History books tell us it was “The Gilded Age” (Mark Twain’s term), and the unbridled capitalism of the “Robber Barons” was running amuck, grinding the little guys underfoot in a perfectly-realized vision of the Marxist Apocalypse.

The history books are mostly right — except for one thing: This wasn’t “capitalism” in operation, but a corruption of capitalism, an arrangement (still with us, by the way) whereby business and government illegally and unconstitutionally coopt each other to their mutual benefit. In such a situation, the law (i.e., the Constitution) is always a minor impediment to be brushed aside when inconvenient.

Conclusion: To call this chimera “capitalism” is simply wrong.

In The Freeman Online, Joseph R. Stromberg cursorily traces the complicated wrongdoings of the Robber Barons but fails to draw the proper conclusion (see just above).

Whenever a businessman tries to get government to give him special favors, he ceases to be a true capitalist. Instead, he becomes the tool of a government which he is reciprocally trying to use as his own tool.

By the same token, when government bestows special favors on any business (or individual), it ceases to be a constitutional entity. It (or, rather, the corrupt officials comprising it) has become a tool of special interests to the exclusion — indeed, the outright violation — of the rights of the rest of the citizenry.

This is the classic scenario of “picking winners and losers,” a game in which both so-called “capitalists” and partisan government apparatchiks have engaged for well over a century.

The Robber Barons are still with us. Only now they camouflage themselves behind anodyne terms like “green jobs creators”, “health care specialists”, “community organizers”, and the like.

You can read Stromberg’s article here.