"Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself."

Your altruistic vision of capitalism is way off the mark because it leaves out the prime determinate, human nature.

Unfettered capitalism leads to unsafe products, exploitation, hucksterism, and greed, all in the name of making a profit.

The tobacco industry continued to sell their products long after they knew of the dangers of it. In fact they elevated the level of nicotine to insure that their customers would remain hooked, and would continue to buy.

Sweat shops were the normal practice in the U.S. a century ago, and after being ended by labor laws, unions, OSHA, and the EPA, have simply sprung up again all over the world with so-called "free trade" and globalization.

"To serve such needs, however, capitalism must once again learn to defer profits and empower the needy as customers."

And just exactly when have they ever done that?

"Pharmaceutical companies ought to be thinking about how to sell inexpensive retro-virals to Africans with HIV instead of pushing Botox to the "forever young" customers they are trying to manufacture here."

The naievete of you and others like you in believing that Corporations and companies will somehow become "good citizens" in their own self interest has gotten us to where we are now, in a race to the bottom where only a few rich and many poor exist.

Lobo Gris

Capitalism has outlived its time. It has nothing left to offer humanity but disparity, war, and environmental catastrophe. It is not compatable with any democracy worth that noble title. It is a juggernaught of destruction inescapably trapped in its own dynamic. We need to remove the invisible hand from our throats and move beyond delusions of a nice capitalism that balances human needs and profits. It ain't possible. We can do better. In fact, we'd better!

One problem is that capitalism correlates well with maximum production which itself correlates well with maximum military production and military power. So the more capitalist a regime is, the easier it is for it to gain military power. And with military power, imperialistic adventures can continue to satisfy the needs and desires of the home population, regardless of the inefficiencies inherent in largescale robbery and extortion. The residents of the target nation of the imperialism rarely share in the benefits, except for the necessary few collaborators.

Another problem is that unfettered capitalism can and often does can improve living conditions in the short term, and enthusiasm for it grows, as is now the case in China. However, eventually the externalized costs make their presence known and by then it is usually too late to easily undo the damage.

The imperialistic powers can put off the day of reckoning longer than others, but eventually their power wanes and they must pay the price as well.

Jaded Prole, you cannot say it better.
"[C]apitalism must once again learn to defer profits"! Who is kidding whom? Capitalism lives on profits, which better come yesterday by its own definition. Capitalism kaput and Mr. Barber will better serve us if he say so loud and clear.

kivals April 4th, 2007 2:28 pm
"unfettered capitalism can and often does can improve living conditions in the short term". Very true. Even our GNP keeps rising, but so do nails and hair on a dead corps.

kivals:
It is true that Imperialism follows Capitalism as pain follows the cancer.
I do not see direct correlation between militarism and Capitalism. Here Marxists hopes failed. Soviet Union definitely was not capitalist society but capitalist encirclement followed by victorious war created militarism that strangulated USSR. Fear no matter how justified it was helped to create an atmosphere, in which Stalin and his clique flourished. When Khrushchev first attempted to cut military, wrecking Navy, aircraft industry and demobilizing 1,200,000 troops including thousands upon thousands of generals, his fate was sealed. The next civil leader to go against Soviet military-industrial complex was Gorbachev. His best gift to the US was Brezhnev's Doctrine, which was accepted by Baby Bush with usual thanks – stub into back.

There are two ways to treat cancer, surgical and strangulation, cutting off feeding vessels. There is no ways to change the nature of cancer. It looks to me that Mother Nature is stepping into the process. Humans are but more intelligent lemmings – they grow and then they die out. Will we be smarter the next cycle?

The militarism is helpful for the imperialism which is helpful for the ever-expanding market and profits. And the maximization of production makes military production and thus militarism easier to achieve. The Soviets did become militaristic for defensive purposes, and in a socialist system militarism requires swimming upstream and it became self-defeating for the Soviets. And of course the US and the West intentionally pushed the Soviets into an arms race that US leaders hoped would bankrupt the Soviets and eventually it did.

As for the role of nature, I do not believe that the general laws of nature, including human nature, dictated our current economic/political situation or will dictate its outcome. I would think there are an infinite number of possible political and economic systems and the ones we find ourselves in today were the result of specific events in human history that could have come out differently if people and forces had been positioned differently. And they will evolve in accordance with actions and events to come, which are in large part unpredictable, though the trends do not look good for the US or its people, especially not in the short term.

Speaking of capitalism:

I suggest we follow the urging of two teachers, whose names I of course forget, to start a Buy Nothing Drive the day after we finish paying our income taxes.

That would be April 16, in my estimation.

After the 2004 election was lost, strayed or stolen, I sent the suggestion of a Buyers' Strike to MoveOn and also to Code Pink.

My reasoning was that if all of us who want an end to this illegal "War" buy nothing but absolute necessities, it will not take very long.

I think we will get results so fast that small businesses and family-operated ones will not have time to sustain much damage.

That gives us ten days or so to stock up on absolute necessities, so that our action (or lack of action!) will have maximum impact.

Can we have a show of hands?

Dr. Seuss was a shaman disguised as a children's book author. In his masterpiece, The Lorax, he creates a character he names "The Lorax" to speak for the trees since they have no tongues. The LORAX confronts "The Once-ler," a prototypical business tycoon who moves to an undeveloped pristine paradise only to find ways to exploit its natural resources. First the trees go, then the rivers get spoiled, then the wildlife dies or flies off... and again the Lorax confronts the Once-ler, hoping his pointed questions will rouse conscience on the part of the Once-ler; but instead, the once-ler invites his whole family to come out, and he builds a larger factor, that creates more and more of... THNEEDS is what Seuss calls them. Robert E Lane's book, "The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies" makes it quite clear than stuff and more stuff does not fill the hollow in people. What people need is simplicity and relationships based on integrity; those virtues and gifts are what belong on the "Endangered Species List" today.

Whatever became of the ideal of Capitalism with a conscience or is this an oxymoron? What ever the case, I am not against capitalism, I'm against capitalism without a conscience. It is possible, and I know of some corporations that do care for the environment, its employees and the community where it is located. It is also true that this is a rare thing.
One thing I do know is that corporations have a charter, certain obligations that must be met, for them to continue being a corporation. These laws need to be revisited and revised and enforced. The threats many corporations make of leaving if things don't go the way they would like, could be countered with new language in the charters for corporations.
I'm positive that there is a solution. And I end with probably a naive rhetorical question, but, how much money does a person need? Is there ever a point when someone might ask themselves, "Do I really need another million dollars?" Yes, I know that greed knows no limits, but what disgusts me is that most, if not all of the super rich portay themselves as caring, loving, and religious people. Hypocrisy knows no bounds either.

Love the idea of a Buy Nothing Drive, maryannsalo. My husband and I decided to get rid of most of our "stuff" and try to buy only what we really need and or want. Everything has changed! I find that I get so so much more enjoyment from simple things than I ever expected. And since we got rid of cable (no commercials) and we use interenet to visit sites that we really want to learn things from, it's just strange - we just don't have the urge to buy, buy, buy anymore. I mean what's the point? We already have everything we need. Anyways I like the idea of Buy Nothing Drive, or a general strike to get our frigging government to respond.

Capitalism is based on profits. Corporations exist for the sole purpose of making profits. That's it. Period.

True, corporations are chartered by the states in which they incorporate. But to my knowledge, there is no requirement to be "good citizens". The states probably have the power to nullify these charters, but I don't know what "rules" whould have to be broken to do so. Further, I don't know of an instance of a corporation having it's charter revoked.

kivals - You mentioned UNFETTERED capitalism. I think this is the key. What we have today is out of control (unfettered) corporations. With no meaningful regulation by government, the supression of unions, inadequate taxation, the raping of the environment at no cost to the corporations, and all the other things that Lobo Gris mentioned, corporations now operate based on the "Greed Motive" not just a "Profit Motive".

It's the breakdown of all the CONTROLS of capitalizm/corporations that have gotten us where we are today. Until major social and governmental controls are reestablished and enforced, nothing will change. You can't change the basic nature of corporations (profit) anymore than you can change human nature (pursuit of happiness?). We have to correct the cause of the disease, not just treat it's symptoms. And as far as I can figure out, the biggest hammer in the room is the government. They make the rules. And until we get REAL campaign finance reform done, our government is going to continue to dance to the tune of thems that brung 'em. And that sure ain't We the People.

No surprise that all the gang here has been thinking about this for a long time. The rebel farmer is closest to my assessment after all these years. What is missing is the regulation, inspired by the abuses that caused the "great depression" and fired the labor movements. It has been the object of the hard-line capitalists to dismantle FDR's America ever since it was christened. I saw Reagan for what he was many years ago, which is why he is the deified saint of the Republican Party.

