Twice this policy almost ended civilization, in 1962 and 1986. Yet when Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon instigated the policy of détente, or cooperation, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, tensions between the super powers decreased until Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, and repudiated détente. In 1986 a Norwegian weather rocket almost triggered an automated Soviet nuclear attack, and this time it was the Soviet Union's Chairman Gorbachev who began the new era of cooperation and disarmament.
What is true for international affairs is also true for our economic system. The basic result matrix for the Prisoner's Dilemma says that if both parties cooperate they will get 90% of what they want. If one is selfish and the other cooperates the one who is selfish gets 100% of what he wants and the person who cooperates gets nothing. Finally, if both sides are selfish, the two parties only get 50% of what they want.
When most of us look at the matrix, we see that if we are selfish, we are guaranteed of getting at least 50% of what we want from a particular situation, and we may get as much as 100% of what we want. On the other hand, if we cooperate, the matrix states we only have a 50% chance of getting 90% of what we want, and a 50% chance of getting nothing. This seems like a perfectly sane rationale, and as Marx pointed out, it is, in a purely materialistic sense.
In a purely human and societal sense, it is insane.
In order for it to work, it requires us to treat both ourselves and other people as "things," not human beings. We must alienate ourselves from our own humanity, and that of our fellow humans, in order for this system to succeed. It is a system which makes perfect sense to a criminal or a paranoid-schizophrenic, or anyone who is fearful that they won't get what they believe is their "rightful" share; which, given human nature, is generally more than they are justly entitled to. It is not a workable system in the long term for any society, because without cooperation, there can be no society.
The matrix for the "Prisoner's Dilemma" says that honest cooperation will always get both sides most of what they want, while experience has shown us that selfishness will potentially get us an unexpected and undesired result, such as global thermonuclear war. If the long-term interaction of large groups of humans is viewed as an indeterminate, non-zero sum game (even though parts of the interaction between individuals may be determinate or zero-sum games), then logically, for the group as a whole, honest cooperation is the best choice for group interaction.
Many years ago, the most overt types of mental illness were called "anti-social behavior" in polite society. For this reason, I named the selfish, sociopathic behavior of laissez faire capitalism "anti-social capitalism."
If "anti-social capitalism" is the term for the form of capitalism currently being inflicted on our nation, then its opposite must be termed Social Capitalism.
The primary purpose of Social Capitalism is for all of the members of a society to maximize not their earnings, but their potential as human beings. The underlying ideal of the system is that we work to live, we do not live to work. The economic system of Social Capitalism always places people ahead of things.
So what constitutes Social Capitalism?
Three words: fairness, cooperation, and hope.
Social Capitalism does not end competition; in fact the only way to insure fairness within the system is to have a vibrant, competitive market.
Social Capitalism does not end entrepreneurship; in fact the idea of hope demands that this idea is absolutely necessary for the system to work.
Social Capitalism does not spell the end of stocks as a means of investing in a company; but it does recognize that the labor of the employee is as much an investment in a business as capital, and that a business operates better when its workers have a stake in the business, and cooperate as partners, not acquiesce as mindless drones.
Social Capitalism is against conglomerates, trusts, monopolies, mergers and acquisitions, and anything else that expands a business to the point where it loses the ability for ownership to cooperate with its workforce, and in the process, kills fairness, competition and hope, and loses its connection with humanity. We must accept a simple fact: that unrestricted growth is a philosophy for cancer, not for any healthy human enterprise. Moreover, any business that is too big to fail, is much too big to exist; so size must be limited.
Social Capitalism believes that a business has a responsibility to both its community and to humanity as a whole, that supersedes its responsibility to shareholders: if a business cannot produce its product without endangering its community or its customers, it should go out of business.
