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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Overlooked contributions of the rich
Message-ID: <356@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 14:36:29 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.356
Posted: Wed Mar  6 14:36:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 05:51:45 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 42

Dave Hudson writes:
>> [From Vassos Hadzilacos:]
>>The auto manufacturer pays wages and gets cars.  The cars he gets are
>>worth more than the wages he pays (otherwise he would have long
>>ceased to be an auto manufacturer).  Therefore, not only does he not
>>"redistribute wealth" but in fact appropriates the wealth created by
>>the labor power he hires.
> [Hudson:]
> 1) I could have sworn someone claimed that socialism had progressed
>    beyond this stupidity (even overlooking who really owns the auto
>    manufacturers).  Didn't you?

Which stupidity?  The one that claims that capitalists redistribute
wealth from rich to poor?  Yes, we progressed beyond that long ago.
Words fail me when I try to think of a sufficiently sarcastic
response to the claim that capitalists are great benefactors because
they redistribute wealth, provide jobs, etc.  But Marx was a master
of the art, so I'll just refer you to *Capital*, Vol. 1.  

An obvious question is why, if capitalists are busily redistributing
their wealth, the distribution remains so grossly unequal in the US
and so intractable to change.  Surely we would expect things to have
roughly evened out after all this time.  In any case, all that this
"thank-God-for-rich-capitalists" argument amounts to is that the
capitalist system requires the existence of capitalists.  Well, some
of us had already figured this out.  

If I'm not mistaken, libertarians on the net have stated that wealth
is created by the labor of men and women.  Correct, and since only
people produce wealth, not capital or money, what gives the
capitalist the right, merely by virtue of ownership, to appropriate
any of this wealth created by other people?  In their efforts to
justify an exploitative system, apologists for capitalism have come
up with this answer:  The capitalist is risking his wealth when he
invests it in production or some other instrument.  But no one has
ever explained why anyone deserves or "earns" a return merely by
having taken a risk.  No one in his right mind thinks that someone
who comes out of a casino richer than when he went in has "earned" or
"deserved" his increased wealth because he risked his money, any more
than the losers deserved to lose their money.  

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes