Dear Mr. Carp:
I’m not going to write a Wespeak in an attempt to reverse your lust of liberal capitalism; I have neither the time nor the intelligence to accomplish that, although I’m sure there will be many others who would gladly rise to that challenge. Nonetheless, I hope that, given the authority with which you spout your views, you have read, or at least acquainted yourself with, some of the minor and major critiques of neo-liberal capitalism—not just Marx, although that would be a helpful place to start, but people like Veblen, Galbraith, even Schumpeter or Theory of Moral Sentiments, by none other than Adam Smith. Also, since you seem so eager to talk about labor contracts, I’d hope that you’re familiar with labor commodification theory. I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, and I’m definitely not trying to be an economist, I just hope that you’ve read something other than Hayek to justify these rather one-sided views of yours.
But, if you do write just one more Wespeak, I would really like you to defend your most basic conviction, which is that leftists must abandon their “opposition to the principles of economics.” First of all, there is far from complete certainty on what the “principles of economics” are, here I’m assuming that you’ve read Keynes, or even the marginal utility theorists, enough to know that the “laws” of economics change dramatically from time to time, thus presumably liberating society from blind obedience to their dictates. But I’d also like to ask you: who is formulating these economic principles, and who says that society must obey them? From your April 27 Wespeak, it would seem that you endorse absolute compliance with laissez-faire economic laws; this seems to be a right-wing version of (although feel free to disagree with me on this, but if you do please explain why) economic determinism. Why, who is that similar to? None other than Karl Marx! Who you probably hate! Central point: please don’t place economic principles, whether free-market or otherwise, beyond the reach of human agency. If that wasn’t your intention, I apologize for being overly glib, but please provide a more cogently elaborated argument so that I can better comprehend, and respond to, your argument.
Well, I guess I did try and change your views more than I said I would. But I don’t expect you to listen to me. Nonetheless, what I also wanted to do was to suggest that, given the faith you place in Walmart as a beacon of capitalism, you offer some comments on the multiple lawsuits filed against Walmart for violating federal labor laws. Given the faith which you (both from your article and, more generally, as a capitalist devotee) place in contracts, it would seem important for you to remark about widespread allegations that Walmart has systematically violated its contracts (as well as labor laws) by forcing its workers to toil overtime without pay. Given the gravity of the allegations (and the fact that such actions violate the contractual relations that underlie capitalism, yes c-a-p-i-t-a-l-i-s-m) I would expect you to at least acknowledge them. Of course, for someone with such polemical views as your own, recognizing such facts can be painful—but if you want people to take you seriously, that isn’t going to justify your article’s ignorance, whether willful or not, of this issue.
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