Capitalism - Part 2

In the previous essay, I dealt with the erroneous idea of most Libertarians that property rights as defined by Locke are based upon these eternal verities of truth and justice. There is another way that proponents of free-market capitalism try to justify their outlook, and that is through a utilitarian method which sees the ultimate good in society as produced wealth, and states that capitalism is the most efficient system of producing wealth. This can be done through an appeal to history which states the all the nations that have embraced capitalism have thrived, whereas those that have not have remained in stagnation. The problem is that we can't determine the absolute success of a system by an appeal to history. We have no knowledge of multiple human histories to create some type of criteria to judge this history upon, and because of that we don't know both the time period to determine the absolute success of a system, and all of the other societal factors that an economic system is contingent upon for its success. Just as proponents of free market capitalism claim that the success of corporatism in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy cannot be attributed to only the economic system, because there were so many other factors, like a war time economy, and it was only established for such a short time, that is the same argument that the Marxists use against capitalism, mainly the argument that capitalism has only been around for a short period in history, and there are a lot of factors that need to be considered. The proponent of capitalism will have to resort to associating the multitude of societal factors in a way that will always explain away a present problem of capitalism, but will always posit capitalism as the ultimate economic system. This is no different from the Marxists who don't disagree with the proponents of capitalism as far as the historical facts are concerned, but posit different historical theories to explain these facts. I am reminded of Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" claim at the demise of Soviet Union, when he stated that we have achieved the end of history in liberal democracy and a free-market economy, only to have Radical Islam creep up on the world stage, but I am sure he would explain that away. To try to assert that capitalism is the most effective system because of the last 200 years will be a futile attempt. The conservative position of somebody like a Hume will just say that it works, and that we must use the "wisdom of tradition" for our judgments. This is limited in that it doesn't allow us to make claims that capitalism is the most successful system, it is limited to just that it works, and if it is "not broke then don't fix it". This doesn't allow for any sort of human innovation as far as economic policies are concerned, there would be no method to deal with present problems like environmental ones. The other way is to posit some meta-history like Fukuyama does, but this always runs the problem of when new factors and problems come to play, how are they explained. Do we use the meta-history of Fukuyama, or the meta-history of Marx to explain them. As I said, we do not have knowledge of previous human histories to determine the veracity of Fukuyama's theory, or that of the Marxists, and yes the present day Marxists have adapted to explain away the problems that history seemed to give to Marx's initial theory. The other way that free-market capitalists try to defend their position is through a philosophical discipline of human action called praxeology. I am new to this disclipline, but from a very cursory understanding it doesn’t seem to have the needed level of explanatory power. I say this because from what I read praxeology sharply distinguishes itself from psychology, in that it makes no claims on human motivation, just on human action, and the consequences of these actions. But for the sake of the original argument, let us assume that capitalism generates the most wealth.

The argument would be something like this, if the ultimate good to be maximized is overall wealth, and capitalism as a system generates the most overall wealth, then it would be the best system. This does not take into consideration how that wealth is distributed; it is true that we are experiencing greater and greater polarization of wealth amongst the members of society. This also does not take into consideration the rights of workers as far as putting a limit to the hours a week they can work, so they can pursue activities necessary for the flourishing of a human being. This includes both the social, creative, physical, and rational dimension of man. Why would overall wealth be a good thing? The proponents of free-market capitalism would throw a whole bunch of reasons, until it is viewed from the human level, then they would say that it allows for humans to pursue projects that were never before possible. This is where the argument lies, because one of the main criticisms of distributism against capitalism is that is creates conditions in society where people are not free to pursue these truly human projects. Thus the goal would be to produce these substantial freedoms that allow for people to live flourishing lives. The way to do this would not be to increase wealth indiscriminately, but to produce goods and services that add to human capabilities. The bring this back to the Kantian perspective of the last essay, to have these substantial freedoms that allow for both these imperfect and perfect virtues to be manifest from the Kantian view. There are two questions that arise from this. Is free market capitalism the best system at the overall distribution of substantial freedoms, and will substantial freedoms alone create the conditions for the flourishing of the human being? I believe the answer to both of these questions is no. The answer to the first would be based in the some of the economic principles of corporatism and distributism. I would urge my readers to look into those economic systems. The answer to the second would be in the notion of an aesthetic-ethical cultural ideal, which I will go into this in the next essay. Substantial freedoms would be a necessary but not sufficient condition for human flourishing.