What's the Difference! (2012)

Many who read this will have seen the Dragon’s Den/Shark Tank on TV, but for those who haven’t, it’s a program that harks back to medieval times. Supplicants come and apply to a group of millionaires for loans in return for a part ownership in their business. The premise is that since all these millionaires started from nothing, so can the supplicant, and therefore capitalism must be the best of all systems. As if being successful in business, and many fail, can justify a system that causes envi- ronmental destruction, war, alienation, racism, and many others.

Foremost among these millionaires, called sharks or dragons, is the ever-acerbic Kevin O’Leary. This businessman views everything from one angle only, ‘How much money can I make’. A classic O’Leary quote is, “The only warm, fuzzy feeling I get is at the end of the month when I count the money.” He once told a prospective business partner, “There’s something nasty about you and I like it.” When a loan applicant mentions that a product is environmentally friendly or ethically sound, he usually says something like, ‘I don’t care about that, I only care about how much money I will make. ’

Now O’Leary has his own show, “Redemption Inc.” where a group of would-be entrepreneurs are given a series of business- related tests in which they compete to sell the most products or assist those who do. This can be as varied as cleaning cars at an auto-dealers or stopping dog walkers to push grooming services. The show is run on similar lines to Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice”, but with the difference that the ‘apprentices’ are ex-convicts. When the idea was first pitched to him, O’Leary made his only - to a socialist anyway - hilarious comment, “Are you out of your mind? I’m running a financial services company, I can’t get involved with criminals!” One may well wonder about the difference, especially when one ex-con, commenting on life in the slammer, said, “To survive you’ve got to be a move ahead of the other guy. You have to figure where he’s coming from and going to”.

O’Leary, after being won over, expressed it best and with his usual subtlety, “If you are a drug dealer, for example, you’ve got logistics, you’ve got distribution issues, you’re dealing with marketing, finance, and sales. You’re a real businessman, you should be running Fed-Ex.” Perhaps, though he didn’t say it, they would have done just fine running the financial companies that caused the sub-prime mortgage disaster. In one respect there is nothing subtle about Redemption Inc. It’s basic premise is that anyone can make it in capitalism, even those who have sinned against it.

Capitalism’s legal system exists primarily to protect for the capitalist class the wealth they have stolen from the working class, their surplus-value, i.e. that value the workers have produced over and above what they get paid, in other words, legal theft. It is money the capitalist class takes without advancing anything. To this end, the whole legal apparatus of laws, courts, lawyers, police, and the armed services exists. It is well to remember that on some occasions these very armed services are used to break strikes and public demonstrations such as the G20 demonstrations in Toronto. As far as I know, they have never forced a company that has locked out its workers to reopen, or to continue to bargain in good faith. The fact that a policeman may catch the thief who stole a workingman’s wallet is purely incidental. It’s laughable to think that the capitalist class would devise such a set-up to protect the property of the working slob.

Those members of the working class who violate capitalism’s laws and get caught must pay the price that may include a stretch in jail. Most ‘crimes’ are those caused by poverty and need, perceived or otherwise. So it becomes clear that there are two kinds of theft. An employer may legally steal the products made by the worker, or, more accurately, the surplus-value those products contain, but if one of the employees walks out with a product he has made, or helped to make, he would be arrested and prosecuted. Most companies have security guards and surveillance systems for this purpose.

Some may argue that capitalists themselves are accused, tried, convicted, and imprisoned and certainly the likes of Garth Drabinsky, Conrad Black, and Bernie Madoff are prime examples. Though the legal system in every country exists to keep the working class in its place, it has a secondary purpose. The law has to ensure the smooth running of business as a whole and therefore regulates dealings between capitalists. Though the above-mentioned hurt a lot of little guys, they also hurt some big ones. Whether a thief is inside jail or outside, theft is theft. As socialists, we advocate a world where the tools of production and the world’s wealth are held in common and where all humankind may take from the common pool of goods and services, as needed, for a full and happy life. In such a world, theft would not exist, nor, obviously would a program like “Redemption Inc.”. In fact, a man like Kevin O’Leary would lead a constructive and useful life.