“We have long lived with the notion - undertaken and popularized in earnest from the outset of the cold war and peaking during the Reagan era - that the American economic system is the most natural and God-given, and that the more taxes are cut, public utilities privatized, and business de-regulated, the more closely we approach some state of grace and harmony with the natural order of things.”
By Andrew S. Taylor
5/8/07
While there are many strains and sub-categories of Libertarianism, each with their own distinct epistemology and nuances, there is one common argument that is shared by all: that laissez-faire capitalism is the most “natural” of all economic systems and that, by extension, systems of redistribution such as communism and socialism are the most “artificial.” This argument is sometimes implicit, and sometimes it is quite overt. The purpose of this essay will be to discuss why it is wrong, and to further explain why the way in which it is wrong can lead us to a better, more consistent philosophical construct in defense of social democracy.
It should be clear that, at this point in the game, such a construct is sorely needed. While pundits both left and right are able to appear in various public forums, armed with reams of data and legions of pie-charts in defense of their various positions on pragmatic or empirical terms, only the free-market Right seems able to speak confidently from principle. The mainstream Left, if it is to be truly progressive (which I mean in its most literal sense of aiding human progress), must have a platform and strategy more imaginative than simply waiting for the Right to fail, pointing out the failure, and then “solving” the problem by being slightly less vicious. In the present era, the mainstream Left acquires power when the outrages of the Right leave voters no other choice, and they never retain the confidence of the public for very long because, intellectually, they have become fundamentally vacant. The Left (or those politicians who claim to speak for it) no longer knows why it believes what it believes. The Right does “know,” which is why they, even when in the minority, will retain a hold on the American imagination that the Left has long relinquished.
This question is deeply relevant now. We have long lived with the notion - undertaken and popularized in earnest from the outset of the cold war and peaking during the Reagan era - that the American economic system is the most natural and God-given, and that the more taxes are cut, public utilities privatized, and business de-regulated, the more closely we approach some state of grace and harmony with the natural order of things. The rising and falling of the stock-market - is this not like the ebb and flow of the tides? The cycles of the moon? Do not the patterns of the market resemble the gentle respiration, the self-correcting perturbations of the natural world? In this context, we are meant to see the planned economy as something of a straight-jacket, a cage, a crude and mindless apparatus whose purpose is to prevent the growth of life in all its glorious chaos and serendipity. This transfixing vision has a hold on the discourse and platforms of both our major political parties.
But let us blink away the pixie-dust for a moment, and consider an alternate possibility: that capitalism, even in its most laissez-faire and “de-regulated” form, is every bit as much “artificial” as Stalinist communism. I am not making an argument about moral equivalence here, nor am I using the term “artificial” in some pejorative sense. I mean, quite literally, that both economic systems are invented, planned, regulated, and can only function by means of an imposed consensus, i.e., by force. Neither represents an integration of the “natural order” into the lives of humans, though the idea that capitalism does is extremely powerful. This explains why, in America, we are loath to challenge it directly. (If it seems that, on this last point, I am smearing the mainstream with a rightward brush, consider Clinton’s widespread popularity with the mainstream Left not in spite of, but rather because of an economic policy more rightward than that of any other post-war president).
It makes sense, of course, that proponents of any economic ideology would want to propose that their system is the most “natural.” The west, even at its most modern and secular, is still a culture whose psychology is deeply embedded in Christian mythos, and so our notion of “progress” is often inextricable from the pursuit of Eden on Earth. The struggle towards the ideal economic system, in some sense, registers in the American psyche as a struggle to overcome our spiritually fallen human reality. The old-guard Left is equally guilty of this fallacy, from Rousseau onwards.
The problem for both wings is that no economic system is “natural” because money is not natural. Any economic system is an artificial system, because it must be established and maintained by some degree of force, and relies on a dominant cultural ideology in order to function. Nor can there be any delusion of being able to approach “naturalness” in a structured economy, as if it were some untouchable but virtuously compelling asymptote towards which we might nobly bend. It makes no more sense to talk of degrees of “naturalism” than it does to parse the distinctions between degrees of death. Once you are no longer alive, the possibility of nuance goes right out the window. By the same token, no human societal invention can properly claim greater “naturalness” over any other.
The question in fact is not one of naturalism versus artificiality, but rather one of scale and structure. The moment we begin to organize society according to standardized concepts and abstractions - of which money is one, and the means of distributing and routing it another - we are dealing in artifice. The difference between a capitalist economy (whether ideal, as in the Libertarian model, or actual, as in the American model) and communism as it has been practiced in its many forms, is to be found primarily in the nature of consolidated power, i.e, where and to what extent it is consolidated. Giant corporations and powerful, authoritarian governments internally function according to similar principles of hierarchy. Office politics and government politics use the same social skills and delegation of power through a chain of command. The difference is this - in a capitalist economy, several powerful corporate bodies are rivals, and in statist-communism, one supreme governing body retains an unrivalled monopoly over all resources.
