Today is 112-year anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. In that preventable industrial disaster 146 garment workers, mostly Italian and Jewish young immigrant women, lost their lives. Many of them met their demise in horrifying fashion either burning alive or jumping to their deaths.
It was a direct result of what we now call economic libertarianism, the philosophy of laissez-faire taken to the point of brutal indifference.
Why did they die? Because the building and sweatshop owners thought that safety standards such as enough fire escapes, baring exits (the Triangle owners had locked one of the main exit doors in order to keep tout union organizers; in the aftermath of the fire numerous victims bodies were found piled against this possible exit to safety) and other regulations that would have prevented the disaster were too costly. In other words landlords and sweatshop owners thought that providing safe working conditions impeded their “freedom.”
The problem is that their definition of freedom was the equivalent of playing baseball without an umpire or playing tennis without nets. Any true notion of that precious concept is built upon a foundation of contribution and reciprocity; necessary elements so purposely omitted from the libertarian idea of freedom.
Laissez- faire inspired economic libertarianism permeates just about all the major domestic policy issues of the day. When it comes to the regulation of industry, this very same cast of characters will protest about “government intrusion” into the market. Now they mock any sort of responsible economics as Marxist or “woke” – a slogan that is so vacuous that they cannot even define them selves.
We hear this stale chant from the likes of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH). This group, along with their cable news pundit supporters, will rail against labor by citing laissez-faire principles that truly make a mockery of just notions of freedom. If this gang of libertarian had been had been in the New York State legislature in the wake of the sweatshop fire we could just picture them opposing the reforms that followed: child labor laws, better workplace fire protection and protections such as guaranteed bathroom breaks and better wages. That too was “woke capitalism.”
The Financial Crisis of 2008 – and of course the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire all refute the idea that an unregulated marketplace always acts effectively, responsibly, and for the public good.
Woke Capitalism Properly Defined.
Progressives cannot allow libertarian conservatives to coopt the term woke. To that end, a better definition of woke capitalism is offered, one built upon reciprocity of duties each of us in society owe each other and contribution to the common good, in other words, one based upon the golden rule. As Hillel, so eloquently put it, “Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto to you.”
That is what woke capitalism is truly about. It is the response that we should shout every time libertarian conservatives attempt to distort the true meaning of the term.
It is the least we can do to honor the 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.
Frank L. Cocozzelli is the author of Commissar Conservatives: How Laissez-faire Libertarianism Is Disturbingly Similar to Communism