by Alan Briskin | Conscious Capitalism
A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines.
Chapter Six:
The Organization Man Meets Radical Self-Interest
Time Range: 1956 – 1960, 1987 – 2008
In 1956–1957, two enormously successful books came out that might be thought of as shadow documents for this period of history — shadow in the sense that they exposed unstated fears and extreme reactions that lay just outside the upbeat portrayal of American society. The first was The Organization Man, by William H. Whyte. Decrying the subtle homogenization of thought and attitude in American society, Whyte warned that a new form of false cooperation was being preached in corporate hallways. Having conducted interviews at General Electric and Ford, he came to believe that a collectivist ethic was leading to a pathological love of safety and fear of risk taking. The emerging language of corporate human relations was nothing more than a justification for hiding in crowds and expecting a predictable career path.
The shadow of emerging affluence was people without character, without a soul. For those who still remembered Marx, it was a confirmation of his warnings about human degradation and loss of authenticity. For others, it was a clarion call to advance the value of self-reliance and the importance of individual self-interest against the wave of homogenizing influences.
In 1905, a nice Jewish girl named Alisa Rosenbaum was born in Russia. She was educated there and came to the United States in 1926. She could have been my father’s older sister, as he was also Jewish, was born in Eastern Europe, and came to the United States in 1925–1926. They both believed in an individual’s capacity via hard work and persistence to shape his or her own destiny. My father’s path was to work in New York City’s garment district selling fabric and wire for hats until he invented a small hand machine that set rhinestones and nailheads into clothing. He called it the Brisk-Set.
Alisa took another path. She became a Hollywood screenwriter and wrote novels. She demanded reverence for her ideas, and her wild mood swings may have been influenced by the amphetamines that she took. She called herself Ayn Rand and in 1957 published her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show “more of what’s there”.
Atlas
Shrugged, which I read in
high school, struck some fundamental chord in the American psyche. The book
launched her from an already-successful author to a major intellectual force,
and the book still sells well to this day. Championing a morality of radical
self-interest, Atlas Shrugged was a
fictional account of a brilliant and creative man who simply did not feel
appreciated enough. We can only begin to imagine how many people identified
with such a hero.
In Rand’s social dystopia, society had been hoodwinked, and the best and brightest were being compromised by illegitimate attitudes of altruism, collectivism, and state-controlled interventions. From what she believed was a rational and objective perspective, society owed its future to the few truly extraordinary individuals, and government should get out of their way. She certainly viewed herself in this way, declaring herself on national television the most creative thinker alive, although one of her admirers, Newt Gringrich, might have had a quarrel with her on that score.
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, was also a great admirer, paying his respects at her funeral and sharing with her a deep faith in laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights. He served as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, and his disdain for regulation was almost as revered as his reputation as a financial wizard. However, something went awry a couple of years after he stepped down. He acknowledged to Congress in testimony regarding the economic collapse of 2008 that he simply could not believe that markets would not be self-correcting. “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief” (New York Times, October 23, 2008).
He acknowledged a “flaw” in his conceptual framework of reality and was distressed by it, believing the model had worked, in his mind, exceedingly well for 40 years. Hearing him speak in his gray monotone style reminded me of a computer initiating a safety check, looking for bugs in the code that might be influencing the computer’s efficiency.
In metaphoric terms, Ayn Rand was writing code back in the ’50s for successful individuals to separate themselves from others without guilt or shame. This had been achieved in the past by royalty, having associated their divine rights with God, but for Rand this could not be the justification.
Instead, she welded her very real distrust of central authority encountered in Russia with a mandate for individual self-esteem, an emerging philosophy of positive self worth that would crest in popularity late in the 1960’s. She proclaimed that what benefited societies were people who used their talents to the full and who were not inhibited or regulated by others. Laissez-faire capitalism was simply the economic and social extension of these ideas.
Unfettered capital accumulation by the individual was only logical to Rand – one should keep what was personally earned. The individual had to be constantly at war with the collectivist viewpoint, a battle that must be waged continually, or risk the very moral fiber of the nation. This was a battle that transcended Rand herself; individualism was a philosophy associated with triumph.
The pristine nature of these libertarian ideas was like a tonic to the ambitious organization man. Here was a remedy for the forces of conformity and homogenizing influences of a mass-producing culture. In Rand’s model of a robust society, individual self-esteem and making lots of money were inseparable. How could this not be right? It was the perfect marriage. The organization man meets a tough and spirited woman in a cocktail bar called Capitalism, and they go at it. If only it were so. The ’50s in the United States had an underlying tone of self-congratulation that was about to change quite dramatically.
