Posted on 10/24/2009 4:53:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
Irving Kristol, who died last month at age 89, inspired some highly mixed feelings in me. On the positive side, this renowned public intellectual was possessed of political realism, a firm anti-utopian grasp of the possible. Like Thomas Sowell and P.J. O’Rourke, though more understated, he had a superb gift for deflating the morally-charged conceits and histrionics of Left egalitarianism. On the negative side, he exhibited a shockingly narrow and vitriolic view of contemporary culture. That hatred, unfortunately, did much to sour his view of capitalism. And his widespread influence on this count has become painfully apparent.
Arguably more than anyone else in the 20th century, Irving Kristol and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) defined, in different ways, the American Right’s view of capitalism. Each thought little of latter-day liberalism and the capitalists who accommodated it, but Kristol believed that businessmen who behaved contrarily to civilized (or “bourgeois”) norms were at least as bad as socialists. Established political authorities thus have an obligation to ban certain buyer-seller transactions – a great many of them, actually. Modern societies, like ancient ones, must affirm objective truths.
Mises, by contrast, saw projecting motive onto capitalists and their customers as a futile and potentially tyrannical exercise. In his book, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, the preeminent Austrian economist observed that animosity toward capitalism is manifest in a dislike of capitalists. Opponents of business, he argued, view businessmen as profit-obsessed reprobates undermining societal well-being:
As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery…For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The ‘ideological superstructure’ of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of strip-tease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories.
These words, though written more than 50 years ago, have an oddly contemporary ring. More to the point, they refer to moralists on the Right as much as those on the Left. That’s all the more troubling since many among the former – like Irving Kristol – have been professed friends of free enterprise. The truth is that the Right carries a cartload of petty anti-capitalist resentments of its own.
This goes against the grain of accepted wisdom, which sees anti-market attitudes as an almost exclusively Leftist vocation. Such a view is understandable. The Left’s reigning idea is that the market, left to its own devices, is incapable of providing moral justice. While capitalism may be efficient, its enormous social costs require rectification through outside control. Inevitably, that means a massive expansion of the State, so long as the “right” people (e.g., Barack Obama, Hugo Chavez) run it. Yet traditionalists of the Right have their own pedigree of fear and loathing of capitalism long predating the rise of the Left. Their arguments raise the age-old philosophical distinction between “wants” and “needs.”
For many centuries, almost all societies were de facto “conservative.” That is, the main tenets of classical conservatism, steeped in reverence for hierarchy, were so ingrained that they required no political movement to promote them. People simply “knew their place.” Those of low hereditary status risked severe sanctions if they pulled rank on their social betters.
Luxury, a manifestation of early capitalism, thus was something to be feared. Its widespread availability, authorities believed, would lead to sloth, lechery or worse. In later centuries, those justifying such a moral code frequently pointed to fallen ancient civilizations whose masses of people had grown spoiled, soft and weak from luxury. Only landed nobility had the right to fulfill wants. Everyone else had to be content with rigidly-circumscribed needs. In his book, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett, John Sekora notes:
(T)he pursuit of luxury, however considered, was viewed as a fundamental and generic vice from which other subordinate vices would ensue. In the Old Testament, where it is equated with disobedience to God, it is the cardinal sin of the Israelites. In Plato and Aristotle, the Cynics and the Stoics, it is the first and most important violation of nature and reason. For the Roman historians, it is the primary factor in the dissolution of the Republic. For the Christian theologians, it is prima facie evidence of both disobedience to God and love of a degraded world.
The prohibition against luxury also assumed a common legal dimension: sumptuary laws. Such enactments reinforced existing hierarchies. By making food, clothing and other consumption items associated with aristocrats off-limits to commoners, those in power could be insulated from challenge. During the ancient Roman Republic, authorities published a book containing the names of everyone found guilty of luxurious living. England during the Middle Ages prescribed the color, material and type of clothing for people of various ranks and trades. Such laws were not necessarily rigorously enforced, but their mere existence inhibited the development of business culture. For if shame and approbation were attached to living “too well,” what intrepid entrepreneur would service such illicit desires?
