Why should we want to reinvent capitalism? Rather than reinvent it, we should remind ourselves why capitalism is so pernicious. We could start by stating the obvious (which, apparently, needs restating): the nature and logic of capitalism are incorrigibly avaricious. As a property system driven by the need to maximize profit and production, capitalism is a giant, ever-whirling vortex of accumulation. Anything but conservative, it’s the most dynamic and protean economy in history. As Marx observed in the opening pages of The Communist Manifesto, capitalism thrives on constant reinvention: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.” Always seeking new ways to make money, capitalists have reinvented the system several times already. Enclosures, factories, Fordism, automation and “flexible production”—metamorphosis for the sake of profit is the only constant in capitalism. Each incarnation has featured new brands of exploitation and corruption, designed and packaged by masters of economic and managerial sophistry.
True economic recovery will require creative solutions to deeply rooted problems. Our first great task is to change the way we talk about what's possible.
To be sure, reformers have been partially successful at shaping these reinventions: collective bargaining, regulations of business, the welfare state. Whatever victories for justice working people have won have been hard-fought and tenuous, the fruit of protracted struggle. But however ingenious or effective the reforms, they’ve been limited, if not eventually subverted, by the intractably mercenary nature of capitalism. As we can see from the history of the past forty years—an era that has been marked by a transatlantic assault on social democracy and New Deal/Great Society liberalism—the rage to accumulate remains the predatory heart and soul of capitalism. We have good reason to assume that capitalists will always seek and find fresh ways to cast off the fetters and vanquish their opponents.
But the iniquity of capitalism goes deeper than its injustice as a political economy, its amoral ingenuity in technical prowess or its rapacious relationship to the natural world. However lissome its face or benign its manner, capitalism compels us to be greedy, callous and petty. It takes what the Greeks called pleonexia—an endless hunger for more and more—and transforms it from a tawdry and dangerous vice into the central virtue of the system. The sanctity of “growth” in capitalist culture stems from this moral alchemy, as does the elevation of market competition into a model of human affairs.
The truth is that people matter more than money. While most everyone would agree with that statement, few of us direct our lives guided by the principle.
Conscripting us into an economic war, capitalism turns us into soldiers of fortune, steeled against casualties and collateral damage, ransacking the earth to fill the shelves and banks with plunder. Capitalism stands condemned most profoundly not by its maldistribution of wealth or its ecological despoliation but by its systematic cultivation of people inclined toward injustice and predation. And I think we on the left need to start dismissing as utterly irrelevant the standard apologetic riposte: the material prosperity and technological achievement generated by capitalist enterprise. No amount of goods can compensate for the damage wrought on human nature by the deliberate nurturance of our vilest qualities. The desecration of the values we claim to hold most dear is the primary reason we should want to abolish, not reinvent, capitalism.
This suggests that what needs reinvention is not capitalism—leave that to the well-mannered barbarians in the business schools—but our moral and spiritual imagination. I don’t mean only the wisdom that lies in the venerable traditions of the left. Even those who have opposed capitalism have often fallen for its illusions: the ideal of “growth,” the mythology of “progress,” the cipher of “innovation.”
Any effort to end the tyranny of Mammon must be leavened by other concerns. What does it mean to be human? What do we really want? These are moral, even religious questions—the kind of questions we often dismiss as politically unserious, or relegate to the hallowed oblivion of “private life.” But they’re also political questions, for the answers determine the ends as well as the means of production. The ancient moral and metaphysical concerns may turn out to be not redoubts for reaction but wellsprings of radical hope.
Read the first proposal in the “Reimagining Capitalism” series, “The Rise of Benefit Corporations,” by Jamie Raskin.
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Every time you people use the word "capitalism" you are actually speaking about free trade monetarism. In the 19th century as America was growing the argument between the American enterprise system (developed by Hamilton, Carey, Lincoln and the best of our leaders) vs. the largely British controlled free trade system of empire often revolved around the use of the term "two capitalist system" - one (free trade) that is exploitive and has all the sins everyone has mentioned here, and the other (American enterprise) which is protective of labor and our industries. In summary, free trade capitalism harms workers. American enterprise capitalism protects workers. Study Carey's Harmony of Interests, Lincoln's Greenback program, and how FDR built the New Deal protections upon Carey's ideas.
There is a real alternative to what you call "capitalism" and it is not one of the various forms of "socialism" which the capitalists created to confused you.
The alternative to what you call capitalism is the American System of enterprise.
A simple desire to keep the fruits of one's own labor has nothing to do with one's propensity towards "exploitation and corruption". If you harm others, you should be punished. That has NOTHING to do with capitalism. You speak of "the obvious" greedy nature of anybody not willing to bow down to a third party, the government, by no means exploitative or corrupt themselves, and eagerly hand over the ethically obtained fruits of their own productivity, so that they may be redistributed to other incapable and/or unwilling to work for reward. Oh, and you offer Karl Marx as justification for your irrational perspective on capitalism, a man that was so determined to advocate his own philosophy on entitlements, that he let his own children STARVE TO DEATH rather than seek a legitimate source of income! I ask you, what do you think happens when these productive capitalist swine you speak of, get fed up being productive, only to have the government steal their money to give to the unproductive? At some point, the productive here in the U.S., being taxpayers, will look at their share of the unfunded liablity to support your entitlements, and decide to either hop the fence, or just check out of the system entirely. I'm fed up with idiots like you that try to use expensive words to justify what they believe to be a "given" justification of a concept, Marxism, which has destroyed every civilization it has touched.
