Blog Excerpt of the Day: Dr. Sanity
This is the best two-paragraph differentiation between capitalism and socialism I’ve ever seen (”want” in final sentence was changed from a different word in the original):
The do-gooder leftist in all the various ideological incarnations–the antiwar crowd, the environmental crowd, the communists, socialists, and assorted collectivists–offers the rationale that he does what he does for the “common good” and for “social justice”, “peace” and “brotherhood”. His high-minded, self-righteous rhetoric justifies (to him anyway) imposing his will and beliefs on others for their own good; and he will not hesitate to use whatever coercive capablity he has at hand to get others to do what he wants and what he says.
The capitalist, on the other hand, is overtly out to pursue his own selfish profit, and understands he must use persuasion. That is, he must convince people that his ideas and the products of his mind are better than all the rest so that they will be willing to part with their hard-earned money to possess them. His desire for power over others is manifested in an indirect manner because people must want what he has to offer and believe that they will benefit from an interaction with him.
This brilliant dichotomy explains why anti-capitalists dating back to the early 1950s, particularly the late John Kenneth Galbraith’s “Affluent Society,” have argued so stridently that advertising and other supposedly pernicious influences are so persuasive that they in essence take away consumer choice — so they can try to portray the alleged materialist coercion of capitalism as just as morally repugnant as their inevitable and very real coercion.
Here’s George Will on that very topic in May of last year, the time of Galbraith’s passing. Will even offers up a specific example of where the coercive logic has led us:
“The Affluent Society” was the distilled essence of the conventional wisdom on campuses. In the 1960s, that liberalism became a stance of disdain, describing Americans not only as Galbraith had, as vulgar, but also as sick, racist, sexist, imperialist, etc. Again, and not amazingly, voters were not amused when told that their desires — for big cars, neighborhood schools and other things — did not deserve respect.
But for liberals that was precisely the beauty of Galbraith’s theory. If advertising could manufacture demands for whatever corporations wanted to supply, there was no need to respect markets, which bring supply and demand into equilibrium.
“The Affluent Society” was the canonical text of modern liberalism’s disparagement of the competence of the average American. This liberalism — the belief that people are manipulable dolts who need to be protected by their liberal betters from exposure to “too much” advertising — is one rationale for McCain-Feingold. That law regulating campaigns embodies the political class’ belief that it knows just the right amount of permissible political speech.
