Why Is Capitalism Immoral?

This is going to ramble a bit. Grab a snack.

The about page of this newsletter has a throwaway line about how I write sarcastic little stories about killing monsters and fighting capitalism. (Nothing published recently. As I have mentioned, I am looking for an agent for the latest book. When, and most likely if that fails, I might consider serializing it at the newsletter. A lot of people seem to be doing that.) I received a semi-polite note challenging the notion that anyone would think that capitalism should be fought. A reminder that some things probably need to be restated from time to time, to keep them top of mind.

This is not going to be an overly philosophical rumination. I frankly find most philosophers too disconnected from reality to be of much help in normal life (Nietzsche was a selfish ass, Hayek needed to spend more time with real people and less time with his imagination, Galbraith could have done with less thinking and more time observing how power really works, etc.) Nor is this an exhaustive historical overview of capitalism or economics. It is merely a reflection on where we are now and some of the defenses of the current situation. I doubt anything I say here will be revelatory but, as I said, sometimes things bear repeating.

Modern capitalism -- defined here as shareholder supremacy and valuing finance over workers and society -- is based on the notion that letting people die is acceptable. Now, I know that seems harsh, but it is based on the behavior of the capitalists themselves. Take the way that central banks manage the economy. Right now, the Federal Reserve is attempting to slow wage growth and employment growth in order to tamp down inflation. The chairman of the Fed has stated that he intends to make hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their jobs in order to fight inflation. Even in the best of times, the Fed has a dual mandate to control inflation and manage unemployment -- meaning that they will not ensure that everyone has a job. Furthermore, the unemployment rate in the US only measures people actively looking for work. So, we know that there will never be, by design, enough jobs for everyone who is actively seeking work,

What happens when you do not have a job in modern capitalism? You go without -- without shelter, without medical care, without food. The lack of any of one of those could kill a person. Now, you might argue that we have built a welfare system in this country to help people who cannot work. That is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. The system largely abandons anyone who is not a child, and the party and institutions most associated with capital in this country actively argue for its continued diminishment.

In other words, the representatives of capital are fine with people they know will not be able to find jobs being denied help when they cannot, well, find jobs. The question of how those people are to get medical care, shelter, or food is apparently reliance on a patchwork of charities. Failing that, they are to suffer and die. Anything less would encourage people to not take whatever work at whatever pay and conditions are forced upon them. Despite studies showing that, for example, UBI does not decrease work and does increase well-being, capitalists still insist on making people suffer in order to force them to take work at less pay and in unsafe conditions. We even have people argue after factory collapses in third world countries that those deaths are okay, since its okay to kill people in order to accelerate economic growth.

I find those positions immoral. You may argue that they are not required for capitalism, but the defenders of modern capitalism consistently argue otherwise.

Another approach to defend the morality of capitalism is to claim that it leads to democracy. I think this is demonstrably not the case. The increased open market economy of China has done nothing to make that country free. Russia, Hungary, Turkey, Singapore, South Korea before its revolution in the 1980s, Pinochet's Chile, Franco's Spain, the American Antebellum South, the Jim Crow America -- all capitalist societies. There is nothing in a free market that guarantees or even encourages democracy. Frankly, given the power that capitalism gives oligarchs and multi-nationals compared to the state, it seems much more reasonable to conclude that capitalism is more likely to result in less freedom than more. Sure, some people at the top have a great deal of freedom -- but then, so did the highest-ranking feudal lords and I don't see people pretending that feudalism is freedom (please, do not point me to the Fox News host that does. I am happier in my ignorance.)

One area that I do have sympathy for is the notion that capitalism has materially improved lives. There is no doubt that the technological revolution has increased the general standard of living of a great deal of the planet's population. I have no illusions on where I would fall on the king-to-shit-shoveler spectrum that defined most of human existence. But people are naturally creative. Real inventors, real creatives create not because there is some monetary gain to be had but because they cannot resist trying to make something cool. And perhaps there is an argument to be made that capitalism facilitates the spread of such technologies, but it is just as easy to argue that capitalism, but empowering the capitalists to protect their turf, retards such growth. It is probably not a coincidence that this era of hyper-consolidated corporations that innovation has stagnated in so many areas. And even if a market is required to accelerate the spread of such advances, why do the players in that market have to by shareholder corporations rather than worker collectives? Why does the interest of capital, which risks nothing of import, have to be given precedence of the risk workers take -- the risk of burring years off their lives by inventing that time in a company, years that are quite literally irretrievable? How is prioritizing money over time moral?

Perhaps the final argument in favor of the morality of capitalism is a relative one: what about the alternatives. This has some merit. While it is important to keep economic and political systems separate (as noted already, there is nothing that ties democracy and freedom to capitalism and quite a lot of evidence that shows that capitalism quite happily undermines, or at least does not promote, democracy), anyone who wishes to promote communism must reckon with the fact that is has not produced a free society anywhere it has been tried. But communism is not the only alternative -- social democracy does much better than American capitalism on all measures. But more importantly, "it is better than the alternatives" is a weak argument for continuing an immoral system. Even if such an observation were true, it is not a defense of the immoral system. It is rather an obligation to conceive and work towards an alternative, even if the final shape and form of the alternative is not yet apparent. You aren't defending capitalism when you point out the failures of its competitors -- you are condemning your own moral imagination.

As I said, this was going to ramble. I doubt very much I have said anything you haven't heard before and I likely have not convinced you any random finance bros or private equity partners who have wandered by. And that is okay. As I said, this is not a rigorous philosophical or historical treatment. But maybe these musings have helped you put your finger on why so much of our society seems off, like moving through it makes you feel dirty and compromised no matter how much you try and be a good person.

At its core, modern capitalism is not built on the creativity and cooperation that comes naturally to human beings, but rather on punishment and stratification. It strives not to help but to engender suffering as a means to ensure control. I don't have any pith slogans or easy solutions on offer. It took generations to arrive here, and it will to be undone in a moment. But I do know that if we refuse to admit that what we have built is immoral and anti-human, we won't be able to make any progress against it at all.