When I see statements about how important it is to return to a purely capitalist economic system, I just have to respond. I suspect that the lack of historical knowledge is leading us once again into an era that we overcame about a hundred years ago, but which is being forgotten. As Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
The very best description of "pure capitalism" I can think of, before labor unions and government regulation to protect both workers and consumers, is Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, written in 1906. If you have not read it, you simply must! It portrays pure capitalism allowed to do whatever it wanted, leading to horrendous abuse of workers and the deliberate sale of deadly products in which manufacturers put making money ahead of public safety. This is capitalism without limits or controls, the capitalism that existed around 1900, and it is exactly where we are headed again if the present trend toward unrestrained capitalist and consumer culture continues. Here is a link to the Wikipedia synopsis of The Jungle, and another link to the book online, which you can read for free, since the copyright has lapsed. It's a riveting book and a great glimpse into history before we had government limits on capitalism to force manufacturers to have at least a minimal social conscience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
http://www.online-literature.com/upton_sinclair/jungle/
Capitalism and consumerism have produced a wonderfully prosperous society for Americans and many other parts of the world, but the system has some terrible blind spots that would become wholesale blindness if we were to return to the kind of unrestrained laissez faire economics that prevailed during the time portrayed by The Jungle. I'll only touch on these issues, since neither time nor space permit a full exposition here. Consider what happens under unrestrained capitalism:
- Unsafe food and products are produced, resulting in many deaths and illnesses. We have already seen this in products from China.
- Wages fall dramatically because there are no labor regulations to force fair pay. Consequently, living conditions for the vast majority also fall dramatically.
- Working conditions become dangerous and working hours excessive because nobody forces industry to protect workers or limit their abuse by unscrupulous employers.
- Workers who become too old or are injured or ill are cast out of work because they are "unproductive" and there is no social net to catch them. If they have a serious illness they may become sicker or die because of the lack of finances to pay for medical care.
- Those who are not able or were never able to work are forced into abject squalor. For example, what happens to the mentally handicapped, the mentally ill, those with physical disabilities, the deaf, the blind, the aged? Who provides for them? Who advocates for them? Certainly not industry. Such people are discarded and left out of any prosperity capitalism produces because they are "unproductive."
- Society becomes even more widely stratified, with extreme wealth at the top and extreme poverty and hopelessness at the bottom.
These are the very conditions portrayed by The Jungle that existed only a hundred years ago. If we return to laissez faire capitalism, they are the conditions that will prevail again, with the added limitation of scarce resources that only the wealthy will enjoy. Capitalism has no conscience, no heart. It has no compassion. It exists solely to produce wealth for those who are able to participate and succeed, and those who are not are simply cast aside to be ground under the wheels of the system.
Surely, in this enlightened time, we can do better! Surely we can devise an economic system that uses resources wisely and sustainably, that includes everybody in the general prosperity, that provides safe and meaningful work for workers and safe, healthful products for consumers. Surely we can come up with a system that maximizes freedom, prosperity, AND compassion for all.
Chuck
Here are some more tidbits I found on this subject:
Upton Sinclair's speech on Socialism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C62Q9tAbG3I
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Short documentary on Upton Sinclair and the meat-packing industry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1aZbqjBF7A&feature=related
The Jungle movie trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHF_BWfSPik
Eeks! Just read the wikipedia description. Sounds like a tragedy!
Read the first few pages of the book... very well written. Thanks.
Hi Chuck-
Thanks for bringing up these points. Yes, I agree that some government regulation is important. People need to be protected against fraud and abuse. Government has been good and has made some wonderful strides in the past. I even happen to like our social security system to a certain degree. At the very least I have to admit it's worked well up to now although I don't like the forced aspect of it.
As the people found that more government regulation was a good thing, the capitalist owners figured out they could buy off certain congressmen and push through legislation that sounded like more regulation for industry when in effect it simply eliminated competition. At this point we started to get monopoly caitalism or you could call it corporatism or perhaps facism.
The best example of this is the creation of the Federal Reserve System. We were told this would protect us from the money interest when it actually gave them a complete monopoly on the creation of money. Ever since that turning point much of the government regulation that has passed has not actually regulated or restricted big business but enabled it to grow bigger without any true competition. The best example is the recent health care legislation that was a huge boon to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and I am sure will do little to actually make for a healthier society. I live in Massachusetts and all our system is forced health insurance with extremely little help to the poor to cover the cost. Scott Brown, our new state senator won on a platform of fighting a national health insurance bill. (I didn't vote for him by the way - I knew he was every bit a fake as I feel Obama has been)
I'm not sure what the solution is but I feel it must protect individual freedom and call for individual responsibility. Eliminating the Federal Reserve System would be a huge improvement in my opinion. I just feel that economic freedom is equally as important as all other civil rights and the only system that seems to give us something close to that is capitalism with some government protection as long as governments stay small in size, the people seem to be able to keep them less corrupt. Big government has actually become an enabler of big business now, not a control of it as it was back in 1906.
I've noticed that smaller countries seem to have better control over their goverments and seem to get a better deal for the people. The European countries seem to be better run. I think the worst examples of government run amuck are the largest ones - USA, USSR and China. So I also think keeping governments on a small scale is important. In the USA this could be done by returning most governmental power to the states.
I think consumerism will go away of it's own accord as the economy falls apart, I'm already seeing the beginnings of that happening.
I don't agree that capitalism has to have no heart. I consider the Mali gift economy to be an example of capitalism with heart (see my latest post at the Venus Project post). When socialism forces the issue by making tax payers pay to help the poor, people rely on government to provide help for their neighbors rather than taking on that responsibility for themselves. In this way socialism also lacks heart.
I think we probably both agree that heart or generosity is the important key here, the question is what social structures will best promote it?
Wendy