Capitalism, All Rights Reserved

Reconsidering Socialism as a Solution, not a System

“All socialist utopias come to grief with roast beef and apple pie”  - German sociologist Werner Sombart, 1905

Americans like getting what they want, when they want it. They like their roast beef and apple pie. They don’t like socialism.

Why not? Because when we have food on the table as a result of two centuries of laissez-faire capitalism, it is difficult for us to imagine an interventionist government that defies the very principles that have engendered our economic success and national longevity.

But what if we think of socialism as a solution to the pitfalls of capitalism, and not a system to eradicate the peaks? What if we stop thinking of socialism and capitalism as opposing ideals, but as cooperative practices? I think we will find that a capitalist system in which the government has a highly discretionary, but publicly understood right to intervene for the betterment of the people in all economic affairs can engender the greatest advantages for the nation. It’s our tried-and-true market capitalism––all government rights reserved.

In regards to our current system, Sombart also said that “America is the Canaan of capitalism, its Promised land.” With capitalism, most Americans would say they have found the Promised Land, and you’d be damned to think they would give it up for a society and economy dictated by a centralized institution.  It is the exemplar of freedom in an economic system: it provides with the people with an “economic system that aligns itself with the combined human spirits of achievement, ambition, self-improvement, individualism, self-esteem, and initiative.”

Well, that’s the delusion.

There’s no questioning it: America became an economic superpower because of market capitalism. After Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, the nation’s aggressive advancement of industrialism, nearly unbounded by government and legislation, engendered tremendous growth of the GDP. Manufacturing replaced agriculture across the eastern seaboard, and the United States experienced and unprecedented 39% growth in national exports. The US, now with a firm footing in the global economy, was set up to profit immensely off of World War I and World War II, and she did. The revenue was not distributed equally, but at least it was there. And prosperity––to use the taboo term––‘filtered-down’ to the American middle and even lower classes, as employment went up, along with median income.

But business cycles are periodic and have natural ups and downs. In times of prosperity, there would be little reason to alter an existing, lucrative system. But in times of depression, businesses devise new strategies. They rearrange their production models to fit distribution results; they change their marketing tactics for a changing demographic; they modify salaries to match output. In other words, they have to be adaptable, bearing in mind that they can revert to previous practices once the market restores its previous trends.

Government can work like this too.

We, as a nation, need to start thinking of socialism as an adaptation rather than revolution. Government doesn’t need to concern itself with the minutia of means of production and distribution. But it does need to begin regulating the prices of necessities like transportation, essential foods, hospital care, and real estate.

Hospital care is a perfect, topical example of an instance where government intervention––with a basis in socialist dogma––can eradicate the excesses of capitalism. Checked the price of a bone marrow transplant lately? In the United States, that would set you back a solid $400,000. Some would ask, “Hey, isn’t your life worth $400,000?” But that would be the wrong question to ask. The question should be “Does a bone marrow transplant really cost $400,000 to perform?” Capitalism, when it is allowed to bleed into fundamental services like healthcare, engenders a divisive sort of economic gluttony. When an industry as essential as healthcare is allowed to charge people on how much a surgery is worth to them, instead of how much it costs to perform, government has an unequivocal obligation to re-examine and regulate the industry. But there can be excesses of socialism too. I’m not asking for the federal government to publish a price manual for surgeons. But a federal cap on life-saving operations would be ideal. For the record, the actual ‘cost’ of the surgery (including doctors’ education, hospital construction/administration/maintenance, as calculated by Barkley Rosser and Marina V. Rosser in Comparative Economics in a Transforming World Economy) is $26,000. In India, a bone marrow transplant at top hospital is, at most, $30,000.

Intellectual historian Tony Judt has this to say about the idea of capitalism and socialism working concurrently (what he calls social democracy):

“It would be pleasing—but misleading—to report that social democracy, or something like it, represents the future that we would paint for ourselves in an ideal world. It does not even represent the ideal past. But among the options available to us in the present, it is better than anything else to hand.”

Strict capitalism and invasive socialism both fail because they do not leave room for dealing with an essential human dilemma: the conflict between wants and needs. Capitalism will provide the upper class with many of their wants, and deny the lower class many of their needs. Socialism will provide both with their needs, but deny our fundamental impulses for wants. Judt sees social democracy as a pragmatic compromise, not a utopian ideal. The well-off can have our roast beef and apple pie. But so can the rest of the country, when they need it.

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