Sumptuary laws pretty much had become extinct by the close of the 18th century, as modern ideas of sovereignty, rights and contract took hold, but the instinct to mistrust and punish those of low status has remained powerful. Military life, where rank is paramount, is probably the clearest example of tight restrictions on dress, speech and other outward behavior. Countless unwritten laws of etiquette still prevail. An employee does not, for example, drive a flashier car than the boss without inviting suspicion. Highly liturgical religions also have maintained a strict code of appearances, as do various sectarian cults. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, isn’t that far-fetched.
Capitalism, more than any other institution, dissolved the idea of the forbidden in everyday life. Under the Austrian or libertarian view, capitalists have the right to offer “frivolous” goods and services, and consumers have the right to buy them. Economic knowledge is subjective. The people best able to calculate the wisdom of economic decisions are those participating in them. Parties outside their frame of reference, especially in the realm of government, lack the knowledge or moral standing to intervene.
Traditionalists generally find this infuriating. For them, the exercise of personal freedom is tantamount to its misuse. A healthy culture, in their minds, must prevent adults from attending immoral concerts, watching immoral TV programs, and reading immoral magazines (or allowing their offspring to do likewise). This was the rock upon which Irving Kristol stood, not to mention Robert Bork, Walter Berns and David Lowenthal, all enthusiastic supporters of censorship. As licentious appetites must be whetted in today’s carnival of consumption, they argue, authorities should restrain people from indulging those appetites. Capitalism, while more efficient than socialism, undermines virtue. New sumptuary laws, of a sort, are needed.
This is the central argument of Kristol’s popular 70s-era book, Two Cheers for Capitalism. For him, capitalism earns a cheer each for efficiency and liberty. But it doesn’t earn a third cheer because it lacks the means of satisfying the search for existential authenticity. Worse yet, it lends credibility to darker existential impulses if money can be made. For the remainder of his career, this view would be his leitmotif. As long as people such as Hugh Hefner are permitted to run profitable enterprises, Kristol argued, capitalists would be the gravediggers of capitalism.
It was Kristol’s founding partner of The Public Interest, sociologist Daniel Bell, who gave this view its fullest expression. In his own 70s-era book, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Bell, a self-described socialist in economics, liberal in politics and conservative in culture, was apoplectic that the “counterculture” was becoming integrated into capitalism. America apparently was better off with its artists starving. While running a successful business still requires traditional economic calculation, he argued, marketing and advertising require pandering to base instincts. “The consequence of this contradiction,” writes Bell, “…is that a corporation finds its people being straight by day and swingers by night.” Bell reveals his hysterical authoritarianism in the following passage: “The question of who will use drugs, engage in orgies and wife-swapping, become an open homosexual, use obscenity as a political style, or enjoy ‘happenings’ and underground movies is not easily related to the ‘standard variables’ of sociological discourse.”
Many conservatives, in fact, since have made the argument that rising discretionary income has had the unintended effect of stimulating amoral wants. The late Canadian social philosopher, George Parkin Grant, a self-described conservative, defended socialism on precisely such grounds. And a new generation of “crunchy” American conservatives, such as Rod Dreher, Jeremy Beer and John Zmirak, are hardly friends of the market either.
Kristol was of the same cast of mind. Contempt for cultural freedom was his trump card. Though hardly a socialist, even socialists didn’t arouse his ire as much as counterculture-friendly businessmen did. He supported the idea of a “conservative welfare state,” and even defended “soaking the rich” under certain circumstances. One wonders whom he had in mind.
All of today’s arguments on the Right against “amoral” capitalism in a real sense ratify the Kristol-Bell thesis. Public policy, in their minds, must wage all-out war against anti-bourgeois forces masquerading as legitimate businessmen. This view, unfortunately, is akin to destroying the village in order to save it. For there would be no end to the Torquemada-like enthusiasm for rooting out immorality for fun and profit, replete with boycotts, censorship, arrests, and confiscatory taxes on luxury items. This obsession reaches its apogee in ceaseless (and baseless) campaigns against “Hollywood,” typically led by people who admit to not even seeing films they denounce. Since capitalists can’t be trusted with capitalism, they must be brought under strict social control. That advocates of this view haven’t necessarily practiced what they’ve preached (e.g., Bill Bennett’s costly casino excursions) does not invalidate their principle that liberty must play a subordinate role to hierarchy and tradition. The neoconservative critique of modernity isn’t that huge of a leap from Marx’s denunciation of the “fetishism of commodities.”