Corporatism as it is today is a headless monster. It obeys only its own rules and now is supplanting those rules into evey aspect of human endeavor. Some here are correct to wonder about the individuals that of course comprise corporations. Many (?) I believe would agree if they could, that lack of regulation is going to bring the whole system down. But they can't protest or suggest,or they will be swallowed. After spending countless hours pondering these things, I've come to the same conclusion as many here: only a collapse like the crash and depression of the early 20th Cent. will bring regulation back.

"The kids include toddlers who recognize brand logos before they can talk and commodity-minded baby Einsteins who learn to shop before they can walk."

Well, look at the bright side: When the baby Einteins grow up, they'll have a job waiting for them. By that time, the only jobs available will be slave-wage service jobs. These prodigious little shoppers who are now adults, can go shopping for the robber-barons who will become prisoners of their own greed.

Afraid to leave their mansions for fear of reprisal from the many victims they exploited and whose lives they destroyed, the greedy robber-barons will need to hire lots of service people to stay alive; that's where the grown up toddlers enter.

This scenario may sound far-fetched, but if our government continues to allow legal loansharking in this country so that average people can never get out of debt or save money, this could very well happen in the not-too-distant future.

Our attitudes about consumption and greed must change course if this planet is to survive.

Is the idea to use law to make people change their minds? or just use law to force them to act as you'd like?

As many here have said, corporations are beasts that feed off money. You can't be surprised by the behavior of corporate greed when that is precisely their nature -- maximize profit without being penalized for stepping on people. Combine that with a grant of rights equal or exceeding the individual and you have the miscreant creation called "corporation."

But we forget that corporation is a defined business entity. It is within our power to redefine them however we want. "Capitalism with a conscience" is possible, but you can't get there from here. As an utterly unrealistic but perhaps edifying flight of fancy, consider this:

We create a new kind of corporate individual, one that only indirectly operates off "profit". Directly, it is fueled by "yenom", which is defined thus: Yenom is money plus benefit to humanity, posterity and environment, minus harm to humanity, posterity, environment. Imagine corporate board rooms and share holder meetings devoted to the ruthless optimization of yenom.

Excerpt:

"We can't yield more profits this quarter, but we can boost yenom by helping this downtrodden sector... We're going to push very hard in all our divisions, while treating our employees fairly, which will also increase yenom."

Of course there would be a body established to evaluate corporate performance, as per yenom.

The point is that in generations to come people may wonder at our stupidity: you don't let multinational corporations solely maximize profits! Duh.

maryannsalo April 4th, 2007 6:18 pm

"Speaking of capitalism:

I suggest we follow the urging of two teachers, whose names I of course forget, to start a Buy Nothing Drive the day after we finish paying our income taxes.

That would be April 16, in my estimation."

I'm all for it and have suggested the same thing before without naming a date.

It would definitely get businesses and our lawmakers attention if just one day (with a promise of more to come) all businesses were to register zero receipts.

Then if they got snotty about it we could organize a week long event.

A pipe dream I know, but a nice effective one if it could be implemented.

Lobo Gris

MtnGoat, you make a good point about this article not being actually about capitalism but rather chosen values of each individual which are then expressed.
I would suggest reading Hannah Arendt. I will try to briefly go over her ideas because they relate to what you said.
For Arendt modernity is characterized by the loss of the world, by which she means the restriction or elimination of the public sphere of action and speech in favor of the private world of introspection and the private pursuit of economic interests. Today's world is the age of mass society, of the rise of the social out of a previous distinction between the public and the private. Modernity is the age of bureaucratic administration and anonymous labor, rather than politics and action. The modern wold is one of elite domination and the manipulation of public opinion.
Instead of building and preserving the community and creating public spaces for action and talk, we are forced to live for sheer survival and in production of things that are perishable. The modern age is characterized by growing artificiality, by the rejection of anything that is not man-made. Arendt cites the fact that natural processes, including that of life itself, have been recreated artificially by means of scientific experiment, that our natural environment has been extensively transformed and in some instances entirely replaced by technology. All this leads to a situation where nothing around us will be a naturally given event, object, or process, but will instead be the product of humans and the will to refashion the world in our image.
Her claim is that, with the expansion of the economy from the end of the eighteenth century, all such activities have taken over the public realm and changed our lives into a search of the satisfaction of our material needs. Society has invaded and conquered the public realm, turning the public realm of what previously were private needs and concerns, and has destroyed the boundary separating the public and the private. Arendt also claims that with the expansion of the social realm the division of human activities has been undermined to the point of becoming meaningless. In her view, once the social realm has established its monopoly, the distinction between labor, work and action is lost, since every effort is now aimed toward reproducing our material conditions of existence. Obsessed with life, productivity, and consumption, we have turned into a society of laborers and jobholders who no longer appreciate the values associated with work, nor those associated with action.
These indeed do seem to be the values we hold today in Western cultures, and these values are expressed through our cunsumer society and buying and then thowing things away. In the past, things were built to last. Not so today. And all anyone need do is look around and see the artificiality and superficiality of today's world. Our work use to have a value and meaning, today that is not true in far too many cases. Some people don't even know what they are making. It's come down to mere survival and a live almost devoid of reason or sense.
Sorry for the long entry, but philosophy is my thing.

