Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy
Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy
Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Tom Sawyer: Hero <strong>of</strong> Middle America 199<br />
can be made available to anyone who is gullible and willing to pay for it.<br />
As Ben begs for a chance to take a turn at the whitewashing, Tom<br />
cautiously refuses, saying it wouldn't do, since Aunt Polly is so particular<br />
about this fence, "right here on the street,<br />
back fence I wouldn't mind and she<br />
you know but if it was the<br />
wouldn't."<br />
Tom says he reckons<br />
"there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand that can do it<br />
the way it's got to be done."<br />
And then in the spirit that was to descend<br />
upon one hundred, or maybe two hundred thousands <strong>of</strong> used-car salesmen,<br />
whose ancestor Tom is, he goes on in response to Ben's begging, "Ben,<br />
I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly well, Jim wanted to do it, but<br />
she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it,<br />
and she wouldn't let Sid. Now<br />
don't you see how I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything<br />
was to happen to it<br />
"<br />
Ben's appetite is now whetted, from a faint in<br />
clination to a raging desire. He <strong>of</strong>fers Tom the core <strong>of</strong> his apple; Tom<br />
holds out. Then he <strong>of</strong>fers all <strong>of</strong> the apple. "Tom gave up the brush with<br />
reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer<br />
Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a<br />
barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, and planned the slaughter<br />
<strong>of</strong> more innocents."<br />
And, as used-car salesmen have discovered ever since,<br />
"There was no lack <strong>of</strong> material; boys happened along every little while;<br />
they<br />
came to jeer but remained to<br />
whitewash."<br />
At the end <strong>of</strong> the operation<br />
Tom "had had a nice, idle time . . . plenty <strong>of</strong> company and the fence<br />
had three coats <strong>of</strong> whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out <strong>of</strong> whitewash, he<br />
would have bankrupted every boy in the<br />
village."<br />
In that moment <strong>of</strong> great inspiration, Tom had revealed to him some <strong>of</strong><br />
the pr<strong>of</strong>oundest mysteries <strong>of</strong> American democratic capitalism. Its essence<br />
does not, we see, lie in "the relief <strong>of</strong> man's<br />
estate,"<br />
if that estate is under<br />
stood to be merely the estate <strong>of</strong> nature. Rather does it lie in the relief <strong>of</strong><br />
an estate the capitalist himself has created, by infusing the desires by whose<br />
relief he is to pr<strong>of</strong>it. Long after Tom, John Kenneth Galbraith was to<br />
effect."<br />
Tom is the<br />
make a theory <strong>of</strong> this fact, and call it the "dependence<br />
quintessential capitalist, carrying enterprise to that consummation that is<br />
every entrepreneur's deepest longing, but which he never hopes to achieve<br />
except, no doubt, in that better world to which good capitalists aspire<br />
to go. He turns the workers into customers and sells them their own labor.<br />
What he realizes is pure pr<strong>of</strong>it, purer pr<strong>of</strong>it indeed than Karl Marx ever<br />
imagined in his wildest polemics against the iniquity <strong>of</strong> surplus value.<br />
He has no overhead, no labor cost, and no cost <strong>of</strong> material, and he exacts<br />
the entire purchasing power <strong>of</strong> his market,<br />
at least until the whitewash<br />
runs out. We should, moreover, not omit to notice the tw<strong>of</strong>old nature <strong>of</strong><br />
the entire transaction. Tom sells not only to the boys but to Aunt Polly,<br />
with whom the original "exchange"<br />
takes place. He is under a "debt"<br />
to<br />
her under what we might call the old, precapitalist order a debt con<br />
tracted by playing hooky. This debt too he discharges at no cost to him<br />
self. And there is a further bonus. When he reports back to headquarters,<br />
and "his"<br />
work is inspected, Aunt PoUy "was so overcome by the splendor