Capitalism: Who Are Its Friends and Who Are Its Foes? D. Boudreaux

through their pension funds. Thus, Marx's expla nation of people's political views is far too simplis tic to take seriously. But over the years I've noticed another problem with this Marxist proposition: Not only is it too simplisticin presuming labor to be opposed to cap ital, it fails to explain the observed pattern of polit ical beliefs. Six years ago, when I took a faculty position in economics at George Mason University, it oc curred to me that nearly all of my libertarian and classical liberal friends come from working class backgrounds, as I do. Were we the exception that proved Marx's rule? Or is Marx's rule wrong? I couldn't answer this question definitively because, quite frankly, I knew too few people who came from privileged backgrounds. So, when I entered law school two years ago at the University of Vir ginia, I decided to take note of the family and edu cational backgrounds of as many of my fellow law students as I could.

Who Are Capitalism's IntellectualFoes? Over the past two years I've conducted a casual empirical study of family backgrounds and politi cal beliefs, using law students at the University of Virginia as my sample. This is a good sample set because a large number of my fellow students come from very privileged backgrounds and were educated at the best prep schools and undergrad uate institutions in the world. But also a sufficient number (though not a majority) of law students at the University of Virginia are products of working classbackgrounds and were educated at decidedly non-elite undergraduate colleges. I finally had the opportunity to test the veracity of Marx's explana tion of political beliefs. I found that Marx's explanation is backwards. The more privileged a person's background, the more likely he is to be a leftist. I know not a single classical liberal law student who is a scion of a wealthy family. Students who share my free mar ket political viewsinvariably are sons or daughters of blue collar or middle class workers, or of fami lies whose substantial economic success was first achieved by the parents of these students. No clas sicalliberal students that I know attended elite prep schools, and only a very few received their undergraduate educations at Ivy League universi ties. Likewise, the most committed leftists in the student body typically attended exclusive prep schools and, almost invariably, received their bachelor's degrees from schools such as Harvard, Yale, Smith, and Stanford. In short, it is the wealthy-or, at least, the children of the wealthy -who most shrilly criticize capitalist achievement and values. Capitalism's defenders come over whelmingly from the working and middle classes.

An incident during my first year of law school reflects the invidious attitudes of students from privileged backgrounds. Our Constitutional Law class was discussing affirmative action when a black student spoke up against such policies. This student argued that affirmative action is unconsti tutional as well as demeaning to minorities. It should be noted that this black student is from the Washington, D.C., ghetto, and, because of his own hard work, he managed to attend Dartmouth as an undergraduate. He also earnedone of the coveted few positions on the VirginiaLaw Review.2 When this black student expressed his opposi tion to affirmative action, he was taken to task by several white students in the class-all of whom enjoyed an upbringing much more economically and socially privileged than that enjoyed by the black student. One particularly grotesque example of left-liberal presumptuousness took place when a white student (who is from wealthy Fairfax County in Virginia) openly accused this black stu dent of being naive about what it means to be 425 black! Marx's explanation of political biases clear ly doesn't explain the lineup of opinions manifest ed in that classroom.

Why Do the WealthyPromote Self-Destruction? The findings of my admittedly informal study of family backgrounds and political viewssuggest the interesting question: Why this pattern? Why do leftists and interventionists come disproportion ately from wealthy families, while libertarians and classicalliberals come overwhelminglyfrom work ing and middle class backgrounds? Several possible answers come to mind. One is that wealthy families are better able to send their children to Ivy League schools. Because leftist thought is most prevalent in these institutions, children from wealthy families are more likely to be exposed to interventionist ideas than are chil dren from less advantaged families. Another explanation that no doubt contains an element of truth is that children from wealthy fam ilies often feel guilty for being economically privi leged. Of course, this guilt occurs when wealthy people come into contact with those who are below the poverty line. But it also occurs when wealthy people learn about working class lifestyles. A friend told me that he knows of a wealthy young woman who expressed surprise and shock upon learning that most people purchase automobiles on installment plans and not outright for cash. People who are accustomed to riding in nothing but new BMWs or Volvosquite naturally feel pity for those who can afford no more than Chevrolets or Toyotas purchased on credit. It nor mally doesn't occur to persons from wealthy back grounds that people who are able to get credit to buy Chevys or Toyotas don't pity themselves, but instead feel quite pleased with their purchases.

