Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Misreading capitalism
Misreading capitalism
Nov 24, 2024 4:01 PM

‘A statue of Adam Smith on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile’ by Zenit CC BY-SA 3.0

At this year’s LibertyCon Byran Caplan, Economist at George Mason University, and Elizabeth Bruenig, columnist for the Washington Post, debated the perennial question of ‘Socialism vs. Capitalism.’ Both Caplan and Bruenig have posted their opening statements and it is an interesting and engaging exchange. Caplan is charitable, well-reasoned, and clear and Bruenig is both gracious and an engaging storyteller.

Bruenig’s story while superficially plausible makes many mistakes in its characterization of the free-market and more broadly of the liberal tradition. Most glaring is the notion that,

Capitalism fosters an obsessive focus on one’s interests, meaning one’s material well-being, and argues that the pursuit of such is an unqualified moral good; it renders sustained contemplation for no other purpose than to know the truth utterly useless and irrational, and largely impossible.

There is a lot of confusion in this statement but what is most transparently mistaken is the notion that self-interest equals one’s own material well-being. Would free-market theorists really argue that someone who chose to write a love letter, to console a troubled friend, or to go to mass instead of advancing one’s material well-being would be acting against one’s own self-interest?

Perhaps no free-market theorist is more linked to the concept of self-interest than Adam Smith, who famously wrote in The Wealth of Nations,

…man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their 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.

If this ‘help’ and ‘advantage’ is construed as simply material, Bruenig may have a point. However, there is no reason to believe that Smith saw it as such. Adam Smith actually opens The Theory of Moral Sentiments arguing the contrary,

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

Later in that same work he argues that, “It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.”

Self-interest is as varied and diverse as individuals themselves. Frederic Bastiat, whom Marx called, “The shallowest and therefore most successful representative of the apologists of vulgar economics,” had a similarly broad view of self or personal interest,

We cannot doubt, then, that Personal interest is the great mainspring of human nature. It must be perfectly understood, however, that this term is here employed as the expression of a universal fact, incontestable, and resulting from the organization of man—and not of a critical judgment on his conduct and actions, as if, instead of it, we should employ the word selfishness. Moral science would be rendered impossible if we were to pervert beforehand the terms of which it pelled to make use.

In Human Action Ludwig von Mises similarly resists the reduction of man to simply material well-being,

Economics deals with the real actions of real men. Its theorems refer neither to ideal nor to perfect men, neither to the phantom of a fabulous economic man (homo oeconomicus) nor to the statistical notion of an average man (homme moyen).

When leading free-market theorists across three centuries and nations, with unique mitments are all opposed to the characterization of self-interest as narrowly centered on material well-being we should be careful to examine just how well grounded Bruenig’s narrative actually is in the actual free-market tradition. Those who assume, like Bruenig, that they can dismiss the free-market system as one rooted in avarice have missed some basic insights at the center of economics since Adam Smith.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Wisdom & Wonder & Interdisciplinary Studies
I was recently invited to write an essay on the importance of interdisciplinary studies for the Calvin Seminary student publication Kerux. In my essay “The Truth is One,” I reflect on the famous quote of Abraham Kuyper, [N]o single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”...
College Cramming: A Refresher Course on the Electoral College
Whether the Republicans cry “fraud” or the Democrats scream “disenfranchised” we can be certain of one thing after the polls close: the President of the United States won’t be elected today. Even if there are no hanging chads or last minute court appeals, the election of the President won’t be made until December 13. That is, after all, the way the Founding Fathers designed the system to work. Confused? Then it’s probably time for a brief refresher on the Electoral...
Bigger the Government, Smaller the Citizen
Today is November 6th, and we’re supposedly going to elect a new President of the United State of America by the time Charles Krauthammer goes to bed early tomorrow morning. But for those of us who can’t help but think “big picture” every second of every day, what does November 7th look like – regardless of who wins? What about November 8th? How about a year from now? Anyone who values liberty, limited government, and the free enterprise system knows...
Is There an Intrinsic Morality of the Free Market?
In an essay for Big Questions Online, a site that examines questions of human purpose and ultimate reality, Rev. Robert Sirico considers whether morality is intrinsic to the free market: Is a hammer intrinsically moral? Your reply would most immediately be: “It depends on what it was used for. If employed to bash in the heads of people you do not like, the answer is no. If employed to help build a house for a homeless people, your answer might...
RFK, Reagan, and Presidential Elections
The first presidential election I remember was the Ronald Reagan – Walter Mondale race in 1984. My kindergarten class in the Philadelphia suburbs held a mock vote that Reagan overwhelmingly won. It of course reflected the way our parents were voting. I can remember at the age of five, John Glenn was one of the Democrat candidates seeking the nomination and I knew he was a famous astronaut. The truth is, I’ve always been fascinated by presidential elections and Bare...
Evangelicals Endorse Mormon/Catholic Presidential Ticket
There is an utter disconnect between what I hear other people – mostly in the media – say about evangelical conservatives, and what I’ve experienced living in and among them for nearly three decades on this planet. I hear how intolerant and close-minded this group supposedly is, and I sit and absorb such attacks with a blank look on my face. They bear no resemblance to the environment I was reared in. The people who instilled in me the values...
A Prayer for the Nation
A prayer “For the Nation,” from the BCP: Lord God Almighty, who hast made all the peoples of the earth for thy glory, to serve you in freedom and in peace: Give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with thy gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever....
If You Want to Help the Poor, Support Religious Orders
Jim Shaw at the Catholic Herald has written a provocative piece that suggests one of the best ways to fight poverty is to support Catholic religious orders. He writes about his experiences in Africa: the lack of rule of law, the petty corruption that eats away at the poor, how lack of infrastructure obstructs progress for farmers and other businesses. The density of these issues seem insurmountable. The sheer intractability of these problems should serve as a warning against utopian...
I Am Woman: Hear Me Whine
I have been duped. I thought, along with my husband, that we were doing a good thing by raising our children in a household that valued traditional marriage and saw our children as gifts from God. I chose, for more than a decade, to work at home raising our children because I could not imagine a more important job during their formative years. According to Laurie Shrage, I’m quite mistaken. Wives who perform unpaid caregiving and place their economic security...
Jesse Jackson Didn’t Have to Choose Between the Poor and the Unborn
In 1977 a pro-life Jesse pared the pro-choice position to the case for slavery in the antebellum South: There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view. I believe that life is not private, but rather it is public and universal. If one accepts the position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as you please, one...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2024 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved