Tea Party Calls For Capital Strike

Melissa Brookstone, a member of one of the nation's largest Tea Party groups, pushed the envelope on anti-Obama suggestions Wednesday, urging small business owners to stop hiring new employees until the president gives up his "globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth."

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Brookstone's message in full:

“I’m on strike!” - Ellis Wyatt, from the end of the movie "Atlas Shrugged, Part 1", based on the novel by Ayn Rand

Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with a global Progressive socialist movement, have participated in what appears to be a globalist socialist agenda of redistribution of wealth, and the waging of class warfare against our constitutional republic's heritage of individual rights, free market capitalism, and indeed our Constitution itself, with the ultimate goal of collapsing the U.S. economy and globalizing us into socialism.

Resolved that: President Obama has seized what amount to dictatorial powers to bypass our Congress, and that because the Congress is controlled by a Progressive socialist Senate that will not impeach one of their kind, they have allowed this and yielded what are rightfully congressional powers to this new dictator.

Resolved that: By their agenda and actions, those in our government who swore oaths to protect and defend our Constitution have committed treason against the United States.

Resolved that: The current administration and Democrat majority in the Senate, in conjunction with Progressive socialists from all around the country, especially those from Hollywood and the left leaning news media ( Indeed, most of the news media. ) have worked in unison to advance an anti-business, an anti-free market, and an anti-capitalist ( anti-individual rights and property ownership ) agenda.

Resolved that: These same factions expect that, by carrying out a radical anti-business agenda, which includes the passage and inflicting of Obama"Care" on our nation, class warfare and redistribution of wealth, and expanding the government, while killing businesses in this country with an environment hostile to business, including excessive regulations ( the average business must now spend about $11,700 per year per employee to comply with government regulations! ), and by borrowing and wasting more money than has been spent in the entire previous existence of our republic, that they will "create jobs", when in fact all they have "created" have been government jobs that consume wealth, and don't "create" it.

Resolved that: Our President, the Democrats-Socialists, most of the media, and most of those from Hollywood, have now encouraged and supported "Occupy" demonstrations in our streets, which are now being perpetrated across the globe, and which are being populated by various marxists, socialists and even communists, and are protesting against business, private property ownership and capitalism, something I thought I'd never see in my country, in my lifetime.

I, an American small business owner, part of the class that produces the vast majority of real, wealth producing jobs in this country, hereby resolve that I will not hire a single person until this war against business and my country is stopped.

I hereby declare that my job creation potential is now ceased.

“I’m on strike!”

These pathetic individuals seem to forget that they don't "create" nothing either, it's the people who they hire that create, and the people who buy what they create that make their pockets full too.

Leon Mcnichol wrote:These pathetic individuals seem to forget that they don't "create" nothing either, it's the people who they hire that create, and the people who buy what they create that make their pockets full too.

I think these sorts of people do create, to be honest. They often create ideas, and, because of their position in the social structure, they have the means to see these ideas through to frution. But, of course, ideas are all well and dandy but if you want to implement said idea, making it a going concern, then you need others to bring that idea to its fullest conception. Which means bringing in labour to bring about the idea. So, at the end of the day, is the idea dependent on labour, or is labour dependent on the idea?

This is where the ideological fun begins...

These "tea-bagger" types worry me. As an outsider looking in, they seem to be a curious mix of American conservatism and libertarianism, all mixed up with a good dose of Ayn Rand.

The basic premise of libertarianism I have no problem with. That we all own ourselves and no one else has any right to interfrere with this basic right. But the libertarians seems to use this obvious viewpoint as a carpet excuse for even the most vilest excesses of capitalism.

According to libertarians, their non-aggession principle leads logically onto individual rights and thus capitalism. I'm all for individual rights against an oppressive government, but I actually saw on an UK libertarian forum recently an anarcho-capitalist (a libertarian on steroids) arguing, in all seriousness, for the re-introduction of child labour. And no one seemed to bat an eyelid at this!



Any ideology that has child labour as the result of its most basic tenet is a tad flawed! I fully agree with the libertarian/Objectivist ideal that eveything should be based on reason, and reason alone. This negates such irrational factors like religion, a stance I fully agree with. But their version of reason is fundamentally wrong. If you look at the works of such people as Richard Dawkins etc. it becomes obvious that strict individualism, the dog eat dog mentality of the libertarian, is not shared by the animal world, of which humans are of course a part.

