Who’s the Materialist?

Two counter-examples.

Mises, for whom the ultimate justification for capitalism is that it enhances the standard of living for all members of a society, each by their own subjective standards (different people having such different and irreconcilable notions of what counts as "dignity" that it can't be appealed to as a consistent rationale).

Mill, for whom capitalism and political liberalism (whose justification is that it does respect the dignity of the individual) are intimately related, but not identical and differently justified.

Holy Cow.

Yasafi nor Daniel has posted yet to tell us why "I want to take what you earn" is selfless and progressive.

Prof Boudreaux,




You wrote,





"all the great champions of economic freedom (aka capitalism) ultimately justify this system because only it affords true dignity to individuals."





Capitalism affords a good deal more than dignity.





It is the price system, and, for modern man, there is no alternative to it. Without the calculus of price, he must go back to the only conditions he could comprehend, the simple, primitive conditions of his remote ancestors and most backward contemporaries. But for the majority of modern men, return to primitive conditions is out of the question. The great increase in population over the last 200 years was made possible only by the productivity of modern, calculating, capitalist civilization. Without that civilization to support them, all but its most self-reliant children must perish.





For the majority of mankind today, capitalism is life, socialism death, and, the middle way, cancer.

Don, I always enjoy your letters to the editor. You seem to write a lot of them. Have you kept track of your "batting average", i.e. the percent that are ever published?

Jeremy L.,

Another understatement.

To say that capitalism enhances the standard of living is like saying that air enhances it. It doesn't just enhance it, but is as essential to it as air itself.

Again, capitalism is life, socialism death, and, the middle way, cancer.

I should have said, as essential to life itself, not just "the standard" of it.

Uh oh! It's look as though Don Boudreaux is saying what dgl is saying: "there's no third way!" Unless anarcho-Libertarian is being offered then Libertarians are going to argue over what constitute 'reasonable government' and 'taxes that aren't theft'. So they too are going to argue of what their 'third way' is going to be.

Beside if Don Boudreaux hangs around sites that lean heavily to Socialism than inevitably he's going to find stuff that's going to get under his skin.

I won't push the semantic dispute too far, but I don't march under the "capitalist" banner. I prefer "classical liberalism" and "market organization". "Capitalism" emphasizes the titles to property we may exchange in the market and the holders of these titles. I'm a libertarian, not a proprietarian. Proprietarianism begs too many Proudhonian questions that proprietarians often refuse to confront.

What is property? Human being themselves could be and have been, not so long ago, labeled "property" exchangeable in a market, but ownership of a human being is the antithesis of liberal ideals. Free labor was one of most essential elements of the 19th century liberalism that I still celebrate, but this liberalism opposed particular property rights. Deconstructing these rights, not strengthening them, was the movement's principal goal.

Furthermore, 19th century "libertarians", who were the actual forebearers of the modern "libertarian" movement, including mutualists like Benjamin Tucker, explicitly opposed "capitalism". They championed free markets as an alternative to what they called "capitalism". They associated "capitalism" with oligarchy, monetary authorities inextricably linked to the state and even slavery.

No, it's not simply about the material benefits. It's about the freedom to choose what one consumes in exchange for his produce. It's about a society organized around these voluntary, cooperative, mutually beneficial, market relationships as opposed to organization by a class of statutory title holders.

Whether the title is feudal "lord" or socialist "planner" or corporatist "manager" or capitalist "banker" or bureaucratic "civil servant" makes little difference.

'taxes that aren't theft'

"Taxation is theft" is only a reformulation in different terms of Proudhon's assertion that "property is theft". If we focus on the deeper logic of liberal ideals, rather than the superficial terminology that politicians continually game, we can understand why "liberalism" has come to mean nearly the opposite of an earlier meaning and also why the earlier "liberals", the classical liberals, where not champions of "capitalism" but opponents of it.

"Capitalism" is actually a term developed by Marxists to describe a straw man they constructed. Smith never uses the term. It is rooted etymologically in archaic terms with highly negative connotation in modern vernacular, terms like "chattel".

