A new world struggling from the rubble of the old [View All]

[mqbush]

People invented business as a useful tool for the benefit of society. They invented clay pottery, metals, writing, the wheel, and business, for everyone’s good.

And uncounted busy hands used knives to cut intricate designs for art or communication, to cut potatoes for stews, to drain an abscess, while some few used knives to disembowel a neighbor. This misuse of what was supposed to be a tool used for good did not result in the banning of knives, nor did it compel a cultural institutionalization of disembowelment. No, we learned from the shocking lesson to be on guard for harmful misuses of this generally beneficial tool.

So too, when businesses start tearing up their social contracts, transforming themselves from useful cells in the social body into cancer cells, short-sightedly aggrandizing all to themselves though this kills the body, this should neither ban all business nor compel any remaining healthy cells to adopt the ethics of the cancer cell.

Eighty years ago we did learn that business can turn against society, become an amoral, asocial, self-serving monster. We did learn to put safeguards into place. What we did not learn, until now, is the steadfast determination of greed, its ability to turn people against society, its cleverness in associating selfishness with patriotism (chauvinism, really) after having made such “patriotism” the “stay out of jail, pass Go, collect $200” card that must be displayed on demand.

Now, bowing to a flag and bowing to a corporation is the same thing, idolatry. It erects a hierarchy that puts humans at the bottom and abstractions at the top. The high priests of these idols assert that worship of them promotes freedom. They believe that because when they can see the necks of supplicants beneath their feet they can see who’s the slave and who’s free. That’s what freedom means to them. It’s the pathology of hierarchy. It explains the violent extremism of their fear of humanism, any serious consideration of the Golden Rule, anything remotely socialist: they could become mere equals to other people instead of lords of the manor, and that would be intolerable to them.

There will always be those who cannot feel free, equal, unless they are standing atop others. And there will always be those who find impoverishment at the hands of others, disembowelment at the hands of others, a bit too much to ask for the sake of the diseased egos of the few. And so labor unions are necessary. Conscientious regulation of business is necessary. Legal muscle to enforce the letter of the Golden Rule even if its spirit can’t be legislated, is necessary. Power to the people again, and again, because those cancer cells keep popping up, and one of the constructive uses of knives is to cut out cancers. This must be done to make us healthy again.