A specter is haunting Washington—the specter of Capitalism. All the powers of the Welfare State have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter: President and Cabinet, bureaucrats and lobbyists, intellectuals and media.
Where is the champion of free markets who has not been decried as a right-wing extremist or worse by his opponents in power? Where are the defenders of the Welfare State who have not hurled the branding reproaches of being greedy, insensitive and uncompassionate against those of us who oppose ever-increasing taxes, transfers and government programs?
Two things result from this fact.
- Capitalism is already acknowledged by all socialist powers to be itself a power.
- It is high time that Capitalists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish our views, our aims, our tendencies, and meet this nursery tale about the specter of Capitalism with a Manifesto announcing its goals.
The theory of the Capitalist may be summed in a single sentence: Protection of private property.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! The restoration of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. By freedom is meant free trade, free selling and buying.
You reproach us with intending to reassert property rights. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. The bourgeois family will flourish as a matter of course when its complement flourishes.
And what of your education! Capitalists have not invented the intervention of government in education; but we do seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the bureaucratic ruling class.
To these ends, Capitalists of various persuasions have acted in concert to sketch the following Manifesto.
- Reaffirmation of the right of private property and contract, including the right to rent, sell or use the property however the owner peaceably chooses as long as such use does not impinge on the equal rights of others.
- A flat income tax set at the lowest rate compatible with fiscal restraint.
- Abolition of all inheritance taxes and restrictions.
- Guarantee of the property rights of all emigrants and dissidents.
- Decentralization of credit in the hands of the State by withdrawing from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and abolition of all credit monopoly.
- Decentralization of the means of communication and transportation by eliminating funding for the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Transportation.
- Divestiture of State-owned factories or other instruments of production such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, Amtrak, U.S. Postal Service, and the Federal Aviation Administration; Abolition of the U.S. Department of Agriculture so that the soil may be improved in accord with decentralized, individual plans.
- Invigoration of all labor through repeal of subsidies rewarding unemployment, and abolition of obstacles to freely made labor contracts such as the minimum wage, that attempt to establish an egalitarian labor force.
- Freedom for the population to relocate throughout the country by repeal of all laws that restrict the mobility of capital and labor.
- Abolition of direct funding for school systems, and permitting competition between government schools and private schools for parents' education dollars, which may be in the form of tax-supported vouchers.
A Capitalist revolution that follows these principles would create the most radical rupture in government control; no wonder that its development involves a slap in the face to modern liberalism.
In short, the Capitalists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing collectivist order of things.
In all these movements we bring to the fore, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, we labor everywhere for the cooperation and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.
The Capitalists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the peaceable overthrow of all existing principles of the Welfare State. Let the ruling elites tremble at a Capitalist revolution. The people who love free markets have nothing to lose but their chains. We have a world to win.
Capitalists and Workers of all Countries, Compete!
Originally written in 1998 by Merrill Matthews Jr. and Morgan O. Reynolds to mark the 150th anniversary of some piece of
trash. Various copies are available; one
here.
