Two local political activists had a newspaper commentary arguing that “socialists” like them are misunderstood. Basically professing belief in, well, all things good and wholesome, and opposition to bad stuff. Castigating capitalism as “built on the brutal enslavement of millions,” and so on. While never explaining what “socialism” actually means.
In fact you can be for all their apple pie good things without invoking the politically toxic word “socialist” — which needn’t even apply. Note that Sweden, often held up as a socialist utopia, does exhibit all those goodies, but with one of the world’s most vibrant free market economies.
The primordial dichotomy between right and left seemed fairly clear. The left wanted more active government, with a bigger economic role, to bring about desired results. Whereas the right, distrustful of government, saw it as inimical to societal flourishing, putting more faith in a competitive market’s dispersal of power.
“Socialism” being a strongly left ideology — what it does mean is government taking the place of a free economy’s private businesses. “Communism” was the ultimate extension of that, with government doing everything. Where such systems have actually operated, they’ve proved the point of the right, producing results ranging from lousy to horrific.
But this dichotomy has broken down in today’s Trumpian America. It turns out the right hates forceful government except when they love it, which is actually a lot, especially to impose religion-inspired regulation (as with abortion). And the Trump regime has even forced some corporations to surrender stock (i.e., part ownership) to the government. Who are the socialists??
So for all their “freedom” babble (like regarding Covid masks and vaccines) the right has a rather fraught relationship with the concept. As indeed does the left — as with woke cancel culture. Freedom of expression, even of thought, is problematic. They’re really poseurs of self-fancied moral purity; heirs of the Puritans who hanged a dissenter in Boston.
As in that newspaper commentary, “capitalism” has become a curse word, with people pining for a different system. Usually omitting to suggest how that different system might possibly work. Indeed, today’s vocal “socialists” generally don’t actually propose a socialist system eliminating private enterprise. And the plea to somehow abolish “capitalism” is really a plea to abolish logic and human nature.
They make it sound like “capitalism” is some idiosyncratic economic system cooked up by conspirators and foisted upon us, which we could simply change. However, what capitalism actually represents is the (inescapable) logic of interactions among sentient beings each having their own lives, needs, concerns, wishes, etc. Each striving for food, comfort, ego-enhancing status, sex, etc. There’s no right or wrong there; rather, it’s just the way things necessarily are if people are indeed individually sentient. And the way they can generally satisfy those needs and wants is through efforts that help others satisfy their needs and wants — each compensating the other — leaving each better off. A logic people quickly figure out.
The basic problem of the anti-capitalist left is the idea of supplanting such human logic with the actions of a disinterested thing — government. Which, lacking the interests and motivations that do drive individual efforts, cannot produce results as good.
Hence calls to somehow replace capitalism with something else are fundamentally silly.
Capitalism’s logic, again, is the logic of mutually beneficial exchange. Whether it’s Ook trading his meat for Zork’s corn — or someone exchanging their labor itself — it wouldn’t happen unless each side deemed it advantageous to themself. True, sometimes circumstances force one into deals they’d prefer not to do —e.g., working hard for a pittance — but still they wouldn’t do it if it weren’t better than the alternative.
But anyway, the real point is that all this activity, one bit at a time, does make people collectively better off. And, over centuries, that, and nothing else, has produced today’s whole human world — up from caves.
So one cheer, at least, for capitalism.
Actually, that word refers to one aspect of exchange logic — people coming together to create enterprises beyond one individual’s capacities. Nobody can build an airplane alone. It takes “capital.”
But the left doesn’t like this. Imagining that goodies somehow just fall from Heaven, for us to distribute equitably. Leftists wouldn’t take that formulation, but it’s what their mindset really comes to.
What mainly irks them is that goodies not falling from Heaven results in disparate outcomes — rich and poor. As if that’s cosmically unfair. Maybe it is; a lot of it is down to just luck, not deservingness. Yet it’s hard to envision some alternative cosmos resulting differently.
In particular, leftists seem to hate success as much if not more than they hate its lack. “Profit” to them is another dirty word, as if no one should be allowed to profit from anything. Like, no one should be allowed to profit providing health care. Or food, or shelter, so needful for decent existence. As if someone will undertake the huge efforts to supply such things with no benefit to themselves. On what planet?
I would say that health care, food, etc., are so important that we’d darn well better make them profitable so that people will be motivated to provide them fully and well. I’d rather get served by an organization motivated by competition and the profit to be gained by meeting my needs than by a government bureaucracy with no compelling reason to care.
None of this means there’s no role for government. We do need it — not to replace the free market, but to facilitate it, providing the societal infrastructure enabling it to function well for our ultimate benefit. For example, by providing a legal system, with courts, for resolution of disputes. And, yes, laws, to bar improper abusive practices, just as individuals are barred from them. (Slavery was not capitalism, it was human theft.)
“Social justice” is another linguistic fetish of the left. Incorporating their intuition that the wrongness of profit — certain people getting more than others — needs rectifying. Thus success itself is thought wrong. Again, leftists wouldn’t agree to put it that way, but it’s really what their mindset entails.
So they fancy themselves Robin Hoods — wanting to take from the rich to give to the poor. Enforcing their own judgment of what is right and just.
Here’s what I think. Successful people do have an obligation to share some of their gains because, whatever efforts of their own produced them, it was the structures of society as a whole that enabled it. Making it “just,” if you will, for them to be called upon to share with society a portion of their gains.
And the less successful are not entitled, out of justice or fairness, to benefit from that. Not earning it. Instead, they should be helped simply because they are our fellow human beings. Helped not because it’s “social justice” or fairness or equitable but because it is humane.
All this is why I am not a leftist. But today’s right? Oy, don’t get me started.
