Why Socialism XII: Into the Dragons' Den

The Entrepreneurs

The Conservative Party, aided and abetted by their Liberal Democrat partners in the present Coalition Government in the UK, and even echoed by the opposition Labour Party, agree that the motive force of Capitalism resides with the Entrepreneurs, and behind them, the Moneyed Class.

They point to the developments of the last few hundred years as being totally due to these Drivers and Developers of our Society, and without whom, we would still be languishing on the land, scraping out a meager living, and remaining in rural ignorance.

But as with all those at-the-top, they leave out all those who actually do the work, and even the inventors, scientists, technologists and engineers, who made possible the profitable undertakings that made them rich.

And such omissions are not only reprehensible, but mask the real wealth-making in our Society, and get away with their version, because they most certainly are the principal recipients of that wealth.

These same people, if pressed to name the most significant period in History, will almost to a man name Greek Society of over 2000 years ago, and will give you innumerable advances that can be put down to that civilization.

But they fail to mention that it was a Slave-Owning Society, in which captives taken in battle, or merely by force from their homes, became the property of the conquerors, and made to work without pay, possessions or rights to the benefit of their now owners. But this isn’t a modern moral judgement of the past: that was the way of things then. But it does throw a different light on why they were able to achieve what they did.

Such a society would, and indeed did, release the “citizens of the State” from most of the onerous labour, so that they could commit themselves to Mathematics or Philosophy or anything else that they chose to pursue, and still live in the marvellous conditions to which they had become accustomed.

Dawn to Dusk hard labour, and without any money or facilities is not conducive to such studies, so for the slaves such things would never even get on the agenda.

[Where has that occurred since, I wonder?]

And the present day Entrepreneurs are in a similar position, but dedicate themselves to a much lower objective – to get as rich as they possibly can, by the exploitation of other people’s ideas, and the labour of the workers employed to deliver-the-goods.

I, therefore, feel that I have to strongly disagree with these surveyors from on high, and insist that a Society only composed of such predatory parasites as these, would soon either die or retrench back to Kingdom of the strongest over the weakest, and an enforced, if wholly inadequate class of their oft-times colleagues, now reduced to working for their “betters”

NO, these parasites do nor direct progress; they merely misappropriate the invention and work of others. Indeed, in many ways, they are so conservative that they present a very strong barrier against such innovators even getting started.

The famous Dragons’ Den TV programme on BBC in the UK, though a supposed entertainment, does very clearly illustrate what motivates these funders of new enterprise. They certainly consider their wealth will have to be increased by becoming involved, and no other criteria are really considered.

For they can only use how they became top dogs to judge the abilities of newcomers to do likewise, and then only help if it gives themselves even more wealth and status as a consequence.

It is like a History composed entirely of Kings and Queens. You would think that History was made exclusively by these people. But, though they did sit on top and make decisions they did not make the crops grow, or invent new products, develop Mankind’s understanding of Reality, and certainly didn’t make anything. They were the Ruling Class, and they kept their positions by the actions of bodies of armed men – such as the police and the army. They could even win an entire country by invasion, as did William the Conqueror, or even build a worldwide Empire like the British.

NO, that isn’t History as an explanation, but merely as an after-the-event description. The real historians do not merely concentrate upon the top parasitic, coercive class.

Michelet’s History of the French Revolution delivered the impulse of the changing situation via the minutia of everyday happenings in the whirlpool of a Revolution.

V. Gordon Childe delivered History via archaeological findings as he described in What Happened in History and Man Makes Himself.

So. Let us be clear. The Dragons are not the motive forces of Society. They are products of the capitalist appropriation of processes and functions that are forever the actions of a developing populace. Indeed, in many ways the Dragons are the barriers to real Qualitative Changes, and they will have to be totally impoverished, and swept away in a Society, which will prohibit such a powerful and totally self-serving caste.