Why Not Capitalism? should appear in paperback today. And, with it, the moral case for socialism dies.

Capitalists and socialists used to duke it out on which system would work best in the real world, with real people. However, most socialists (at least the ones I read) are sensible enough now to recognize that economics favors capitalism, not socialism. Socialism doesn’t work. But–putting calculation problems aside for now–one of the main reasons socialism doesn’t work is that people are bad. People are more selfish, callous, nasty, greedy, violent, and rotten than they should be. Capitalism works because it recruits bad motives for good ends, while socialism fails because it requires more virtue that we’re willing to supply. (Not more than we easily could supply, but more than we’re willing to supply.)

So, while capitalism kind of wins down the in the muck, socialists have retreated to the moral high ground. As far as I can tell, no one–not even my good colleagues and mentors David Schmidtz or John Tomasi–have provided a proper challenge there. Cohen has a powerful methodological critique of political philosophy–he charges everyone, including Rawls, of dumbing down justice and making illicit concessions to the depraved parts of human nature.

Why Not Capitalism? takes that moral high ground away. If people were perfectly benevolent, perfectly virtuous, perfectly respectful, and perfectly committed to social justice, they could make socialism work. But–as I illustrate in chapter 2 and explain in chapter 4–they’d be capitalist instead. If people were exactly as sensible socialists wish they were, they’d be capitalist, not socialist. From a moral point of view, ideal capitalism is better than ideal socialism, and from a moral and economic point of view, real-life capitalism is better than real-life socialism.

Most libertarians argue for libertarianism by disputing the Left’s moral concerns. They try to argue we have strong property rights, that need never or rarely trumps these rights, that social justice is a myth, that we don’t owe each other much, and so on. Why Not Capitalism? is different. I’m not defending egoism or limited duties of beneficence. Nope. Rather. I concede almost everything Jerry Cohen wants to say about morality and about the proper methodology of political philosophy. My beef with Cohen is that he doesn’t follow his own methodology consistently.

Here’s are some excerpts from the first few pages:

           My mentor David Schmidtz once said, in conversation, “Don’t concede the moral high ground.” I’ve also heard him say that a proper defense of markets has to be in the language of morality, not just the language of economics. This book is written in that spirit.

…many people who oppose socialism and support markets find capitalism morally uninspiring. Sure, capitalism performs better than socialism. But, we worry, that is just because we are so selfish.

Capitalism rewards us for developing greater talent or working in critical jobs. It pays us for innovation and efficiency. We respond to the incentives, and so it works. Socialism asks us to work hard for the sake of others. We refuse, so it doesn’t work. But many people worry this just shows we are not altruistic enough for socialism.

In the 20th Century, we learned that the great power wielded by socialist governments attracts sociopaths and tyrants. Yet, again, we worry that this is just because we are so morally flawed. Socialism asks us to supply benevolent philosopher-kings, but the best we can come up with is a Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. It seems the problem is with us.

Since we are selfish, greedy, and fearful, maybe market-based economies are the best we can do. If only men were angels, though, we could dispense with capitalism and make socialism work. Utopia is socialist.

Even capitalism’s greatest defenders seem to agree. Adam Smith tells us, “It is not from thebenevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self–love…”[i]Bernard Mandeville, in his famous poem “The Grumbling Hive,” says capitalism runs on vice much like biodiesel engines run on food waste. He asks us to imagine a hive full of selfish bees, each trying to make a buck by supplying others’ “lust and vanity”. Yet while, “every Part” of this capitalist system is “full of Vice,” the “whole Mass [is] a Paradise.”[ii] Even “the very Poor Lived better than the Rich before.”[iii] Later in the poem, Mandeville imagines that the bees become virtuous, unselfish, and motivated to pursue spiritual endeavors. But then, without greed, the economy falls apart. Finally, there’s Ayn Rand, “Goddess of the Market,”[iv] who defends capitalism by arguing that selfishness is a virtue and altruism is evil.[v]

Socialism seems to answer to a higher moral calling. Perhaps the best evidence of this is that socialists so often defend their view in moral terms, while capitalists defend their view in economic terms.[vi]

The problem with socialism thus seems to be that it asks too much of us—it asks us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to share, and to never take advantage of power. Socialism seems like a noble idea—and we’re not good enough for it. Socialism says, “All for one and one for all.” But we’re more comfortable with something like “Every man for himself.” And so, sociobiologist Edward Wilson jokes of socialism: “Wonderful theory, wrong species.”[vii]

Why argue with Jerry Cohen?

