The Promise of Capitalism–And the Destruction of the Human Spirit-Part One

It is time to admit it. The economic systems of the 18th and 19th centuries are dismal failures. Capitalism and Marxism[1] are utter failures. Pure socialism is not the solution and neither is pure capitalism. It may be time to admit that there is no perfect system for human beings. A blending of the systems may be necessary. In fact, the human condition may be too erratic, too surly, and too stuck in fear that raw emotion encrusts the societal and cultural malaise. The instinct of the primal stokes humanity’s tragedy setting our automatic responses to bypass any or all rationality.

Adam Smith’s [2] “invisible hand” decapitated by Milton Friedman excessive laissez faire Machiavellian economics deconstructs the social contract. A contract that is rooted to justice, to fairness, and to the rule of law; and, a contract that enables communities to coexist in commonality. Communities to share common interests. Communities that seek control. Some view this, however, as being sheepish awaiting for the wolf to seize power. It is Friedman’s wolflike predilection for Hobbesian[3] economics, and in turn, demolish all state models: police, fire, schools, military, and all social programs. This allows for the state to be crushed, and create a schism within the world, and, an upheaval that sabotages human compassion. Selfishness, terror, and angst drives the human heartache with ever collapsing oppression—and yet the human compulsion for community, fairness, and self-sacrifice evolves with resolve through love and hope with the eternal expansion of greatness.

For “the long arc of history” the United States of America strives to be better than the last generation, unfortunately, the endeavor for betterment is tied to economic ascension. The struggles of the underclass, along with racial caste bias[4][5], still belies the “more of a perfect union” mythos. And, these foibles hinder the effort towards perfection for a number of reasons—setting aside humanity’s imperfection—the economic systems corruption denies stability and seeks chaos in contradictions. In a broad sense, capitalism seeks freedom yet destroys community by sabotaging social programs. Marxism on the other hand seeks community yet destroys individuality. Capitalism and Marxism juxtaposition of each other rely on the misinformation that is sewn within the mythos and the distance of time. In academia, the discussion of the two systems, Capitalism and Marxism, buried under reams of paper that could fill the archives of a warehouse are lost in overzealous punditry and dysfunctional warped malfunctioning practicality. In a paper by Hassan Mudane titled, “Marx and the critique of Capitalism,” asserts that Marxism as an assessment to the “critical understanding of capitalism as an historically particular way of organizing social life, and that this form of social organization entails political, cultural, and economic aspects which need to be understood as a dynamic ensemble of social relations not necessarily contained within the territorial boundaries of nation states.” Essentially, the economy of capitalism breeds “commodification” of all resources, relationships, human labor and extraction thereof, and are bought and sold within the markets and marketplaces.

Globally, capitalism corrupts institutions, social strata, and relationships within communities, and as such, the “socially productive activity,” as defined by capital and are inherent to the nature of human interaction(s). The historical perspectives seen prior to utilization of capitalism as a form of economy, in forms of feudalism, slavery, indenture servitude, or production of services through relationships real or imagined are coercive. The norms of capitalism, however, can be abused, manipulated, and deconstructed into caste (both racial and religious) systems, class structures, and institutions. The key factor within these structures are the prescriptions of privatization in order to assess one’s value through community, merit, monetarily, aspirational, and spiritual.

In these forms, the culture writ-large can be parted into divisiveness only parameters in order to demoralize the uniqueness of communities, and in doing so, pit one community against the other. The survival of the fittest is the rationalization. Social Darwinism is the rationalization. Natural selection drives the forces of competition. It is competition that is freedom. It is liberty that is freedom. It is privacy that is freedom. The promise of capitalism is freedom. The structures of freedom are inherent. Freedoms must never be regulated. Freedom must not be moderated—at least that is the mythos. In essence, freedom must be hard, earned, and coercive.

The mythos of freedom and capitalism should not be socially constrained; nor, should be regulated by the state. Nor should the state provide subsistence to the less fortunate—after all, it only makes them weaker—at least that is the argument. Milton Friedman’s perspective presupposes such credulity in that the social safety net hinders liberty or more precisely freedom of markets.

