Historical Response #24: Ellen Brown Defends Her Use of a Stalinist Non-Historian's 1934 Attack on American Big Business.
Ellen Brown says her main historical source -- a Stalinist literary critic of the 1920s and 1930s -- is more reliable than mine: contemporary pro-capitalist scholars who have devoted their careers to studying American business history.
This is her one response in which she quotes my criticism at length.
24. "Robber Barron" Capitalists raised prices and lowered quality.I don't see where I allegedly made that point, or that you have refuted it. You write:
Ellen Brown repeats the Left-wing myth of the exploiting corporations of late 19th-century America.In 1934, these international bankers and businessmen were labeled the "Robber Barons" by Matthew Josephson in a popular book of the same name. The Robber Barons were an unscrupulous lot, who "lived for market conquest, and plotted takeovers like military strategy." John D. Rockefeller's father was called a snake-oil salesman, flimflam man, bigamist, and marginal criminal -- never convicted but often accused, of crimes ranging from horse theft to rape. He once boasted, "I cheat my boys every chance I get, I want to make 'em sharp." Once the Robber Barons had established a monopoly, they would raise prices, drop the quality of service, and engage in unfair trading practices to drive other firms out of business.[Web of Debt, p. 117]
Then you say, "First, Rockefeller's father was not a robber baron." So? I didn't say he was, I said he was the father of one. And that doesn't refute my statement that Matthew Josephson called that group Robber Barons in his book. I'm just reporting.
Then you simply give a difference of opinion among historians, citing a source which says:
Today's history textbooks typically depict the Industrial Revolution in the United States as a period dominated by "robber barons"--unscrupulous businessmen who earned vast fortunes on the backs of weary workers and naïve consumers.Challenging this view is Dr. Burt Folsom, a professor of history at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Too often, he says, textbooks fail to distinguish between what he calls "economic entrepreneurs"--self-made industrialists whose hard work and ingenuity helped make the United States the superpower it is today--and "political entrepreneurs"--well-connected businessmen who used their political clout to extract money and privileges from taxpayers while contributing little to economic progress.
So you've got your sources with their opinions and I've got mine. Whether mine is myth or yours is is a matter of debate.
She made no attempt to show that her ancient, Left-wing non-historians offered better evidence than modern, full-time historians. She just said the equivalent of "You've got your sources, and I've got mine."
Her main source is a 1934 Left-wing book written by a pro-Stalin literary critic: Matthew Josephson. Mine are modern analyses written by pro-free market economic historians and economists. Which sources should you believe?
Read what I wrote before you make up your mind. Also read the links that I provided.
If she were arguing a case in front if a jury, and her eyewitnesses were 90 years old nearsighted, and not one of them was wearing glasses, while the prosecution's witnesses were trained observers with verified 20/20 vision, would lawyer Brown's plea to the jury work? "The prosecution has its witnesses, and I have mine." Her client would go to jail.
Her case for Greenbackism is no better than the reliability of the witnesses she relies on prove her case. Her witnesses are often fake (bogus quotes), and in this case, they are Left-wing non-historians who hated free market capitalism.
Ellen Brown is a Leftist. She has sold her Left-wing, welfare-state potboiler of a book to 24,000 naive conservatives who are without training in either economics or history, just as she has had no training in economics or history. She has put the shuck on the rubes.
You would be wise not take seriously anything she writes until you verify it by competent sources.