In the modern era, the perceived differences in social permissiveness (free-speech, etc.) between American and Soviet (or Cuban, or even North Korean) society are as attributable to such differences in scale as they are to any supposed cultural tradition of free expression (for, in fact, Americans seem to have internalized so much of the corporate/managerial mindset that self-censorship is possibly the greatest threat to free expression in America today, even and especially among journalists and other framers of public opinion). Much of what remains of our “social freedom” lives between the gaps, narrowing though they are, not currently covered by the numerous corporate and state entities vying competitively for domination. To wit, we might most accurately view American capitalism at the turn of this century as a rivalry between a modest handful of competing totalitarians, whose only check against complete domination over civic life is to be found in the energy they must exert in warfare against one another, and with what remains of our ever-diminishing legal protection against them in the form of government - itself an increasingly corporate entity. The skeptic who doubts this proposition need only consider the almost incomprehensible vastness of energy, resources, intellectual talent, and sheer time and space expended in the realm of pubic discourse by corporations to get every living citizen to think like they do. He or she need only observe how much of this discourse is about the orchestration of dreams, desires, and other preternatural murmurs as opposed to the discussion of empirical fact. And then the skeptic must finally observe that the remaining 1% of this discourse which happens to be somewhat factual is there only because extensive legal regulations still exist which prevent - sometimes - the most harmful and egregious confabulations from passing muster. For now. Even if Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are willing to say “when,” can anyone rationally doubt that there now exist many corporate overlords willing to seize and exploit any opportunity for greater power over society that presents itself? To whom citizenship and fairness are pitiable abstractions for the feeble-minded and weak? Or are we to assume that, Enron and Halliburton aside, megalomania is a true rarity even among billionaires capable of buying influence in the world’s most powerful governments? Of taking over the role of government itself? Considering these question in the light of the evidence presented by our daily lives, by the billboards and commercials and endless parade of banners, by the outsourced “reconstruction” of obliterated societies, does it not seem that corporate propaganda is every bit as concerned with controlling our thoughts as any other totalitarian propaganda? Indeed, is there any other defining characteristic of the totalitarian state than its constitutional tendency, its inherent desire, to be the exclusive colonizer of the human mind?
It seems we can attribute what remains of our freedom to the fact that there is multitude of totalitarianisms currently vying for control. If America were ruled by a single, all-powerful corporation, it would hardly appear different from Soviet Russia. The corporation would have to own everything - housing, the media, all of industry and all intellectual property. It would have crushed its competition from existence. It would exist as a totalitarian state. As the tip of the corporate pyramid sharpens and grows more distant from the base of society, as merger after merger puts a dwindling handful of executives in control, we continue to approach that dreaded singularity known as Big Brother (and take note that the hyper-capitalist society that Russia has transformed into with devastating rapidity is not one iota freer from authoritarianism than it was before).
The peacetime-warfare (i.e. warfare through economy and the control of public opinion) of competing interests is what defines a mixed economy. But, in order to secure a free society, it is not enough that the interests merely compete; they must also be fundamentally different externally from one another in form and function if they are to provide checks and balances against each other. This must also be true internally, between their constituent parts. The human animal being what it is (a beast with a recently developed, intelligent fore brain encasing an ancient, hungry reptilian one), the tendency of human groups to organize into leaders and followers must be channeled into institutional structures of highly limited and uniquely defined power, appropriate to their assigned social function. The business model must be different from the government model, and the government model must be different from the military model. The more that the business, government, and military models begin to resemble one another in function and form - whether through cross-pollination (large numbers of individuals moving from one sector to another via professional connections) or through the sheer domination of one model over all others (via a military coup, a repressive political regime, or a robber baron-style wholesale buyout of government), the more a society veers towards totalitarianism, for the obvious reason that “competitors” whose interests are similar or identical are not capable of providing a system of long-term checks and balances. Put another way, powerful institutions are defined by their socially-enforced limitations above all else, by those rights and responsibilities which they are expressly and constitutionally denied. The lack of such clearly-defined boundaries between power-wielding bodies is what leads to totalitarianism. This is what Eisenhower warned us about is his famous speech, referring to the “military-industrial” complex, and it is why more than a few fascist despots have defined their own polity of choice as “the melding of industry and government” or “capitalism run amok.”
