The Art of the Deal

One of the most pernicious effects of the Marxist fantasy is that it prevents us from properly valuing entrepreneurship as a creative, indeed an artistic, activity. A great entrepreneur can be a great artist, and can have profound influence for good.

Walt Disney is the obvious example. Steve Jobs, of Apple and Pixar, is another. Thomas Edison, P.T. Barnum, Conrad Black, Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner—all these men are artists. They ought to be understood as such, and, for the sake of future generations, ought to be held up to the young as models. They should be considered culture heroes.

Worse, the Marxist blindness makes us largely incapable of distinguishing such creative entrepreneurship from the real robber barons, the Carnegies and the Gateses. I hear the same rumblings against Google now that we used to hear about Microsoft. But Google has genuinely improved the world, while Microsoft has really only benefited Bill Gates. We ought to be wise enough to tell the difference.

Besides changing the world, and being a thing of beauty to watch, creative entrepreneurship can benefit everybody. This seems to be difficult to grasp, but I don’t know why it should be. People assume that, if Wal-Mart is wildly successful, they must be underpaying their employees—if they are getting richer, someone else must be getting poorer. If McDonalds is able to sell a burger for less than anyone else, they must be using worm meat. Either the employees must be being cheated, or the customers, for a business to succeed.

But this is a fallacy. Worse; it is the opposite of the truth. Business is not robbery. A good business deal can easily benefit all involved—it almost has to, in order to work.