In his recent column, Craig Westover implores Mitt Romney to make the moral argument for capitalism, then writes the script. Capitalism is an idea for an economic system, which proponents insist will solve our problems if ever properly implemented. Elements of it have certainly led to a tremendous growth of material wealth in recent centuries. Capitalism is the most universally accepted idea in modern world culture, perhaps in world history. It's the closest thing on our flat earth to a global religion, at least in middle class living rooms and the halls of power. Religions and philosophies divide us, we are told, the free-market binds us together. Capitalism's morality is the assumption behind every debate over which candidate will grow the economy faster, every fearful news story about a drop in the stock market, every G-20 summit and every WTO conference. Capitalism is presumed moral. Doubters are black-clad, foul-smelling miscreants antagonizing the police and disrupting the process while offering no realistic alternative.
But what are the morals of capitalism? Capitalism values capital – wealth. Basically, if everyone is free to buy and sell anything they can get their hands on (including their time) at whatever price someone will pay, out of the chaos will come the optimum distribution of everything and the maximum growth in wealth. It's crazy but mostly true, I sit typing into a laptop as living proof. The problem comes in assigning a “morality” to that system, which rests on values like freedom, legal order, and property rights, but doesn't own their licensing rights and has never realized them with any consistency. Prioritizing the growth of capital is not inherently moral or immoral – it is a tool that can be applied wisely or stupidly, morally or immorally.
We live in a world where capitalism has become our wire-frame surrogate morality, but also in a world where capitalism's growth focus is a hammer looking for nails where most problems need not even screws, but improved logistics and communication. Free-market fundamentalists list forever ways government spills sand in the gears of their perfectly designed perpetual-growth machine. They fail to admit how closely our world resembles their ideal, with governments doing the dirty work of pacifying the hungry masses at home and abroad until those industries are fully privatized. Capital flows around the world in magnitudes and at speeds Adam Smith never imagined. Entire industries change continents in hardly the time it took to draft and deliver the Declaration of Independence. The highest achievers in the capitalist hierarchy, those able to live on the growth of their capital rather than sell their time, suffer proportionately less from the forced altruism of the U.S. tax code than do the toiling masses. Immortal corporate persons are free to sell anything they manufacture until it's proven malignant, and to fill public airwaves with messages manipulating minds to irrationally demand more.
Capitalism says it has the secret to improved “standard of living,” then defines the term to best fits its values: economic activity per person per year. Spending thousands of dollars on medical interventions is economic activity, staying healthy by working in the garden and eating the results is not. Extra cops (or better yet private security guards) add to the economy, while safe neighborhoods don't make the ledger book. Working overtime to fill your anti-anxiety prescription adds to your standard of living, while cutting hours to walk more with your partner subtracts. 110,000 widgets for one of a hundred people is far better than a thousand apiece for all hundred. These are the values and morality of capitalism.
Westover articulates concisely our “culture's dominant philosophy,” and makes “the moral case for it,” to an extent. He fails to demonstrate that capitalism's tools are ideal for our situation, much less uniquely suited to human nature. If we are destined or determined to live in a globally connected world, we need a new organizing force to replace the hollow quasi-morality of capitalism. A rising tide may raise all boats, but it will drown us all if it never slows and recedes. And, the boats will sink long before that if we continue to load them down with more gold while failing to keep them seaworthy.
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