Oct. 31, 2011
If you judge by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests, capitalism is in bad shape. Everyone loves to hate bankers and Wall Street. Even me. I know they are essential cogs in the capitalist economy. Even so, I still shed tears in the perennial Christmas rerun, It’s a Wonderful Life, when Jimmy Stewart, the honest Main Street guy, outwits (with the help of his guardian angel) the fat-cat greedy banker, Lionel Barrymore.
It’s too bad Wall Street is traditionally seen as the center and symbol of capitalism. The Islamic terrorists made it clear whom they were attacking when they crashed their planes into the World Trade Center. The OWS people seem to be preaching the same gospel. Instead of airliners, the protesting campers use a heap of iPhones, iPods, iMacs and iPods to facilitate their efforts. They even took a break recently to mourn the death of Steve Jobs. Maybe we should promote Silicon Valley to take the place of Wall Street in our semiology.
Whatever the symbol, what about the big question—is capitalism in a slump? Or worse, is capitalism ripe to be replaced by a more humane and just system? … Well, like what? Socialism maybe?
Here I think our educational system (with a strong assist from Hollywood) must take a lion’s share of the blame for the confusion nowadays about capitalism and its necessary, but not sufficient, role in supporting our liberal democracy. Seldom taught nowadays is the amazing story of how we came to be a free-market liberal democracy. How the three pillars of our modern Western civilization—science and technology, free-market capitalism, and freedom of religion—have combined to make us the freest, most prosperous, least violent, and most humane and tolerant civilization ever created on this amazing planet.
If you disagree with this blanket claim you are proving me right. Your education was faulty.
Actually so was mine. When I was in college right after World War II the prevailing atmosphere (noosphere I call it—the intellectual taken-for-granted climate—see my blog Memes and Genes) in most liberal arts colleges, including mine, was sympathetic to socialist command-economy solutions but antagonistic to capitalist free-market ideas. In succeeding years it has gotten worse. After the Vietnam War, much worse.
“Liberal,” for instance, used to mean a person who believed in freedom, freedom from government and clerical power. Our founding fathers, in this sense, were strong liberals and they created a liberal democracy (they called it a republic). Today liberal is confused with progressive. A progressive today is a person whose key virtue is fairness, not freedom. Progressives are not satisfied with equal opportunity, they want equal results. And if freedom doesn’t bring equal results, progressives like the OWS protesters, expect the government to take charge and make things more equal. If that means coercion (they don’t like to talk about this part) so be it. Whatever this is, it is not liberal.
The OWS protests have a slogan, “We are the 99%.” Ironically the slogan itself shows their ignorance of history and their faulty education. When our country was founded in the late 1700s it was still the Agricultural Age of earth. In those days all of us ordinary folk were indeed the 99%. For ten thousand years before 1787—99% of the world’s people were slaves, serfs or peasants. All of our distant ancestors (even the top 1% who were the lords, ladies and priests) were subjects, not citizens. They had an average life expectancy of less than 35 years. They rarely traveled more than a few miles from where they were born. They watched most of their children die before the age of six. They were subject to terrible torture and deadly violence if they dared to be different in politics, religion or worldly wisdom. Even the elite 1%, who had all the wealth there was (not that much—they did have a lot of servants and slaves, but no anesthetics, antibiotics, airliners or air-conditioners), suffered and died young from disease, famine and war.
The United States is exceptional because we led the world to dramatically change that baleful situation. Karl Marx of course disagreed. In the mid 19th century he claimed, like the protesters today, that capitalism created wealth all right but the richest 1% took it all. Marx thought capitalism would make the 99% so poor they would revolt. Instead the 99% in most western countries became bourgeois, the same class Lenin swore to “wipe off the face of the earth.”
The 99% did not become as rich as the top 1% to be sure. But they sure became a lot richer than their slave, serf and peasant ancestors. So rich that the vast majority of that 99% in the U.S. today (and other Western Civilization countries) live more than 75 healthy years instead of 35 disease- and violence-filled ones; travel thousands of miles by auto and air in their lifetimes; rarely see their children die; have iPhones, TVs, campers, air-conditioners and Facebook pages; and are free to disagree in politics, religion and worldly wisdom without fear of prison, torture or death. All of the 99% in the U.S. today are citizens, not subjects.
To accomplish this miracle our Constitution established freedom of religion, encouraged free markets and free trade, and laid the foundations for science and technology to blossom. We did not originate these ideas made explicit in the Constitution. The ideas came out of the medieval Judeo-Christian past, modified and expanded in the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment. We didn’t originate them, but we did put them into practice on a continental scale.
I recognize that this broad historical background (that should have been taught in our schools and colleges but wasn’t) does not automatically solve all of our present problems with unemployment, mortgages, taxes, etc. But it does point us in the right directions—programs that build on successes in the past and programs that avoid mistakes. If we want success we need to encourage science and technology, free-markets and free trade, and support religions with a small r (see my last week’s blog).
We also need to be very suspicious of programs that promote zero-sum solutions. That means most (not all—we are rich enough to have a modest safety-not for all citizens) command-economy programs. The world went through a hellish period last century where we saw clearly what a disaster command-economy fascism and socialism were for hundreds of millions of dependent subjects. Apparently the OWS protesters and many of their sympathetic progressive-liberals were not paying attention.
It’s time ladies and gentlemen to pay attention.
Bill Stonebarger, Hawkhill Owner/President
P.S. Broken record. For details see my new book TWILIGHT OR DAWN? a Traveler’s Guide to Free-Market Liberal Democracy. (Formerly called The Road to a Tea Party.)