The weekly Screed (#919)

No tomatoes for you. 

You either. Or anybody!

By David Benjamin

“Philip answered him, ‘It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

                                                              — John 6:7

PARIS — Taken literally, capitalism is the most ruthless and horrifying economic system ever conceived. Lately however, as Republicans level charges of communist sedition against Democratic presidential hopefuls, socialism is more in the spotlight — where it comes off as pretty scary.

Indeed, in its ideal form, socialism requires a single gigantic agency run by politicians and functionaries to control an entire society’s means of production, pulling the strings of labor, finance and commerce in ways that force everyone to share equally and artificially — regardless of individual contributions —in the bounty of the national economy.

I was pondering this left/right dichotomy the other day here in France, a country that calls itself socialist but mitigates this dogma by infusing it with elements of capitalism and — for its darkest and wretchedest masses — a dose of sheer, nostalgic medieval feudalism.

Most of the time, of course, I live in an America that calls itself capitalist but mitigates this dogma by infusing it with elements of socialism and — for its darkest and wretchedest masses — a dose of sheer, nostalgic medieval feudalism.

I was sitting, specifically, in the place Maubert during the Saturday farmer’s market, where this year’s bumper tomato crop was overflowing the fruit and vegetable stands. And I thought, in the spirit of capitalism, what if one profligate tycoon descended on the marché and bought up every last tomato, paying two, three — ten! — times the posted prices to ensure that not one tomato escaped his clutches? He would be acting out the logical extreme of the capitalist ideal, which — applied to money, property, vegetables or votes — is to get more of it than almost everybody else. Even more ideal is to get all of it. Every tomato in the market, in France, on earth!

Capitalists the world over are reluctant to admit their aching need to achieve an absolute, private monopoly over everything. Some, like Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, liberal activist Tom Steyer and benevolent Starbucks mogul Howard Schultz even deny the proposition that they want it all. They want, they insist, to share. Sure they do!

Come on, man. Watch these guys try to share. They do it like dogs standing on their hind legs — not well but amazing that they can do it at all. Besides, every filthy-rich capitalist is ultimately forced to confront his betrayal of the very ethos that made him filthy rich. As soon as he bestows a bit of his booty elsewhere, he distances himself, by a few precious dollars, from having it all. He has not only betrayed capitalism. He’s creeping toward socialism. The exalted state of untrammeled acquisition, which was tantalizingly within reach, has slipped his grip.

To have it all, his only philosophical course is to take it back. Facing this choice — to share a little or not to share anything at all, ever — exposes the absurdity of the grand economic principle that made him appallingly, wastefully, pointlessly wealthy.

A better, truer capitalist wouldn’t care about this — or any — seeming clash of values. In capitalism there is only value, not values. In this light, our best and purest capitalist might in fact be our president, a pillar of heartless greed who, despite frequent business failures, has never denied his avarice, nor stinted in his mission to get it all. Donald Trump understands, thanks to the coldbooded tutelage of a sociopath father, that the only way to acquire more and more is to squeeze it, drop by drop, out of people who have less and less.

Tenants, gamblers, electricians, bricklayers, workers, slobs, suckers.

Herein, of course, although he’s too obtuse to perceive it, Trump reveals his own species of absurdity. He occupies an oil-and-water milieu in which he pays lip service to conventional morality while flouting it contemptuously. To gain the grudging favor of polite society, even the devoutest capitalist must dissemble.

By definition, your fearless money-grubber is obliged to take, and take, without thought of giving, To prey upon the gullible. To pursue the ruin of his every rival and the impoverishment of everyone else, while pretending that this vast, relentless plunder serves to enrich the nation and nurture some nebulous greater good. And to never expose the springs, wires and trapdoors behind the legerdemain.

The irony of the capitalist ideal — well, there are many. But perhaps the greatest illusion is that America, especially among its conservative elite, styles itself a “Christian” polity. This paradox prevails despite written evidence that Jesus — the “christ” in question — from his very beginnings at the wedding in Cana, was a manifestly socialist cat, more interested in spreading the wealth and sharing the wine than hoarding all the goodies to his bosom.

A typical example of the socialist Jesus occurred on a warm day in Galilee when the Savior was evangelizing on the road, five thousand hungry followers in his wake. A capitalist might not have noticed that the crowd was famished and thirsty, and if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. But Jesus took note. He wondered aloud how to feed these loyal and loving throngs. One member of the crowd had some loaves and fishes.

To this exceptionally prosperous boy, Jesus directed a socialist challenge. “I see you have food,” he said. “I assume that you brought enough for everybody?”

Alas, the boy had only eats for himself. Had Jesus been a proper capitalist, the Gospel would tell us how he seized the food and ate it all himself, letting the crumbs trickle down — for the peckish five thousand to fight over. Of course, we all know that Jesus instead, miraculously, multiplied the loaves and fishes.

It has long been my interpretation of this passage in John that Jesus didn’t literally expand the supply of bread and sardines by divine flourish, but simply appealed to his followers to unwrap their own hidden supplies of provender. This gentle and canny appeal triggered a flood of generosity that ended up feeding everyone, with a loaf or two left over.

In real life — as probably in the New Testament — we don’t get miracles. Nor will any true-blue capitalist ever glom all he wants to glom. Nor will any socialist firebrand ever talk us all into sharing universally the stuff we personally busted our ass to pay for. The best we can do — the best we’ve done — is to wisely compromise our two grand economic pipe dreams and make them muddle along imperfectly together, each forgiving the sins of the other.

Nobody ever gets all the loaves and fishes. If someone tried, Jesus would shame him into sharing.

Same goes for tomatoes.