Yes, things are very bleak with the fangs of the soulless, godless corporate monsters devouring everything in their globalized path. We are no longer looked on as human beings, not even as citizens but only as consumers on a treadmill to oblivion.
Competition is drummed in our heads from day one here in the west and is now spreading via Japan, Korea and Taiwan to China, India and beyond. Everything and everyone is subjugated to an artificial hierarchy and gradation. Have you noticed there's a to 10 or top 100 for everything now. Who's the winner.... the champ...top dog... the idol...king of the hill..... the last standing.... the survivor.... on and on (christ these all sould like t.v. shows - unbeliveable). It's so pandemic we don't even question it. I truly believe we could wake up one day and be informed by the media that some singular individual, be him Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or the ghost of Rudy Walberg, now owns the entire world. Some of us would say he/she is such a hard worker, others that he/she is such a genius, still others would offer that said person is so good looking and charismatic... and thus deserved his/her good fortune. Geeee if only we could be like HIM...then we could do what we really want.
Only plausible solution I see on the horizon is that the ecological threat will become so pervasive and dramatic (ie global warming, peak oil... etc. with all their associated calamities) that people will be forced to embrace the whole "solartopia" solution. It will be something like the last page in Voltaire's Candid in which in answer to what we should do he answers "Cultivate are gardens."
It could produce a radical democratization of the world both in income and input.... with most of us doing the basics of growing food locally, producing are own energy and just generally living a simpler, stronger and more rewarding life. Of course there would be a tremendous amount of sharing and communicating of ideas as to what works.
I'm getting a little old for this idealism stuff but this hippie still has a little mojo left and I'm thinking of selling my home in Honolulu and doing the whole sustainable living thing with some friends on the big island.....
The chapters are yet to be written and were all the authors... good luck...

I think the author is right about encouraging a restructured capitalism that responds to the needs of the needy instead of responding to the needs of the wealthy... He offers a simple understanding, a balance of a type that works.

Capitalism demands profits, though, and substantial profits - so I don't think, now that it is so powerful, that it can ever be halted except by financial catastrophe, revolution (quick methods), or some type of a progressive, and selective environmental collapse (slower methods).

Capitalism is, what, around 85% (just a guess) of the world's economy and seems too far gone in it's effort to sustain itself and will unlikely continue in its present form.

A social/economic revolution that emphasizes some type of "restrained Capitalism" is what is needed.... Perhaps an economic structure that forces a limitation on profits, forces environmental responsibility upon businesses and corporations, supports at least a minumum of health care for all workers...
Comments?

Maryann many of us did stop buying expect needs, hope it will catch on, it is quite freeing to be able ask your self is this a need or a want! You save tons of money.
Rebalfarmer, your right, controls, regulations are needed badly for corporations, they are treated like people but they are just greedy CEO's taking all the profits and killing the workers.
Workers rebel, or they will take your soul.

As I wrote earlier, I believe there are an infinite number of different political and economic systems possible. Actually, each law passed related to economic regulation makes for a different economic system. And of the infinite number, surely there is an infinite subset of capitalist systems that work fairly well in providing for the long-term welfare of the population. And of those there may be an infinite subset of corporate capitalist systems that may serve the welfare of the population fairly well for some time, but I have trouble believing there are any corporate capitalist systems that will promote the welfare of the population over the long term, in a sustainable fashion.