Another question for the anti-materialists:

Do any of them actually practise what they preach, and forego any of the material perks of their high stations in life?

As Lenny Bruce observed, "Any preacher (or liberal) with more than one suit is a hustler."

And, any with a swimming pool, sending out tax collectors to hound hard-working waitresses for their tip money, is a liberal like Louis XIV was a liberal.

Martin,

For one who didn't want to "push the semantic dispute too far," you've pushed it pretty far.

What are you going to tell us next, that the woman defending herself against a rapist is the real rapist?

Gil,

This may come as a shock to you, but I largely agree with you. If you accept the idea of anything less than an absolutely pure free market, you're in murky territory.

Do any of them actually practise what they preach, and forego any of the material perks of their high stations in life?

Few do, because you construct a straw man yourself here.

What are you going to tell us next, that the woman defending herself against a rapist is the real rapist?

No. Do you have some evidence for this etymological evolution of the word "rape", or are you only constructing another strawman to avoid confronting the evolution of the word "capitalism"?

"Capitalism" is a word invented in the middle of the nineteenth century and has little if anything to do with the earlier classical liberalism of Locke, Smith, Bastiat, Ricardo and the rest. "Capitalist" describes a statutory proprietor, a statesman, and "capitalism" describes an ideology that developed among these statesmen. Ignoring this historical reality doesn't change it.

You could try to confront the assertion of historical reality with other historical evidence, but you haven't done that. Why?

If you accept the idea of anything less than an absolutely pure free market, you're in murky territory.

I favor a free market. The question is: what are we entitled to exchange there? This question concerns "property", not the market.

What is property? Are we "free" to own other human beings? May one man be subject to the mastery of other men for life, even masters "free" to exchange his subjection among themselves? This subjection was "property" only a bit more than century ago in the United States. The history is indisputable.

The territory you defend is so murky that you can't even see its internal contradictions.

Dionne's article and his quoting of the pope only prove what I have been saying for some 40 years now; that it is obvious that very bright people can be very blind and stupid in their views on particular facets of life.

The Dionne and the pope both fit the description.

Martin Brock makes a very good point. "Capitalism" may not be best term. "Free Market" or "Free Market Classical Liberalism" are others that more clearly communicate the ideas most of posters support.

I think Martin Brock is historically correct that Free Markets flourished under authoritarian, hereditary regimes in Europe. Austria Hungary. England, at the time of the American Revolution, was a mercantilist monarchy as Adam Smith pointed out that evolved, in America, to Free Market until about WWI when Statism started to move to ascendancy in elite, intelellectual thought and progressed from Wilson to Obama.

My point is that I do not see Mrtin Brock as disagreeing in substance, in this post, and he makes some useful points in terminology that make us more effective in communicating the value of Free Markets for Free People.

Quadrageimo Anno 40 Years after Rerum Novarum, written in 1870 near the beginning of factory and industrial revolution was heavily influenced by Marxist Jesuit Nell Bruening.

Patrick Burke, Th.D, of the Wynnewood Institute, www.wynnewood.org,is writing a book on the differences between Rerum Novarum which was more influenced by Classical Liberalism and Quadagesimo Anno which was influenced by Marxism. See wikepedia.

Inadvertently, it seems, the Popes and the Catholic Church were promoting Marxism until Pope Paul who came from Poland and knew about the real thing rather than fantasy Group Think of Intellectual Elites who Know It All.

Martin,

Language, like all living things, changes. Whatever capitalism meant in the past, today it means just what Prof Boudreaux said it meant, economic freedom.

You’re confusing the definition of property with the principle of property rights. Though the definition may vary, the principle remains the same, the right to one’s own, however defined.

Likening the defender of his property to thieves is exactly the same as likening the woman defending her body to rapists.

"Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of 'greed' is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or keep what they have already earned - never to those wanting to take other people's money or to those wishing to live on the largess dispensed from such taxation." - Thomas Sowell, Visions of The Anointed

Why argue about Capitalism when we can argue about freedom vs control?

Dionne's bumper-sticker philosophy assumes that intent is uniform, instead of allowing that free markets and capitalism deserve consideration because they are effective at making everyone better off than they were before.

Here's my counter-example that the Dionne's of the world can't explain: people who buy thousands of acres of rain forest to preserve it themselves. Where's the materialism there?

E. J. Dionne, Jr. is well know as one of the most dishonest columnists in Washington.

Dionne never met a misrepresentation or strawman he didn't love.

"I want to keep what I earn" is regarded as greedy and unenlightened.

"I want to take what you earn" is regarded as selfless and progressive.

Don, I have noticed that too. Plus, of course they think you have earned too much. Sometime ago I heard a minister expound on Mich 6:8. His example of "walking humbly with the Lord" was that there should be a maximum wage as well as a minimum wage. He couldn't answered my question on how it is humble to tell someone they make too much money. The response becomes "but it is more fair." Fairness, however, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. (One of the few things I remember from my introduction to sociology text.)

That minister, and others, tend to forget(in addition to the difference between income and wealth) that most of the people on the The Forbes 400 got there by creating businesses which created jobs and wealth for many others.

Socialists are the true materialists, because they believe that material goods determine everything and they judge every system by the distribution of those goods. Any non-material benefits that might develop from a society with equal distribution of goods are secondary. In contrast, Capitalists (Classic Liberals) focus on freedom and any material goods that develop out of a free society are secondary.

I've actually asked some smart liberals about that paradox, their only response is that only bad people ask that question. The usual...

Language, like all living things, changes. Whatever capitalism meant in the past, today it means just what Prof Boudreaux said it meant, economic freedom.

Actually, the word means many different things to many different people. You only say it means "just what Prof. Boudreaux said", because you personally accept his usage, but words don't simply mean what you mean by them. They mean what a host of people mean by them, because they're instruments of communication.

You’re confusing the definition of property with the principle of property rights.

No. There is no absolute "principle of property rights" handed down on stone tablets by God to Moses or John Locke or anyone else. If you want very carefully to specify a principle, we could discuss your specific principle, but you haven't done that.

Though the definition may vary, the principle remains the same, the right to one’s own, however defined.

But you could drive a herd of elephants through the loopholes in this "definition". What exactly is "one's own", and what exactly does the "right" to it entail?

I gave you a specific example of something labeled "property" in the U.S. only a few generations ago, human chattel, and you've simply ignored the example. So may men own other men or not? If not, is this example unique? When we've deconstructed this single misappropriation, have we reached proprietarian nirvana?

Likening the defender of his property to thieves is exactly the same as likening the woman defending her body to rapists.

No, it's not exactly the same, because a woman's property in her own body is specific while "property" more generally is not specific. When you say "property", I have no way of knowing what you mean by the term, specifically, until you tell me.

Furthermore, a woman's body is inseparable from her, while other "properties" are separable from the property holder. In fact, much "property" involves governance of resources far removed from the property holder, so defending this "property" is not exactly the same as a woman defending her body from rape.

Equating rape exactly with any violation of any propriety is obviously a lot of simple nonsense. You want to rationalize one forcible imposition, so you equate it with others more generally accepted. You should go into politics.

In some respects, historically, a woman's body was her husband's property, and her refusal to have sex with him, even if forcibly imposed, was a violation of his property. This was true even after chattel slavery was nominally forbidden in the U.S.

August,

You wrote,

"Capitalists (Classic Liberals) focus on freedom and any material goods that develop out of a free society are secondary."

And that's why they don't win many elections.

Martin,

I'm sorry, I'm just getting too old for that sort of thing.

They believe if you aren't sufficiently sensitive to the plight of the poor, then you must be excessively concerned about your own well being which is presumed to be at the expense of the poor.