Dawkin's studies show that it is the notion of reciprocal altruism that drives human nature. Basically, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. There's no need to look into this truism for any universal moral standard, be it religious or philosophical. It's just the way it is.

But, of course, alturism often corresponds with being shafted by those who are less ethical than you. To get back to the way nature intends things, you need to bring in the reciprocal side of things to stop you being done over by thugs and bullies.

And this is where capitalism breaks down, I think. As I said, workers might get jobs because of the good ideas of captialists, but the whole deal is not reciprocal. The capitalist gets more than his just deserts whilst the worker gets just enough not to starve. This is not reciprocal and so is against the very way nature has decided beings must interact with each other.

One could argue that it's dog eat dog in the natural world, lion eats wildebeat, frog eats fly etc. and in many respects it is. But when you have two competing entities, with pretty much the same firepower, there has to be a bit of give and take. For example, you have the numberically small captialist class which currently has the firepower at it's disposal competing against the numerically superior working class which seeks this firepower, and, through its numerical strength, has the means to aquire this firepower.

Unless the nature of the realationship is reciprocal, one side will always fight against the other for supremacy. And as the capitalists are content on keeping the relationship unbalanced, their adherance to such an unnatural state of interaction will be their untimate undoing.

Red & White wrote:I think these sorts of people do create, to be honest. They often create ideas, and, because of their position in the social structure, they have the means to see these ideas through to frution. But, of course, ideas are all well and dandy but if you want to implement said idea, making it a going concern, then you need others to bring that idea to its fullest conception. Which means bringing in labour to bring about the idea. So, at the end of the day, is the idea dependent on labour, or is labour dependent on the idea?

This is where the ideological fun begins...

These "tea-bagger" types worry me. As an outsider looking in, they seem to be a curious mix of American conservatism and libertarianism, all mixed up with a good dose of Ayn Rand.

The basic premise of libertarianism I have no problem with. That we all own ourselves and no one else has any right to interfrere with this basic right. But the libertarians seems to use this obvious viewpoint as a carpet excuse for even the most vilest excesses of capitalism.

According to libertarians, their non-aggession principle leads logically onto individual rights and thus capitalism. I'm all for individual rights against an oppressive government, but I actually saw on an UK libertarian forum recently an anarcho-capitalist (a libertarian on steroids) arguing, in all seriousness, for the re-introduction of child labour. And no one seemed to bat an eyelid at this!



Any ideology that has child labour as the result of its most basic tenet is a tad flawed! I fully agree with the libertarian/Objectivist ideal that eveything should be based on reason, and reason alone. This negates such irrational factors like religion, a stance I fully agree with. But their version of reason is fundamentally wrong. If you look at the works of such people as Richard Dawkins etc. it becomes obvious that strict individualism, the dog eat dog mentality of the libertarian, is not shared by the animal world, of which humans are of course a part.

Dawkin's studies show that it is the notion of reciprocal altruism that drives human nature. Basically, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. There's no need to look into this truism for any universal moral standard, be it religious or philosophical. It's just the way it is.

But, of course, alturism often corresponds with being shafted by those who are less ethical than you. To get back to the way nature intends things, you need to bring in the reciprocal side of things to stop you being done over by thugs and bullies.

And this is where capitalism breaks down, I think. As I said, workers might get jobs because of the good ideas of captialists, but the whole deal is not reciprocal. The capitalist gets more than his just deserts whilst the worker gets just enough not to starve. This is not reciprocal and so is against the very way nature has decided beings must interact with each other.

One could argue that it's dog eat dog in the natural world, lion eats wildebeat, frog eats fly etc. and in many respects it is. But when you have two competing entities, with pretty much the same firepower, there has to be a bit of give and take. For example, you have the numberically small captialist class which currently has the firepower at it's disposal competing against the numerically superior working class which seeks this firepower, and, through its numerical strength, has the means to aquire this firepower.

Unless the nature of the realationship is reciprocal, one side will always fight against the other for supremacy. And as the capitalists are content on keeping the relationship unbalanced, their adherance to such an unnatural state of interaction will be their untimate undoing.