My response is this: Certain people at any given time will misuse their freedoms. But that in itself is insufficient cause for yanking freedoms from everyone. Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Robert George, Roger Kimball and Robert Bork, among others, don’t see things that way. Casting dark shadows of dispersion upon the pursuit of happiness, they would remove the freedom of the great many to enjoy the fruits of others’ creativity. Filmmakers such as Clint Eastwood, Peter Jackson and David Fincher would be looking for alternative work. So would stand-up comics such as Margaret Cho, Chris Rock and Richard Lewis; musicians such as Depeche Mode, the White Stripes and Iggy Pop; and novelists such as Philip Roth, Gore Vidal and Chuck Palahniuk. What a dreary world these defenders of tradition would have us endure!
The Left, we are told, wants to create a “nanny state,” regulating adults as though they were children. That’s largely true. Yet moral busybodies of the Right have their own idealized nanny state. They may be comfortable with fatty foods, tobacco and alcohol, but they seek to banish film, drama, painting, literature, music and other cultural expressions not meeting their religious or cultural criteria. Such an impulse is not only bad civil liberties, it’s also bad economics. That’s why in the end, Ludwig von Mises, though not without his flaws, far more than Irving Kristol is a lodestar in the quest for human liberty.
There's truth in that but it is called supplying the demand.
Profit is what motivates people to grow food, build houses, make computers and generally take the effort that creates the standard of living that is attainable (not guaranteed)in a free society. What the philosphically tilted economists like Kristol object to is what they view as capitalism’s dark side, but the dark side is human nature and not a flawed political system. Among free people, it is manifest in excess and debauchery; in closed societies, it’s manifest in oppression, torture and murder. Until man figures out how to alter human nature, those will be his choices.
Government choose to reward Disney and punish it's competitors, Disney merely defend it's interests in it's copyrights, Government acted to reward Disney.
The problem here is the Marxist have successfully indoctrinated too many Americans with this notion of the evil capitalist cabal.
Yes, there are bad actors in Business but to blanket blame all Corporations for bad actions at some corporations is simplistic nonsense. It also is a simple way to scapegoat business for the corrupt incompetence of Government. Rather then hold them accountable for their actions, the Left merely blames "Big business" for the failure of Government and the good little American voters buy the nonsense.
The solution is not a blanket condemnation of business but to hold Government accountable for it's failures. Government exists to protect us from force, fraud and abuse. The solution to it's failures is NOT to blame business but to hold Government accountable for it continual attempt to overreaching it's legitimate power.
We have figured it out. Religion alters human nature. Whether it be Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc., religion puts in place a set of ethics, defines culture, and places boundaries on behavior. Even in a modern society with sophisticated social structure, cultural norms and ethics are far more powerful in shaping human nature than any govt mandated law would do.
Dirtboy posted about the Canadian banking system and their sense of individual responsibility versus ours. Canada has no laws mandating personal responsibility. No govt does. But their culture protected them from individuals taking advantage of an onerous situation that is allowed from a legal standpoint.
I'm not saying that religion is the sole remedy for the eventual self-destruction of Capitalism. However, one must realize that virtue does play a huge part on whether a nation can survive regardless of the economic system.
As a conservative, I believe that govt does have a role to play in promoting virtue. The govt, with its massive power, must be careful in doing so, and should use direct legislation as the bastion of last resort (e.g., Prohibition). There are many other methods the govt could use in perserving "useful" virtue, such as having an English-as-an-official-language policy; enacting loser-pay laws in curbing frivolous lawsuits; or simply cleaning out corruption by passing term-limits on Congress.
Second strawman you've erected so far on this thread. The Dems are a large part of this problem. So are many pubbies, such as Phil Gramm. But that does not change the historical fact that companies historically have turned to governmen to either increase their bottom line, shut out competitors, or have taxpayers assume risk.
Yes, there are bad actors in Business but to blanket blame all Corporations for bad actions at some corporations is simplistic nonsense
That's your third strawman, show me where I have blamed all corporations.
The fact that you cannot debate this subject without abject reliance on distorting my position points to the weakness of yours.
While Marxist shills like yourself squeal about "big Business" to avoid having to confront the failure of Government to perform it's legitimate functions.
Fourth strawman. I also hold our corrupt establishment leadership in both parties as culpable (in the case of the GOP, last seen shilling for a hard-left corrupt candidate in upstate New York). But the discussion here is about nature of the relationship of corporations and government.