You, the reader, are probably not a socialist. But you probably accept the view just described, the view that markets are a kind of moral compromise, the view that if we could harness the best within us, we would dispense with capitalism. You might not call yourself a socialist, but if you are a typical person, you probably agree that socialism would be best if only human beings were much nicer than they in fact are.

The best spokesperson of this widely-shared view is the philosopher G. A. (“Jerry”) Cohen. Cohen is the leading Marxist philosopher—and one of the leading political philosophers, period—of the past 100 years. Capitalism has countless critics, but Cohen is perhaps its best moral critic. Why Not Capitalism? is a debate with Cohen. I want to show he, and everyone else who agrees with him, is mistaken. I debate Cohen in order to undermine the widespread belief that socialism is morally superior to capitalism.

In the introduction, I summarize Cohen’s powerful arguments for the intrinsic desirability of socialism. Cohen is really onto something. Commonsense moral thinking really does support the view that a certain type of cooperative socialism is more intrinsically desirable than real-life capitalism, and that many of the behaviors characteristic of capitalist societies are repulsive.

I go through some responses others have given to Cohen and explain why these responses don’t work. Almost every response to Cohen I’ve seen pretty much concedes his argument.

Saying Cohen is too utopian concedes that Cohen is right. It concedes the moral high ground to Cohen and concedes his main conclusion. It concedes that capitalism works well only because it is, as Cohen says, a “social technology”[i] that uses “base motives to productive economic effect.”[ii] It concedes that the market “recruits low-grade motives to desirable ends.”[iii] It does not answer Cohen’s charge that the “market is intrinsically repugnant.”[iv] To dismiss socialism as too as utopian is to say that it’s best, but not attainable.

Cohen’s argument requires a different kind of response.

In my view, Cohen’s argument fails, and fails badly. In Chapter Two—“The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Argument for Capitalism”— I will perform some philosophical aikido. I will parody Cohen’s style of argument to show, on the contrary, that capitalism is more intrinsically desirable than socialism. I will show how Cohen’s kind of argument for socialism turns into an even better argument for capitalism. Chapter Two parodies Cohen by immitating the same structure, format, and tone of his argument. However, while Cohen describes an ideal socialist camping trip, I describe an ideal capitalist society, as presented in the children’s show The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, a CGI-animated cartoon on the Disney, Jr. channel. In effect, I copy Cohen’s argument, but flip his argument around to get the opposite result.

Part of my goal is to expose—through parody—that Cohen’s argument for socialism is fallacious. When you see how easily his argument for socialism can be flipped to produce an even better argument for capitalism, you’ll see that Cohen’s argument is flawed. I’ll explain what the flaw is in chapter three, but there’s a good chance you’ll see it before I explain it.

However, I do not just mean this to be a mere parody or reductio ad absurdum of Cohen. I am not simply trying to say that Cohen’s argument for socialism fails and leave it at that.

Instead, I intend this exercise to vindicate the intrinsic moral goodness of capitalism. Contrary to Cohen, capitalism is not just something we are stuck with because people are too selfish, greedy, and fearful to make socialism work. Rather, even if people had morally perfect motivations, we would still have grounds to prefer capitalism. Capitalism is not merely better economics than socialism for the real world. Rather, even in utopia, capitalism occupies the moral high ground.

 

A final bit on my parody of Cohen:

Remember, my goal here is not simply to expose, via parody, that Cohen’s argument for socialism is defective. Even though Cohen’s argument is fallacious, he is on to something. Cohen’s ultimate legacy—the ultimate result of his life’s work defending socialism—will be to help us see that from a moral point of view, the intrinsically best society is capitalist. Cohen also became famous in part for criticizing the libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. [1] In chapter four, I’ll explain that another legacy of Cohen’s work will be to show that Nozick was basically right all along about the nature of utopia.