> Smart, far-seeing capitalists are able to see beyond mere legalities.
This is exactly the argument that Marxist made. They weren't going to let traditional middle class morality hold them back, they had history on their side and new what was ultimately best for society. They had real examples where trashing norms and moral codes ultimately worked for the best, such as overcoming a restriction on vivisection to cure a horrible disease. Or ignoring FDA regulations to get a helpful blood test to market. The argument can always be made. It just tends to end badly.
Arthur Koestler wrote about this a lot in Darkness in Noon.
No it's not. Smart, far-seeing people observe what's broken in the system, and many of them can fix it while making money. Then, there are people who don't care about externalities, and exploit the flaws while causing others harm. Sometimes outdated laws can be modified, or phased out.
The proposal of Marxists is that they take things away by force.
I take "seeing beyond legalities" to mean ignoring the law, not changing it of phasing it out. Ignoring the law is bad, even if you think you are doing it for a good reason.
Modifying the law or phasing out a law is fine and smart people companies should do that. I felt like the OP was saying that when you think a law is wrong you should ignore it.
> The proposal of Marxists is that they take things away by force.
Breaking a law in most cases is taking something away from someone or some entity, whether it is rights or property. It is bad to take something away by force. But it is bad to take it away by stealing or cheating too.
> The proposal of Marxists is that they take things away by force.
Capitalism is not possible without state application of force and coersion.
Consider land ownership, for instance. It is completely predicated on the use of force. The only reason you 'own' your land, is because someone a long time back used force to take it away from someone else (Or, if they were the original settler, used force to take it away from the commons).
"Ah, but now that we've divided all the land into various lots that people own, we can divorce ourselves from the original use of force! Going forward, we won't use violence to secure new ownership of land!"
Well, under Marxism, after a one-time use of force, whereupon productive property is transferred to the ownership of the state, it can also divorce itself from the original use of force. After all, going forward, it won't need to use force to seize productive property, either - because it will already have an owner - the state.
All ownership requires force. Ownership of personal property typically requires a continuous personal application of force. Ownership of private property (Land, productive enterprises, etc) requires a continuous application of state force.
This is exactly the argument that Marxist made. They weren't going to let traditional middle class morality hold them back, they had history on their side and new what was ultimately best for society. They had real examples where trashing norms and moral codes ultimately worked for the best, such as overcoming a restriction on vivisection to cure a horrible disease. Or ignoring FDA regulations to get a helpful blood test to market. The argument can always be made. It just tends to end badly.
Arthur Koestler wrote about this a lot in Darkness in Noon.