Law Prof Says Bah Humbug to Scrooge Detractors
The unredeemed Ebenezer Scrooge wasn’t a bad guy, according to some free-market advocates. After all, he was a responsible adult and good businessman who paid a market wage, no more no less, and was the only productive member of his family.
Capital University law professor David Mayer is among those coming to Scrooge’s defense, CBC News reports. Scrooge before his transformation “is really a hero” who “acts responsibly and treats his fellow-men justly,” Mayer argues at the MayerBlog.
“What is often overlooked about Dickens’ story—often because the popular film or stage adaptations soften its hard edges—is that it is propaganda for a social philosophy, one that is essentially anti-capitalist and anti-individualist,” Mayer writes.
Mayer points to another author’s joking summary of A Christmas Carol for putting it succinctly: The story is a “melancholy tale of a productive businessman who gets worked over by three meddling supernatural social workers one Christmas Eve, transforming him into a simpering socialist.”
