There are countless Russian names of all ethnicities, which are popping up in my head right now, making me feel proud of being a Russian. There are others, too, which make me sick.
Born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, this woman is an insult to her place of birth, and to my Russian sensibilities, not so much on account of her general obnoxiousness, as because of her patently anti-Russian frame of mind, or, perhaps, her clever manipulation of her newly found sponsors, feeding them the food they would like the best. I am talking about that monstress from hell Alisa Zinovievna Rozenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand.
Wholeheartedly paraphrasing Schelling’s rude words (said about John Locke), “Je méprise Ayn Rand!” Her obscene panegyrics to capitalism,--- such as: “What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism’s enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the practical, but the only moral system in history,”--- are antithetical to everything I stand for, and, most importantly, they are so wrong! There is nothing moral about the faith and practices of capitalism, which are, at best, ethically neutral, and it is blasphemous to turn any capitalist theory into a substitute for religious morality, that is by substituting the moral authority of God by the authority of what the Bible calls Mammon.
Ayn Rand’s in-your-face capitalistic orgy does not know the meaning of moderation: "When I say capitalism," she screams with a snooty buoyancy, "I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, with a separation of state and economics, in the same way, and for the same reasons, as the separation of state and church."
Let the response to this silliness come from a very recent and savvy source: “If by free market one means a market that is autonomous and spontaneous, free from political controls,--- then there is no such thing as a free market at all. It is simply a myth.” (Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude, p. 167.) In other words, “free market” is not an “objective reality,” but an ideology and an ethical system incompatible with religious morality in any of the great religions.
The myth of laissez-faire capitalism and complete market freedom has been sufficiently dispelled by “real life” itself, and such extravagant pronouncements as this one, by Ludwig Von Mises, to the effect that: "the first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism", no longer hold water. And yet, here is a fairly recent, and already quoted by me, tirade from the very distinguished economist Milton Friedman, who argues this point, as if oblivious to the fact that the kind of freedom which he has in mind simply does not exist: “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” (!) As a matter of fact, quoting Friedman does not make me sick at all, as his silliness is hardly offensive, but, on the contrary, like Lenin's proverbial “useful idiot” supplies good ammunition to the anti-capitalist camp.
Among the recent apologists of capitalism, there is a persistent tendency to overlook the fact that capitalist self-interest is not sufficient to make it trustworthy, and society requires constant regulation of the private sector to make sure that the “good capitalist” goal of maximizing profit is not carried too far out. But still, the following declaration by Alan Greenspan, the self-serving philosopher of the marketplace, stands out as either too naïve (which cannot be the case), or so utterly disingenuous (which must be the case), that it once again makes me sick (a second time in this entry!):
“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as the cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.”
A much-much more moderate expression of the belief in the self-regulating ability of the small-scale next-door capitalism, cautious and conditional, comes through in the following passage from this classic father of political economy Adam Smith:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages." (Now, the meaning of the next phrase is that no one can be so naïve as to believe in the altruistic goodness of human nature.) "Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.”
At the same time, Adam Smith pulls no punches in curbing his enthusiasm, or, perhaps, just driving down its
perception, in passages like these: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind,” and “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
(What this means is that under all circumstances capitalism, as an economic system, depends on the political protection of its presumed nemesis the State [and, under modern internationalized conditions, of... the American Navy…])
This is what is to be expected from any decent defender of capitalism -- reason and moderation! I have no problem with Thomas Jefferson’s elegant endorsement of private enterprise, as opposed to a government-imposed regulation, in this line: “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
Or in this Winston Churchill’s unintentionally (or intentionally?!) ironic appeal to reason and relative worth of different systems in comparison: “Some see private enterprise as a predatory tiger, to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.” (See my commentary on this and the next Churchillian adage in my entry The Tiger, The Cow, And The Horse.) And here is that next one, which I find verbally sharp, but superficial in its substance: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
A similar thought has been likewise expressed by the renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes:
“[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous --and it does not deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.”
(This, by the way, is only way I can “buy” capitalism: please do spare me the words freedom, goodness, and other such rubbish!)
But, on the other hand, here is another point of view, preferring the tyranny of the state to the tyranny of persons, expressed by George Orwell (yes, the George Orwell!) in his 1944 review of the book The Road to Serfdom by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek:
“[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to “free” competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because it is more irresponsible, than that of the state.”
