Adam Smith, Socialist

Quiz time, again:

1- What fruit did Eve eat in the Garden of Eden that got her into trouble?
2- In Genesis, which was created first, women or animals?
3- Why did Cain slay Able?
4-Which of the four books of the Maccabees describes the miracle of the oil lasting eight days?
5- In the Constitution of the United States does the oath taken by a new president conclude with the words “So help me, God”?
6- Does the Constitution of the United States establish a democracy?
7- What did Adam Smith mean when he wrote about Laissez-faire, laissez-passer?

Answers:

1- Who knows? The apple is a renaissance artist’s invention.
2- The woman was created at the same time as the man in Genesis I, after the animals in Genesis II.
3- We are never told.
4- None of them; it’s a later rabbinic add-on.
5- No; the word God is never used in the Constitution, ever.
6- Democracy was the last thing on their minds in 1787; the founders mixed the three classic forms of good government, monarchy, aristocracy, democracy giving democracy the shortest of shrifts.
7- Nothing; he knew the term but never used it and didn’t believe in it.

So much for common knowledge.

Discussion:

If the word God never appears in the seminal document creating the American government why do some Christian fundamentalists want to insist that our schools teach that the founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation? If Adam Smith in his classic On the Wealth of Nations didn’t advocate that the government should do nothing to regulate the economy, what did he propose? And why as a Jewish community should we care? (Hint: Think of the Jewish prophets, not the modern emphasis on profits.)

Prof. John Hill of Curry College recently gave a lecture at Roger Williams University on the topic “Laissez-fair, no fair” debunking the myth that Smith ought to be enshrined as the father of modern capitalism. It was a useful reminder to me of those long ago days when I first read On the Wealth of Nations and a wake-up call to my students who only know it by reputation. Hill contends that Smith was a moral philosopher above all; that he was interested in the wealth of nations, not in the wealth of individuals; that while he understood some would become wealthy, that wealth imposed obligations; that he favored a luxury tax to prevent the wealthy from getting too rich and opposed the sort of gap we have in America where 5% of the population controls 75% of the wealth.
In America, we have always stressed the rugged individual. Smith would have preferred we pay homage to the self-made man who gives it all back. The career of Andrew Carnegie is nothing to emulate; he was a strike breaker who ruthlessly exploited his workers and then let his partner take the fall when deaths occurred. But in his The Gospel of Wealth he preached that ostentatious living and amassing private treasures was wrong. He praised the high British taxes on the estates of dead millionaires. He claimed that, in bettering society and people here on earth, one would be rewarded at the gates of Paradise and gave the vast bulk of his state to the creation of libraries and concert halls.

In a different gospel we read “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” a nice Jewish sentiment paralleling Jeremiah’s idea that the reason Jerusalem was about to fall was that the rich were exploiting the poor. Micah tells us what God expects of us and it’s not acquiring wealth for personal gain at the expense of others but “only to do justice and to love goodness and to walk modestly with your God.” Instead David Koch, Jewish multi-billionaire gives his money under the table to the Tea Party which believes that it’s wrong to tax to aid the tired the poor, the huddled masses who have been seduced into taking out foolish loans. When I was a student protester it was on behalf of the poor, the black, the grunts conscripted into the Vietnam War, none of which I was. Today the Tea Party people protest that their pockets are being picked by people who want to introduce a form of European Socialism. Pshaw! Adam Smith knew the truth, if only people would actually read him.

The 2010 Elections

The people have spoken, though I wish they’d spoken differently.

Two years ago Obama and the Democrats were America’s darlings. On November 2 we saw the power of big money behind the scenes and big voices on TV and radio. We Americans ride a pendulum. In 1964 the conservative movement was dead and in 1980 we got Reagan. In 1972 Nixon was overwhelmingly re-elected and then in ’74 was forced to resign in disgrace. Bill Clinton also lost congress two years into his first term and then handily defeated Bob Dole. The big Republican wins on Tuesday will be followed by big Democratic ones at a polling place near you sometime in the future—but not in two years, I wouldn’t think. Such is life.

A man whose intelligence I respect thinks that the stunning Republican victories were the result of, “the power of the American People, who do not want a ‘European Social Democracy’ type of society.” My immediate response was “You've made my point. The Democrats weren't proposing anything close to European style socialism, but the big money and the big mouths convinced the voters big-time that they were.”

It’s mid-term exam time. Question: Which European leader was the first to introduce and have his parliament pass legislation creating social security benefits, sickness insurance (2/3 of the premiums paid by employers, 1/3 by employees), and accident insurance (100% paid by employers), health insurance, civil marriage obligatory (and church marriages optional). Hint: He was Otto von Bismarck, not some far left socialist (in fact, he had a series of anti-Socialist laws passed). Why? One reason was to woo workers from the Socialist party to his Conservative one; the other was that the master of Realpolitik knew that Germany’s economy depended on a stable happy work force.

President Obama has two choices. He could say (and has already said) I’ve learned my lesson and want to compromise with the new Republican majority in the House, the empowered Republican minority in the Senate. This is the Bill Clinton approach, and it’s worked. Then, but it won’t now. Already, within the week of the elections GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has rejected talk of bipartisanship and made crystal clear his party’s goal is to defeat Obama in 2012. The party of NO will not become the party of “Let’s roll up our sleeves and work together”. Right wing Republicans call Obama “Leviathan” perhaps an homage to Thomas Hobbes as they work to “Reverse the damage done by the Obama-Reid-Pelosi regime since 2008.” (Mark Tapscott, Editorial page editor of the blog “Washington Examiner”)

Memo to Mark Tapscott: Obama didn’t assume office in 2008.

Or Obama could go the other way (but I don’t think he will as he’s shown no inclination to do so when he had large majorities in congress) and roll up his sleeves and say, “I have an agenda, the American people knew what it was when they overwhelmingly elected me and I’m going to push it.” This was the attitude of Cheney and Bush when they rolled into Washington in 2001. They knew the people had wanted Gore and Liebermann, but they’d won and they pushed and pushed and got what they wanted from cowed Democrats and jubilant Republicans. But as I say, I don’t think Obama has it in him. He’s weak; eloquent, but lacking in the reality of how Washington works—not with a whimper but with a whip. Ask Dick Cheney.

The Republican leader in the House is likely to be the only Republican Jew in Congress, Eric Cantor of Virginia. (What does that tell us, that of all the Jews in the House and Senate only one is a Republican? It tells us that Jews are still overwhelmingly concerned with social justice, not bottom lines, with the economics of job creation, not trickle down tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while the gap between poor and rich increases exponentially.) Jews won and lost this season. Rhode Island sent its first Jewish Congressman to the House and America lost Russ Feingold, a man who with John McCain fought and fought and fought and fought for election reform, only to have it trashed by the Supreme Court. It’s ironic that he was among the first victims of the big money splurge that resulted.

For a complete accounting of how Jews did this season, see: http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2010/11/02/2741564/tracking-the-races