The Anti-Capitalist Mentality

Ludwig von Mises (pronounced meeces) is one of the giant intellectuals for freedom along with Milton Friedman and Hayek. He explains the mentality of socialists in books such as The Anti-Capitalist Mentality. In his book Theory and History he writes: "Similar motives prompt those who advocate socialism and interventionism for moral and religious reasons. They consider it supererogatory to examine the economic problems involved, and they try to shift the discussion of the pros and cons of the market economy from the field of economic analysis to what they call a higher sphere. They reject capitalism as an unfair system and advocate either socialism or interventionism as being in accord with their moral or religious principles. It is vile, they say, to look upon human affairs from the point of view of productivity, profits and a materialistic concern about wealth and a plentiful supply of material goods. Man ought to strive after justice, not wealth."

He says, "The only fault they find with the tenets of the Marxian socialists and the secular parties of interventionism is their commitment to atheism and secularism.... The truth is that those fighting capitalism as a system contrary to the principles of morals and religion have uncritically and lightheartedly adopted all the economic teachings of the socialists and communists."

Murray Rothbard is what is called an anarcho-capitalist. I disagree with him that there should be no government, but total laissez-faire capitalism. Even the ideal world will have government, but I agree with him on how magnificent the unfettered market place is. Ayn Rand and others explain how critics of capitalism don't see that if there was faults it was usually because capitalists go to socialist centralized power of the state to get favors and then disrupt the economy. If America had continued in the 20th century the limited government of the 19th we would be a much more productive country and much more inspirational to the world. Friedman explains that America is more socialistic than capitalistic because government takes half our income.

Rothbard says, "One of the most common charges leveled against the free market (even by many of its friends) is that it reflects and encourages unbridled 'selfish materialism.' Even if the free market -- unhampered capitalism -- best furthers man's 'material' ends, critics argue, it distracts man from higher ideals. It leads man away from spiritual or intellectual values and atrophies any spirit of altruism .... Many critics complain the free market, in casting aside inefficient entrepreneurs or in other decisions, proves itself an 'impersonal monster.' The free-market economy, they charge, is the 'rule of the jungle,' where 'survival of the fittest' is the law. Libertarians who advocate a free market are therefore called 'Social Darwinists' who wish to exterminate the weak for the benefit of the strong." Rothbard goes into a rebuttal of these accusations. I haven't time to go into all the arguments.

The essence of true human relationships is to create an environment where people are free to choose and to grow as they see fit. A world of true love is a voluntary world, not a world where people use force to make them do right. It is a world of the pen, not the sword. It is a world of persuasion, not coercion. Governments are instruments of force and should only use that force against those who initiate force. It is right, contrary to the belief of the Libertarian Party, that the U.S. used force against Hitler in WWII and against Kim Il Sung in the Korean War who initiated violence to bring their version of order to the world. But it was wrong of the U.S. government to enact laws and use force against those who drank alcohol in the 1920's. Friedman explains that the"Noble Experiment" of Prohibition only made matters worse. Libertarians are correct on their analysis of domestic policy in America. To correct what we perceive as evil, we must use persuasion. Cigarettes kill far more than cocaine, and it is wrong to ban either one. Socialist do-gooders like politicians use force to make people do what they think is right. Milton Friedman and some conservatives like Bill Buckley see that the Republican Party is wrong to advocate economic rights but not civil rights.

Ayn Rand is right when she wrote in For the New Intellectual: "The world crisis of today is a moral crisis -- and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution."

Rothbard writes, "It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization." The Libertarian Party rightly puts in its constitution that government should leave religion alone and specifically condemns the sick socialist practice of deprogramming. They don't write this because they necessarily love so called cults; they write it because they believe deeply in freedom.

Jim Lewis was the vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1984. In his book, Liberty Reclaimed, he teaches that America must give up its tendency to turn to government force to punish noncoercive people and groups regardless of whether they are businessmen or churches who are simply offering their services voluntarily. America, he says, must go to a "new level of tolerance for others. Our nation is made up of many diverse groups, nationalities, customs and lifestyles. For centuries the political process has been used by some groups to harass, imprison, and even murder other groups. It has been used by Catholics against Protestants, by Protestants against Catholics, by one nationality against another. It has been used to eradicate customs, languages, and beliefs. (The UC is sensitive to the Japanese domination by force of Korea for 40 years.) And as tolerance was destroyed so was freedom because the two are intimately linked together. A free society must be a tolerant society because intolerance leads to crusades which need big government."