I agree with some of your post, but several issues should be addressed immediately.

First, the capitalist qua capitalist creates nothing; he need not even contribute mental labor. Second, stating that everything should be "based" on reason is rather vague and itself irrational. What about empirical evidence? What about morality? Reason is a capacity to understand our world. It is a tool; it tells us nothing about how things should be. At best, we can hope that it reveals what is. Third, human "nature" is a highly controversial subject, and I would be hesitant to invoke nature for defense of moral standards. Nature has no conscious will and as such cannot dictate ethics; instead, it would be wiser to look to the consequences of actions or propositions in order to evaluate their appeal. Fourth, in keeping with the train of thought of the first point, I want to make it emphatically understood that revolutionary socialist doctrine maintains that the relationship between the worker vis-à-vis the capitalist should by no means be reciprocal; in fact, there is to be no relationship. The capitalist class is to be eradicated. Finally, mental labor (e.g., generating ideas, entrepreneurship, etc.) is equal to physical labor in that both are forms of labor power, which is the capacity of humans to exercise mental and physical capabilities in order to produce use-values.

Rev Scare wrote:I agree with some of your post, but several issues should be addressed immediately.

First, the capitalist qua capitalist creates nothing; he need not even contribute mental labor. Second, stating that everything should be "based" on reason is rather vague and itself irrational. What about empirical evidence? What about morality? Reason is a capacity to understand our world. It is a tool; it tells us nothing about how things should be. At best, we can hope that it reveals what is. Third, human "nature" is a highly controversial subject, and I would be hesitant to invoke nature for defense of moral standards. Nature has no conscious will and as such cannot dictate ethics; instead, it would be wiser to look to the consequences of actions or propositions in order to evaluate their appeal. Fourth, in keeping with the train of thought of the first point, I want to make it emphatically understood that revolutionary socialist doctrine maintains that the relationship between the worker vis-à-vis the capitalist should by no means be reciprocal; in fact, there is to be no relationship. The capitalist class is to be eradicated. Finally, mental labor (e.g., generating ideas, entrepreneurship, etc.) is equal to physical labor in that both are forms of labor power, which is the capacity of humans to exercise mental and physical capabilities in order to produce use-values.

I'm usually a contrary so-and so and will argue the toss come what may, but you've raised some excellent points there Rev.Scare, points that have definitely got me thinking.

I'm off to bed now but will have a proper look at you post tomorrow.

Red & White wrote:I think these sorts of people do create, to be honest. They often create ideas, and, because of their position in the social structure, they have the means to see these ideas through to frution.

The "ideas" many of these individuals—especially petit-bourgeois shopkeepers, like Mrs. Brookstone—happen to capitalize on hardly require much creativity at all. More importantly, as Rev Scare pointed out, it is not their creative input which is what entitles them to the surplus value their workers produce, it is their passive ownership of capital which grants them that privilege.

But, of course, ideas are all well and dandy but if you want to implement said idea, making it a going concern, then you need others to bring that idea to its fullest conception. Which means bringing in labour to bring about the idea. So, at the end of the day, is the idea dependent on labour, or is labour dependent on the idea?

I would phrase the question differently: Why are ideas worthy of non-labor income?

I actually addressed this very issue in my essay, "The Petite Bourgeoisie," to which I wrote:

"The crux of the issue is whether or not petit-bourgeois enterprises withstand the socialist critique of capital, and the answer is unequivocally: no. So exactly what is the socialist objection to capitalism? There are primarily two objections, one based upon the capitalist theft of surplus-value, and the other based on the juridical principle of imputation. I will explain each of these in turn.

Charlotte Wilson accurately explained surplus-value as being the 'difference between the value produced by the workers and the wages they receive.' In other words, workers are paid a wage to manufacture commodities that usually have an exchange value greater than the wage they receive from their capitalist employer. The capitalist appropriation of the surplus-value labor produces is what socialists refer to as 'exploitation.' Capitalist ownership of the means of production is what enables this exploitation to occur, because labor has no alternative to working for a capitalist, or as Marx put it, 'Capital obtains this surplus labor without an equivalent, and in essence it always remains forced labor, no matter how much it may seem to result from free contractual agreement.'