Yet another major blow to the apologists of capitalism is delivered where it hurts the most, in their pocket, by an argument pitting capitalist “natural” efficiency against the whole institute of private property. In our panegyrics to the wonders of capitalist administration, how are we supposed to reconcile the efficiency part with the proprietary protections of the rightful heirs of capitalist enterprises who happen to be not properly qualified to administer their windfalls. The discrepancy between the efficiency of some and incompetence of others, when the former are bound to lose to the latter in the property court, is usually resolved by murder in a number of Colombo episodes, and some other television crime dramas. Needless to say, such a problem does not appear to exist in state capitalist enterprises, where ownership takes a back seat, and is customarily supplanted by the management by the fittest. No wonder that today’s Western capitalist market is prudently comfortable with the state-owned models of enterprise, such as in Putin’s, as opposed to Yeltsin’s, Russia. We may eventually see everywhere the situation where private proprietors are increasingly separated from the administration of their businesses through the legal mechanism of government regulation, reducing the “free” enterprise sector to such areas of small business where success or failure would have little impact on the welfare of society at large. The so-called “public” companies all seem to be moving precisely in that direction, inasmuch as the reasonable rights of small investors cannot be automatically guaranteed by the self-regulating laws of market “freedom.” (By the way, who should prove the better “master” between the following two: the most authoritarian state on earth, or a dimwitted heir to his parents’ great fortune? …The question was rhetorical!)
Summarizing my challenge to the apologists of capitalism, I am quite comfortable with any sort of defense of general capitalist practices, as long as that defense remains ethically-neutral, even though the necessity of government control, the abject failure of all historical experiments in laissez-faire capitalism, as well as the grudging admittance of clearly shaped socialist practices into the very bastion of capitalism, the American economy, all testify to the social impracticability of capitalism in its pure form, and thus call into question the philosophical sustainability of the “libertarian” capitalist doctrine.
But I am categorically opposed to the idol-worship of the capitalist golden calf, to any effort to moralize, in any positive way, the factor of human greed, either directly, as in “Greed is good!” or by any other name.
And finally, one of the best challenges to capitalist apologetics is, in my opinion, the following observation of Albert Einstein: “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism… An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship (sic!) acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.” (Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?)
It is exactly for the reason stated here by Einstein, having seen the worst excesses of American capitalism at close range, and having deplored the Russian national catastrophe of the 1990’s, that, even though I do not wish to go too far in my challenge to the so-called capitalist realism (and particularly I have no intention of disparaging small business, which ought to be a legitimate part of any economy), my sympathies on a larger scale are clearly with its socialist alternatives, as practiced in today’s civilized nations of Europe, or at least with the practice of “state capitalism” (granted, a poorly defined concept!), as one of the several possible ways of the future.
Born in 1905 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, this woman is an insult to her place of birth, and to my Russian sensibilities, not so much on account of her general obnoxiousness, as because of her patently anti-Russian frame of mind, or, perhaps, her clever manipulation of her newly found sponsors, feeding them the food they would like the best. I am talking about that monstress from hell Alisa Zinovievna Rozenbaum, better known as Ayn Rand.
Wholeheartedly paraphrasing Schelling’s rude words (said about John Locke), “Je méprise Ayn Rand!” Her obscene panegyrics to capitalism,--- such as: “What they have to discover, what all the efforts of capitalism’s enemies are frantically aimed at hiding, is the fact that capitalism is not merely the practical, but the only moral system in history,”--- are antithetical to everything I stand for, and, most importantly, they are so wrong! There is nothing moral about the faith and practices of capitalism, which are, at best, ethically neutral, and it is blasphemous to turn any capitalist theory into a substitute for religious morality, that is by substituting the moral authority of God by the authority of what the Bible calls Mammon.
Ayn Rand’s in-your-face capitalistic orgy does not know the meaning of moderation: "When I say capitalism," she screams with a snooty buoyancy, "I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, with a separation of state and economics, in the same way, and for the same reasons, as the separation of state and church."
Let the response to this silliness come from a very recent and savvy source: “If by free market one means a market that is autonomous and spontaneous, free from political controls,--- then there is no such thing as a free market at all. It is simply a myth.” (Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Multitude, p. 167.) In other words, “free market” is not an “objective reality,” but an ideology and an ethical system incompatible with religious morality in any of the great religions.
The myth of laissez-faire capitalism and complete market freedom has been sufficiently dispelled by “real life” itself, and such extravagant pronouncements as this one, by Ludwig Von Mises, to the effect that: "the first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism", no longer hold water. And yet, here is a fairly recent, and already quoted by me, tirade from the very distinguished economist Milton Friedman, who argues this point, as if oblivious to the fact that the kind of freedom which he has in mind simply does not exist: “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” (!) As a matter of fact, quoting Friedman does not make me sick at all, as his silliness is hardly offensive, but, on the contrary, like Lenin's proverbial “useful idiot” supplies good ammunition to the anti-capitalist camp.