The danger, then, is not that corporations exist, or that the government and its laws exist, or that the military exists. The danger is that each of these bodies, all of which are hierarchical and which wield great power over society as a whole, have a dependably human tendency to seek more power and control over the material conditions of reality than is healthy for society as a whole. It is therefore crucial that society must ever be on guard against the over-indulgence of any one “model” or the liberal intermixture of interests between industry, government, and the military. Each of these elements of society perform crucial functions, but their different external functions increasingly hide internal similarities, and these similarities are the reason that corruption and collusion of power interests across the line of public and private are coming to define our civic life. And, in the era of globalization, it is the business model that it is rapid ascent, with the military model not far behind as the government model recedes back into the pre-dawn horizon.
We must make the following observation of the business model: while businesses may thrive or perish of their own accord in a free society, and the health of business can (though not necessarily) indicate the health of society as whole, the traditional business infrastructure itself is not in any way dependant on social freedom. Instead, the business model is based on rigidly defined hierarchies, much like a comparatively low-stakes military, in which there is a chain of command based on rank, and a pyramid of downwardly cascading delegation of authority. The clerks and low-level managers - the privates and sergeants of the business world - are at best devoted only to the functions of their immediate department, more likely than not existing in a state of rivalry or bitterness regarding the strangers on the upstairs floor. Even fairly small businesses routinely disperse information downwards on a “need to know” basis, keeping the nature of their most important decisions under wraps until the last possible moment - especially those most likely to directly affect their employees, . It is no mystery as to why military training is often regarded as the best preparation in the business world, since the same competence in obeying authority from above and executing it downwards is required in both milieus. The “triumph” of the mixed economy, to the extent that it is a triumph (it is also many other things) is that it keeps its numerous would-be despots and tyrants contained to comparatively small regions of influence, even as within those regions there are endless battles for control of the fiefdom.
This leads us to observe the most important similarity between the military and the business model: it is designed for optimum function in a state of warfare. In other words, it is meant to operate on the assumption that its mortality is daily imminent, that it will be attacked by the enemy/competition at any given moment. It is designed to function efficiently in a permanent mode of perceived existential crisis. Reflection upon the greater meaning of the task is at best useless, and in fact is likely to be counter-productive and inhibit judgment in combat. This psychological stance of fierce “adherence to the task” is necessarily a feature of any social hierarchy. It is, indeed, the whole point of having a hierarchy, which maximizes the number of individuals devoted to the What and How, and minimizes to a tiny, extremely powerful minority those who determine the Why. It is bracingly, awe-inspiringly successful, but it is not democratic, nor is it reflective.
Like the military model, the business model is an effective and powerful tool which in many cases can be wielded to produce, distribute, procure, etc. But you would no more want a government run on a business model than you would want it run on military model, and for precisely the same reason - it is a model which only knows the particulars of the crisis, i.e., the immediate present and the near-term future. It is not a democratic structure, and it does not act with reference to objective social values except to the extent that those values are imposed from without. Both the business and the military exist to perform tasks, and they are designed to do so brilliantly. They were not devised with the intention of defining the public good.
The great problem with the “crisis mode” is that even brute reality has its limits, and if society does not legally intervene, it will be the limits of crisis-mode mentality that will define corporate behavior. Whatever walls are erected to regulate corporate power, the corporation will push against them with all its might, hoping for a crack in the facade. Without laws limiting working hours, setting minimum wage, safety and privacy standards and so on, there will always be someone willing to work for longer and for less, i.e., someone in a greater state of individual crisis. Labor laws, if not set by the state, will instead be set by the limits of desperation. The Libertarian will argue that this is precisely what makes the laissez-faire system “natural,” and this of course is hokum of the highest order, because it completely overlooks the fact that the modern industrial corporation, the technology that fuels it, and even the various forms of monetary currency which fund it are not products of the natural world but of human invention. The modern arrangement between employer and employee does not exist in nature. It is a creation of industry. They are human concepts, a product of our modern and artificial social arrangements.
The Libertarian who argues that laissez-faire capitalism is an expression of natural law does so through Darwinian metaphors. They posit the free economy as a wilderness, in which the most “productive” individuals achieve order and through their own egoistic pursuits raise the standard of living for everyone. For instance: without Thomas Edison, no light bulbs. Edison is likened to the alpha wolf most equipped to thrive in the wilderness. The irony here is that the Darwinian metaphor relies on a non-intentional, pre-conscious system - nature - for its referent. The more accurate metaphor is the exact opposite of Darwinism, i.e., agriculture. By means of a systematized, highly refined, and wholly artificial infrastructure of social institutions based on notions of common citizenship, equity, plurality, and commonwealth, people like Edison, and the many thousands who were talented and industrious enough to work for him (and often be exploited by him), were nurtured into being by society’s careful ministrations. Schools, educators, keepers of the peace and justice, this is why we have the light bulb. We can credit Edison for being the first without worshipping him for it. Another would soon have followed. One thing Darwin was clear on; wheat and corn do not naturally arrange themselves into tidy, efficient rows for hundreds of square miles as a result of natural selection.