War, Gold, and Banks Oh My

At the turn of the 20th century, an incident set off the course of economic woes and tribulations and piss poor speculation on the stubbornness of human philosophy in regard to the trappings of economy and politics. European suffrage to treaties, monies, and the economy of labor pillaged by the misunderstanding and accountability of resources both private and public markets. These markets would hold sway over what it means to have monetary capital constricted, and, the “invisible hand” of certainty to be elevated to the next possibility.

The incident that would bring tribulations to the marketplace, of course, was World War I. The leveraging of nation-states assets both in human costs, capital markets, and infrastructures were expensive, at least in the sense of assigned values according to corporate interests and actuaries in determining the loss of labor (productivity) to the economy and time. Nation-states that felt violated demanding full reparations, France for instance, would not forgive—and wanted their pound of flesh no matter what—they were due (entitled) to what they perceived as losses.

In a book by Liaquat Ahmed titled, “Lords of Finance—The Bankers Who Broke theWorld” informs how the world shifted from the gold and silver standard to a more production base model in order to restore economies of the free world. Europe and the United States shifting of resources (or believed shifting) changed the dynamism of economies. Gold resources during the crises of the war allowed the United States and France to take advantage of the instability. The New World, in essence, took advantage of the Old World monied elites to fill the coffers of the United States treasury and banks.

The United States because of location, location, location is/was able to isolate the problem through proximity and would not suffer the direct horrors of war until it inserted itself. The economies and the monied institutions, of the time, felt a certitude in justifying certain beliefs regarding the “rules of economic” access and restitution. The rule of law, the honor of men, and traditions set the level of means of production. The production of what, relies on the efficiency of people and coercion. The transition to modernity from agrarian relies on the masses to “buy-in” to the mythos of markets, freedom, and liberty, in that through the acquisition of these gains, rewards, and stability are the dynamics necessary to evolve society through capitalism.

Capitalism has also the evolved great disparity and inequity in justice. Capitalism has allowed for corporate interest to overwhelm, overtax, over consume the viability of markets both literal and figurative. Capitalism consumption, not unlike that of an unchecked virus, thrives in the moments of great economic zest, but also in chaos, in fact, capitalism booms in disasters, destruction, and economic downturns. In the oft set models of Milton Friedman, laissez faire capitalism insinuates that the best time to reshape an economic community is at its lowest level in order to wipe the slate clean.

In Naomi Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine-The Rise of Disaster Capitalism ,” distillates the essence of Milton Friedman’s models for economic liberty and the free markets. She explains that psychiatrist Ewen Cameron colluded with the Central Intelligence Agency in order to prove his theory that the human mind was reprogrammable once the slate had been wiped clean. This theory, which failed miserably, found that the human mind has redundancies not unlike the culture writ-large does through tradition and mythos. This lesson, however, would be learned and disregarded for the expediency of currency and profit, when adjoined with the economic policies of Milton Friedman.

In the early 1970s the infancy of Milton Friedman and associates, also known as the Chicago Boys, because they followed the philosophy of their renowned mentor, co-opted and combined with Central Intelligence Agency model for reprogramming of Dr. Ewen Cameron, applied the sociocultural economics structures of disaster capitalism. Chile’s Augusto Pinochet deconstructed the social safety through the encouragement of Friedman’s acolytes and then double down after the initial foray failed to produce desired results. Incomes for the worker class decline, extraction of material exited the country, and corruption of the elite few skyrocketed while the authoritarianism destroyed public trust and personal lives of persons that dissented through exile or death [Ibid, Klein]. This type of modeling would continue through central and south Americas both in the overt and covert means in multiple American administrations.

Capitalism as Freedom

The essence of capitalism is the allowance of exploitation through either coercion or through the access of deceptive productivity. Resources are extracted to the benefit of the monied interests(corporations) and oligarchs rarely towards the community. In Friedman’s models, through the decades of the 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond the disaster capitalism relied on authoritarianism to successfully deconstruct the social network in order to demonstrate austerity to access capital that never seem to “trickle down” to the community or to the worker.

The people, if you will, that are not part of the elite, or more importantly, do not have access to the monied interests bares the consequences of capitalism extraction. The social construct, in which, capitalism succeeds relies on the population to cede authority through either coercion or involuntary conditioning of what is expected by duty, by community, or by cultural assumptions of work ethics (or all of the above). In essence, cultural expectations are realized by the assumptions that are indoctrinated within the body of the individualism, and the body of the cultural narrative in terms of the “work ethic” within the Western-American ideology.