FLASH POINTS
April 17, 2012
Paul Ryan Suddenly Does Not Embrace Ayn Rand Teachings
WASHINGTON- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to send the message this week that, contrary to ‘urban legend,’ he is not obsessed with philosopher and author Ayn Rand.
“‘I reject her philosophy,’ Ryan told the National Review on Thursday. ‘It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.’
“Best known for her novels ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ Rand advocated a philosophy that emphasizes the individual over the collective, and viewed capitalism as the only system truly based on the protection of the individual. She has been a significant influence on libertarians and conservatives.
Ryan, whose name has been floated as a possible running mate for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, appeared to be distancing himself from Rand in response to a public letter he received this week from nearly 90 faculty and administrators at Georgetown University. In their letter, they criticize him for misusing Catholic social teaching in defending his budget, which hurts the poor by proposing significant cuts to anti-hunger programs, slashing Pell Grants for low-income students and calling for a replacement of Medicare with a voucher-like system. They also invoke Rand’s name.
“‘As scholars, we want to join the Catholic bishops in pointing out that his budget has a devastating impact on programs for the poor,’ said Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, one of the organizers of the letter. ‘Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.’
“But any urban legend about Ryan’s affinity for Rand surely started with Ryan himself, who, prior to this week, had no qualms about gushing about Rand’s influence on his guiding principles.
“‘The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,’ Ryan said during a 2005 event honoring Rand in Washington, D.C., the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in April 2009.
“During the 2005 gathering, Ryan told the audience, ‘Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill … is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict — individualism versus collectivism.’ The event was hosted by The Atlas Society, which prominently features a photo of Rand on its website and describes itself as a group that ‘promotes open Objectivism: the philosophy of reason, achievement, individualism, and freedom.’”
~ Huffington Post
“PBS Frontline Investigation into Financial Crisis Suggests Another Disaster on Horizon
April 24, 2012
“On Tuesday night PBS will air the first two parts of a four-part documentary on the crisis, called ‘Money, Power and Wall Street,’ with the second two parts to air next Tuesday, May 1. …
“It puts credit derivatives in their rightful position as the ultimate cause of the financial crisis — not the selling of houses to poor people, not super-low Federal Reserve interest rates, not a surplus of savings from China or Japan. …
Derivatives — bundles of securities that sliced and diced mortgages and sold them to investors, and credit default swaps that helped investors pretend they’d bought insurance against those bundles going bad — fueled what Frontline calls ‘an unfettered brave new world of banking,’ spreading credit liberally throughout the land, feeding the housing boom and exposing the banking system to nightmarish risk.
“And this all happened far, far away from the oversight of regulators, who bought the arguments of Alan Greenspan, the Thomas Friedman of finance, that any fetters on the free market would block the free flow of credit.
“‘The regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary,’ rasped the Ayn Rand acolyte, who seems to grow more monstrous with hindsight. ‘It hinders the efficiency of markets.’
“Banks, meanwhile, whined that they would lose their ability to compete in the global financial system if the government didn’t immediately break down the Depression-era rules that prevented them from getting too big to fail. Okey-doke, said both Congress and the Clinton administration. You got it.”
~ Huffington Post
Next Week: How Wealth Became Concentrated and the Poor Were to Blame
“Paupers are everywhere.” ~Complaint heard from Queen Elizabeth, late 16th century, after returning from travels in the English countryside.
Michael Harrington, political activist, socialist, and professor of political science at Queens College, was no Queen Elizabeth, but his research on poverty came to the same conclusion. As he wrote in his book The Other America, he was horrified to find that 40 to 50 million Americans lived in poverty, a fifth to a quarter of the entire US population in 1962. Where were they hiding?
by Alan Briskin | Conscious Capitalism, Politics
A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines.
Chapter Five:
A Shining City on a Hill
Problems No More, USA, 1952-1956
In a dozen short years removed from FDR’s last State of the Union address, the economic landscape had changed dramatically, or so it seemed. The brilliant Robert L. Heilbroner, economist and economic historian, could write that what distinguished the capitalism of the United States from all others was its refutation of Marx’s assumption that government could not be an impartial arbiter. American democracy, he proclaimed, tolerated and allowed for an open discussion of class struggle without class warfare.