Among the recent apologists of capitalism, there is a persistent tendency to overlook the fact that capitalist self-interest is not sufficient to make it trustworthy, and society requires constant regulation of the private sector to make sure that the “good capitalist” goal of maximizing profit is not carried too far out. But still, the following declaration by Alan Greenspan, the self-serving philosopher of the marketplace, stands out as either too naïve (which cannot be the case), or so utterly disingenuous (which must be the case), that it once again makes me sick (a second time in this entry!):
“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as the cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.”
A much-much more moderate expression of the belief in the self-regulating ability of the small-scale next-door capitalism, cautious and conditional, comes through in the following passage from this classic father of political economy Adam Smith:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages." (Now, the meaning of the next phrase is that no one can be so naïve as to believe in the altruistic goodness of human nature.) "Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.”
At the same time, Adam Smith pulls no punches in curbing his enthusiasm, or, perhaps, just driving down its
perception, in passages like these: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind,” and “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”
(What this means is that under all circumstances capitalism, as an economic system, depends on the political protection of its presumed nemesis the State [and, under modern internationalized conditions, of... the American Navy…])
This is what is to be expected from any decent defender of capitalism -- reason and moderation! I have no problem with Thomas Jefferson’s elegant endorsement of private enterprise, as opposed to a government-imposed regulation, in this line: “Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
Or in this Winston Churchill’s unintentionally (or intentionally?!) ironic appeal to reason and relative worth of different systems in comparison: “Some see private enterprise as a predatory tiger, to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.” (See my commentary on this and the next Churchillian adage in my entry The Tiger, The Cow, And The Horse.) And here is that next one, which I find verbally sharp, but superficial in its substance: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
A similar thought has been likewise expressed by the renowned British economist John Maynard Keynes:
“[Capitalism] is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous --and it does not deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.”
(This, by the way, is only way I can “buy” capitalism: please do spare me the words freedom, goodness, and other such rubbish!)
But, on the other hand, here is another point of view, preferring the tyranny of the state to the tyranny of persons, expressed by George Orwell (yes, the George Orwell!) in his 1944 review of the book The Road to Serfdom by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek:
“[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to “free” competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because it is more irresponsible, than that of the state.”
Yet another major blow to the apologists of capitalism is delivered where it hurts the most, in their pocket, by an argument pitting capitalist “natural” efficiency against the whole institute of private property. In our panegyrics to the wonders of capitalist administration, how are we supposed to reconcile the efficiency part with the proprietary protections of the rightful heirs of capitalist enterprises who happen to be not properly qualified to administer their windfalls. The discrepancy between the efficiency of some and incompetence of others, when the former are bound to lose to the latter in the property court, is usually resolved by murder in a number of Colombo episodes, and some other television crime dramas. Needless to say, such a problem does not appear to exist in state capitalist enterprises, where ownership takes a back seat, and is customarily supplanted by the management by the fittest. No wonder that today’s Western capitalist market is prudently comfortable with the state-owned models of enterprise, such as in Putin’s, as opposed to Yeltsin’s, Russia. We may eventually see everywhere the situation where private proprietors are increasingly separated from the administration of their businesses through the legal mechanism of government regulation, reducing the “free” enterprise sector to such areas of small business where success or failure would have little impact on the welfare of society at large. The so-called “public” companies all seem to be moving precisely in that direction, inasmuch as the reasonable rights of small investors cannot be automatically guaranteed by the self-regulating laws of market “freedom.” (By the way, who should prove the better “master” between the following two: the most authoritarian state on earth, or a dimwitted heir to his parents’ great fortune? …The question was rhetorical!)
Summarizing my challenge to the apologists of capitalism, I am quite comfortable with any sort of defense of general capitalist practices, as long as that defense remains ethically-neutral, even though the necessity of government control, the abject failure of all historical experiments in laissez-faire capitalism, as well as the grudging admittance of clearly shaped socialist practices into the very bastion of capitalism, the American economy, all testify to the social impracticability of capitalism in its pure form, and thus call into question the philosophical sustainability of the “libertarian” capitalist doctrine.
But I am categorically opposed to the idol-worship of the capitalist golden calf, to any effort to moralize, in any positive way, the factor of human greed, either directly, as in “Greed is good!” or by any other name.
And finally, one of the best challenges to capitalist apologetics is, in my opinion, the following observation of Albert Einstein: “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism… An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship (sic!) acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.” (Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?)
It is exactly for the reason stated here by Einstein, having seen the worst excesses of American capitalism at close range, and having deplored the Russian national catastrophe of the 1990’s, that, even though I do not wish to go too far in my challenge to the so-called capitalist realism (and particularly I have no intention of disparaging small business, which ought to be a legitimate part of any economy), my sympathies on a larger scale are clearly with its socialist alternatives, as practiced in today’s civilized nations of Europe, or at least with the practice of “state capitalism” (granted, a poorly defined concept!), as one of the several possible ways of the future.
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