, 14 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
Here is an example of the breathtaking ignorance of #Marxists/#Socialists, one which provides an excellent opportunity to refute some of their essential claims:
Attention: #Marxists/#Socialists. Wage earners don’t need “overlords,” but they certainly do need businessmen and capitalists. Businessmen and capitalists survey prospects for profit, and on the basis of what they expect to be profitable, found, organize, and run business firms.
They decide what their firms will produce, where, in what quantities, and by what methods, and provide the necessary buildings, machinery, and materials. They also decide how many workers of different types they will need for their plans and then hire and tell them what to do..
The products their firms produce are THEIR products. They supply the guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level in their firms. The workers they employ are their HELPERS in fulfilling their plans and producing their (the businessmen’s/capitalists’) products.
Thus, the products of the old Ford Motor Company and the old Standard Oil Company were the products of Ford and Rockefeller. Today, the products of Amazon are the products of Bezos.
The products of every firm are the products of men such as these, though usually they are less prominent and not as easily identified.
In all such cases, the role of the employees is that of providing help. They are accurately described by the expression “The Help.”
It is on the basis of this same principle of attributing results to those who supply the necessary guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level, that we attribute the discovery of America to Columbus and not to the members of his crews, who were merely Columbus’s helpers.
In the same way, we attribute Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz to Napoleon and not to the lesser officers and soldiers who served under him. And in the same way, we attribute the foreign policy of the United States to the President and not to the State Department employees.
Wage earners have their jobs by virtue of businessmen and capitalists having provided them. The help the wage earners provide in producing the businessmen’s/capitalists’ products is fully remunerated by the wages they are paid.
Take away businessmen and capitalists and you take away wage earners, who either die of starvation or must become primitive producers and sellers of commodities on their own, in which case most of them still die of starvation.
For introductory elaboration, read my essay whose title appears immediately below. It’s available at amzn.to/2N44uTu in Kindle format for 99¢ and also in paperback.
For full elaboration, read my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, available in hardcopy and Kindle formats at amzn.to/2PM19ut. Also available at capitalism.net as a free pdf replica capable of download. (Read chapters 11 and 14 in particular).
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