In 1922, it is said Vladimir Lenin observed that “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” While the quote may be apocryphal, American businessmen have been proving him right ever since. The relentless pursuit of profit has attenuated businesses’ relationship to principle. The trouble is that the abandonment of principle in favor of self-interest has led American business to a point of crisis. What businessmen appear to miss is that an adherence to principle is a more direct route to the preservation of self-interest and the only means to long term and secure profit.
American businessmen seem intent on proving Niemöller’s formulation (“When they came for the Jews, I remained silent because I wasn’t a Jew…”). They came for the auto industry in 1965 with Ralph Nader’s profoundly dishonest little screed, Unsafe at Any Speed, a book whose thesis has long since been discredited, was so completely wrong and was supported by evidence so thin, that it should never have survived the withering laughter of a business community that knew better. But no one came to the auto industry’s defense. No one wanted to rock the boat. Profits were at stake and being on the other side of conventional wisdom is not good for business.
But, at the time, the American auto industry was making the best and safest cars in the world. It had revolutionized transportation and its products had ushered in 20th century American primacy. Its products supported the American industrial complex that refused to come to its defense. American cars were the envy of the world and auto companies provided well-paying jobs and upward mobility for generations of Americans. The industry built an entire city, drove the economy of a state and created vast wealth throughout the world. It provided cars that changed the very culture of the nation, adding immeasurably to entire ancillary industries that also employed millions and it generated profits and paid tax revenues that funded government at all levels. Indeed, government expansion was enabled by vast infusions of cash generated by the tax payments of the industry, its workers and its ancillary and connected companies.
But that was not important to those who, in the name of the people – of the inaptly dubbed “consumerism” – sought to bring the entire industry down by lawsuits and political action. And when the political left invoked governmental power, American business was nowhere to be found. They were not auto makers, after all, and they did not want to be seen as supporting an industry that had been said to have deliberately produced unsafe cars that needlessly killed people.
The long decline finally culminated in the destruction of an important American industry strangled by union demands and brought to ruin by choking regulation and absurd legislative mileage requirements. Now, those institutions responsible for its destruction are running its major companies: bureaucrats and union officials. We all know how it will end. Union thugs and federal bureaucrats do not know how to run anything but goon squads and tax consuming bureaucracies. The companies will fail.
Then they came for the tobacco companies. Knowing that seizure of the vocabulary will frame the terms of debate, they applied their favorite derisive sobriquet: Big Tobacco; as if “bigness” itself were somehow inherently discrediting. If I may indulge in a short digression, bigness does not come from failure but from success. It is the left’s project to punish success wherever it is found. It is, after all, a fundamental element of their philosophy. Life to them is a zero sum game. Success for one can only be bought at the expense of the failure of another. Success, then, is the enemy, especially if it is economic success. Bigness, then, as the symbol of extreme success, must be disqualifying to claims to virtue. Indeed, that very bigness equates with evil (unless, of course, it is government bigness).
Whatever its shortcoming, tobacco is a product that is legal. Those of us who do not smoke often find its by-products offensive, but the truth is that millions of people around the globe find pleasure in its use and the only people it generally harms are those who voluntarily use it. (Some of us believe the film industry is significantly more destructive on a broader scale than any tobacco product could be.) “Big Tobacco” employs millions and has added billions to our economy. “Big Tobacco” has given hundreds of millions to support charitable organizations throughout the world, single-handedly saving a number of cultural institutions in the United States.
But, of course, it is big and that is not tolerable. So its executives were subjected to a fuming inquisition by Congressman Henry Waxman whose conduct was reminiscent of no one such much as Judge Roland Freisler, the infamous Nazi judge known for his ugly rants and his humiliation of the accused from his impregnable perch of judgment. Nothing so becomes a demagogue than self-righteousness.
The industry became a cash cow for tort lawyers and state governments that extracted billions of dollars from productive use and applied it to support the bad judgment of impecunious governmental agencies. The industry has largely moved offshore, taking jobs, charitable contributions and tax revenues with them. The industry has stopped its major support for the American economy.
And other businessmen were nowhere to be found in defense. After all, it wouldn’t be good for business to be seen sticking up for a business that traffics in death, as the left’s caricature would have it.
Then they came for the oil companies. They demonized them for having the temerity to make a profit and vilified them for imagined environmental depredations. They hung the label “Big Oil” on them and demanded that government regulate their every move. It enthusiastically accommodated the demand. It increased fees, taxes and imposts. It developed rules for their governance. It controlled all aspects of oil companies’ operations. Regulation and taxes killed oil and gas extraction in the United States as oil companies found it no longer economically feasible for them to explore and drill.
The oil companies licked their wounds and took it. They feared that resistance would result in even greater regulation and even more confiscatory taxation. The American business community did not unify in opposition. There were profits to protect and it was better to try to stay under the radar lest the government turn its attention to them. It was not their problem in any event. They were not oil companies, after all.
