QUORA *: ‘If the primary purpose of capitalism is simply to make more capital, why would anyone oppose the people choosing (democratically) to distribute it fairly?’

I posted this answer:

The primary “purpose” of capitalism is to leave people free to pursue their own purposes by banning force from human relationships. The government’s job is to protect every individual’s rights to freely work and trade with others, to earn and keep property, to freedom of expression, conscience, and association, to basic principles of justice such as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, etc, and to remove from society those who violate others’ rights; that is, commit force or fraud against them. 

Importantly, while the government’s job is to make rights-protecting laws to shield the people from criminal aggression, capitalism also embodies a constitution that protects the people from government aggression by subordinating government officials to the same rights-protecting laws that they impose on private citizens. Capitalism also subordinates society as a whole to the rights-protecting laws by restricting the authority of the popular vote so people’s “capital” (their earned property) cannot be democratically seized and “distributed fairly,” and so people’s freedom cannot otherwise be restricted by regulation.   

The most concise statement of the essence of capitalism can be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which holds that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. . .” America’s Founding Fathers didn’t set out to create more capital. They set out to liberate the “common man”--ultimately, all men and women. Unlike other social systems, which are imposed from the top down, capitalism** emerges naturally when people are left free based on the principle that rights precede government--rights being understood as sanctioning the individual’s social freedom of action to pursue his own flourishing, not an automatic claim on goods or services that others must be forced to provide. 

The true nature of capitalism is buried under mountains of misconceptions and misrepresentations. The question above is an example of that. Fortunately, there are good educational resources available to balance the intellectual scales against the gross falsehoods. I recommend Andrew Bernstein's books, The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire and Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Moral Case for Individual Rights. 

** [The term “capitalism” doesn’t fully capture the reality of the free social system, in my view. I prefer Americanism to describe the unity of intellectual, political, and economic freedom based on individual rights that is the essence of laissez-faire capitalism.] 

Related Reading:

The Dollar and the Gun—Harry Binswanger

Why Capitalism Needs a Moral Sanction

Democratic Socialism: The Rise of the Pigs

Democratic Socialism: If the Pigs Take Over

Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society