Heilbroner believed government could, and did, play a significant role in reconciling divergent interests — and this, Marx, the flawed observer, did not see. How could Marx, Heilbroner suggested, surrounded as he was by the Dickensian factories of England, Russia’s brutal condemnation of trade unions under the czar, monopolies officially championed in Germany, and the ineffectiveness of Italy and Greece to collect their own levied taxes on their respective business communities? The huge chasm between the rich and poor in Europe obscured any vision of reconciliation.
But not in America. Here was the shining city on a hill, to use Ronald Reagan’s attribution of America’s exceptionalism decades later. Here was a country that was neither frozen by a historical aristocracy nor closed to social mobility.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show “more of what’s there”.
The expansion of the economy after the war seemed closer to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations than to some sourpuss guy named Marx, who at times couldn’t even leave his home because his coat and shoes were sitting in a pawnshop. Even a progressive intellectual like Mary McCarthy could write:
The mansions are torn down and the real estate “development” takes their place…. Class barriers disappear or become porous; the factory worker is an economic aristocrat in comparison with the middle class clerk … vast inequalities and dramatic contrasts are ceasing to exist.
~ Quoted in The Illusion of Unity in Cold War Culture by Alan Brinkley.
From out of inner-city tenements sprang planned communities, like Levittown in New York, and more generally the birth of the suburbs. Mass production strengthened its hold on construction, agriculture, livestock, and our general view of using natural resources. How we build our homes, grow our food, house our animals, and slaughter them all came increasingly under management with an eye to efficiency and surplus value. Under what was labeled free enterprise, incomes grew among the middle class, products expanded, and television emerged to entertain and enchant. What’s not to like? And in contrast, a dozen years of Joseph Stalin (1941–1953) solidified views not only of the error of communism as an economic model but also of the danger of collectivist strategies that masked a top-down concentration of political power.
In the United States, a new society seemed possible, suggesting a greater unity of interests and values traversing classes and regions. What was required was a good work ethic, a little imagination, and a can’t-say-quit attitude. Running for president in 1952 and 1956, General Dwight D. Eisenhower captured this zeitgeist while simultaneously repudiating Franklin Roosevelt’s call for an activist government. Eisenhower beat Adlai Stevenson, who had served under Roosevelt and attacked Eisenhower’s championing of the business community, twice — by large margins. Was it possible that capitalism had matured to the point where it was beyond booms and busts?
Next Week: The Organization Man Meets Radical Self-Interest, 1956 – 1960
Alisa took another path. She became a Hollywood screenwriter and wrote novels. She demanded reverence for her ideas, and her wild mood swings may have been influenced by the amphetamines that she took. She called herself Ayn Rand and in 1957 published her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged.
by Alan Briskin | Business, Conscious Capitalism, Health, Politics
A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines.
Chapter Four, Part Two:
Out of Depression and War, a New Vision of Wealth Distribution
Time Range: 1929-1944, 2012
The economic bill of rights highlighted
a scar in the American psyche. Roosevelt’s time in office, which included a
failed coup d’état directed against him, deepened the resolve of factions
opposed to government intervention. From
this moment on, a widening split would cleave those who believed in federal
intervention from those who perceived arrogance in a government that addressed
questions of economic distribution.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show “more of what’s there”.
FLASH POINT
The Obama Economy–and Ours
Government didn’t build
that.
By Patrick J. Buchanan, July 24, 2012
“If you’ve
got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Mitt
Romney fell on this Obama quote like an NFL lineman on an end zone fumble
during the Super Bowl. And understandably so.
For this
was no gaffe, said Romney, this is what Obama believes. This is straight out of
the catechism. Obama thinks that had not the government created the
preconditions, none of us could succeed. We all depend on government. None of
us can make it on our own.
Had Obama
been channeling Isaac Newton–”If I have seen further than others it is because
I am standing on the shoulders of giants”–or John Donne — “No man is an island,
entire of itself”–many would have nodded in agreement.
But what
Obama seemed to be saying–indeed, was saying–was that, without government, no
business can succeed.
Realizing
that statement rubs against a deeply ingrained American belief–that the people
built the nation–Obama and his acolytes are charging that Romney ripped his
words out of context.
Here is Obama’s full quote:
“If you were successful, somebody along the line
gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody
helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed
you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a
business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen.”
