Greetings, again,

"I do not agree with you that the 'common people' seeks merely to 'feed his family.' There is almost NO ONE in our society who lives a life of bare subsistence. We want our cars, our air conditioning, our entertainment, etc, all of which are way above 'bare subsistence.'"

     According to UNICEF, one out of every five children in the US is living on a dollar a day. [*1] By our own records, 18% of our children live below the poverty level. [*2] And even for those living above the federal poverty guidelines, food and undernourishment is still a significant concern. Twelve thousand dollars a year is the poverty level for a single mother, or only eight thousand dollars a year for an individual. Another 39% of our children live only marginally above the poverty level. [*3] Let's keep in mind, too, that these levels of poverty and homelessness were taken from before the recent recession.

     We're talking about half or more of the country's children. Yet you politely refer to these people as "NO ONE." How can you expect to represent this country when you deny the existence of more than half of the people?

     Even when the stock market moves confidently forward, in one of the nation's biggest upturns, [*4] it still leaves behind the teaming masses to wallow in poverty, misery, and unemployment. Here, I think we have a decent argument: the best businesses, operating perfectly according to their CEO's, have done nothing to create jobs or end poverty in America. The facts and statistics prove it. Free enterprise, at its best, did nothing for us, the workers. However, your argument is that poverty and unemployment exists because businesses are straddled with taxes. Can you really persist in this argument, when businesses have perfect conditions, and unemployment only grows?

"You make the mistake of the proto-marxists of thinking that the sale of one's labor is different from the sale of finished goods, etc."

     I don't understand this phrase at all. Marx's argument was, and always has been, that labor does not differ from other trade commodities. From the second paragraph of "Wage Labour and Capital," he wrote, "Labour-power, then, is a commodity, no more, no less so than is the sugar. The first is measured by the clock, the other by the scales." [*5]

"I certainly have no interest in living in a land where there is no accumulation of capital, investment, and the building of enterprises that can support people's needs and desires."

     That's particularly odd. I don't remember saying this at all. When I stated that I wanted workers to manage industries, it was because the worker is the best person to make industrial decisions. Every worker is also a consumer, and must necessarily live with the choices they make. I couldn't imagine that American workers would suddenly do away with technological innovation altogether.

"It doesn't matter whether the workers have an 'interest' in maintaining an enterprise. It takes more than an 'interest' - more than hard work by the hourly employees. It takes capital and investment to keep such enterprises alive."

     Where does capital and investment come from -- if not off of the backs of the hard-working laborer? Capital can't exist without labor. Factories, mines, and railroads are not natural, nor are they self-creating. They exist because someone labored to create them. Capital exists only because of labor, and for no other reason. You should just shorten your sentence to, "It takes more than hard work to run a business -- IT TAKES HARD WORK!!!" Adam Smith covered this very well in his book "The Wealth of Nations." Quoting one of the world's most significant economists: "It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased..." [*6] So, naturally, I and the other economists of the world are going to disagree with your analysis that capital exists independent of labor.

"You are implying that the 'capitalist' is selfish - but the worker is pure at heart. That is hogwash. Everybody is looking out for themselves and their family. Without the capitalist, there wouldn't be an enterprise that the wager earners could work at."

"What you seem to want is for the capitalist to take all the risk, save the money, build the company - all of which he does for his own profit - and then you want him to be stuck there when the business is no longer profitable. I notice you don't suggest that the workers stay and work for less and less profit themselves.

"In other words, you want the owners who put their money in business not to really own what they build, but to be forced to maintain it for the benefit of the employees even when it is no longer profitable. But you don't want the laborers to have to operate under the same constraints!"

     Hogwash? I've heard people justify and legitimize the greed and selfishness of Capitalism; but, I have never heard someone completely deny it altogether. Again quoting Adam Smith, "Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals." [*7] In every era, and every continent, the Capitalist class is in a conspiracy against the common people, to keep them miserably low poverty. A summary of the world's most respected economist.

     But, so you don't think I'm poorly-read in economics, I'll point out a few other significant economists who agree. Thomas Malthus wrote, "The true cause of the advance in the price of labour is thus concealed, and the rich affect to grant it as an act of compassion and favour to the poor, in consideration of a year of scarcity, and, when plenty returns, indulge themselves in the most unreasonable of all complaints, that the price does not again fall, when a little rejection would shew them that it must have risen long before but from an unjust conspiracy of their own." [*8] Other economists who agreed: Josiah Child, [*9] Thomas Paine, [*10] James Steuart, [*11] J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi, [*12] Nassau Senior, [*13] among many others.