Remember, they think that profits rightfully belong to the laborer, regardless of the value of the laborer's input.

When they accuse you of being materialist, they mean that they think you lack sympathy for the poor. It's all about FEELINGS.

Given their lack of comprehension of the structure and functioning of the market, it makes perfect sense to go straight to redistribution. Any other approach escapes their comprehension.

"I want to take what you earn" is regarded as selfless and progressive.

No, that's a straw man. No self-described "progressive" speaks this way, but he might dispute your assertion that a particular proprietor has "earned" a particular entitlement to consume or otherwise to govern resources. In fact, by law in the U.S., some forms of income are "unearned" definitively.

So the issue is not whether "taking what you've earned" is selfless or "progressive". The issue is whether we ought by law to say that you've "earned" what you say you've earned and forcibly to impose rights that you claim respecting the "earnings".

I always say:

"How is it that when *I* want to spend my money I am selfish and greedy, but when *you* want to spend my money you are noble and generous?"

Property is not theft. Politics is theft.

Government doesn't have to be theft, because protection of property could be organized around an ethic of property rather than an ethic of politics, nonetheless, all governments are organized politically. Why? Because its easier. Why would anyone earn who can steal and get away with? Hell, they even feel good about it. Its a culture of theft and there is honor among the thieves.

As for materialism: Damn right I'm a materialist, and proud of it. And if you want to do business with me you had better be a materialist too. I have no use for idealists. They're a dime a dozen, none of them honest, and most of them thieves.

Today we had another indictment of "materialism", now from Prince Charles

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-...>

The Washington Post is not longer a Newspaper, it's a propaganda organization.

"The Washington Post's ill-fated plan to sell sponsorships of off-the-record "salons" was an ethical lapse of monumental proportions."

These "salons" where basically an off-the-record access to the Post’s journalists and government officials for lobbyists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...

The Washington Post needs to fail. Ethical lapses and sheer propaganda are news organization, is it any wonder why they are losing money hand over fist.

"No self-described "progressive" speaks this way, but he might dispute your assertion that a particular proprietor has "earned" a particular entitlement to consume or otherwise to govern resources."

Evidently, based on the tax rates and regulatory burden in the most (so-called) progressive countries, the (so-called) progressive people who are running the joint have an extremely elastic and expansive opinion of how much property is unearned and how much wealth deserves to be governed by the socialist collective (meaning by themselves).

The obvious greed and self-interest displayed by so-called progressives can easily be seen by looking at the pay rates, benefits, pension plans and job security for the so-called progressive professions (i.e. government jobs as bureaucrats and nannies). The taxpayers are not exactly supporting a bunch of hairshirt-wearing Mother Teresas. Compared to the average person's wealth, the public sector is the land of out-of-control, uncompetitive and rampant greed. The overpaid and underworked nannies would like to compare themselves to the tycoons on Wall Street but it's the good old working stiffs with low pay, no benefits, no pension and no job security working in the "greedy" private sector who are their slaves.

I the article, and I find the letter to be way out of context with what was being asserted.

I serious doubt Dionne runs around calling capitalism a system rooted in materialist values. Perhaps, since he was referring to capitalism in reference to THE POPE, he may have taken the liberty to speak from the Pope's viewpoint; the Pope is spiritual, after all.

Also, to conflate, so tightly, the notions of capitalism and materialism is really doing a disservice to capitalism.

Materialism - the need to possess things for the need to possess things - is what causes people to trample a store clerk to death because of a sale.

Materialism is a sickness; capitalism isn't. That's just a judgement call on my part. Nobody has ever benefited from their materialism.

"Grumblers may blame Western civilization for its materialism & may assert that it gratified nobody but a small class of rugged exploiters. But their laments cannot wipe out the facts. Millions of mothers have been made happier by the drop in infant mortality. Famines have disappeared & epidemics have been curbed. The average man lives in more satisfactory conditions than his ancestors or his fellows in non-capitalistic countries. & one must not dismiss as merely materialistic a civilization which makes it possible for practically everybody to enjoy a Beethoven symphony performed by an orchestra conducted by an eminent master." - Ludwig Von Mises

Strcture etc.

