“How do you feel about capitalism?” a friend asked. I was a bit taken aback. I’m a red-blooded American citizen – how did he think I felt about capitalism? I responded with a solid, Lockean answer: that I believed that whatever a person made with their own toil, sweat, and tears is and ought to be their uncontested property.
“But what about communism?” he wanted to know. I had to lay aside my conditioned negative reaction to consider the question.
“Well,” I began, “we’ve never actually seen true communism. The transitional process always gets stuck at the dictatorship phase, which doesn’t really speak too well of humanity …”
“But neither does capitalism,” he argued. “Especially if you’re Christian. It’s too dog-eat-dog, too self-centered and aggressive.” I had to concede the truth of this. Capitalism, as he pointed out, can encourage a sort of nasty individualism. I could understand how Karl Marx believed that the internal tensions produced by capitalism would be the cause of its eventual destruction.
But indeed, the only exposure we’ve had to true communism comes from the religious who inhabit contemporary monasteries, where they, if they earn a salary in a secular workplace, hand it over to their organization for redistribution and sometimes even choose to replace the pronoun ‘my’ with ‘our’ (our toothbrush, our pencil, etc). Surely, I thought, this lifestyle is more peaceful, more considerate. Here, for the first time, I was considering a real-world alternative to the capitalism whose superiority was trumpeted from purple mountains majesty and was trickling down to every public school student busily learning that Common Good is one of the Core Democratic Values. No American could say that his country didn’t stand for integrity or the general good. Certainly, my friend had me very nearly convinced that communism is the more moral regime.
The difficulty is, however, that true communist communities are fragile. Unless there’s a devastatingly significant purpose to which every member honestly believes his hard work is essential, the free-loaders that inevitably surface swiftly tear the whole thing asunder. Communism doesn’t cater to the needs of a large, diverse group of people with a range of demands and interests, and it restricts individual potential. Capitalism generates results from hard work on an individual level, and provides socio-political flexibility enough to allow private individuals to work as much or as little as they like, to be as affluent or as uncomplicated as they like, without negatively impacting their neighbors. Even in the diversity and complexity of our own local economies, we can see the need for a system which can handle the array of consumers and products available, a prerequisite with which a planned economy would be overwhelmed.
The reader may wonder why I bother to ask these questions. Hasn’t it already been established that communism, once tried, failed? I believe that it’s vitally important to reflect on what it is we fight to protect. Our current situation is not the best of all possible worlds. The present point in history is not the high point of human development. As a member of a generation that’s been fed the glory of capitalism alongside my applesauce and carrot sticks, I wouldn’t be a good citizen if I didn’t know and couldn’t prove that capitalism is the best defense I have for the liberty I cherish.
Kahryn Rombach, 2008 MCPP Intern
Nasty individualism? What’s nasty – individualism is beautiful. I am me, and only myself; why should I live for anyone but myself?
There are those who would argue that living for oneself serves not only to damage others, but even to damage the self. It could be said that you are defined by everyone BUT yourself. Your love of personal freedom, for example, was cultivated in you by your family and peers, but only because doing so is culturally acceptable here. Even your name, sir, is not your own.
I do not recall exactly who it was (Mises, I think), but one of the great economists in our past posited that we always operate individually. Groups, he held, do not act. Certain members within the group act, but the group itself does not act. The view is called methodological individualism, if You want to impress someone with big words.
@ Kahryn: An argument can be made from existentialism, though, that until one has voluntarily embraced those things given to You from the outside (name, love of freedom, social norms, and so on), one is living in bad faith. That is, one could argue that it is true that my name is not my own initially, but given time, I have come to appreciate and love the name jsrule. I have chosen to make it part of my identity. I could have rejected it and chosen a different name, but I chose to keep jsrule. That was my choice. That was me, acting as an individual, exercising my freedom.
“Hasn’t it already been established that communism, once tried, failed?”
As Barzun put it (from my memory) “With the right kind of people, any eutopia is workable.” That is, we can imagine a world where everyone fits to a system. And it just takes those kind of people to let it last.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum…
jsrule: I agree with you insofar as a distinction is made between appreciating the self and living only for the self. I think we’re on the same page in terms of the importance of appreciating and giving due appreciation to external factors.
Also, wouldn’t methodological individualism be the reason why a communist community ultimately fails?
James: That’s why I brought in the concept of monastic life. There’s something about that world where everyone truly does have a place in a predetermined system. There are even some lay ecumenical organizations who model themselves after contemporary monastaries – I suppose my question now would have to be whether the types of individuals interested in this lifestyle are the only “right kind of people.
I think we’re attributing things to both capitalism and communism that aren’t neccessary components.
Capitalism makes no claims, moral judgments, or favoritisms towards individuality. All it means is the absence of force in economic decisions. People can choose any arrangements they wish (monastaries, etc.) and any attitudes and values they wish, so long as they do not use force.
Communism, on the other hand, is nothing but force. It is merely the idea that everyone should be forced to do certain things with thier resources (what they do, who decides, and how it’s enforced are secondary).
I do not see how anyone, with any value system, could beleive that using violence to control people is better than using only peaceful, non-violence to attempt to persuade people. Capitalism allows for this, communism does not.
Oh come now, IMM, play empathetic for a bit…
Doesn’t capitalism, while not legally forcing man to do much, effectively force him to do things like get a job? I mean, his choice is either that or to scrape off what charity he receives from friends, family, church, or the general generosity of the people that walk past. Not much of a choice, right?
It also asks you to be a generally decent person, doesn’t it? If all men were devils, wouldn’t society be impossible?
I’m even putting those questions in somewhat glowing terms. A real skeptic can make it sound worse.