“Victims” of capitalism?

“Victims” of capitalism?

Available in Audiobook  at:

Available in Paperback, Hardcover and eBook  at:
Buy How to be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business from Amazon

Buy How to be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business from Rowman & Littlefield

Buy How to be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business from iBookstore

Buy How to be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business from Indigo Chapters

Buy How to be Profitable and Moral: A Rational Egoist Approach to Business from Barnes & Noble

 

When the Canadian government recently announced the plan to build a monument to victims of communism, Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader (and the party’s sole MP) tweeted: “no mention of monument to victims of capitalism.” While the government should not build any monuments—it is spending our money without our consent—Ms. May’s tweet warrants comment. It reflects widespread ignorance of capitalism, and not just among politicians. As the system consistent with requirements of human survival and flourishing, understanding capitalism is in our self-interest.

Many people confuse our current mixed economy with capitalism. However, there is no capitalist system anywhere in the world (the closest to it was 19th century America but even there capitalism was not pure but entailed government involvement in the economy), so there hardly could be any “victims” of capitalism. But more fundamentally, there cannot be victims of capitalism because the whole concept is a contradiction. To see why, we must be clear what ‘victim’ and ‘capitalism’ mean.

‘Victim’ is a “person destroyed, sacrificed, or injured by another, or by some condition or agency; one who is cheated or duped” (The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language). In another words, a person is victimized by physical force—whether initiated by another or caused by a natural phenomenon (such as earthquake or flood)—or by fraud committed by another. ‘Capitalism’ is “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned” (Ayn Rand: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal). In other words, capitalism is a system in which the initiation of physical force and fraud is banned. Under capitalism, only the government can use force—but only in retaliation against its initiators, such as terrorists and other criminals.

Because initiation of physical force and fraud are banned in a capitalist system and the government’s only role is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, there are no victims. Quite the contrary: capitalism is the only victimless social system. People are free to pursue their interests but they cannot violate the rights of others by initiating—or threatening to initiate—physical force against them. The government—via independent courts and objective law—is there to deter and punish them in case they do. Under capitalism, violations against others’ life, liberty, and property are deterred and punished, including crimes such as polluting someone else’s property, or otherwise damaging or stealing it. Under capitalism, the government protects individual rights and cannot itself initiate force, for example by confiscating citizens’ property to build monuments.

In every statist system, including the mixed economies prevalent in most countries of the world, there are victims because the individual rights are not fully protected and governments themselves initiate physical force in varying degrees, from taxation and confiscation of property for the sake of alleged “public interest” to imprisoning and executing dissidents. If we want more freedom and recognition of individual rights—necessities for human survival and flourishing—the first step is to understand what capitalism means and then promote it, by educating all those willing to listen. Elizabeth May might not be among them but many others will be.

Share this:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Share this:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email
Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,363 other subscribers

8 Responses

  1. Well said, Jaana. Thank you!

    I have long thought that advocates of capitalism have done a great disservice to capitalism by referring to our (U.S.) system, a mixed-economy, progressively growing welfare state, as capitalism.

    The mixed economy leaves no one happy, neither those who are pro-freedom, nor those who are statists, and although I’m glad that statists are stymied and unhappy or discontent with the mixed economy, the failure to identify the mixed economy for what it actually is muddies the issue, the distinction between the two camps, damaging the cause for freedom while engendering further calls for greater expansions of statism, given that most on both sides generally accept the same moral view: altruism. (The left has for decades been demanding what the hypocritical right has been upholding, only more consistently so.)

    Sadly, the chickens are coming home to roost big time in America, sadly.

  2. Very good article Jaana, thanks.

    By her particular phrasing in the context, Elizabeth May outed herself as a neo-Marxist.

    Her phrasing is typical of neo-Marxists.It probably seems to most people to be an out-of-context use – but I take it as defending Marxism (which communism is a strong implementation of).

    Environmentalism and Marxism share the roots of a view of humans as uncreative and inherently unethical, which leads to a presumption of fixed-pie economics and an expectation of drive-to-the-bottom ethics thus exploitation. Their underlying error is denial of the effectiveness of the mind for human life.

    We do have problems with Mercantilists here, who also believe in forcing individuals for collective good, in other ways. But embracing an ideology that can’t even feed people where ever it is substantially implemented, let alone protect the environment, is not a solution. History proved that in places such as the USSR and North Korea. The solution is individual freedom supported by defense and justice systems, which is what you mean by “capitalism” (Karl Marx used the word differently, and had a deterministic view of life).

    A question of psychology is why people believe a negative disproven view of life, despite evidence al around them.

  3. As a nephew of two men who were starved to death in a prison during the Portuguese Estado Novo (Fascist Rule) for being Socialist, I can’t stand that these victims are forgotten, apart from the rest of people I have known. It looks incoherent to me that you can’t blame this on capitalism (because you negate their victims) whereas you have tweeted a quote that makes socialism responsible for the Great Recession (although public share of GDP is only around 20% in Western countries and former Socialist countries currently in the EU have suffered massive privatization)

    https://twitter.com/JWoiceshyn/status/1040253519561781249

  4. In the face of the Govt of Canada planning a Victims of Communism Memorial in my neighborhood in Ottawa, I too had the same reaction as Elizabeth May – what about the victims of capitalism?. While I can accept that in either case it is those who interpret and implement the philosophy of communism or capitalism who commit the crimes and create the victims, I think the general population would understand what May was referring to and many would agree. If one is going to lump the victims of autocratic governments using a communist framework as victims of communism, then it seems reasonable to lump the victims of governments, corporations and individuals who abuse a capitalist framework as victims of capitalism. i think the majority of the general public would understand May’s criticism of capitalism to be directed towards individuals, corporations, and sometimes government leaders/ political parties, driven by greed without a sense of social and environmental responsibility, Union Carbide’s Bhopal disaster, slavery, the uncaring poisoning of coal and asbestos miners, etc were all driven by a capitalist emphasis on profit. I am not against what you refer to as a mixed economy as long as the capitalist aspect is convinced, by persuasion where possible and force where necessary to have appropriate social and environmental responsibilities. If we are thinking in general layman’s terms, I think your defense of “capitalism” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

    1. Thank you for your comment. It shows why it is very important to be very clear about the terms we use. Many people are confused about capitalism: they mistakenly think it is a social system that sanctions or makes possible the initiation of physical force or fraud–which of course always has victims. Without a clear definition, there is no way of either defending or condemning capitalism, or any other system.

      According to Ayn Rand, capitalism is “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can only be violated by means of force.” This is not the the prevailing system anywhere in the world, so we cannot argue that those victims of force that you describe are victims of capitalism but victims of force that the prevailing mixed economy–where government does not fully protect individual rights and also initiates force against its citizens.

Leave a Reply

Jaana Woiceshyn teaches business ethics and competitive strategy at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Canada.

She has lectured and conducted seminars on business ethics to undergraduate, MBA and Executive MBA students, and to various corporate audiences for over 20 years both in Canada and abroad. Before earning her Ph.D. from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, she helped turn around a small business in Finland and worked for a consulting firm in Canada.

Jaana’s research on technological change and innovation, value creation by business, executive decision-making, and business ethics has been published in various academic and professional journals and books. “How to Be Profitable and Moral” is her first solo-authored book.

%d bloggers like this: