I want to start by analyzing the two ideologically pure positions of the role of government: socialism (this week) and libertarianism (next week). Strictly speaking, those two theories are not real opposites, since socialism is merely an economic theory and libertarianism is the theory that government – particularly the federal government - should be absent in all or nearly all areas of social and economic life. So Communism may actually make a better ‘opposite’ to libertarianism, since Communism not only advocates government control of the economy, but also that government control all aspects of social life, such as mandating religion (or lack thereof), who you marry, how many children you can have, etc.
In regards to Communism, my criticism is basically the same as everyone else’s: nice sounding theory on paper, not so great in reality. Marx did genuinely begin his quest for a noble reason: compassion for exploited capitalist workers. It is hard for us to imagine exploitation; we may think exploitation is working an extra 2 unpaid hours a month or something like that. But In Marx’ day, there was no workman’s comp, no overtime pay, no minimum wage (and so workers kept undercutting each other), no unemployment insurance, no unions, no sick leave, no vacations, and no safety regulations. And young women in the workplace? Forget about it – have a baby, you’re fired! Still doesn’t sound so bad? Well, add to that the fact that most work was difficult and extremely dangerous. What you end up with is depressed, sick, and injured workers who can’t feed their families anyway. In order to remedy this, Marx recommended that there be no private property. The hope is that if there is no private property, then no rich person can exploit a poor person. We should never forget this when critiquing socialism.
But as most of the world has now admitted, a government cannot create wealth. Hence, economic equality ends up meaning that everyone is equally poor. My favorite example is from Cuba. Only after Raoul Castro took over were cell phones permitted. ‘What could anyone have against a cell phone?,’ you may ask. Well, remember in the 90s when everyone talked about ‘bling’? Bling, apparently, referred to such things as light reflecting off your gold chains, or the sound that a cell phone would make. Bling was significant because it meant that you had status – that you were more important than your neighbor. Easy solution for Fidel: no cell phones, no inequality (that’s not the whole story, but that’s a part of it).
Well, capitalism wins again. It turned out that after a few years of private economic competition working its magic, everyone got a cell phone. Now, everyone’s life is easier, competing cell phone companies have created a ton of wealth, cell phones are no longer a status symbol, and human beings are still trying to flee Cuba.
I intentionally started this series with an uncontroversial post (unless I have any Communist/socialist/Marxist blog readers I don’t know about), but I’m going to start getting controversial next week. Then, I will argue that a similar critique can be made of libertarianism: sounds nice on paper, but in reality it just doesn’t work. There has never been, is not now, and never will be a successful economy that is not overseen by the federal government. And yes, that does include early America: even the Founders intentionally left many ways for the federal government to intervene in the economy and to place limits on capitalism.
