Richard Branson’s image has appeared all over South Africa done up as Che Guevara.

Promising a mutiny in the way South Africans can purchase cell-phone airtime, Branson is taking on the monolithic incumbent operators using the language of a revolutionary.  His intention is to make money for himself and his investors by undermining the fat profits that existing businesses are already making.  The reason he is able to do so is because of free market capitalism which allows anyone to start a business in competition to anyone else and will protect them from anti-competitive behaviour while they do so.

Capitalism is certainly a brutal system; but that brutality is not aimed at consumers.  It is aimed at the very businesses that revolutionaries hate so much.  Any change in customer preferences (the choices of the proletariat) results in a massive concentration of effort by businesses to keep up with those preferences.  Businesses that can’t do so (such as businesses caught using child labour when it is no longer politically acceptable to do so) get left behind and shut down.

Branson has claimed the very principles of subversion promoted by arch-Communist Guevara in the pursuit of globalisation and capitalism.  It was Guevara who said, “We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism — and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labour, and to which they export new capital — instruments of domination — arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.”

The commercial sector appears to have an astonishing ability to reinvent itself and to claim the very criticism aimed at their destruction.  For socialist revolutionaries the problem is that they have misidentified capitalism.  

Capitalism is not a political system;  it is simply a mechanism by which people value things they want and trade for these things from their possessions which they consider of lesser value.  A person’s time and labour is sometimes all they possess.  If they value it less than any amount of money then they will trade their effort for that cash.  The economic thinking behind ending slavery was that slaves should enjoy the right to sell their own labour for a price of their choosing – just like everyone else.

Any act to change the political system of a society will result in an adaptation in the way the effected people value things.  A government may decide that food is a strategic resource and a food staple will henceforth be sold at a fixed price no matter what it costs to produce.  Farmers will look at that price and, if they realise it will cost them more to produce than they will earn from selling, they won’t farm.  Communist governments frequently find themselves buying in vast amounts of expensive food that they used to grow themselves from the very capitalist governments they hate.

Any wild accusation can be levelled at businesses: they harm the environment; they exploit poor people; the steal from the masses.  Business owners listen and observe.  If they note that the accusations are affecting their business then they adapt.  If the adaptation costs them then they simply pass those costs on to their customers.  If they aren’t allowed to do so then they quietly close down operations, cut their losses and move elsewhere.

Give businesses a measurable problem and they will solve it.  WalMart – a US-based retailer – has frequently been accused of causing environmental harm.  A new WalMart in Aurora, Colorado has been built entirely to appease environmentalists:  recycled asphalt parking lot, solar panels and a windmill for power, waterless urinals, efficient lighting.

Major retailers have come out with organic and locally sourced produce.  Restaurants and coffee shops dutifully sign up for Fair Trade goods.  Major manufacturers buy carbon credits.  And brands, like Virgin Mobile, have adopted the discourse of anti-globalisation campaigners.

There is no hidden agenda in this.  Business owners are quite up-front about their intentions.  Firstly, no-one wants to be a target of insults and slurs.  Secondly, they want to stay in business and keep providing for themselves and their families.

The customer is always right and, if you like the teachings of Che Guevara, then the teachings of Che Guevara you shall have.

People may fight for the cause of socialism, or freedom, or democracy but – while they’re out fighting – someone is going to have to stay home and make sure the revolutionaries are fed and clothed.  And they’re going to charge you for it.    Any attempts to stop this process results in a lot of people sitting around waiting for the government to provide.

If revolutionaries really want to put business under pressure then free market capitalism is the way to do it.