Capitalist Christmas

 

Now Dickens was a witness to the appalling poverty created by the original Capitalism of the British Georgians and inherited by the Victorians. It was a world spit between the owners who had capital and an allowance afforded them by returns on that capital allowing them to enjoy lives of leisure. All those without capital (the majority) were forced to work for their living facing starvation unless they manned the machines in the mills of the capitalists.  

Dickens reacted to all this monetary thinking of the period by reminding people of the good will of St Nicolas and the ancient culture of gift giving at mid winter in his famous story against the hardened heart entitled "A Christmas Carol" first published on December 19, 1843.

However it does nothing to deal with the Capitalist problem at the heart of this. In 1776 at the same time as the American Declaration of Independence from the British Empire, a Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith published the results of 10 years work called in short the Wealth of Nation. In this book he outlined the principles of the emerging Capitalism. Key was the idea of the invisible hand of the markets. Not explicit but named later by commentators. From this idea we can produce the idea of a Capitalist Christmas, and the real problem that Dickens was observing.

For a Capitalist Christmas consider this:

I was going to give some money so a poor family can enjoy a happy Christmas; but then I remembered my Capitalism! So I spent the money on myself to increase the income of those companies creating growth so the lazy poor people can get a bloody job.

It can be seen that Capitalism reverses the common thinking of giving and instead shows that self interest, via the mirror of a free market produces wealth. This is the central thesis of his book. So the message of Christmas in Capitalist countries reverses the logic of the previous dominant religion of Christianity and shows that actually self-interest is how we can give gifts to the poor.

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This overlooks a few things:
(1) IS work really a gift? I mean what kind of twisted society thinks it's kind to pay someone to work on building your swimming pool? If work was this desirable wouldn't the wealthy do it themselves? It is not like anyone expects to be paid to swim in it.
(2)  rewarding the poor through salary enables middle men to take a slice from the "gift". Firstly rich investors get a slice by cream off returns on investment and lending costs. Secondly the government gets a slice to underwrite the financial sector (offering protection from crashes) and expands the markets through war (which is ironic since the American in 1776 were throwing off the chains of Imperialist slavery and the capitalism of the British Empire)

Finally the poor will get the gift I have given them through my spending.