This is not socialism, anymore than statutes against taking the law into your own hands is tyranny. Socialism is defined as, "Any of the theories of the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by society rather than by private individuals with all members of society sharing in the work and profits," (Websters New World Dictionary, Second Concise Edition, 1975). Government not only has the power, but the duty, to protect the nation and its citizens against the depredations by an arrogant, amoral few, whether they are Frank and Jesse James, or Enron. It is in fact, according to the Code of Hammurabi, the primary duty of honest government.
Given the widely held view--especially among conservative economists and commentators--that capitalism is essentially an amoral system (see Joel Bakan's interview with Milton Friedman, for his book Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power; pp. 33-5), a system of regulatory checks and balances for business becomes imperative, or else it destroys itself.
Additionally, without regulation, business (especially what Theodore Roosevelt referred to as "big business"), tends to act in the best interests only of the corporation and its shareholders, not the community or nation as a whole. British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell's pithy observation, "Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate," still rings true (emphasis added).
This leads to my fourth observation about morality and capitalism: that the drive for profit (and its concomitant, power) does not exempt the capitalist from his responsibilities to society in general, and his community in particular. Nor does his responsibility to his shareholders supplant his responsibility to his family, his neighbors, his community, his nation, or the world. The legal system of the United States unfortunately reinforces the idea that the capitalists' first and virtually only duty is to their faceless shareholders (Ford v. Dodge, Michigan Supreme Court, 1916).
Many proponents of laissez-faire capitalism attempt to justify their societal amorality with Margaret Thatcher's statement, "There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families." This belief, if you take it to its logical conclusion, leads to a brutal aristocracy of social Darwinists. This will, in turn, stifle creativity and progress in a society or civilization, as exemplified by Europe in the Middle Ages, or Islam after the Eleventh Century.
This type of immoral mindset, first codified by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince of the ends justifying the means; of the cynical morality of expedience; of might making right; while practiced (and opposed by humans with documents like the Magna Charta) throughout history, has become the controlling ideology for today's plutocrats. Business is approached solely as a zero-sum game, another form of warfare where, to misquote Vince Lombardi, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." (The actual quote, according to Jerry Kramer in Distant Replay, is "Winning isn't everything, the desire to win is.") If you doubt this, look at all the war oriented books in the business section of your book store: Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Miyamato Musashi's Book of Five Rings, The Leadership Principles of Attila the Hun, et al.
The great tragedy of the American corporate emphasis on the next quarter's bottom line, is that it prevents the capitalist from objective, long-term planning for his enterprise, his workers, his community, or even himself, much like a short-term tactical victory in war. This creates an inflated expectation of return on investments that inevitably produces a series gulf between employer and employee, manufacturer and consumer, corporation and society. This myopic view of the future, involving only their business's immediate interests, and inevitably sows the seeds of that business's destruction.
(For those who think that you automatically win a war if you win all of the tactical victories, I suggest a look at Vietnam. During the peace negotiations Colonel Harry Summers asserted to a North Vietnamese General that the NVA had never defeated American troops above the company level. The NVA General replied, "That is true; it is also irrelevant." See Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War.)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
