I am writing this letter in response to Drew Chebuhar’s editorial “Teach-ins and class consciousness: King’s Dream Lives,” published in the Jan. 31 Daily. Maybe it’s just because I’m new here at Iowa State, but I have scarcely seen such a blatant piece of morally bankrupt drivel within this paper. It astonishes me to no end how editorialists the likes of Mr. Chebuhar, the vendors in the marketplace of ideas, can so consistently fail to see the wisdom of a freedom-oriented (read CAPITALIST) politico-economic system; they are in opposition to the very concept that protects their industry.

While Mr. Chebuhar correctly argues against a caste-like class system, he also argues against the only system that could eliminate it: capitalism. He forgets that before capitalism developed (in however impure a form) everyone was confined to their caste. Indeed, it was not until the advent of capitalism that the immorality of the caste system was even considered; it was just the way things were. In such a society, the only way to change status was through the use of brute force.

Capitalism, to the degree it is implemented, destroys the idea of caste because it liberates us from the labor-intensive theory of value to which Mr. Chebuhar subscribes. By this I mean that capitalism holds that wealth is not simply a finite quantity to be gained by labor and then hoarded. Rather, wealth is something to be created through the use of the mind. Whereas in the past, an individual or group could obtain a monopoly over the limited concept of wealth and thereby control the class system, under capitalism, monopoly and class control are impossible

because wealth is as infinite as human thought and ingenuity.

Mr. Chebuhar, if you truly want to end the class system, realize that it was the government that passed the racist and sexist statutes to which you refer, and it is the government, not the capitalists, that must be limited. Your advocation of a Marxist (I do use the term dismissively) class struggle is just as fascist (there is no Marxist-fascist dichotomy) as Mussolini’s imprisonment of Gramsci. In today’s burgeoning global climate of freedom, I hope it is as futile. The market always corrects.

Benjamin Dixon

Sophomore in Mathematics