Capitalism Smeared as Slavery -- by Advocate of Slavery

In the course of some research, I ran across a mendacious smear piece in the "1619 Project" of the New York Times.

The lengthy piece quite revealingly starts off with Martin Shkreli, the notorious scoundrel who gamed central planning (in the form of FDA rules) to charge extortionate prices to patients who needed a medication. Since the patents had long expired for this medication, it should have been available from multiple suppliers. And it would have been under capitalism, since that regulation would not have existed to impede the law of supply and demand.

It is Shkreli -- no capitalist, and whom the Times plainly regards as a criminal -- whom the Times happily elevates to a quotable authority:

[T]his is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.

The rest of the article proceeds accordingly, as you might expect of a journalist who doesn't even bother to define the term he is plainly denouncing.

So let's take up that slack right now, before we go any further:

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

This definition comes from Ayn Rand, author of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. Matthew Desmond chose someone he despises as a representative of capitalism: He has no room to complain about my choice.

With this out of the way, reading most of the rest of Desmond's hit piece will be like shooting fish in a barrel. Here are my notes on the rest of the piece:

• The idea of there being different "varieties" of capitalism, (e.g., "democratic to unregulated") is ridiculous. Also, regulation is not part of capitalism, and democracy is mob rule. There are, however many different examples of mixed economies in the world. It is simply wrong to call any or all of these systems "capitalism."
• The assertion that, "Slavery was undeniably a font of phenomenal wealth." is highly debatable, to say the very least, plantation millionaires (the seen) for example, not withstanding. Despite the opulence of its rulers, find me a Venezuelan who calls their brand of slavery a "font of phenomenal wealth.")
• The author gives a whirlwind tour of early American history, with emphasis on: (a) the brutality of slavery, (b) the fact that land speculators and plantation owners benefited from the often dishonest and inhumane treatment of Amerindians, (c) a quick portrait of the cotton economy, (d) the fact that many Northerners grew wealthy by trading with the plantation owners, and (e) assertions that many modern management techniques originated on plantations. This snow job proves absolutely nothing, except that the author wants us to think that "American capitalism" (whatever that's supposed to be) is a more or less direct descendant of the institution of slavery. (His discussions of management techniques read like he'd consign the world to starvation just because the Haber Process originated in Nazi Germany. [See Note below. --ed]) America is indeed scarred from its shameful legacy of slavery, but it is fatuous to damn it (or "capitalism") as if it has not made any meaningful progress since.
• At one point, after calling slavery "America's first big business," he followed with a particularly graphic and disturbing description of the punishments meted out for slaves not making their quotas. This is a calculated ploy to cause readers -- who may be too shocked to remember that people don't receive this kind of treatment in America today -- to wrongly associate brutality with capitalism.

After all of this buildup comes the following paragraph, which may well sound aspirational to a reader, horrified at the brutality and overwhelmed by mostly irrelevant details by this point. In fact, it is quite ridiculous. It is about the "freedom" felt by poor whites who had been exposed to slavery. Like the rest of the piece, it mixes a grain of truth with an anti-capitalist agenda:

It was a freedom that understood what it was against but not what it was for [true --ed]; a malnourished and mean kind of freedom that kept you out of chains [also true --ed] but did not provide bread or shelter. [See below. --ed] It was a freedom far too easily pleased. [true --ed]

Pardon my French, but how in hell does an abstract concept like "freedom" "provide bread or shelter?"

It doesn't, as Ayn Rand points out in a discussion of individual rights, which are protected under (actual) capitalism:

Or pills, but competition would lead to prices that make sense. (Image by Amanda Jones, via Unsplash, license.)

There is no such thing as "a right to a job" -- there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man's right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no "right to a home," only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no "rights to a 'fair' wage or a 'fair' price" if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no "rights of consumers" to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no "rights" of special groups, there are no "rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn." There are only the Rights of Man -- rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals.

When one is free, one has the opportunity to create or trade for these things with other free men. Goods, like food and shelter are produced by individuals, working alone or cooperatively. The only institution that "gives" anyone such things without actual effort is a system that -- like slavery to a greater or lesser degree -- forcibly deprives other men of those things.

And so it is that this piece has said something I think I can agree with: Desmond is clearly against capitalism and, based on what he has the gall to claim freedom should entail, for slavery.

-- CAV

Note: As a reader points out, the Haber(-Bosch) process actually originated before the Nazi regime. That said, the author appears to treat certain business processes as inherently evil simply because they originated on plantations. Any tool can be used for good or evil.

Updates

Today: Corrected some typos. 
11-20-19: Added Note.