The oil industry, with its investment, imagination and risk, provides the lifeblood of the American economy. Its products give us mobility. It moves our goods. It means that Americans can have fresh foods throughout the nation regardless of the weather, raising levels of nutrition and enhancing the health of Americans. Its products provide containers for all manner of products and supply the raw materials for everything from clothing to cosmetics. Attacking the oil industry does nothing but increase the cost of the many goods for which its products are available and makes the nation poorer.
The left’s attack on the oil industry has even compromised national security. Not only do we now lack the domestic resources with which to support our economy, we are forced to enrich people who mean us ill by buying the same products that, but for government interference, we could easily make ourselves, from countries that are culturally, religiously and economically at war with us. We have, truly, sold Islamic terrorists the rope with which they are attempting to strangle us, thanks to the left’s malign attack on our national oil industry.
The left has leveled a long term sustained attack on the pharmaceutical industry – “Big Pharma, in its parlance. That industry whose huge and often fruitless investment of capital has resulted in the development of drugs that are offering cures to hitherto incurable diseases. That industry has created the drugs that are now in such effective use in Africa to fight the AIDS plague. That industry, whose innovations have been misappropriated in the name of humanitarianism and which has been vilified for having the audacity to actually charge for its products in an effort to recoup its vast investments, has discovered products that have resulted in better health care, longer lives and increased health throughout the world.
But, of course, it charges for its products, makes a profit and, worst, is big. The attack goes on and businessmen in other industries are AWOL in defense.
Now we are being treated to an attack on the health insurance industry by the Obama Administration. Businessmen are being sent the message: dissent from leftist initiatives at your peril. Your government will come after you and your colleagues in the business community will not be there to defend you.
There is a larger effort at work here. It is no less than an attack on capitalism by discrediting its most successful institutions. Discredit successful institutions, you discredit the system itself. Undermine the leading practitioners of capitalism, you discredit capitalism. Discredit capitalism and you can justify government taxation, regulation and, ultimately, seizure.
Does anyone believe the attack would continue if government were making cars, manufacturing cigarettes, producing oil and drugs or offering insurance coverage? Of course it wouldn’t.
The foundation of American prosperity is American business. The foundation of American business is American freedom. The attack on business and industry is an attack on freedom. It is time for businessmen to get into the fight.
They need to coalesce in defense of American industry. They need to understand the enemy and prepare to fight it. They must come to the defense of their fellow businesses. They need to oppose union efforts wherever they arise. Walmart has been under attack by unions for offering good jobs without union membership. American corporations need to let union executives know that their attack on Walmart is unacceptable; that contract renewal negotiations will be much tougher as long as unions continue to attack Walmart.
Businessmen must stop supporting the instruments of corporate destruction. Many have made major gifts to the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the most destructive, anti-business cabals in history. Many have donated to the Sierra Club to finance its destruction of agriculture throughout the nation. Corporations have underwritten performing arts organizations that despise everything the corporations represent and which poison the culture with attacks on the very foundations of American prosperity. Businessmen have to take the time to understand the organizations to which they donate and refuse to support those that work at cross purposes to the interests of freedom of enterprise.
Corporate executives must serve notice on office holders that attacks on one industry will be seen as an attack on all industry and that corporate contributions will evaporate for any politician who participates. Congressman Waxman continues to get donations from oil, auto and pharmaceutical industry executives even as he attacks the insurance and tobacco industries.
Corporate executives must understand that every dollar donated to a liberal politician is another nail in capitalism’s coffin. They have come for your business fellows and they are coming for you. Executives must get involved with the political process. They must reject the “practical” approach they have taken to political giving. Feeding the lion in hopes he will eat someone else first is folly. He may, but he will get to you eventually. Short term profit is not worth the sacrifice of principle. Sacrificing principal for profit will, in the end, yield businessmen neither.
Political donation given for political or practical advantage rather than for principle may ensure a government contract or, for a time, forestall more comprehensive regulation, but it will, in the end, result in the election of those predisposed to tax and regulate. To its dismay, “Big Pharma” has discovered this in the current health care debate. They thought they could pre-empt attacks by lending themselves to a health care initiative that, itself, constituted an attack not only on the American insurance industry but on American freedom itself. In the end, it got them neither gratitude nor immunity. The attack continued as Democrats tried to extort still greater concessions. Tyrannists compromise only for effect and only for a time. In the end, their nature is authoritarian and it will out.
American freedom is at risk. American business is imperiled as never before. Businessmen must get involved and must be prepared to defend one another against leftist attack. They must support candidates who fundamentally support capitalism and freedom of enterprise and not those who attack industry. Any industry. If they won’t do it for their country, they should at least do it for their companies.
Family Security Matters Contributing Editor John W. Howard is a lawyer, specializing in corporate and business litigation who also founded a non-profit, public interest law firm specializing in First, Second and Tenth Amendment issues.
