We are answering criticism we should not even address, neoMarxist criticism. Whether we may have theoretical disputes over the process of capitalism, arbitrage versus concentration of capital, we tend to agree that what we have come to call private property, or more precisely stated legal stewardship, is central to the ideology of capitalism as Max Weber implied in his classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The Protestant is alone before God in his moral history including his work ethic performance. Stewardship is a legal accountability, alone before the law, for that good or otherwise works. It is natural law and derivative of the Protestant Ethic. It is the essence of any functioning autonomy
I have been reading in a book, The Mexican Heartland, that takes capitalism to task for the loss of autonomy of the villages in that heartland. Capitalism is relentless in its drive to greater efficiencies but economies of scale in the production of commodities, which is what destroyed the economic viability of those villages, are not capitalist per se but present in any economic system driven by opportunity cost and I venture to say all are at some level.
The book reads as an indictment of the market discovery of price which means it is also not neoMarxist. It is just throwing blame around recklessly for the disruption those villagers experienced. It is not an illuminating read and I do not recommend it.
Do Well and Be Well
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