![]() ![]() Hence, the definition of capitalism in the American context need not be accorded the same latitude as that given to Norwegian or Brazilian capitalisms because “it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less,” to quote Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s authentic fairy-tale. ![]() Under this way of seeing the world, relatively stable categories and definitions are for those who still believe in the goal of wertfrei research, “objectivity,” and source criticism. It is an act of political warfare, and as such, openly embraces alternate constructs right down to how groups are defined and how facts are put before the reader, and in fact these are delivered up in an artful literary style worthy of the best fiction. Desmond is not writing history but doing discourse theory, and thinks he is laying siege to the strategic high ground. The Desmond contribution to this majestic project of our Newspaper of Record has, it turns out, little to do with history per se. Are these not things that happened in America, too? (See Jim Geraghty for more on what failed to be added to the American Capitalism pile).ĭon’t awful things happen in Norway, too? Apparently not. Nor are we told of the private firm that quickly intervened to address the outrage-voluntarily! And nothing is particularly made of the fact that Shkreli was convicted on charges brought by his own company for some of the severest trading violations in the world. No mention is made of these particles: A hue and cry, by private and public persons alike, went up almost immediately when Shkreli initiated his pricing scheme. His actions might have been sufficient for Desmond’s purposes, but Shkreli obliged him further by justifying what he did by invoking the rules of capitalism, giving Desmond the perfect Count Dracula to lead off his “just-so” story.īut, look here, some sand is left to the side. This man is archetypal, we learn, because after gaining control of the patent of a life-saving drug, he did what every evil robber baron would obviously do: He raised its price by a whopping 56 times! Behold the face of American Capitalism. Shkreli is presented not as a behavioral outlier but as the very ideal type of the American capitalist par excellence. ![]() Thus he forms some into fairytale sandcastles over here, and others, into brooding keeps over there (the latter complete with gargoyles and circling vultures).Īnd the biggest, ugliest pile in Desmond’s sandbox is the one labeled American Capitalism, where some very choice grains have been plucked out and set before us.Īnd here we meet, first and foremost, a very young and very brash first-generation son of poor immigrant Eastern European parents, one Martin Shkreli. In this game, facts and concepts are so much sand to be shaped into various piles of likes and dislikes according to what suits Desmond’s fancy. To really understand Desmond’s contribution to the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” one has to realize that he is playing a semantic game of a very peculiar sort. Matthew Desmond imagines there are good capitalisms, such as those in Norway, Thailand, and Brazil, where workers are protected in their jobs and employers are prohibited from hiring or firing as they choose and bad capitalisms that leave employers free to make these decisions on their own with few or no restrictions. How many types of capitalism are there? If one wants to play semantic games, I suppose there are as many as there are imaginable denotations of the word. Editor’s Note: This essay is re-published with permission for Law & Libertyas part of a symposium on the "1619 Project." ![]()
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