In our previous
posting we saw how, by the simple expedient of “re-editing the dictionary” —
shifting the source of rights from actual flesh-and-blood human beings to the
abstraction of the collective (“mankind” or “humanity”) — the U.S. Supreme
Court managed to interpret the U.S. Constitution in a way exactly the opposite
of that intended by the framers of the Constitution, and the principles
embodied in the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of
Independence.
The
issue today is how to get things back on track.
It won’t be easy, but it can be done — and it is pretty simple. (“Easy” and “simple” are not synonyms, by the
way.)
As
with many other things, it’s a question of power. Yes, that dirty word, power.
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| Dan'l Webster (but not the Devil) |
And
if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know what’s coming next. We quote Daniel Webster (or, for a change of
pace, Benjamin Watkins Leigh) from the Massachusetts Convention (or the
Virginia Convention) of 1820, “Power naturally and necessarily follows
property.”
By
“property” we don’t mean stuff. Not even
the best stuff. That’s because property
is not stuff, i.e., “things.” Property is 1) the inherent, absolute,
inalienable right every child, woman, and man has built into human nature
itself to own stuff, and 2) the socially determined and necessarily limited
bundle of rights that define how an owner may use his or her stuff. In general, no one may use his or her stuff
in any way that harms other people, groups, or the common good as a whole.
Now,
what kind of stuff are we talking about?
Not consumer goods. No, we’re not
denying the right of anyone to own consumer goods. That would be stupid. Even Karl Marx admitted that people have the
right to own the food, clothing, and shelter they need. The real question is who owns the productive
stuff (land and technology) that makes the consumption stuff (food, fiber, and
fuel)?
That’s
the real issue. It’s not whether
somebody just gives you what you need, although that may at times be necessary
as an expedient in an emergency. It’s
whether you have the ability to produce what you need, either to consume
yourself, or to trade to someone else for what that someone else has produced
that you want to consume. As Adam Smith
said, and on which he built his entire economic theory, “Consumption is the
sole end and purpose of all production.”
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| Benjamin Watkins Leigh |
That’s
because if someone just gives you what you need, you become dependent on that
someone. Offend him or her, and the flow
of goodies might stop. If you own that
which produces what you consume, whether directly or indirectly, no one can
claim you are a “useless eater” and a drag on the economy. If, however, you are receiving what you
consume from others without producing something that you exchange in return,
it’s very easy to claim you’re just a leech, and society would be better off
without you.
(Unless
you’re John Maynard Keynes, in which case you claim that people who produce
what they consume with anything other than labor are “functionless investors”
and should be “euthanized” because they don’t set aside goods for
non-consumption. . . . in other words, because they act rationally, rentiers
don’t fit into the Keynesian model based on contradiction.)
The
problem, of course, is that as land runs out, and technology becomes expensive,
how are ordinary people supposed to become owners when labor alone cannot
produce in competition with advancing technology? As Frederick Jackson Turner pointed out back
in 1893 (or maybe it was 1892. . . .) the end of “free” land under the
Homestead Act meant the end of democracy . . . unless somehow the expanding
commercial and industrial frontier could replace the vanished land frontier. .
. .
This
was the situation Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler addressed in their two
collaborations, The Capitalist Manifesto
(1958) and The New Capitalists
(1961). The answer? Open up the means for ordinary people to
finance new capital formation on the same terms as the rich: purchase new
capital on credit that pays for itself out of future profits, and thereafter
generates a living income for the owners of the capital.
All
of a sudden, ordinary people would once again have the political power that
follows economic power, and a truly liberal and democratic society could
re-emerge — not the shabby, pseudo-liberal ideologies based on moral relativism
and the abandonment of reason, in which the great mass of people are always
looking over their shoulders to avoid offending those with economic, and thus political
power.
That
is the whole point of a Capital Homesteading
program, and why an aggressive program of expanded capital ownership must
have a place in current political dialog . . . making you wonder why nobody
seems to be talking about it. . . .
#30#