I Am A Pro-Business Leftist
What? How can that be?
Business is something we all have to do in order to survive — and thrive. It is what we do. We make things, we serve things, we program things, we advise about things, we sell many things, we entertain each other. We are part of a complex civilization that is founded upon a fossil fuel energy paradigm that powered unprecedented advances in science and technology that have elevated the standard of human living and made possible an explosive growth in human population. Yet this complex civilization has not created a new form of political economy to keep pace with these advances, nor has it accepted the fact that this very same energy paradigm that has powered such success has itself caused the dire environmental conditions that threaten a catastrophic failure, an unprecedented collapse that could end human civilization.
Business has existed for thousands of years. It evolved from the success of a wandering hunter-gatherer species with a large brain and sometimes problematic primate dominance and sexual pathologies. Once the innovation of agriculture took root, populations increased, gathered around the locations of agricultural activity. Old clan or tribal social frameworks became more complex and a polity system emerged that tended to stratify the population into pyramid power structures. Commerce was created. Actual pyramids were built. Collective effort was essential. Methods to mediate exchange evolved. Methods to rule populations evolved. The history of human civilizations demonstrates the ongoing conflict between competition and cooperation that characterizes our species. We could spend hours discussing as well the moral and ideological systems that have risen and fallen over time, that have justified status quo power relations.
Lord and Serf. Master and Slave. Employer and Employee. Such has been the dialectical progression. Religions emerged to create moral structures designed to justify the existence of the ruling class. So in Ancient America you’d get human sacrifice to serve as a way to get the gods to bring fertility and deflect blame for droughts away from the rulers, then later in Europe you’d get Divine Right of Kings to keep everyone aligned and in their “proper” places. The emergence of innovation, philosophy, and advances in science were founded upon the liberalizing effects of cooperation, but the aggressive, competitive war games prosecuted by the silverback gorilla types at the top always threatened disaster for the people at large. Revolutions occur when the established morality story no longer masks the failures of the political-economic status quo.
Neoliberalism is a disastrous ideological framework that, upon the orders of the oligarchs, supplanted the democratic trend established in the 1930s via The New Deal. It pervaded and perverted Western political economy starting around 50 years ago. Neoliberalism is a cover story for unbridled, parasitic, finance capitalism. It is a distorted market fundamentalism that touts free markets that are not free but based on monopolization, and a moral inversion based on greed and the cult of self that touts a meritocracy that is rigged. All economic assaults against the individual — unemployment, illness, bankruptcy — are seen as personal failings rather than the results of a failed system. Humans are commodified, depoliticized, and divided into silos where they are immersed in propaganda so to be ruled and exploited. Solidarity of the People is obliterated so the few can play their dominance game that is an insane drive for infinite profit growth in a finite ecosystem.
That’s just the way it is, you say? Do you agree with Margaret Thatcher that “There is no alternative”? Isn’t that totalitarianism?
There are many alternatives, and to have any hope for an Advanced Human Society, as the planet dies because of unbridled Capitalism, we need to figure this out real quick. Neoliberalism engineers people to power an economy strictly designed to benefit the few. The vaster portion of surplus value created by collective effort is unfairly siphoned to the top. Instead, government and the economy should be engineered to enhance “the general welfare” of the People, an ideal written in the Constitution. When will we live our ideals? How can you justify a $7.50 minimum wage unchanged in relative terms for all these decades, as productivity — created by workers — has increased incredibly during the same time? Why do fast-food workers get $22.50 an hour in Scandinavia? Because people make these decisions.
Enough is enough, as a friend of mine says.
The right, and their dupes, want an economy dominated by the few. The left want a fair economy engineered for the many. It’s that simple.
Neoliberalism is right authoritarianism, and we just elected a Neoliberal president. We already know that we don’t want Soviet-style communism because it is left-authoritarianism, and we don’t want to look like Bulgaria in 1962. And if you are a right-libertarian like Ayn Rand or Rand Paul you’re happy with benign neglect, to let the plutocrats be liberated, and to let everyone else suffer.
I am a left-libertarian. I say stop the suffering. That doesn’t mean I can’t conduct business. We need business reform, that is a fact.
We need to recognize, in the wake of this traumatic election, that powerful forces have contrived to divide the American People, brother against brother, mother against son, in order to prop up an exploitative theory of “business”. Our minds have been poisoned by a corporate propaganda machine that manufactures consent for what it wants to do to fill the pockets of very few people.
We need a diamond society instead of a pyramid society, where yes inevitably there are a few rich at the top and a few poor at the bottom, but the rest of us cooperate together instead of exploiting each other. Humanity will not get out of this century alive unless we cooperate. The power relations of employer-employee must be exploded. We need radical expansion of worker co-ops. Look up the Mondragon Corporation to understand how that very successful company works. Why should Uber control drivers? Lyft, GrubHub and others show that the technology of delivery is now mundane. Uber takes 35% of the fare, and the drivers take all the business risk. Instead, why not have the drivers be the owners in each city or state, pay for the mundane tech platform and get to collect the surplus value? What’s wrong with that?
We need to embrace a different theory of money. Money is a promise, an exchange of value that the People should control. The Federal Reserve has given trillions upon trillions in free money to the wealthy and corporations. Why not the rest of us? Is it socialism for the rich and dog-eat-dog capitalism for the rest of us? Money is a story that can only work if we all believe it. All private banks must be abolished. Public banking is essential. Every person should have a bank account with the government issuer of currency. If you want to have some independent private investment firms go ahead, but don’t think you can suck away our value by putting us eternally in unnecessary debt. Money is in essence a primary utility issued by the government, which is all of us. Unfortunately, we are ruled by these rentiers who serve no purpose to the real economy.
There are numerous business owners who want Medicare for All. There are numerous business owners who realize that finance capital is a parasitic, predatory creature that sucks the life out of the real economy.
We need to make things. We need to build things. Business is what we do. There’s no point to business unless it creates an Advanced Human Society.