with Mr. Rees-Mogg. He first attracted national attention in the late 1990s, when he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in a working-class Labour stronghold in Scotland and went out to shake voters’ hands in the company of his nanny. (It was reported that they had campaigned in a Bentley, but he later denied this charge; it was a Mercedes.)
. . .
In Parliament, Mr. Rees-Mogg fell to the far right of the Tory spectrum, opposing climate change legislation and increased spending on welfare benefits and supporting tax breaks for bankers and corporations. In an interview, he said the Tory party must win a “battle of ideas” between the forces of the free market and socialism, and that its message to voters, especially young ones, had been too timorous.
“I think that conservative principles have a broad appeal and you should state them boldly, and the point of a Conservative election is to do conservative things, not to do Labour things but slightly less damaging,” he said. Voters today, he said, were drawn to politicians with more pointed views, both on the left and right, “because the centrist approach didn’t succeed.”
. . .
Radstock was a mining town until the last pits closed down, in the 1970s. Among those waiting to see him was Scott Williams, a knife-maker with brawny forearms and the accent of a Hollywood pirate. Mr. Williams said he had always considered himself staunchly Labour, but was increasingly concerned about attacks on his personal liberties. He had fiercely supported Brexit.
“I belong in Texas,” he said. “That’s the type of person I am. I don’t fit in in England.”
Mr. Williams said he had paid little attention to Mr. Rees-Mogg’s voting record on taxes or welfare — “I don’t really keep count on politics” — but had been drawn to him in recent months, and was impressed when he stood by his hard-line view on abortion.
“Something I do like about Jacob, he’s a straight talker,” he said. “He is who he is. He may be blue blood, but at least you get a straight answer.”

For the full story, see:
ELLEN BARRY. “The Saturday Profile; Latest Populist Craze in Britain: An Unabashed Elitist.” The New York Times (Sat., SEPT. 30, 2017): A10.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 29, 2017, and has the title “The Saturday Profile; The Latest Populist Craze in Britain: An Unabashed Elitist.”)