I posted this answer:
Since there are no classes (i.e., castes) under Capitalism, the question is flawed. Nonetheless, in order to answer the underlying premise of the question, I’ll take the vague term “working class” to mean individuals who are employed and being paid in the form of hourly wages.
I not only agree, I know not only because general prosperity is in the philosophic nature of capitalism but also because I’ve observed it and lived it.
Capitalism infers laissez-faire, meaning to leave every individual free to work and trade in the social absence of forcible interference, including by government officials, who are constitutionally limited in their legal powers to the protection of individual rights. Under such social conditions, where all aggressive physical force, both “legal” (public) and illegal (private), is banished from human relationships, the only way to improve one’s economic circumstances is through voluntary contract--that is, trade, or mutually beneficial exchange of value for value. Under capitalism, no one can get richer through force of theft, fraud, enslavement of others, or government favor. People can only enrich themselves to the extent they lift others. Capitalism is thus the system of mutual betterment in pursuit of self-improvement. Thanks to free trade, the most successful earn their fortunes by providing value, and the richest--the John D. Rockefellers and Howard Hugheses and Jeff Bezoses--get that way by providing the most value for the most people. Workers are huge beneficiaries of this Capitalist process.
I said I’ve observed and lived this truth. I’m surrounded by goods and services--from ceramic bowls to automobiles that, left to my own “working class” devices—my own labor—could never build myself. As you walk through any retail establishment, ask yourself as a “working classer” how and why the goods you observe got there. And they are provided at prices I can afford, thanks to the investments in productivity-enhancing machines and methods employed by businessmen that raise the value, and thus real wages, of employees’ labor. These goods are provided mainly by profit-seeking businessmen and entrepreneurs. Their “working classes”—their employees—are all paid for by money earned working at jobs created by these high-earning, high net-worth-creating, highly creative workers. My AT&T cell phone is the product of countless people, up and down the income scale, working for countless companies located in countless countries in countless occupations, from the mines to the AT&T retail store shelves, all working to turn nature’s raw materials into my cell phone for me, each working for his/her own self-betterment, none of whom knows me or vice-versa--a shared prosperity only possible under the rigorously protected individual freedom of Capitalism. And I earn the money to buy the phone working at a trade, plumbing, made possible not only by my own labor but by tools, materials, and processes provided by others in the same manner as my cell phone.
The “working class” has been around for thousands of years. But the living standard of workers—who mainly worked for themselves in a hand-to-mouth existence—did not start improving until the rise of modern Capitalism that came out of The Enlightenment, which introduced the values of respect for reason, individualism (including individual rights), and limited rights-protecting government. Over the last 250 years, the general living standard, which has been identified as “The Great Enrichment”, has exploded up to 100-fold in parts of the world that embraced a substantial degree of Capitalism. The so-called “working class” certainly is included in this enrichment. Anyone willing to work can participate in Capitalism’s extensive network of voluntary cooperative productiveness, raising themselves economically as far as their ability, ambition, personal circumstances, values, judgement, and rational choices will carry them. There are no guarantees, but no victims. There is only the freedom to try.
Of course, laissez-faire capitalism--the complete separation of economics and state--doesn’t exist in pure form anywhere, and never has. Economies have been and are corrupted by varying degrees of government-imposed redistributive taxes, rights-violating regulations, self-aggrandizing cronyism, and other forms of coercive interference into the economy. But to the extent that laissez-faire exists in a nation and between nations of the world, people who rarely even know each other get better together through the win-win peaceful coexistence of trade, resulting in a natural rise in the general standard of living.
Do I agree that Capitalism has been responsible for dramatically improving the “working class” standard of living? You bet. While objective laws, labor unions, and the like have their place in a free society based on individual rights (which is what Capitalism is), no act of government or “working class” movement could have lifted the common man’s living standard out of the grinding poverty that existed for millenia, and never has. That lift was achieved by the liberation of the “common” or ordinary individual that came out of the Enlightenment and is which we call Capitalism. That I, a trade union worker, can sit on my couch, with my Dell computer, open it to a website named “QUORA,” and answer this question, while snacking on cheap food purchased from a nearby supermarket, in the comfort and safety of my private home, is my proof of the truth of the fact that “Capitalism has been responsible for dramatically improving the working class’ standard of living.”
* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:
Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]
You can also reply to other users’ answers.]
Related Reading:
Inequality Has Surged Since 1989, but the Lifestyle Gap Has Shrunk by John Tamny for FEE
QUORA: ‘How is capitalism NOT a zero-sum game?’
The Capitalist Manifesto by Andrew Bernstein
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QUORA *: 'How is capitalism good despite the fact that it creates higher and lower classes?'
QUORA: ‘Given that I live in a capitalist society, how can I avoid having my labor exploited?’
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On ‘Capitalist Government’ and Corporate Bailouts
QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’
QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘
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2 comments:
I agree that Capitalism has a shared responsibility for dramatically improving the working class’ standard of living.
First of all, capitalism, through law and government, gets the crooks out of the way. And in the same way, it keeps crooks trying to pose as politicians from infecting law and government. This way, such crooks can't displace law and government with crime under color of law and government. All this removes the impediments against everybody, not just the working 'class'. This is capitalism's responsibility.
The rest of the responsibility, the majority part of it, is taken up by the working 'class' and everybody else who also works, by going to work and staying at work producing and trading goods and services through markets. They all produce their own markets by producing supply, then by registering demand by means of their supply.
The only 'the market' there is exists only in peoples' heads. It is their belief of what people want and, so, what they believe people will produce. That's peoples' guide in deciding what to supply and demand, thus, what markets to produce 'out there'. They can take their own abilities and preferences into account in this, since for others, 'the market' includes others' beliefs about what they want and, so, will produce. Two way street; every way field. In case of conflict, capitalism resolves them through civil law, and through criminal law, if conflict has taken physically violent form, which would automatically be initiatory physical force.
The U.S. and all the other European nations involved in Trans-Atlantic slave trade were Capitalist. There is nothing in capitalism that prevents any number of abuses of workers. The sweat shops that your Dell was built in are mostly offshore; although you might talk with you local Amazon employee or "independent contractor" about how little they get to negotiate anything.
Labor has never been any significant part of the ownership class except by democratic
government law and it's enforcement. You delude yourself mightily by pretending your small business puts you, in any way shape or form, into the Capitalist oligarchies that currently write our laws and buy our elections.
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