Leftist politics is a way to assuage the guilt that grows from this pity. There is surely some truth to these explanations, but neither seems sufficient to explain the pattern of political viewsI detect among my fellowlaw stu dents. The guilt explanation appears particularly weak. Earlier I stated that I met in law school a few classical liberal friends whose families are quite wealthy. However, in all of these cases the parents of my classmates are the first generation in their 426 THE FREEMAN • NOVEMBER 1991 families to achieve substantial economic success. Therefore, the explanation for leftist bias among the wealthy that focuses on guilt clearly isn't a suf ficient explanation. The factor that distinguishes these wealthy clas sical liberals from the leftist children of other wealthy families is that the classical liberals are firsthand witnesses to the effort and risk-taking that were required for their parents to achieve great economic prosperity. Children from families whose wealth extends back two or more genera tions never see the productive source of their fam ilies' wealth and, hence, remain unaware of the extent to which hard work and risk-taking were necessary components of their families' substan tial material success. My sense is that another fac tor in addition to Ivy League schooling and guilt contributes substantially to the leftist bias of peo ple who enjoyed privileged upbringings.

My identification of this other factor leading to leftist bias isn't novel, but it does help explain the pattern of my casual observations better than any other hypothesis I can think of. It is this: Children from wealthy families take wealth for granted, whereas children of working and middle classback grounds do not. The longer wealth has been in the family, the greater the inclination to look upon wealth as something to be distributed rather than something that must be created and continually re created by hard work, sacrifice, and risk-taking. Children of the economically well-to-do assume that wealth is more or less a fixed stock that always has been and alwayswillbe around; the only ques tion is how it is to be shared. In contrast, people who don't hail from affluent families generally understand-often - at only an emotional level-that high tax rates, burdensome govern ment regulations, and silly products-liability laws block the path of those seeking to produce wealth.3 Wealth isn't thought of by these people as an ever-present and indestructible fund that can be taken willy-nillyfrom its producers without caus ing a diminution in its size.Therefore, people from working and middle class families are much less likely than people from wealthy families to be sus picious of those who achieve economic success in the marketplace. Children of the non-wealthy are much more likely than are children of the wealthy to realize that a person who gets rich in the marketplace does so only by producing new wealth and not by taking it from someone else.

Conclusion Quite obviously,my empirical "study" of family backgrounds and political beliefs among my fellow law students is only very casual and impressionis tic. And I don't wish to claim that there are no exceptions to my findings. Committed libertarians and classicalliberals can be found among the ranks of the wealthiest in our society,and diehard inter ventionists exist among middle and working class citizens. Nevertheless, I continue to be struck by the prevalence of leftist interventionist thought among people whose families are wealthy and have been so for several generations. And I am equally struck by the disproportionately large number of libertarians and classicalliberals whose parents or grandparents are of no more than mod est means. I conclude from my casual survey that, to the extent that capitalism is threatened in America, its intellectual enemies come mainly from that group of people who Marx theorized would be capitalism's most staunch supporters. As usual, Marx was wrong. D 1. Thomas Sowell, Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (New York: William Morrow, 1985),p. 202.

2. I emphasize that this student earned his position on the law review.Like many lawschools, the University of Virginia has a policy of setting aside a half-dozen or so law-review positions each year for minority students. Minority students who don't earn a position on the law review through their grades or writing skillsget an additional opportunity to become a member of the law review by writing an essay explaining why their minority status (as opposed to their aca demic achievements) qualifies them for law-review membership. The black student who spoke out against affirmative action quite admirably refused even to participate in this minority set-aside pro gram. He became a member of the law review solely by virtue of his academic abilities and hard work. 3. By silly products-liability laws I mean statutes and, more often, judicial rulings that impose on manufacturers monetary penalties for injuries to consumers that are caused by consumer negligence rather than by the negligence of manufacturers. A telling example of such a silly law was presented in a segment on CBS's 60 Minutes several years ago. A farmer used a ladder to climb onto the roof of his bam during the winter months. The lad der remained in place through the spring, at which time, while being used by the farmer to climb onto his bam's roof, the ladder lost its footing. The ladder fell, causing injury to the farmer. The ladder fell for good reason: when the farmer put it in place during the winter, he set it on a mound of frozen cow manure and the manure thawed during the spring. Naturally, the ladder's footing wasn't secure on a mound of thawed cow manure. The farmer sued the ladder manufacturer and won. The court's argument was that the ladder manufacturer was negligent in not warning the farmer of such danger. See generally, Peter W. Huber, Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences (New York: Basic Books, 1988).