John, Jonah: Capitalism is anideological. Capitalists couldn’t care less.

Ideology is hardly ever a thing that interests them. In the old South, laws

had to be passed to stop businessmen violating the segregationist ideology

by employing blacks where they oughtn’t, when they thought they could make a

buck by so doing.

Unfortunately, “anideological” is not the same as “anti-ideological.” Where

the political environment demands that businesses pay lip service to some

ideology, or suffer dire financial consequences through state prosecutions

or private lawsuits, they will pay lip service very punctiliously, in order

to get on with what they are really interested in — creating wealth — with

a minimum of trouble. Hence the spectacle of 1930s German industry marching

to Hitler’s tune: hence all those “sensitivity” and “diversity” seminars

that plague the lives of office workers in America today….