Capitalism relies on the mythos of freedom, freedom of choice, freedom of accountability and responsibility to choose their own form of coercion, whether through labor or entrepreneurship. Yes, entrepreneurship can be coerced as well—if not through access, then through regulations or control of the means of production. The “invisible hand” often steers towards extraction that benefits the few instead of the many: Imperialism and Colonialism leveraged the resources of the disenfranchised “others”—not them—and removed the resources from the community, such as: coal, gold, oil, and other minerals.

The perception of factors that contribute to capitalism as being choice filled equaling freedom, individualism, and social responsibility to the community in order to forward the betterment of civil society, does not adequately reflect the continual strive and strife in the commodification of modern feudalism for those deemed less than, exploited, or disenfranchised. It is this modeling that has relegated the post-modern angst that creates the sense of grievance, and in turn, the loss of dominion for the dominant caste.

A dominate caste that has from the high to the low reigned over the disenfranchised of the “other” for nearly four centuries. A reign that took time, blood, and treasure to dissolve into a more equitable solution. Yet, the precipice that sits upon capitalism, corporatism, and perceived democracy of the people are polarized into factions in order to maintain the monied interests ever since plantation owners along with merchant class barons designated themselves as the “establishment.”

The “establishment,” that would be duplicated, and split into designated “cultural norms,” such as media, religion, government, and business, which eventually evolves into the post-modern version of commodified institutions. For this, the Western-American dynamic commodification replaced the sense of noble duty, and, implicitly honors one’s contribution to community. In essence, work commodified defined the value of one’s labor through status, through caste, and through identity. In capitalism, status and caste overrides the value of labor and productivity, and in turn, leverages these categories in an illusory mythos of exceptionalism.

American Exceptionalism

In the years the following the American Revolution, the United States searched to define herself—an identity worthy more than a bunch of ragtag rebels petulantly stomping their way to victory. The mythos of the Founder’s had to be greater than. The victory had to shine a consciousness that rivaled the monarchy. A consciousness inspired by Enlightenment, an understanding that the feudalism is a downfall for people seeking freedom. Indeed, feudalism cannot work. The tradition is transformed because distance allows for self-reliance, innovation and creativity.

This sets up an independence of spirit and creation of a mythos, for a young country that is most difficult, but for early adopters allows them to the set margins of opportunities. One of those margins is the defining of an economy, another margin is the trajectory of how that economy is to be obtained. Even more definitional is how that economy is identified not only by the viewing of outsiders, but those—the people—internally. One such description by the early adopters is the refining of the American ethos into the form of myths, traditions, and customs. This ethic perceived within the American consciousness as being exceptional, free, and capital.

The ethos of American Exceptionalism has propelled capitalism eventually as a commodity that resides within markets and marketplaces, and in turn, subverts the social contract. In fact, capitalism societal impact relies on the greed of consumerism in order to facilitate the next profit, the next consumable, the next product, or the next commodified marketplace. For instance, Apple or Samsung rely on consumers to buy their latest version of the product no matter how old or new their present model may be.

Similarly, this type of consumerism in automobiles, houses, kitchen products, clothing, and other electronic items et cetera have become the signal form of productivity. Essentially, capitalism success, more importantly, relies on the services and the products of consumerism. Consumerism became commodified. Consumerism transformed capitalism. Consumerism is American exceptionalism, and in turn, American exceptionalism is capitalism. A cycle that is regulated by the productivity of means not the means of productivity. Yes, the means of production are still the resource, in which, values can be measured, but the incomes, inputs, assets, or possessions et cetera are reliant on the outcomes, confidences, right direction, wrong direction, or similar definitional terms that signal how the “exceptionalism” performs. And, in the end, performance churns the current spirit of capitalism. Capitalism no longer fills purpose, promise, and its value has deconstructed the human spirit.

Editor's Note -- My apologies. I did not catch the error until recently when a friend notified me that the post somehow posted twice within its posting. The error has been corrected with a slight change with hyperlinks and name correction of Chilean president should have been Augusto Pinochet instead of Benito Pinochet.