This is the great tragedy of what I call “antisocial” capitalism. It is a system of absentee owners, and managers who are frightened to death about losing the little piece of limited, temporary power that they have attained. The owners play a dishonest little game of management against labor (divide and conquer), to avoid dirtying their investor class hands. Both management and labor are employees (workers), who should be working together, in opposition to the owners, in matters which negatively effect the workforce, e.g., cutting wages and benefits.
I would like to propose that there are two general types of capitalism: the antisocial and the social. Antisocial capitalism is that endorsed by Herbert Hoover, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Grover Norquist and every other proponent of free market, social Darwinist, laissez faire capitalism for the last century and a half. It celebrates a freebooting, opportunistic, devil take the hindmost attitude exemplified in film Wall Street by Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko.
The laissez faire or antisocial form of capitalism is not an immoral system, simply an inhuman one. “[T]his science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise…[It] is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house [pub or saloon as we Americans say]; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the [antisocial capitalist] takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do.”
Thus wrote Karl Marx in his Human Requirements and the Division of Labor; from his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, written in 1844. (The words in brackets are ones I have modified or added for the sake of continuity or clarity.) I always hesitate to quote Marx to make a point, because of the automatic negative reaction that his name elicits. However, his observations on antisocial capitalism, or what he called “political economy,” seem to me in this case, spot on, and worth quoting.
Our nation's own Thomas Jefferson (in a letter to James Madison in 1797) I think spoke to the effects of such a system: "In truth, I do not recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is eternally and systematically engaged in the destruction of its own species. What is called civilization seems to have no other effect on him than to teach him to pursue the principle of bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all] on a larger scale, and in place of the little contests of tribe against tribe, to engage all the quarters of the earth in the same work of destruction. When we add to this that as to the other species of animals, the lions and tigers are mere lambs compared with man as a destroyer, we must conclude that it is in man alone that nature has been able to find a sufficient barrier against the too great multiplication of other animals and of man himself, an equilibrating power against the fecundity of generation." (The Complete Works of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition; Volume 9, p. 360; 1904).
To have a “war of all against all,” we must first designate then denigrate all of our potential rivals and adversaries. Then we turn this human opposition into things rather than people either directly or indirectly by declaring some inhuman goal—whether abstract or concrete—that is more important than those people who might get in the way of that goal. At the instant we turn people into things, or place the acquisition or maintenance of things ahead of people, we have made our first strides down the slippery slope of inhumanity. This is accomplished by the expedient of dehumanizing ourselves and others for no reason other than the acquisition of more power or material wealth.
There is perhaps, in the broadest sense, a moral system to the unbridled acquisition of wealth and power, as well as the remorseless exploitation of your fellow human beings in attaining these ends, as Marx states above. However, if philosophy and its many branches (especially moral philosophy or ethics) are to be something more than some sort of perverse zero sum game, then it must reinforce and reward the best of our humanity, not replace it or render it moot.
There is one further problem with antisocial capitalism and its evolution towards a concentration of wealth in the investor class, whose sole interest is increasing its wealth regardless of the human cost. This was pointed out by Paul Kennedy in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. When a nation's primary product becomes financial services, not manufactured goods or raw materials, history shows that nation is in a state of decline. It happened to Imperial Spain, the Dutch Republic, and the British Empire. It is now happening to the United States of America.
So, why does this decline occur? I think that part of the answer is the fact that a nation who does not have some direct control over the form and quality of the goods it manufactures, produces, and consumes; lacks control over its own future. This idea was at the center of Gandhi's daily acts of non-violent resistance to the British Empire, from weaving his own cloth to making his own salt. This same idea also played an important role in the American Revolution, which was as much against the trade monopoly of the British East India Company as it was the British Crown.
The other part of my answer for the decline lies in the very nature of the remaining types of employment that exist when a nation no longer produces a physical product; only numbers on a balance sheet.
Human beings like to feel that the work (as well as other activities) that they do has some meaning, some permanence, makes some sort of difference to the world they live in. The alienation which we feel—first discussed by Hegel and at the core of every existentialist philosophy since Kierkegaard—is due to the lack of these qualities, the disconnection which we feel with our work, its product, our society, and its political and economic systems. The investor class has promoted this alienation, telling us that it, and the accompanying frustration, anger, and depression is “normal,” in their attempt to maintain power.
I am going to quote Karl Marx once again, this time from Volume I of Capital, (Part VII, The Accumulation of Capital; Section 4: Different Forms of Relative Surplus Population, The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation), because he stated it so clearly, “...within the [antisocial] capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of [antisocial] capital.”
My concept of social capitalism is regrettably not yet fully developed. It is, as its name implies, a hybrid. Its true essence is much more about first changing our hearts and then changing the system. It is about reducing then eliminating the alienation we feel in our lives, in our jobs, and towards our fellow human beings. It is about changing the way we compete with each other at every level of our lives. No longer will it be the “war of all against all,” a death match that destroys the humanity of both victor and vanquished. It will be a system where the real measure of your success is in the degree of your humanity.
Social capitalism is not about making everyone economically equal, or eliminating private property. Nor is it about the government micromanaging the economy, or eliminating the risk taking entrepreneur. It is about the government acting as equipoise to the power of corporations and the wealthy, rather than their tame lapdogs. It is about preventing the plutocrats and their corporate surrogates from becoming so powerful economically and politically, that they become a threat to the liberty enjoyed by We the People, as well as the institutions that represent us. It is about supporting the little guy against the colossus, defending the weak against the strong, and speaking for those who are mute against those who shout at the top of their lungs.
Perhaps this is all a utopian dream. But to attempt to make it even partial reality is infinitely preferable to the dystopian nightmare that looms before the American people.
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