The term 'wage slavery' was coined at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States by the so-called 'factory girls' who labored in the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. Wage slavery denotes the various similarities between wage labor and chattel slavery, e.g., the surplus-value both the wage laborer and chattel slave produces is appropriated by property owners, as opposed to the individuals who actually produce said surplus. However, we can even find sentiments against bourgeois social relations as early as 1767, when Simon-Nicholas Henri Linguet eloquently explained the unjust nature of wage labor as follows:

'It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm laborers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him . . . What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? . . . He is free you say. Ah! That is his misfortune. The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him. But the handicraftsman costs nothing to the rich voluptuary who employs him . . . These men, it is said, have no master—they have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence.'

The juridical principle of imputation is also a strong indictment against the capitalist wage-for-labor-time contract. In legal theory, imputation implies that 'people should always be held legally responsible for the positive and negative results of their de facto responsible actions.' So in criminal law, for example, if a gang conspires to rob a bank and one remains outside in the car to ensure a quick escape, while the others kill a guard inside the bank, the driver is still jointly liable for the homicide. In other words, whenever two or more people embark on a joint exercise, they are equally liable for everything that happens during the execution of that plan. If we apply imputation into the realm of production, and we assume that people have the inalienable right to the product of their labor and their labor time (as socialists do), then the capitalist wage-for-labor-time contract is in direct violation of the juridical principle of imputation—since it permits capitalists to have the legal responsibility for the firm's entire output and the liability for the labor time of his/her employees. Workers not being held legally responsible for the results of their labor is to reduce them to the status of things and, consequently, to have them lose their dignity as human beings.

Capitalist apologists utilize a litany of theories to justify bourgeois social relations, from 'time preference theory' to entrepreneurial risk. For the sake of brevity (and because of the obvious absurdity of defenses based upon time preference and risk), I shall focus on the most commonly invoked defense of capitalism: entrepreneurial discovery. The Austrian school economists, Joseph Schumpeter and Israel Kirzner, are the most famous advocates of this theory (sometimes referred to as the 'finders-keepers' ethic). According to this theory, capitalist profit is justifiable because entrepreneurs use their knowledge to identify gaps in the market, i.e., new products or services, or new means of producing existing goods. There are, of course, numerous problems with this theory. Aside from the fact that it doesn't logically follow that mere discovery is deserving of non-labor income, a requisite condition to generating a profit from discovery within capitalism is to attain the means by which to bring said discovery to the market (e.g., having or being lent funds to invest in machinery, office space, etc.). Without the exploitation of labor, however, no profit could possibly be made by the entrepreneur. Moreover, as Peter Kropotkin rightly noted, 'every invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it.' There is also the issue of credit rationing under capitalism. The finders-keepers ethic posits that everyone has the equal opportunity to be a 'finder,' and therefore, to profit from entrepreneurial activity, but within the capitalist mode of production, financial institutions systematically discriminate against the asset-poor in society (which is invaribly proletarian). As a result of this systemic discrimination, no matter how much interest an individual is willing to pay to subsidize their business idea, if they don't have adequate collateral to satisfy lenders, they'll be denied a loan—hence the expression: 'it takes money to make money.'

Capitalist social relations might be justifiable if it could be argued every institutional alternative to capitalism is unworkable, but we know this to be false. One of the socialist alternatives to the capitalist exploitation of labor is to replace capitalist enterprises with worker self-management. In syndicalist firms, labor would be charged with appropriating the surplus their firm generates, thereby eliminating exploitation. As Christopher Eaton Gunn explains:

'The economic category of profit does not exist in the labour-managed firm, as it does in the capitalist firm where wages are a cost to be subtracted from gross income before a residual profit is determined . . . Income shared among all producers is net income generated by the firm: the total of value added by human labour applied to the means of production, less payment of all costs of production and any reserves for depreciation of plant and equipment.'

