Capitalistic Behavior: Is It an Exercise in Greed or Brilliance?
Mark Leviton, whose March 25 letter responds to Dvonch, questions whether Calendar is the best forum for debating the merits of capitalism, then he proceeds to use it for promulgating a theory now being rejected all over the globe--Marxism.
His notion of “surplus value” is based on Marx’s discredited theory that the value of finished goods lies only in what labor adds to the value of the raw materials and that the capitalist’s profit represents “exploitation” of labor.
What this theory ignores is the one thing that makes capitalism work--the brilliance of the entrepreneur’s mind in choosing how and where to invest.
It isn’t the benefits to society that justifies greed. Greed is simply the material expression of a man’s right to prosper from that faculty that is most distinctly human: the brilliance of his mind.
DENNIS HARDIN
Studio City
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