Conservatives, as opposed to liberals, proclaimed that people had a right to own what they owned and government should be on a very short leash. Government intervention should be held to the strictest criteria for determining what benefited the nation as a whole, especially in regard to infringing on private property and wealth accumulation.
The danger of deviating even a little from this principle, they warned, would unleash a swarm of another form of special interest groups, mostly those not very good at earning a living. This meant limiting what government should do and how much taxes it should collect.
If Roosevelt argued the moral and
political basis for ensuring freedom from want, conservatives argued the moral
and political basis for ensuring freedom of individual rights and protecting
those who succeeded on their own without government assistance. If one side
argued against the special interests of business and corporate influences, the
other side argued against the special interests of labor and minorities.
The interdependence of the whole was
visible to some and invisible to others. Both felt the success of the nation
was at stake. Both sides felt varying
degrees of contempt for the other, to the point where even the same words would
appear to have entirely different meanings.
FLASH POINT
US Supreme Court: Closing Arguments Regarding Health Care Mandates
New York Times, March 30, 2012
“Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. concluded his defense of the law
at the court this week with remarks aimed squarely at Justice Kennedy. Mr.
Verrilli said there was ‘a profound connection’ between health care and
liberty.
“‘There will be millions of people
with chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease,’ he said, ‘and as a
result of the health care that they will get, they will be unshackled from the
disabilities that those diseases put on them and have the opportunity to enjoy
the blessings of liberty.’
“Paul D. Clement, representing 26
states challenging the law, had a comeback. ‘I would respectfully suggest,’ he
said, ‘that it’s a very funny conception of liberty that forces somebody to purchase
an insurance policy whether they want it or not.’”
To complicate matters further, discussion of the
proper role of government also pinched a nerve in the neck of the county’s
individualistic orientation. Going back to Henry David Thoreau, the view of
government was that it was the least capable of social institutions to do
anything right. Government was no more than a body of collective incompetents
compromised further by having to compromise with each other. Thoreau, a
naturalist, was not very fond of what he observed of human behavior,
particularly in regard to group behavior on the political stage.
So the mold was cast:
individualism, the right of private property, and state’s rights against those
who believed in groups, collective interdependence, and federal government
intervention. Hopefully the problems would just go away, because the lines were
drawn in such a fashion that no resolution was possible.
FLASH POINT
Health Care Reform and the Supreme Court
New York Times, June 29, 2012
The Supreme Court largely upheld President Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act, in a mixed decision. The conservative chief justice, John G. Roberts, joined the
majority in affirming the central legislative accomplishment of Mr. Obama’s
term.
Chief Justice Roberts ruled that the key provision in
question, the so-called individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy
insurance or pay a fine, failed to pass constitutional muster under the
Commerce Clause, which was the heart of the administration’s arguments in favor
of it. But the chief justice declared that the fine amounted to a tax that the
government had the power to impose, and that the mandate could survive on that
basis.
The decision did
significantly restrict one major portion of the law: the expansion of Medicaid,
the government health-insurance program for low-income and sick people. The
ruling gives states some flexibility not to expand their Medicaid programs,
without paying the same financial penalties that the law called for.
The
debate over health care remains far from over, with Republicans vowing to carry
on their fight against the law, which they see as an unaffordable infringement
on the rights of individuals. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee,
Mitt Romney, has promised to undo it if elected.
Next Week: A shining City on a Hill, 1952-2956
In a dozen short years removed from FDR’s last State of the Union address,
the economic landscape had changed dramatically, or so it seemed. The brilliant
Robert L. Heilbroner, economist and
economic historian, could write that what distinguished the capitalism of the United
States from all others was its refutation of Marx’s assumption that government
could not be an impartial arbiter. American democracy, he proclaimed, tolerated and allowed
for an open discussion of class struggle without class warfare.
by Alan Briskin | Conscious Capitalism, Leadership
A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines.
Chapter Four, Part One:
Out of Depression and War, a
New Vision of Wealth Distribution
Time Range: 1929-1944, 2012
FLASH POINT
Wall Street, October 1929
The Roaring Twenties
collapsed amid a giant speculative bubble. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had
increased fivefold over a six-year period, and there seemed no end in sight. As
if in a giant craps game, players were left with their cash on the table. Who
would have guessed? The wealth benefits of surplus value appeared to have no
real counterforce, or so it seemed. Simultaneously, an investor class now began
to understand that speculation about the future of profit could be more
profitable than creating goods and services. It was this latter lesson that
stuck even as a whole army of economists would be engaged to figure out how to
avoid the next crash. Financial services, particularly the purchase and sale of
commercial paper, would eventually become the new game in town, but not quite
yet.
