Celebrate Thanksgiving, Celebrate Capitalism

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American holiday, almost as unique as the 4th of July. But there's more to it than simply stuffing yourself full of food, or drinking heavily to make your extended family more bearable.

When it comes right down to it, Thanksgiving is a celebration of man's ability to produce wealth. And, by extension, of the system of living that allows him to do so.

That's right, Thanksgiving is a celebration of capitalism.

We're taught that this holiday is a remembrance of a peaceful union between the early colonists and the Native Americans, but we all know how that turned out in the end. And although the day has become a celebration of family, lots of food, (and football), that's not really what it's about either.

It's about the one common thread between that first Thanksgiving and this one. The thing that makes it all possible.

Capitalism.

Lawrence Reed, from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, explains why:

"Thanksgiving Day is a particularly appropriate time to reflect on the meaning and value of profit. The settlers at Plymouth colony who started the holiday tradition nearly wiped themselves out early on when they set up a communal, socialistic economy. Each person was producing for everybody else and received an equal share of the total production. In the absence of a strong profit motive, the settlers starved until Gov. Bradford altered the arrangement. Thereafter, men and women produced for profit and the result was bountiful harvests with full Thanksgiving tables."

So that takes care of the value of capitalism and profit in the first Thanksgiving, but what about today? When you think about it, only in a capitalist society is a huge annual feast even possible. Reed continues:

"Consider this as you feast at the table today. The people who raised the turkey didn't do so because they wanted to help you out. The others who grew the cranberries and the yams didn't go to the trouble and expense out of some altruistic, charitable impulse. If you think those folks and the others who made almost everything else you own performed their tasks as sacrificial rituals, then you probably believe McDonalds when they say, "We do it all for you."

In Marxist North Korea, they have a regime that works night and day to see that nobody makes a profit or owns a private business. There won't be anything like Thanksgiving dinner in North Korea today, and that's no coincidence.

As for me, you can count on me saying a prayerful thanks for more than just good food today. I'm going to say thanks for the profit motive which made it all possible. When God instilled a measure of productive self-interest into the human mind, he knew what he was doing."

I'm right there with him.

Henry Hazlitt wrote that the most important lesson of economics is to look not only at what is immediately present, but also to see that which is hidden or at least more difficult to see.

The same is true, I would think, of Thanksgiving. We certainly should be thankful for the food, family, friends, etc., but with all those wonderful things right in front of us, we should not forget about that which is not always immediately present to our attention. A capitalist society makes Thanksgiving possible, and I'm thankful for living in one.