"What you want is for people to walk right into possession of those things without having paid for them.

"Without imposing a communist or national socialist system, how do you propose to force property owners and people who have accumulated capital to invest in the laborers rather than in their own best interests? What moral right do you see that allows you to appropriate the wealth of others to your own benefit?

"To give the land to the workers, you'll have to steal it from the people that paid for it.

"That is what the founders, and dare I say the Scriptures, are opposed to. It's called theft. You propose to steal what others have lawfully gained, because you believe you can arrange things to the better benefit of the 'workers.'"

...

"The idea that the land already belongs to the workers is just Marxist lunacy. Why should it belong to you if you didn't pay for it? That's what deeds and title are for - to prove ownership."

     There seems to be the question of "what grants someone the right to property?" John Locke, the Enlightenment philosopher, has clearly defined what grants someone the right to property: "He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common..." [*14]

     It is labor that separates wealth from the common. So, it seems odd that industrialists and big businesses can invest in land with money and own it. After all, their money is the product of the workman's hands, and they provided nothing at all for it. Capital only exists because a laborer created it, and one necessarily concludes with Locke, that the laborer is the possessor of the property. It is the laborer who created capital, and pulled it out of nature. So, it must necessarily belong to the laborer. With Adam Smith, as well, and many other economists, we find that labor is the sole creator of wealth. The dividends that Capitalists live off of, then, are not created by them; they are the product of labor. They produce nothing, add nothing, contribute nothing. It is theft to steal someone's labor, and live off of it. Quoting the economist, J.C.L. Simonde de Sismonde, "...all wealth proceeds from labour..." [*15]

     If workers produce all of the wealth in society, then it belongs to them! John Locke didn't dance around the issue of property, and neither did Rousseau or Adam Smith. It's not "Marxist lunacy" -- it's called the Enlightenment.

     Those who add labor to wealth are its rightful possessor. Furthermore, if anyone's possession of wealth disenfranchises others, this too is theft. You love private property, but would you love private ownership of the world's oxygen? The entire question is so ludicrous, and yet, Capitalists own all of the world's land, and on the exact same arguments as one would claim the world's oxygen: because it is there and nobody has claimed it.

     The workers make all of the wealth. The capital you speak of, also, was made by the workers. (Or did dams and canals suddenly appear, like Moses calling on god's miracles?) Every economist and philosopher seems to agree, that workers have a right to what they labor upon, and that necessarily means all of society's wealth. Also, I'd like you to respond to the massive poverty in the United States, which you seem to think affects "NO ONE." And how would we American voters expect you to represent them, when you deny that they exist?

Thank you,

Andy Carloff,

Resources

*1. "Young child survival and development," by UNICEF, UNICEF Page .
*2. Federal poverty guidelines issued annually by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Health and Human Services Page . The same numbers reported by The Washington Post, Washington Post Article.
*3. Ibid.
*4. "U.S. Economic Expansion Longest on Record: Can the 'New Economy' Take the Credit?" By Polzin, Paul. Wednesday, March 22 2000. All Business Article
*5. "Wage Labour and Capital," Section: "What Are Wages?" December 1847, translated by Frederick Engels, Neue Rheinische Zeitung, April 5-8 and 11, 1849. Marxists Internet Archive.
*6. "Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith, Book 1, Chapter 5.
*7. "Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith, Book 1, Chapter 8.
*8. Malthus, Thomas, "An Essay on the Principle of Population," 1798, chapter 2.
*9. Child, Josiah, "Brief Observations Concerning Trade and Interest of Money," 1668, London, Printed for Elizabeth Calvert at the Black-spread Eagle in Barbican, and Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the White-Heart in Westminster Hall.
*10. Paine, Thomas, "Agrarian Justice."
*11. Steuart, James, "An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy," London: Printed for A. Millar, and T. Cadell, in the Strand., 1767. Book 1, chapter 4.
*12. Simonde de Sismondi, J. C. L., "Political Economy," 1815, chapter 2.
*13. Senior, Nassau William, "Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages," of Magdalen College, A.M.; delivered before the University of Oxford in Easter Term 1830, Late Professor of Political Economy, The Second Edition, London; John Murray, Albemarle Street, MDCCXXXI, LONDON: Printed by William Clowks, Stamford Street. Lecture 1.
*14. Second Treatise on Government, by John Locke, chapter 5.
*15. Sismondi, Jean-Charles-Leonard Simonde de, "Political Economy," 1815, chapter 5.