Freedom from Fear and
Want: State of the Union, 1944
In his final State of the Union speech at the end
of his second term of office, President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid out his thoughts
in a particularly blunt fashion. World War II was nearing an end but still far
from a clear conclusion. He had to rally a country that had been through a
desperate depression and still faced an uncertain future. In this speech, he
laid out the clear connection between security and poverty. He declared: “And
an equally basic essential to peace is a decent standard of living for all
individual men and women and children in all nations. Freedom from fear is
eternally linked with freedom from want.”
Yet
he knew this was not a shared belief. He warned of the insanity of “the
so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920’s” and went as far as to call those financial
excesses “the spirit of Fascism here at home.” Acknowledging American sacrifice
that had met the demands of war with courage and stood ready to make further
contributions, he cautioned about a “noisy minority” demanding “special favors
for special groups … who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the
cocktail bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to
the basic interests of the nation as a whole.”
HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show “more of what’s there”.
Was Roosevelt feeling a little stressed out? No wonder his opposition suggested that he was a Socialist; he was making points remarkably similar to those of Marx at the Red Lion Pub. It was as if he were declaring the danger of lobbying groups shilling for owners of capital, congregating on an imaginary Das Kapital Street right in the heart of the nation’s capital. Could such a K Street ever exist? Would we allow it?
FLASH POINTS
Corporations
That Spent the Most on Lobbying Saw Tax Rates Decline: Report
“The top eight companies that spent the most on federal lobbying from 2007
to 2009 all saw their reported tax rates decrease from 2007 to 2010, according to a new analysis released Monday by the
Sunlight Foundation.
“The report notes that these top eight firms spent
$540 million on lobbying from 2007 to 2009. They filed 332 lobbying reports
that mentioned taxes and named 491 different tax bills in those reports.
“The top eight companies that spent the most on
lobbying were Exxon Mobil, Verizon Communications, General Electric, AT&T,
Altria, Amgen, Northrop Grumman and Boeing. Exxon Mobil spent the most, some
$81.92 million from 2007 to 2009.
“AT&T recorded the largest tax reduction, with
its tax rate falling from 34.0 percent to negative 6.4 percent from 2007 to
2010, or an estimated reduction of more than $7.3 billion.”
— Huffington Post, April 17, 2012
Roosevelt understood that we were entering a
period of increasing interdependence: “In this war, we have been compelled to
learn how interdependent upon each other are all groups and sections of the
population of America.” Not individuals, but groups. This is a critical
distinction, meaning that subgroups of the whole must learn to work toward
common purposes. We must, Roosevelt insisted, be concerned with groups made up
of businesspeople and farmers but also teachers on pensions and soldiers
returning from duty. We are all
interconnected. A high standard of living that leaves behind significant
subpopulations is a dangerous illusion. “We cannot be content,” he declared in
one of the more famous lines from his speech, “no matter how high that general
standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people — whether it be
one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth — is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and
insecure.”
Declaring
the need for an economic bill of
rights, he proclaimed that without them, individual rights of life and liberty
would be compromised and our political
bill of rights would be in jeopardy. Just as today we have, as a matter of
national pride, a system of government that protects free speech, free press,
free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches, and free
elections, Roosevelt hoped that one day we could say the same about an economic
bill of rights. What were some of these rights?
- The right to useful and remunerative work
- The right to earn enough to provide
adequate food and clothing and recreation
- The right of every family to a decent home
- The right of adequate medical care
- The right of adequate protection from the
economic fears of old age, sickness, and unemployment
- The right to a good education
During
Roosevelt’s time in office, he oversaw the creation of the Social Security
System, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Housing
Administration (FHA), and Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the passage
of the Wagner Act, which aided the promotion of unions. If Roosevelt sounded at
all like Marx in his warnings, his actions could not have been more different.
He believed in government’s right to act on behalf of those in need, rather
than have those in need organizing together in revolt. Marx was far more
cynical, if not realistic. He believed that governments would be lackeys
catering to whichever class of owners currently held power. He predicted that governments
would be socially incapable of reining in capitalism’s excesses.
