I posted this answer:
This is a great question, and highlights a little-acknowledged but important aspect of the capitalism-vs-socialism paradigm.
Socialists can and have established socialist companies; even, for a time, successfully. The key is for people to adhere to the basic principle of voluntary consent, and renounce the use of political power--governmental force and coercion--to impose their socialist beliefs on everyone by law.*
Capitalism and socialism can coexist peacefully under a government that is economically neutral in the same way and for the same reason as it is neutral on religion and conscience. In such a society, the government secures everyone’s individual rights to live by her/his own judgment equally and at all times.
Kibbutzim is an example of socialism coexistng with capitalism, because it is voluntary socialism. The Amish have a form of voluntary socialism. Neither Kibbutzes nor Amish communities are a threat to anyone else, and no one else is a threat to them so long as they adhere to the same basic, rights-respecting rule of law as everyone else.
In The Communistic Societies of the United States, Charles Nordhoff documents dozens of 19th Century communistic societies that were based on the common ownership of all property along with central economic and social planning, all based on strictly voluntary consent. Many of these communities were formed by refugees from Europe, where they were persecuted by governmental authorities still unified with religion. To escape the persecution, which often included jailing them for their beliefs, they emigrated to the capitalistic United States of America to take advantage of the freedom to live socialistically, if they chose to. In his History of American Socialisms John Humphrey Noyes expanded on these themes.
These societies collectively built and ran agricultural and manufacturing industries, trading and sometimes hiring workers from and with the “outside” Capitalist world. Though starting off poor, many grew to become quite prosperous (although rarely did any last past the founding generation.) The key features of these socialisms was voluntarism and the respect between the communists and the capitalist outside world for each other's rights and freedom. It’s amazing what people of common values can accomplish together when they get every associate’s voluntary consent, and respect the rights of those who want to pursue a different path.
The key takeaway is that capitalism is the natural consequence of free people guaranteed individual rights to life, liberty, rightfully acquired property, and the pursuit of happiness, including the rights to freedom of association, conscience, speech, and so on. Under these rule-of-law conditions, socialists are free to set up socialist companies. The danger arises when socialists turn to political power in order to use government force to impose their socialist values on the entire society regardless of anyone’s lack of consent. This is not peaceful socialism. This is criminal socialism. Perhaps the earliest practitioners of criminal socialism were the slaveholding plantations of the American antebellum South. In his best-selling Sociology for the South: Or the Failure of Free Society, leading pro-slavery intellectual George Fitzhugh described the Southern slave farm as “the beau Ideal of Communism,” and explained in detail how and why. In reading Fitzhugh’s arguments, one will recognize his theories, especially his anti-Capitalist arguments, as essentially those later popularized by Karl Marx.
The tyranny of theocracy was finally defeated when we separated religion and state, allowing all religions, agnostics, and atheists to peacefully coexist. The economic tyranny of socialism, as well as the free-for-all of our mixed, crony “capitalist” economic cold civil war, can be eliminated by separating economics and state, allowing people of differing economic beliefs and goals to peacefully coexist.
The conflict between capitalism and socialism is, fundamentally, a conflict between a free society and totalitarianism. In a free society, as history has shown, socialism and capitalism can peacefully coexist based on the principles of inalienable, equal individual rights governed by a rule of law that secures those rights equally and at all times. Political socialism—that is, government imposed socialism—offers no such peaceful coexistence between socialists and capitalists.
The little acknowledged truth is that while socialists are free to pursue their happiness under Capitalism, Capitalists do not enjoy the same freedom under the political socialism inspired by Marx, practiced in many forms throughout the last two centuries, and advocated by such modern “democratic” socialists as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Occasio-Cortez. Getting back to the QUORA question at hand, we don’t have to agonize over which works better. We only have to have a society where people are free to establish either socialist or capitalist companies, and whatever works, works. Why don't they? They can and they have. But they almost always fail, because the collectivist moral/economic vision that guides socialism runs contrary to the individualist nature of human life. Put simply, most people don't want to be chained to some collective. They want to be free to pursue their own concept of happiness, cooperating with others or being let alone as they choose.
.
The pioneering 19th Century socialists grasped this fact about human nature. As I previously wrote:
Success or fail, the [socialisms] were strictly voluntary arrangements, with none attempting to legally force their creed on others. And almost without exception, the socialisms failed. Also without exception, the architects of the socialisms offered excuse after excuse for why their particular attempts failed. The 19th Century socialists blamed their failures on everyone and everything, except their own theories. “[T]he time had not yet arrived” [P. 312] for socialism, observed one architect. “[W]e very much fear,” observed another, “that [socialism] will be unsuccessful on account of the selfishness of mankind, this being the principal obstacle to be overcome.” “General Depravity, all say,” observes Noyes, “is the villain in the whole story.” Quoting another socialist historian, whom he relied heavily on in this book, Noyes writes, “Macdonald himself, after ‘seeing stern reality,’ confesses that in his previous hopes of socialism he ‘had imagined mankind better than they are.’”
This is why socialism, in all of its political manifestations, always leads to tyranny. It has to, because it faces an implacable force—human nature. People simply want to live for themselves. Capitalism is consistent with human nature. Socialism is not. But as long as we maintain a rights-respecting free society, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the socialists can keep trying to their heart’s content.
* [I distinguish here between voluntary associations based on socialist principles and socialism as a political/economic social system imposed society-wide.]
Related Reading:
Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society
Sanders’ Goal to ‘Transform Society’ Puts Him in Some Terrible Company
QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’
QUORA: ‘Is fascism a capitalist ideology?‘
On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 1
On the Purpose of a Corporation by the Business Roundtable, PART 2
QUORA: ‘What are some of the best, specific arguments for capitalism and against communism?’
No comments:
Post a Comment