And, he is absolutely correct, if we are to assume that "improving the lot of the ordinary people" involves nothing more than an accumulation of material wealth. Herein lies the fallacy of the whole system, for it flies in the face of what all the great religions and the sages of history have defined as being necessary for the achievement of an acceptable level of humanity.
I speak of virtue, virtues that are the very hallmark of humanity. Not only does capitalism ignore the virtues,
it all but mandates their opposites in sins.
Foremost among the universally acknowledged virtues are the
following: Patience, Kindness, Humility,
Temperance and Charity. Inversely, the
sins are all but mandated by the necessities of an economic system in which the
overriding value is material gain. In such
a system, Patience is replaced with Wrath, Kindness with Envy, Humility, with
Pride, Temperance with Gluttony and Charity with Greed. An honest examination of each of these should
make the validity of each one obvious.
In the competitive world of capitalism, driven as one is to achieve, there is little time for patience lest you fall behind a quota or a rival. Failure in reaching a quota can lead to a destructive anger with yourself, or in the second instance anger directed at your rival who then becomes elevated to the role of enemy. Kindness, which all too often is viewed as weakness anyway, gives way to envy for which one must find an excuse, either blind luck or an unfair advantage by the others. The envy is not only felt for the success of your rival but for the success of any or all others. In reality you find yourself in competition with the whole of society if not the world. In the event, however, that you should surpass your quota or best your rival, the temptation for excessive pride in your achievement may be temporarily satisfying to yourself, but it will hardly endear you to others. Think of what your reaction to the boasting of your rival would be should he have prevailed. It is highly unlikely that you might think of him as being temperate in his pride of acquisition. You might well accuse him of gluttony. Is there anything more disgusting? Perhaps not, but there is something far more destructive, and that is greed. Greed is considered by many to be the deadliest of the deadly sins, for its inverse is charity. The aims and objectives of a capitalistic system mandates greed, for capitalism must incessantly grow to avoid stagnation resulting in an over consumption that lays waste to the earth's limited resources. Does this truly represent an improvement in the lot of ordinary people? In the face of these truths, Milton Friedman has the audacity to suggest:
"The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system."
Is this an admission of guilt? Is this a conclusion that greed is inherent? Has he little or no faith in man's capacity for goodness? What could he be thinking? I have heard Friedman argue in support of inherited wealth as a means of passing something on to better the lot of succeeding generations, suggesting that we are a family-oriented society, and that perhaps our greatest incentive for accumulating wealth is to provide for our offspring. But is there no thought that it might better their lot to pass on an earth whose resources have been carefully conserved, rather than to pass on the ill-gotten monetary gains derived from the waste and ever-increasing exploitation of those resources that the capitalist system demands?
Then too, this article would not be complete without some mention of the damage such a system does to the human psyche. This system has boastfully led to the concept of the "rugged individual," the man who needs no one. "It's me against the world." How silly can we get? Once again, religions and sages have preached the necessity for brotherhood. We are our brother's keeper. The indoctrinated idea that man is at odds with his fellow man and competitive by nature is false. His natural inclination is to work in accord with others for the good of all. Driven by a desire to beat the other guy in the accumulation of more and more, deceit becomes a choice for success, if not mandatory. With the loss of truth, there can be no trust, and with the loss of trust this thing called love is no longer possible, and when love goes, there goes humanity.
So, while I can't argue with the success of their system in terms of what they perceive as its function of attempting to satisfy an insatiable greed, I can certainly argue that its success turns to failure in terms of a just society or the perpetuation of the human race.
I would hope that sanity
will prevail and the alteration in our life style which will be quite severe,
will be met with a calm deliberation in the transformation of power from that
of the oligarchy to we the people. Let
the people be defined as Carl Sandburg does In his poem "The People Yes"
wherein he refers to the people as, "The Hallelujah Chorus forever shifting its
star soloist.
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