Roosevelt
believed otherwise. He thought government should be willing to be referees in
the capitalist’s game of concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands. He
believed it was essential on both moral grounds and in the name of democracy as
a living, viable entity. For Roosevelt, political rights in the United States
and around the world depended on freedom from want as well as fear. If
political and economic rights diverged too greatly, he feared that terrorism,
fundamentalism, and extremism of all forms would split the nation and the
world. Was he just a worrier?
Next Week: Out of Depression and War, a New Vision of
Wealth Distribution, Part Two
The economic bill of rights highlighted a scar in the American psyche.
Roosevelt’s time in office, which included a failed coup d’état directed
against him, deepened the resolve of factions opposed to government
intervention. From this moment on, a
widening split would cleave those who believed in federal intervention from
those who perceived arrogance in a government that addressed questions of
economic distribution.
Conservatives, as opposed
to liberals, proclaimed that people had a right to own what they owned and
government should be on a very short leash. Government intervention should be
held to the strictest criteria for determining what benefited the nation as a
whole, especially in regard to infringing on private property and wealth
accumulation.
by Alan Briskin | Business, Collective Folly, Community, Conscious Capitalism
A serial journal of cogent reflections and irreverent insights on the social effects of capitalism and the roots of partisan politics. Pairing prose with HDR photography and “flash points” drawn from current and historical perspectives, the author seeks to recover lost wisdom and courageous action beyond the shouting and noise of today’s headlines.
Chapter Three:
Ghosts of Past, Present, and Yet to Come
Time Range: 1911, 2011-12
Would not progress and economic growth lift all ships? Rather than economic cycles leading to greater economic division and social fragmentation, would there not transpire higher levels of educational attainment, greater entrepreneurial opportunities, and increased social mobility? In time, isn’t it logical to think that an investment class would value knowledge and motivation for its workers, leading to better working conditions, not worse? How could it be otherwise? With time, progress would surely come.
Like the ghosts of Past, Present, and Yet to Come in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, recently published as Marx trekked his way toward the Red Lion Pub, Marx’s portrait of the rich and poor tweaks the imagination and conscience. With little sentimentality, he predicted that society would repeat a pattern of boom and bust, with causalities counted, surprise voiced, and renewed commitment to the same pattern over and over again. His writings suggested that we would all be caught in a matrix of exploitation and protest already calculated into the design, until the final act — Judgment Day. Is it true? Are we simply trapped in a version of the movie Jerry Maguire, with the Cuba Gooding Jr. character shouting, “Show me the money!”?
HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography by Alan Briskin: multiple shots at different exposures are combined into one image in order to show “more of what’s there”.
FLASH POINT
New York City, March 15, 1911
In the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, 146 garment workers died. The doors and stairwells to the exits had been locked to prevent theft and employees’ taking unauthorized breaks. Most of the workers who died were Italian and Jewish immigrants aged 16 to 23. Many died leaping from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors.
In the 20th century, with the exception of one other fire and the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, it was the deadliest disaster in New York City’s history.
There were no eight-leaved clovers here, only actual working people. The fire stirred public outrage and forced city agencies to initiate safety reforms. The devastation also stimulated the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Union in their efforts to battle sweatshop conditions.
Chengdu, China, May 2011
“[An] explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.
“When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.
“Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.…
“In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
“However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants.… Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms.”
~ New York Times, January 26, 2012
Mike Daisey, creator of the one-man show The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, defended his theatrical license when confronted with inaccuracies in his portrayal of certain events and dialogue based on interviews in Chengdu:
“I stand by my work. My show is a theatrical piece whose goal is to create a human connection between our gorgeous devices and the brutal circumstances from which they emerge. It uses a combination of fact, memoir, and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity. Certainly, the comprehensive investigations undertaken by the New York Times and a number of labor rights groups to document conditions in electronics manufacturing would seem to bear this out.”
~ Huffington Post, March 16, 2012
“Foxconn Technology Group will keep on increasing worker salaries in China and cutting the hours of work, Chairman Terry Gou said on Sunday, after it came under fire for poor working conditions for employees making Apple iPhones and iPads.…
“We have a saying now in the company, ‘You work fewer hours, but get more pay,’ Gou told Reuters at the 2012 Boao Forum for Asia in China’s Hainan island province. ‘We won’t stop here and will continue to increase salaries.’”
~ Reuters, April 2, 2012
Next Week: Out of Depression and War, a New Vision of Wealth Distribution
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