Libertarians argue that the government which governs best, governs least. Yet, having read all-too-many Libertarian essays, discourses, rants, and tracts, I never cease to be confounded by the astonishing rarity with which Libertarians question whether, once government has been drowned in its proverbial bathtub, no other system of repression might arise to replace it, despite the overwhelming historical evidence that this is precisely what happens.
Human society requires structure, and where the structure is not defined by some semblance of consensus before-hand, it is defaulted upon, often with dire consequences. It is true that for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth century in America, “big” government interfered little in the affairs of business. However, businesses were small because corporations were strictly limited in size and scope by the exigencies of public charter, hence there was little to interfere with. When granted their own “personhood” at the end of the nineteenth century, all checks on their growth were undone. Unfettered capitalism, as practiced by the British Empire and later by the United States following Reconstruction, was “tempered” only by a rigidly defined and merciless fatalism regarding the prospects for human happiness on Earth. The Enlightenment-era Aristotelian Deism and the philosophically nuanced Christianity of the founders gave way to those chapters of the Good Book found on either side of the savior, those passages in which plagues of locusts and running sores were either reported or predicted. Christ became the sugar-pill by which Social Darwinism, itself a bleakly Old Testament revelation, was swallowed.
This happened, because laissez faire capitalism places severe demands upon its practitioners. A laissez-faire society cannot and would not “liberate” us to live our lives as we see fit, with no one else legally obliged or permitted to account for us but our own conscience. It is not a free-love, chain-smoking, pot-growing, SUV-driving free-for all. Instead, it would create a series of drastic circumstances to which we would have no choice but to submit. A society with no minimum wage, no mandated health-coverage, no restrictions on the work-week, no checks on the predatory practices of credit-card companies, no required labels on food containers and no FDA at all, is a society in which even the most mundane acts of buying food and finding a job become a constant struggle against the wiles of unscrupulous salesmen.
It is worth considering what businesses already have done in the past few decades. They have demanded that their employees submit to drug tests, they have monitored their private emails and internet usage (a courtesy now recently extended to every American citizen), and they have sold personal information (credit ratings, social security numbers, etc.). Furthermore, they have created an economic situation in which one must be a debtor in order to receive an education and housing, and in which supposedly private matters regarding one’s spending habits, previous addresses, and money problems are de facto public knowledge, available for purchase by other creditors. There is little evidence - no evidence - that the major corporations of today have any interest whatsoever in viewing their employees and customers as private citizens with rights. They routinely employ vast armies of lawyers to find loopholes in laws to protect consumers, and employ other, equally vast armies whose sole purpose is to lobby to have those loopholes widened to the point that they swallow all regulation completely. There are no company ethicists on the payroll. Shall we consider a world run entirely by private police forces, private schools, private roads and private prisons, all of whom are free to exclude membership and employment for whatever reason they like? These are all violations of our personal liberty by corporate powers which only a strong democratic government can prevent.
An “excess of government” in a democracy is a logical impossibility, since a democratic government is defined by two essential characteristics: 1) It values the egalitarian over the hierarchical, and 2) its purpose is to enact the will of the people, i.e., to subjugate the hierarchical institutions of business and the military to humanistic value systems and democratic will. A government that has come to insinuate a pernicious level of control over the lives of the citizens it is meant to represent is not an excessively democratic government at all. History will show that such tyrannies are either excessively militarized or excessively corporate. Such governments have retreated from the enlightenment values which seek to free the individual from the strictures of merciless hierarchies. A government that becomes incorporated or militarized, or which succumbs or defers to the corporation or the militant, is a government rapidly regressing into the social psychology of feudalism. The government that refuses to subjugate and regulate corporate power is the government which kicks open the door, welcoming into the corridors of power the divine right of numerous child-kings, despotic accountants, and cool-headed tabulators of human labor.
There is a reason why our society, a century ago, was so fiercely rigid and conservative, and this is it precisely. We were at the mercy of the giants of capitalism. Only God was more powerful, hence He was our only recourse for injustices suffered. This is likely the same reason for the growth of evangelical fundamentalism today. And yet it ultimately matters little whether the worker at the bottom believes in the Supreme Being or not. He should be concerned, gravely concerned, that his masters on Earth, having long lost a fear of the people and their means of representation, know no fear of Him either.
A close examination of the relationship between money and labor will be discussed in part 3.
Andrew S. Taylor’s official website can be found at Fables and Riddles.
