Why Not Capitalism? is now available on Kindle. The print editions should be available in a week or two. The six feverish days in which I wrote the first draft were the most fun I’ve ever had writing.

Defenders of markets usually speak in the language of economics, while defenders of socialism speak in the language of morality. The problem is that most defenders of markets–from Adam Smith to F. A. Hayek to Milton Friedman to my own mentor David Schmidtz–concede the moral high ground to socialism. They admit that the market is a good system for bad people, while socialism is a good system for good people. Even if economics tells us that socialism is a bad system for bad people, the fundamental problem is that people are bad.

Time for a different approach. Time to take the moral high ground. In Why Not Capitalism, I grant socialists every moral premise and every methodological assumption about human nature and justice. But I then show that this vindicates capitalism, not socialism. If I could wave a magic wand that make us all good enough to make socialism work out the way socialists want it to, we’d still find capitalism better. From a left-wing point of view, socialism is great, but capitalism is even better.

In this short book, I

• explain why traditional economic arguments for market society concede the socialist moral critique of capitalism.
• show how Marxist philosopher Jerry Cohen’s life’s work ends up vindicating anarcho-capitalism and Robert Nozick’s vision of utopia.
• explain why Cohen’s arguments for socialism fail even if we grant him his moral premises and his methodological critique of political philosophy.
• With a little help from The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, explain why even in a world full of perfect altruists with morally pure motives, capitalism would still be a better way to live (for most people) than socialism. That is, even if people were so loving and generous that they were immune to moral hazard, even if people were perfectly benevolent, they’d be still want to be capitalist.

Book blurb:

Most economists believe capitalism is a compromise with selfish human nature. As Adam Smith put it, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Capitalism works better than socialism, according to this thinking, only because we are not kind and generous enough to make socialism work. If we were saints, we would be socialists.

In Why Not Capitalism?, Jason Brennan attacks this widely held belief, arguing that capitalism would remain the best system even if we were morally perfect. Even in an ideal world, private property and free markets would be the best way to promote mutual cooperation, social justice, harmony, and prosperity. Socialists seek to capture the moral high ground by showing that ideal socialism is morally superior to realistic capitalism. But, Brennan responds, ideal capitalism is superior to ideal socialism, and so capitalism beats socialism at every level.

Clearly, engagingly, and at times provocatively written, Why Not Capitalism? will cause readers of all political persuasions to re-evaluate where they stand vis-à-vis economic priorities and systems—as they exist now and as they might be improved in the future.

Endorsements:

“Are you interested in capitalism as a path to your personal utopia? This stirring moral defense of a free society is the place to start.”

—Tyler Cowen, George Mason University

“In forceful strokes, Jason Brennan attacks the work of the late G.A. Cohen’s defense of socialism and neatly shows why and how it is not the best of all systems even in the best of all possible worlds, let alone the highly imperfect world in which we live. His combination of accessible prose with technical precision is a model of good writing on political theory that should enable this book to reach the wider audience it deserves.”

—Richard Epstein, New York University School of Law

“Gone is the false triumphalism of the 1990s. The question of how to organize society, and the ideological conflict between market systems and socialist systems, is live. Brennan offers in this brief volume a fully realized and compelling answer to Jerry Cohen’s rightly celebrated book Why Not Socialism? Many of the responses to socialist advocacy dismiss command economies as impractical or impossible. But Brennan grants Cohen his premises, and carries out the argument in a way that faithfully mirrors the logic that Cohen tried to marshall in his defense of socialism. Brennan offers an unflinching defense of capitalism, and does it with style and humor. His writing is at once accessible to the first-time philosopher and yet persuasive to the denizens of the ivory towers. This book will be on the reading list for every class I teach.”

—Michael Munger, Director of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Duke University

Table of Contents:

Chapter One: Deep Down, Everyone’s a Socialist…and Wrong

Chapter Two: The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Argument for Capitalism: A Parody

Chapter Three: Human Nature and Justice

Chapter Four: Why Utopia Is Capitalist

Kevin Currie-Knight’s Amazon review, excerpt:

If ideal theory is what we are concerned with, socialism might look good. But boy oh boy does market capitalism look better?!

This is roughly Jason Brennan’s point in this short book reply to G.A. Cohen’s Why Not Socialism?. In Cohen’s book, we are presented with some basic arguments for socialism that send a few messages: a world based on greed is bad, a world based on mutual sharing is better, and any good objection to socialism is practical (rather than principled) in nature. Thus, someone might object to Cohen that socialism may be great, but we need a price system in order to best allocate scarce goods and resources, or that human nature being what it is, markets that play to self-interest might work better with how we are. These, say Cohen, are not arguments against his points about socialism’s desirability, but questions about whether or how it can be implemented with things as they are. Cohen wins.

Well, maybe not. Brennan’s book is divided into four chapters. The first is a basic outline of his argument. The second is a parody of Cohen’s method of argument (Cohen illustrates the desirability of socialism by having us imagine a camping trip where we all share and share alike. So, Brennan depicts the desirability of capitalism using an imaginary Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, based on the tv show where all characters own property, trade, and otherwise are free to do as they please.) This chapter is not only the most hilarious thing I’ve read in any philosophy book, but is quite necessary for Brennan to show how Cohen’s argument fails. (The fact that Cohen compares an idealistic utopia of perfect people with a ‘realistic’ capitalist world full of flawed humans becomes VERY apparent.)

The third chapter is Brennan’s analysis of chapter 2 and how it shows that all Cohen does is compare ideal apples to half rotten oranges. The fourth chapter finds Brennan making his positive argument about why, if we are depicting the ideal social system, capitalism wins. His argument here is fairly similar to the argument in John Tomasi’s Free Market Fairness but in a world of ideal theory. Capitalism is the only system that allows each person to pursue their own lives in their own way, to trade without having to consult the state for permission, and to engage in truly mutually beneficial exchange (again, without having to ask the state’s permission). And to turn Cohen on his head, Brennan suggests that the general objections to markets – that they play on people’s greed, that they lead to mass inequality and poverty, that it creates an atomistic individualism at the expense of community – are all practical problems, not principled ones. That is, if we accept Cohen’s ideal theory (where practical considerations cease to carry weight)… why not capitalism?

When the print edition becomes available, I’ll blog more on these topics.