CAPITALISM AND PATRIOTISM: A MATTER OF FACT

(This is one of my older entries, one of those “evergreens” which unfortunately never lose their currency. I wonder whether anything may ever change in my remaining lifetime…)

Some questions are matters of opinion. Others are matters of common sense. This one is a matter of fact… And of opinion… And of common sense.

In an earlier entry, I defined patriotism as a person’s closer identification with the lower-class members of his or her national stock than with the same-class citizens of other nations. This is pertinent to the subject of this entry.

A capitalist patriot… is such a thing at all possible, or is it yet another contradiction in terms?

Let us not deny a capitalist the quality of sincere patriotism. But let us observe that the truth in this matter is far easier to establish than in the more diffused environment of sheer demagoguery. It is, as they say, for everybody to see.

The litmus test is profit (the essence of capitalist enterprise) versus the national sentiment. Is our capitalist ready and willing to sacrifice maximization of profit on the altar of his national fervor, that is, in favor of his country’s less profitable home base? Or is his “home base” where his highest profit is?

It goes without saying that any capitalist outsourcing his business to a cheaper place outside his country can by no means claim being a patriot of his nation. At the same time we can see without a closer scrutiny that there are too few examples to the contrary in the United States, that a patriotic businessman would resist the irresistible temptation to “maximize,” and suffer certain losses, in order to keep his business inside his own country.

I am not even touching the question of product quality here. Our experience shows that the quality of many imported products is demonstrably inferior to similar domestic products. It is also a fact that quite a few so-called “made in the USA” products are actually made of foreign-made components, and in this sense can be called “American-made” no more than all those American space rockets flying out into space exclusively on the strength of their Russian-made engines.

Let us take the massive exception, of course, of the precious small business that supplies jobs to the labor market of its own country. But wherever the competition goes international, this is a totally different story already.

…Show me a capitalist who prefers the more expensive domestic labor to the much cheaper labor overseas. Show me a capitalist who prefers the far more expensive domestic products to the much cheaper made-in-China supplies.

In our shamefully unpatriotic global market, show me a patriotic capitalist, and I will admire that capitalist as a glorious exception that defies the rule.