juxtablog

The two characters are the keys to the political analysis Sinclair impresses on the reader. Personal kindness, he says, cannot change poverty, exploitation, war or corruption. J. Arnold Ross helps poor families as he takes their land for wells. He admires and respects his workers, but must stick with the other oil operators when they bring in strikebreakers to bust their union and evict the strikers from their homes. In a not-very-fictionalized account of the “Teapot Dome Scandal,” J. Arnold tells Bunny again and again bribing politicians, even a president of the United States, is simply what is required in order to do business.

    It doesn’t matter whether a capitalist is a good person or a bad one, Sinclair says. It’s the system that grinds one class into poverty, and allows another to reap the benefit. J. Arnold Ross, a loving father and paternalistic employer, commits criminal acts because his social class not only makes it possible, but necessary. His pained justification to Bunny for hiring gun thugs is that, if he doesn’t, the other oil operators will combine against him and drive him out of business. Capital operates as a class.

Source: David Bacon | Bad Capitalists or a Bad System