You wrote,

"The average man lives in more satisfactory conditions than his ancestors or his fellows in non-capitalistic countries."

It isn't just a matter of living more satisfactorily, but living. Period.

I think what Martin's point is that property rights are an ever evolving thing from decade to decade and there is no moral absolute when it comes to that. So basically today's free market capitalist is tomorrow's pariah.

Ackermann,

"Nobody has ever benefited from their materialism."

Really? Then why are popes and politicians so concerned about it? I'll tell you why. Because our natural materialism runs counter to their efforts to exploit us.

Rampant materialism is a pscyhological disorder, but to say that materialism by itself is a disease is wrong. Unless one is planning to live like a hermit, a certain amount of materialism is required. Housing, computer, books, car, clothes, furniture, TV, DVD player. That just scratches the surface of living a basic modern life. That some people go too far - that's nobody's business UNLESS they go bankrupt and start demanding I bail them out.

Just thinking this morning... that political behavior is also economic behavior. I'm thinking that political behavior can be seen as "the marginal propensity to exploit others". The marginal propensity to exploit others increases as one's ability to exploit others rises, as one's ability to produce anything else of value decreases, and as such behavior is allowed, or even encouraged, in the culture.

What we are talking about here is the mind/body dichotomy. Those who see too much materialism in capitalism don't understand that the source of all those material goods is a very spiritual value: The freedom of the mind. All of those goods were invented by the human spirit, the means to manufacture them was created by man's intellect. Without the material, there would be no spiritual, and without the spirit, the material would have no value.

I am tempted to quote a whole lot of Ayn Rand here.

>>No, it's not simply about the material benefits. It's about the freedom to choose what one consumes in exchange for his produce.<<

And if there's a surplus, who own it [according to you, that is?]? In fact, according to you, who own it after it (whatever 'it' is) is produced but before it is consumed?

My simpleton brain cannot comprehend what you try to get at each and every time the concept of property is discussed on this blog. Is there a way you can write you opinion on this with more clarity? You know, in laymean's terms.

"I am tempted to quote a whole lot of Ayn Rand here."

thanx for resisting the temptation.

While capitalism emphatically does improve material living standards, all the great champions of economic freedom (aka capitalism) ultimately justify this system because only it affords true dignity to individuals - the dignity that is denied by interventionist systems which arbitrarily diminish each person's freedom to choose.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

I wonder if the 2 billion people living off $2 dollars a day feel they have improved living standards or dignity?

YASAFI

Property is not theft. Politics is theft.

Politics begets property, and denying this reality doesn't change it. "Property" means what the politicians say it means. If you don't believe that, you've never been sued, taxed or even robbed.

So basically today's free market capitalist is tomorrow's pariah.

Today's free market capitalist is a chimera, a fairy tale, like angels watching over a sleeping child and the hope of eternal bliss for chanting a few comforting mantras.

Maybe the fairy tale evokes bygone days, or maybe it's pure fairy tale. If we have ever had a very free market in the U.S., it ceased to exist long before I was born. Roberts' recently posted poster is only one evidence of this fact. The rest of the evidence surrounds me 24/7/365, and I'm constantly amazed by people's incredible capacity to deny it.

If I suggest that anything commonly called "property" today, from Obama's lease on the White House or Air Force One to some AIG executive's Manhattan penthouse to a welfare queen's monthly check or the interest on a Treasury note, is not noble beyond reproach, then I'm "exactly" like someone suggesting that a woman defending herself from rape is a rapist herself.

This proprietarian state worship is what passes for "libertarianism" these days. No wonder the fascists won a long time ago.

Martin,

Propety is natural, and denying this really doesn't change it. Politics too is natural (marginal propensity to exploit), but politics would not exist if property did not exist. Without property there would be no one to exploit.