If you would do something other than erect strawman posts, I'd be glad to.
I suppose you think that folks who OFFER bribes are guiltless, and only those who accept them should be blamed??
"Government choose to reward Disney and punish it's competitors, Disney merely defend it's interests in it's copyrights, Government acted to reward Disney."
And Disney's actions went beyond the legitimate actions of business in doing so, by suborning government.
"Yes, there are bad actors in Business but to blanket blame all Corporations for bad actions at some corporations is simplistic nonsense."
I suggest you go back and re-read what I actually wrote. "Blanket blame" is nowhere to be found. But by the same token, putting the blame ONLY on government is simply idiotic. BOTH sides end up suborning liberty to their own benefit.
The "country club Republicans" go too far in favor of business, and the socialist Democrats go too far against it. Both are wrong.
And there is little risk of sunburn where their heads are.
Actually, we’re all right. Each of us has a slightly different “take”, but the fundamental observations above all ring true to one degree or another. On a good day, on a level playing field, in an antiseptic Adam Smith like environment of fair play, capitalism works better than any other economic system. I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that. But anyone thinking we live in a textbook world where company A and company B compete to make widgets, and the maker of the best product, subject to pure market economics wins, whilst the government just paves roads and prints postage stamps is delusional.
I love your tagline!
Enron was a great example of how things should work. The guys who did wrong were discovered, tried, and sent to jail. In a Fascistic system with government and business tied into one that would never happen - a corporation might run afoul of the powers that be and be purged - but it would never have to answer for its crimes.
I always have to scratch my head when people use Enron as an example of why politics and business need to be more entangled (then they already are). What, do you not like criminals being punished for their crimes?
If Phil Gramm had not done Enron’s biddding in the first place by getting new commodities exchanges exempted from regulation, the Enron scandal would never have happened in the first place. And although executives went to jail, many, many others lost a ton of money.
Sounds like the old which came first, the chicken or egg argument.
But knowing human nature, I think dirtboy is correct.
The only Anti-Capitalism bent I have is against any time mega corporations collude with Big-Government to get political favors which harm everyone eles’s political or economic freedom (aka I am against Corporate welfare, crony capitalism, National Banks, and Lobbying for unfair regulations which cut competitors, or make it very difficult for them to function in the marketplace): So I guess you could say I was less anti-capitialism (really close to pure libertarian..), and more anti-corporatism (which, imo, is a form of socialism-fascism-tyranny-feudalism-slavery-Anti-American)!
The intelligent and principled discussion on this thread is an example of how what are described as "conservatives" debate their opinions. Only a few misplaced personal attacks appear, but the discussion stimulates honest inquiry.
America's Founders were on the side of liberty for individuals in all its dimensions, as opposed to delegating coercive power to those they elected to serve them in government. They trust "the people" more than "the government."
On the question discussed on this thread, as well as other Constitutional issues, they made it clear that no written constitution would substitute for what they described as "virtue" among the people. See the following excerpts from an essay in the book, "Our Ageless Constitution": here
America's Founders knew that it takes more than a perfect plan of government to preserve liberty. Something else is needed - some moral principle diffused among the people to unite and strengthen the urge to peaceful observance of law. They recognized that the raw materials of a free government are people who can act morally without compulsion, who do not willfully violate the rights of others, and who love liberty enough to demand that government's power is very limited. They used the word "virtuous" to describe such people. Defined by Webster, "virtue" is "a conformity to a standard of right," but whatever word is used to describe it, such a moral standard is the necessary fountainhead of a free society.
The Declaration of Independence referred to "Nature's God," the "Creator," the "Supreme judge of the World," and "Divine Providence" Our nation's founders came together, voluntarily, to create a limited government to secure for them and posterity their God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. Such liberty, they believed, rested on three great supports:
Their own words are eloquent reminders of their devotion to this belief:
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government." - George Washington's Farewell Address
"We may look up to Armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored." - Samuel Adams
"Virtue must underlay all institutional arrangements if they are to be healthy and strong. The principles of democracy are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted!' - John Adams
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
"What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow." - Judge Learned Hand - P. 190, "The Spirit of Liberty" (1944)
****The problem with a govt with too much power is that it has limited check and balances, especially if the govt controls the media and individual liberties such as gun ownership.****
This is why you never give government control of guns and money at the same time. Every time in history it has very quickly led to mass murder by the government.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.