"As crucial as tolerance is to freedom, it is still very difficult for many of us. Sometimes we watch someone get wrapped up in a religious cult and lose his individuality. We may want to grab him by the arm and drag him off somewhere until we can get him thinking straight again. But if we respect that person's right to make decisions we can only try to persuade him. Or perhaps we see a friend gorging himself on pastry and candy. We know he is gaining an incredible amount of weight. We know that it affects his heart and can ultimately kill him, but still we have no right to forcibly wire his mouth shut or lock him up while we feed him health foods. Instead, we must limit our actions to noncoercive means. Or perhaps a dear friend has started taking drugs which we feel will be destructive to him or he becomes an alcoholic. Do we have a moral right to call in the State and have him incarcerated 'for his own good?' No! All we can morally do is try to help him while respecting his right to be wrong.... This respect for the right to commit moral errors is the core of any philosophy of liberty."

Am I making myself clear? If we side with those who ban drugs, then we endanger the messiah. Because Satan will make people fear the messiah more than drugs. The messiah is looked at as a germ in Satan's world. People want to eradicate him for the good of all. They killed Jesus. God has worked for 400 years to teach people to be tolerant and learn from the mistake of killing Jesus. Tolerance can flourish only in capitalism, not socialism. That is why Father is giving billions to the Washington Times and the Republican Party and the economic libertarian, F.A. Hayek. Let's sell Mary Pride's books on anti-feminism and her homeshooling resource books at WFWP meetings instead of Boslooper. That's what Father would want if he knew what poison Boslooper wrote and what Godly things Mary Pride writes. We must help those to fight such incredibly dedicated anti-capitalists as John Kenneth Galbraith and Ralph Nader. Let's fight the good fight -- not help the enemy.

Ben Rogge in Can Capitalism Survive says, "The modern liberal is usually inconsistent in that he defends man's noneconomic freedoms, but is often indifferent to his economic freedom. The modern conservative is often inconsistent in that he defends man's economic freedom but is indifferent to his noneconomic freedoms." I love Milton Friedman. He is obviously Jewish and has the warmest smile and personality. Years ago he started me on my road to understanding the real meaning of freedom. His book Free to Choose was a best-seller. What really knocked me off my chair was his 10-part video series of the same title I watched on PBS. It is beautifully done. If it is in your library, please watch it. When I was going to college at the University of Nebraska in 1965, Father came to Lincoln and blessed holy ground. I was searching desperately for truth. If there had been an ad in the classified of the student paper saying there was a 16mm film (there were no videos then) at the library that would explain the meaning of life I would have gone to see it and accepted its teachings just as I got excited about Milton Friedman's teachings when I saw him. I have changed my life around from living a feminist lifestyle where my wife worked to God's way of life where she doesn't just because I read a book. We don't only have to witness face-to-face. We need to have books and videos and tapes in all the libraries and put an ad in every classified in every newspaper directing people to a clear Principle. In the 1970's I put Father's Day of Hope speech book in the downtown branch of the library in Lincoln, Nebraska.. This was before books were checked our electronically. In the cover was the names written of those who checked out the book. Several years later I went to see if it was still there. There must have been 20 names. One name was to a minister in a small town 100 miles away who had apparently been searching for it.

America must not become digested by this culture that hates capitalism. It must see through the illogic and misuse of idealistic words. It must discern Satan's tactic to manipulate the emotions by using words that religious people feel emotional about to trick them. For example, one person wrote that "liberation theologians" believe that "Capitalism fosters individualism, competition, materialism, and greed. Socialism offers an alternative set of values, which stress the virtues of participation, community, equality and sacrifice." This sounds good, but it is false. People should not listen to such people as the famous theologian, Paul Tillich, who said, "Any serious Christian must be a socialist." Listen to religious leaders such as Zig Ziglar and Norman Vincent Peale. Dr. Peale is the writer of one of the best-selling books of all time, The Power of Positive Thinking. He said once, "Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system." Amen. God blessed America, not with wealth, but with capitalism that unleashed the energies of the average person so they could go on to invent airplanes and come out of a log cabin and become the president to fight and end slavery.