Thank you, Dr. McCarraher. It needed to be said. I'm with you.
I agree that Capitalism has it's problems--it's not perfect, just like all other political systems thus far implemented into societies around the world. I also agree that there is inequity in power and money that's largely due to deregulation and monopolies and oligopolies created in our system today (too big too fail banks, the mortgage mess, I could go on). However, to the author's comment, "Even those who have opposed capitalism have often fallen for its illusions: the ideal of "growth," the mythology of "progress," the cipher of "innovation." This is a bit much. I hardly think it's an illusion of the numerous medical miracles that have been created (heart transplant, IVF, vaccinations, MRI, etc.), or engineering advances (my GOD too numerous to count, we could start with the airplane and move to computers). What would the people of the 18th or 19th century say to what they would see today? How about the ability to give birth to a child and live to see them live to adulthood, for starters. How many mothers gave birth to 6-10 children hoping 3 of them would make it to adulthood. What would these mothers think about the technology and medical progress made today (vaccinations, ultrasounds, cleft lip surgery)? These are only a "few" examples of "progress", "innovation," and "growth." The US is a dynamic and flexible society, that's why it's the richest nation in the world for a reason. And, being a born to immigrant parents to this country, I worked my way through... 5. posted by: simon341 at 06/14/2011 @ 1:09pm
I find the authors characterization of individuals at business school as "well mannered barbarians" to be incredibly offensive and inimical to the nature of real progressivism. I happen to have several friends at business school who plan to use their skills to better the world. Hard as it may be for sanctimonious Nation readers to imagine it, they do not have a monopoly on solutions to solves the world's problems.
Instead of invoking the debunked criticism by the dead god Marx, why don't you look at American history and find out that these criticisms of the moral and economic deficiencies of what you are calling capitalism were made over a century ago by many leaders of the trade union movement as well as national leaders including Abraham Lincoln. Study the economics programs of William and Henry Carey who perfected the American System in opposition to the foreign free trade system (i.e. capitalism as you known it. If you want to understand what is wrong with capitalism as you know it, study Carey not Marx.
Lunacy. Complete lunacy.
Bird cage liner at best.
@Classical Liberal
If not capitalism why would we have to have socialism? We do not live in a black and white world. It is indeed possible to combine aspects of socialism and capitalism in order to create some sort of hybrid economic system. And, moreover, it is possible to envision an entirely different system altogether. The fact that you view capitalism and socialism as the only economic alternatives only admits that you have succumbed to prevailing hegemonic ideology.
And lastly careful in your use of communism and socialism. There are essentially no similarities between theoretical socialism and practiced Soviet communism.
Well said. Capitalism not only destroys the worker but also Nature through its incessant need for profit.
What we need now is radical change. For years we have sought to bring about the end to capitalism because of the exploitation of workers. But now we must look beyond workers and into the environment.
The end of Capitalism in America truly is a "wellspring of radical hope." The "reimagining" of Capitalism that is discussed here is a radical de-construction and meant to truly be the end of Capitalism. The American Constitutional Republic at its very foundations is utterly incompatible with a socialist redistribution system. The entire idea of property rights, the right to self defense, personal liberty, and ultimately the Bill of Rights cannot exist under a socialist redistributive system. In order for this sort of system to be imposed, the categorically unique principles that America was founded on will simply have to be destroyed. This entire discussion is not about restoring individual liberties, including free enterprise, but destroying them and replacing them with a new form of communism, an American communism. In the unique American system government derives its just (and limited) powers from the people; under the centrally planned socialist system the people derive power from the government, which is to say the government controls all power. The American Constitutional Republic will cease to exist the day Free Enterprise Capitalism is destroyed.
Congratulations, Professor McCarraher. I applaud your courage. You have opened a can of worms that is long overdue. Capitalism and money are so sacred to our way of life that the mere suggestion that they be done away with is grounds for being burned at the stake.
Capitalism and democracy are natural opponents. Capitalism pits people against people and encourages a survival of the fittest, dog eat dog type of mindset. I must conquer him lest he conquer me. Democracy tends toward equality. One person's vote/opinion is no more or less valid than another's. We are all of one accord. If my neighbor is ill, I suffer also.
The truth is that people matter more than money. While most everyone would agree with that statement, few of us direct our lives guided by the principle. Until we, as a species, put each other on a higher plane of importance than the acquisition of wealth, no amount of "reimagining" (manipulating, rejiggering) capitalism is going to fix anything. If we simply relied more on each other and less on our bank accounts to meet our needs, the rest would eventually take care of itself.
Yet we are so deeply indoctrinated to the monetary system that, month by year by decade, we dutifully succumb to its demands as we inch toward the grave. When we get there and look back, how many magnificent ideas will have gone unimplemented, how much of life will have been unrealized because "I didn't have the money?" The hell of it is that money... 12. posted by: MMcDonough at 06/09/2011 @ 3:35pm
Is the secular left willing to grant a seat at the table to the Christian left (the theological descendants of the Niebuhrs, Richard and Reinhold)? We, too, have something to say about what it means to be human.
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