This author recently wrote about the nature of capitalism in contradiction to its opposing ideology— communism. We echoed Javier Milei’s view that capitalism’s self-correcting mechanisms are not failures. This is akin to being on a bandstand in a jazz band. There are no failures if you approach the unfolding of events as part of the process.
A failure is only a failure if the group treats it as such. If a jazz band improvises off of a misplayed note, then it becomes part of the performance. Similarly, If a company’s investments losing value and causing price rebalancing across the market is considered simply a natural process in the markets, which it is, then all of the accessories to considering such an event a failure are unnecessary.
These accessories are typically government interventions and media hysteria promoting such interventions. None of this is necessary. The government and media can still exist and play a role in markets without such non-capitalistic socialist and communist-styled interventions. Contrary to socialist orthodoxy, all societal participants and jobs could exist and even be improved under the capitalist model.
This past week, a Tesla factory was raided by supposed anti-capitalists. A growing movement on the political left decries capitalism. They often protest that capitalism leads to all sorts of nefarious things and does nothing good. These people have believed wrongly that capitalism is a failing system and that what is necessary is to tear down the capitalist economy. This is simply silly.
What humans call capitalism is a natural and universal process. We use words in the English language like market, economy, and capital to describe features of human interaction. Such interactions are necessary in a society. They happen in all human societies. These interactioms help people to create prosperity and abundance for themselves and for their communities.
No human can live alone. We are not meant to live solo. Everyone who has tried has lost their life. Humans are meant to live in communities and interact with each other to help each other share the responsibilities, duties, and activities that are essential for human life. The exchange of complex, sophisticated goods and services that occur between humans requires the devices we call markets, prices, and capital.
We would not be able to build airplanes, computers, clothes, or other complex products without this system of interactions that we call capitalism. It doesn’t matter what this system of interactions is called. All of these products, which many take for granted, require intense specialization of labor and activity.
For example, a car requires steel to be mined, refined, and finished into a product. Similar multistage complex processes must occur with multiple different types of plastics, electronics, textiles, and other materials. None of this can be possible in any system other than the one we describe by the word capitalism.
Thus, saying that capitalism must be torn down and destroyed is like saying we must tear down and destroy a natural human function— like walking or communicating through speech, or farming. Imagine if farming was decried as a negative human process in the same way that the political left is propagandizing against capitalism. How stupid would that be?
This is why the arguments to destroy and overhaul capitalism are silly at best and ultimately stupidly idiotic.