The attack on capitalism is relentless. Most capitalists don't read a lot. They are too busy serving their customers. Socialists dominate the media, the government, and the universities. They are constantly writing and speaking their hatred of capitalists -- from your neighbor who has a pizza restaurant to the billionaire who started out with one store and now has them everywhere, called Dominos. They especially hate the billionaire because he flies in a helicopter and bought a professional sports team in Detroit. This is greed to them. He should have spent his money on the poor. Nobel prize winner Paul Samuelson teaches that Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman shows "the hollowness of a life spent in commerce." Zig Ziglar teaches the truth about selling. Socialists will see Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times as showing the alienation of the worker. Robert Heilbroner's In the Name of Profit presents stories of large corporations being cruel and irresponsible and ruled by moral cripples who have sold their souls and conscience. They are shown as cynical and callous. General Motors is seen as deliberately building unsafe school buses and a drug company that made the drug thalidomide that caused a few women to have deformed babies. The moral is that Big Business needs to be regulated.

Milton Friedman is critical of capitalists who run to Washington D.C. to get politicians to use force to prevent competition. Businessmen in cahoots with politicians throw a wrench in the invisible hand of the free market and give capitalism a bad name. In Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise the author writes,"If a detailed, factual study were made of all those instances in the history of American industry which have been used by the statists as an indictment of free enterprise and as an argument in favor of a government-controlled economy, it would be found that the actions blamed on businessmen were caused, necessitated, and made possible only by government intervention in business. The evils, popularity ascribed to big industrialists, were not the result of an unregulated industry, but of government power over industry. The villain in the picture was not the businessman, but the legislator, not free enterprise, but government controls."

One of the most influential socialists in America who has fought Milton Friedman is Michael Harrington. In one of Friedman's videos on Free to Choose we see the two of them debating for a few minutes. Harrington is ridiculous, and Friedman is the essence of heart and mind. But sadly, Harrington's view prevails on college campuses. I pray our universities will teach the second generation to not be fooled by socialists and see the lies of Harrington and not believe in him. Harrington said once, "Capitalism ... is outrageously unjust; it requires a continuing maldistribution of wealth in order to exist ... We live in the twilight of an epoch ... I am absolutely convinced that we are moving toward some kind of planned economy." Not if I can help it. Socialism is so bad that lately some long-time socialists like Heilbroner I quoted earlier are having to admit that capitalism has won. How different can you get when you compare North and South Korea. South Korea does not have a laissez-faire capitalist society, but it has far more free enterprise than North Korea, and so it is booming. The Mormon church is booming. It respects its members such as Marriott and Covey. It loves capitalism.

Ayn Rand is disgusted that business, small and big, has to apologize for existing. It is also disgusting that stay-at-home mothers have to apologize. We must teach the world to praise right values. One person wrote, "Capitalism requires not defense but celebration. Its achievement in creating high and rising living standards for the masses without sacrificing personal liberty speaks for itself. Only the deaf will not hear and the blind will not see."

"Its achievement prevails over its defects. Yet its critics continue decade after decade to be preoccupied if not obsessed with its defects. Even those who acknowledge its achievement continue to urge the alternative of socialism without reason or demonstration from world experience to suppose it could equal and surpass capitalism."

Thomas Jefferson said, "I am not a friend to a very energetic government." Government today is so "energetic" it threw the messiah in jail because he put money into a bank. Logic is the last thing socialists use. One liberal wrote an article against capitalism in a newspaper article I read once. He opposed the idea of some government official of trying to privatize a "part of the interstate highway." The writer said if businessmen ran the highways there would be "toll gates...and potholes." He says, "No, thanks. I'll get my greed and incompetence from rascals we can throw out of office every once in a while." He went on to say how big things especially have to done by big government, such as the post office and public schools. This is the prevailing view. It Satan's lie.

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