In the past 30 years at least, we’ve seen that arguments about markets vs. socialism in philosophy inevitably turn to arguments about the methodology of philosophy. In particular, we see that these lead to debates about to what degree, if any, “human nature” constrains morality or constrains what counts as just institutions.

Gerald Cohen worries that “dumbing down” justice to accommodate immoral human motivations is absurd. People may be unwilling to stop raping and murdering each other, but of course these are unjust actions, and so almost by definition a just society is one in which these things never happen. Similarly, free-riding off of others, abusing power, and acting callously to others undeserved misfortune are unjust, and so in a just society, these don’t happen.

David Schmidtz thinks justice is about finding workable solutions to real problems, and that Gerald Cohen’s favored institutions aren’t solving the problems so much as imagining them away. He claims that morality is strategic, not parametric. While Cohen is right that “I don’t want to” doesn’t imply “I don’t have to,” Schmidtz thinks that “Others don’t want to” might change or shape what I have to do, and what counts as a just response.

I’m not sure there’s any real substance to such debates. I worry they are purely semantic, about whether we’re going to use to the word “justice” one way or another. Cohen is trying to describe how the world ought to be, period, and Schmidtz is trying to describe what the morally best response is to a problem rather than trying to say what would be best if the problem disappeared.

At any rate, I don’t think we have to settle this debate to decide whether socialism or capitalism is best. Here’s my way of putting it: Either Cohenesque ideal theory is silly, or it’s not. If it’s silly, Schmidtz beats Cohen; we should have some form of capitalism. Capitalism wins. (Not even Cohen would deny that. He might reject Schmidtz’s specific favored version of capitalism, but he’d admit that capitalism beats socialism in “non-ideal” theory.) If it’s not silly, then I beat Cohen. (At least, no one has shown otherwise yet.) Capitalism wins.

(There’s also a half-way, fudged-factored, ad hoc-ified, insistentarian version of ideal theory from Rawls. As I point out in one paragraph in my recent book, capitalism wins at that game too. Rawls’s argument to contrary involves him violating the methodological rules he set out, and so should be dismissed with prejudice.)

So, for the purposes of asking whether capitalism is more just than socialism, it turns out we don’t need to settle the debate about ideal vs. non-ideal theory or the debate about human nature and justice. No matter how we answer that debate, capitalism wins.