Millions of individuals throughout the world work within labor-managed firms today, and the success of the cooperative organization model has been empirically verified. The task of a future socialist commonwealth, then, is to foster cooperative production via the implementation of syndicalist firms and abolish the exploitative wage-for-labor-time contract. The economist, Jaroslav Vanek, proposed the following law to be written within a socialist constitution:

'Whenever people work together in a common enterprise (whatever their number), it is they and they only who appropriate the results of their labors, whether positive (products) or negative (costs or liabilities), and who control and manage democratically on the basis of equality of vote or weight the activities of their enterprise. These workers may or may not be owners of the capital assets with which they work, but in any event such ownership does not impart any rights of control over the firm. Only possessions of and income from such assets can be assigned to the owners, to be regulated by a free contract between the working community (i.e., the enterprise) and the owners.'"

These "tea-bagger" types worry me.

They shouldn't, as they're a numerically insignificant, fringe movement. The media attention they've received far exceeds what their numbers actually justify, I assure you.

As an outsider looking in, they seem to be a curious mix of American conservatism and libertarianism, all mixed up with a good dose of Ayn Rand.

That may well be the case for leading ideologues of the Tea Party movement, but certainly not for the average participant in a Tea Party protest—the latter are typically religious fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, and/or paleoconservatives.

The basic premise of libertarianism I have no problem with. That we all own ourselves and no one else has any right to interfrere with this basic right. But the libertarians seems to use this obvious viewpoint as a carpet excuse for even the most vilest excesses of capitalism.

According to libertarians, their non-aggession principle leads logically onto individual rights and thus capitalism. I'm all for individual rights against an oppressive government, but I actually saw on an UK libertarian forum recently an anarcho-capitalist (a libertarian on steroids) arguing, in all seriousness, for the re-introduction of child labour. And no one seemed to bat an eyelid at this!

The notion of "self-ownership," in and of itself, leads to no such reactionary conclusions. It is only when self-ownership is coupled with Lockean property theory (which is the real philosophic basis of capitalism) that libertarians and "anarcho"-capitalists feel morally justified in bemoaning how taxation is in direct violation of their so-called self-ownership. The Marxist philosopher, G. A. Cohen, spent much of his academic career brilliantly debunking these libertarian claims, and I highly recommend his book Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, as well as the excerpts I provide from his article, "Are Freedom and Equality Compatible?", to you.

If you look at the works of such people as Richard Dawkins etc. it becomes obvious that strict individualism, the dog eat dog mentality of the libertarian, is not shared by the animal world, of which humans are of course a part.

Dawkin's studies show that it is the notion of reciprocal altruism that drives human nature. Basically, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. There's no need to look into this truism for any universal moral standard, be it religious or philosophical. It's just the way it is.

But, of course, alturism often corresponds with being shafted by those who are less ethical than you. To get back to the way nature intends things, you need to bring in the reciprocal side of things to stop you being done over by thugs and bullies.

Reciprocal altruism is basically a theory which evolutionary biologists constructed in order to make sense of the altruistic acts which pervade human and animal behavior. Peter Kropotkin was arguably the first person to articulate the theory, and you can read it in his seminal work, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (a book written as a response to the social Darwinists who held hegemony over the evolutionary thought of his era). The theory has subsequently been embraced by other disciplines as well, e.g., game theory, behavioral economics, etc.

However, it remains just a theory—albeit one with ample empirical evidence in its favor. The significance of the theory, as you alluded to, is that it shows that socialist social relations are not beyond the scope of our nature. Whether we're 'hardwired' to behave in such a manner, or it's merely a product of socialization, is, in my opinion, ultimately irrelevant; what matters is that we're capable of behaving cooperatively, given the proper social and/or institutional setting.

One could argue that it's dog eat dog in the natural world, lion eats wildebeat, frog eats fly etc. and in many respects it is. But when you have two competing entities, with pretty much the same firepower, there has to be a bit of give and take. For example, you have the numberically small captialist class which currently has the firepower at it's disposal competing against the numerically superior working class which seeks this firepower, and, through its numerical strength, has the means to aquire this firepower.

Unless the nature of the realationship is reciprocal, one side will always fight against the other for supremacy. And as the capitalists are content on keeping the relationship unbalanced, their adherance to such an unnatural state of interaction will be their untimate undoing.

As Rev Scare mentioned, it's important not to take metaphors derived from nature too far. Nature cannot tell us what's right or wrong, because the fact of the matter is we're endowed with the potential to display a wide range of behaviors, from reciprocal to competitive. Our ethical considerations are thus entirely socially derived.