Debate: Socialism vs. Capitalism
Side: Capitalism

"I am a socialist and a very different kind of socialist from your rich friend Count Reventlow"This is a quote from 1930, spoken by a rising german politician called Adolf Hitler. In 1930, the contention that fascism had emerged out of socialism was accepted across the board. It was an observed historical fact. Fascists marched under red banners on may day. their leaders believed in high tariffs, in workers control all factories, in a common production of and distribution and exchanges.The first inmates of the concentration of nazis in Germany were communists and socialists. There is a reason why. It is absolutely true that the socialists of the national and Leninist varieties were bitterly opposed. They were fishing in the same pool. They were competing for the same kind of voter. Though one kind of person that neither brand of socialist had any time for was the classical liberal, what they called the decadent anglo-saxon bourgeois capitalist. Why? Because theirs was an ideology that elevated coercion over freedom. Now, why do I begin with this Godwin's law, high-stake opening? Two reasons. First of all as a corrective to the self-righteousness that I have already started seeing when people who claim to be socialist then start claiming credit for everything from the extension of the franchise to the extension of universal education.But my real point is this one: Socialism rests on compulsion, its defining ethic is not equality, but coercion. Socialism and Capitalism are matrices. They are economic systems in which people can be generous, or greedy. They can be selfish, or altruistic. Human nature comes whether from our genes or from our maker. It isn't something that is created by an economic system. What is unique about socialism, is the readiness of the state to deploy coercive force. Now we have evolved a great vocabulary to describe this. We talk about asking people to pay a bit more tax. Then we see what happens if they choose not to. Behind all that polite sounding stuff, asking them to pay their fair share, to contribute, is the threat of prison. Now of course, there are some occasions, where any society, will need to rely on coercive force, on incarceration. There are some taxes that are necessary in any system. We all accept that. But their use of coercive and ultimately lethal force by the state is its most awesome and awful power. We should tilt the balance as far as we can to Liberty before you say, "no, that power should be used as the prayer-book says of marriage: 'reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly'".The idea that those of us on the capitalist side are in favor of "dog-eat-dog", is not true. If by "dog-eat-dog" you mean the desire for material improvement, that is a fundamental in human nature under all systems. You had it under the communist regimes, you had it under feudal regimes. But what is unique about capitalism, is that it harnessed that ambition to a socially useful end. Under every other system devised by human intelligence, a group of people sat at the top and the way to get rich was to suck up to those in power. They were kings or bishops or commissars. We uniquely, in America and then exported, came up with a system where you satisfied your ambition by serving the rest of your fellow citizens under the law. We channel that desire for self-improvement in a socially productive way. That's the reason why socialist countries are not only less wealthy than capitalist ones, but less free. That's the categorical difference between East Germany and West Germany, between North Korea, and South Korea. It's not just that socialism does not work in the sense that it fails to provide material advance, it doesn't work in that it takes away human dignity and civil rights above all our freedom to make choices as autonomous individuals. Some may ask: "How is it freedom, to not have your daily bread, to not be able to go to a reasonable school, to not have any opportunities to develop yourself as a young person, or even as an adult". First, let's leave aside whether the asker means positive or negative freedom. If you want decent opportunities, if you want decent schools, and if you want to rise in living standards, would you go to North Korea, or South Korea? Would you look at socialism to provide it, or would you look at the free market?That's an interesting thing. Karl Marx, who of course invented the thing. Let's not gloss over the fact. Karl Marx thought that as time went, it would become more liberal. That he could take the restraints off, that people wouldn't need to be told what to do. And like every other prediction that Karl Marx made, that was the opposite of the truth. It is extraordinary, Marxists uniquely claimed that thiers is a scientific, rather than a political doctrine. They claim that their truths are empirical, they're not just opinions. And yet every single forecast that Marx made, that there would be more and more unemployment under capitalism, that there would be a smaller group of oligarchs and a larger group of proletariats. Every single one of them turned out to be the opposite of the truth.I want to tackle one other thing. Somehow on this side, we are more materialistic, greedier, less humane, that we have less by way of fellow-feeling and sympathy than those on the other side. If you can trust socialist and capitalist economies, you see precious little evidence of that. But for what it's worth, I have never met anyone who derives more pleasure from a healthy bank balance, than from listening to Beethoven, or playing with his children, or going for a walk in the country. But what is it that enables us to do those things? it's economic progress. The fact that you have a dishwasher, and don't have to spend all your time doing the washing by hand means that you can go for that walk in the country. The fact that you have a car, and don't have to queue up at the tram station, means that you have more time to listen to Beethoven's symphonies. The fact that you don't have to spend six weeks working just to feed your children, means that you can spend the weekend playing with them. And where did those economic advances come from? From the system that unlocked the inventiveness of a creative people, that tapped into the unlimited potential of human innovation and that raised our species to a standard of living, that a couple of generations ago would have been unimaginable. Now that has happened for about a billion people in the world. Those of us who can afford the car, those of us who can afford the dishwasher, there are six billion people who cannot afford the cars and the dishwashers. But they will, they will as free exchange, and specialization and comparative advantage run their course raising people to a higher and higher standard of living unless we go down the road of Cuba, and Zimbabwe, or any other socialist country because it doesn't work. Don't make the mistake of judging socialism as a textbook theory, but judging capitalism by its necessarily imperfect outcomes. Judge like with like.In the real world, you find me a functioning socialist country that has delivered more than a free-market alternative and I will switch over to socialism at once.Now, I am going to finish with this point: Among a number of the greatest heroes are the greatest heroes who have lived or argued in any language. There are the Levellers, three of whom, fell in Burford Church in an act of cold-blooded execution which disturbed even the morbid sensibilities of the mid-17th century England. What was it, that the Levellers, those farsighted heroic men, who looked forward to the universal franchise, to something that we would now recognize as constitutional liberty and democracy under the law? What was it that they believed? What was the starting point of their ideology? What was it that Richard Overton argued for in his arrow against all tyrants? Self-ownership. He began by saying "I own my mind I own my body and if I am free to trade the products of my own labor without the intervention of prelate or princes then I will be happy". These were proto libertarians. They were radicals but they understood that freedom was linked as they constantly said that liberty and propriety ownership and freedom were inextricably linked.Capitalism, this thing that raised our species, developed in some of the Italian northern city states was then refined by the Dutch but it was in America that it reached its fullest flower and was explored addressing the Lords and Commons in 1644."Remember what nation it is whereof a nation not slow and dull, but quick and piercing of wit" -John MiltonAmerica has got the whole thing going. America ended slavery, it exported property rights and it exported the rule of law and it was all based on raising the individual above the state rather than the other way around.