A corporate capitalist system that does well serve the needs of the population is always going to be highly regulated and the corporations are always going to be chafing against such regulations. That makes the situation unstable and unsustainable. Sooner or later, the corporations will break free of the regulations. In the US, corporate leaders saw an opportunity to break free with the fall of the Soviets as:
(1) many people became convinced that this proved socialism had no future, including many in China, and that the further away from socialism an economy was, the better; and
(2) the removal of the Soviet system allowed the US corporations to expand into new areas of the globe and to create a "world economy," i.e. find a virtually unlimited supply of slave labor and cheap natural resources to exploit.

As corporations break free of regulations, they accumulate more resources, and they increase their power to influence government activity, which becomes a positive feedback loop. And this would be expected to continue until so much pain has been caused that the majority of the population attempts to push back, possibly even violently. Then if that majority is successful in reforming and regulating the corporations, the cycle starts all over again.

It seems that allowing any great concentration of private wealth and power, which is what inevitably happens with corporations, will lead to similar instability and unsustainability.

Professor Barber writes:
"...we will require the assistance of democratic institutions and an adult ethos. Public citizens must be restored to their proper place as masters of their private choices. To sustain itself, capitalism will once again have to respond to real needs instead of trying to fabricate synthetic ones — or risk consuming itself."

Democratic institutions like this one, are a minority. All the big ones have been bought.

Public citizens are periodically restored by a violent revolution, then they make the mistake of setting up another corruptible representative democracy and the tree of freedom will need some bloody patriots to fertilize it all over again.

You can manage capitalism about as well as you can manage a roulette wheel. It's a gamble any way you look at it, and subject to tampering.

For the solution to all these problems, check out direct grassroots democracy at:
http://www.ni4d.org/library/fossedal_direct_democracy_in_switzerland.htm
and the Green Party at:
http://www.gp.org/

MtnGoat April 5th, 2007 2:55 pm

"public citizens already are masters of their private choices. they are in the process of insisting someone else manage those choices for them in order to make the decisions they refuse to make on their own."

And just what private choices would those be?

Lobo Gris

#
MtnGoat April 5th, 2007 4:53 pm

"All the private choices you make everyday. To get on an airplane pumping carbon into the air because you want to visit europe, or see grandma, or work. This choice is completely within your grasp. As are the consequences.

The private choice of where to accept a job, what kind of tomatoes to buy and where they were produced, to pay more for a washer or not have one at all. To pay to go to a private school, or accept a public one. To pay more to your employees because you think it is the right thing to do. What kind of car to drive, or not drive, where to live, how to live, how you will balance kids and work and what your values are for that tradeoff. How much risk to accept when choosing a medication, or picking a hobby, or a partner.

The fact of the matter is, when State power is minimal…all the decisions it is your right to make, for you, are solely in your grasp. No one else needed to make them for you, or make them for others. No one else to insert their value decisions above your own."

All of the choices you listed are being made by individuals now. Today. So what is your point?

Lobo Gris

ralph 442. This goes way back in the thread where ralph442 mentions old hippie and idealism. There's nothing wrong with being an old hippie. In fact I'm probably only five years younger than you are. I'm 48. But there can be a problem to Idealism and that is inaction.
I'm a lot of things. I've done time. I've studied philosophy and astrophysics. I teach in a poor village in South Vietnam right now. But I love to learn and have good arguments.
The saying, "No matter how thin the paper, there's always two sides." I know is true. And we as a collective share one common dream - a better, healthier, more fair world.
Right now, I think we all share the common idea that our present form of government is in need of some seious change. All the issues discussed here are related to the possibility of a better world.

"Capitalism's success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are now chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to "need" all that it produces in order to survive. ..."

" ... In order to turn reluctant consumers with few unsatisfied core needs into permanent shoppers, producers must dumb down consumers, shape their wants, take over their life worlds, encourage impulse buying, cultivate shopoholism and invent new needs."

Now you can begin to understand why the transnational corporations are so desirous of 'guest worker' programs and legalizing (amnesty) illegal immigration.

Many more consumers with the added benefit of providing cheap, exploitable labor -- that is what Bush and the national Chamber of Commerce want -- and their so-called 'immigration reform' is the plan.

Ben Barber's a hypocrite. He drives a BMW, and earns more as a professor at a state university than the Governor of Maryland.