THE MORAL CHOICE BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM — PART 2
Cartoon from here.
This is the second part of a six-part essay. Here are the six parts.
- Why Did I Write This Series?
- Capitalism Versus Socialism And The Culture War?
- What Does The Bible Says About Private Property?
- What Is The Problem With Collectives?
- When Is Socialism the Best Moral Choice?
- When Is Capitalism The Best Moral Choice?
Capitalism Versus Socialism And The Culture War?
When the first colonists arrived in the New World, they came predominantly from England and Spain. The Spaniards discovered gold. Because of that, Spanish royalty took an intense interest in their colony. The English discovered tobacco, furs, and fish, but not much gold. Initially, the English colonies did not even survive.
The English first attempted to colonize the New World in July 1585 on Roanoke Island in what is now North Carolina. That colony failed mysteriously — after the second attempt (see here and here). Jamestown, Virginia, the third attempt by the English, succeeded. Even so, Jamestown barely survived (see here) as did the Pilgrim settlement, Plymouth Colony, further north (see here). The colonies were not particularly profitable, and they suffered from neglect. Eventually, however, this neglect became benign.
Imagine living in a huge land far from any sovereign. New settlements slowly appear up and down coastline. Each is different and strange. New ideas travel between these various communities. Populations spread out, and agricultural communities become largely self-governing. Nonetheless, in spite of their isolation (or because?), the people of the English colonies eventually become the rich. So it is that by 1776, the English King had once again become interested in the wealth of the New World.
How did the English colonists become so wealthy? Why did the Spanish colonies remain relatively backward? The answer seems to be a difference in attitude. The English colonists had become accustomed to running their own individual affairs. In America, each citizen had the unquestioned right to own property. Hard work and thoughtful diligence paid off. What each man earned he could keep. In other parts of the world, rulers schemed to control as much wealth as they could, but that tended not to happen in America — until an English king, King George III, decided the colonies just might be worth the trouble of exploitation.
Consider the Boston Tea Party. The colonists became angry when their English sovereign decided to award the British East India Company special tax privileges. George III decided to award a favored corporation his colonies’ tea business. The colonists protested by throwing their king’s tea in the harbor.
What the colonists had learned is that liberty requires the right to own property. When the king tried to tax them without their permission and to award tax relief to his friends, the colonists feared George III would enslave them. So the colonists rebelled against a culture of repression, a culture that accepted the unfettered rule of a royal sovereign.
How did the colonists reach conclusion George III had no special right to rule them? I think they reached that conclusion by reading the Bible. Look at the characters in the Bible. God has little use for making men kings (See here). There is only One who is inherently greater than any other man or woman. That is Jesus; He is God. All the rest of the characters in the Bible became great when they had held to their faith in God.
What evidence could the English king offer that he had the right to lord over other men? None. So when George III began abusing their rights, the colonists felt little reason to be cowed and obey.
So what has all this to do with socialism? Like monarchy, pure socialism disregards the right of the individual to own personal property. Instead of recognizing individual rights, the government takes upon itself the right to own the means of production. Your food, your clothing, and your shelter and everything else you are allowed to use comes as a gift from the state. Since the state owns the means of production, even your labor becomes the property of the state.
Like monarchists, socialists enforces their control over the means of production with the force of arms. That ultimately makes difference between pure socialism and monarchy superficial. Socialism merely replaces the king with the vanguard of the proletariat.
Continued — What Does The Bible Say About Private Property?
–How did the English colonists become so wealthy?–
They stole land from the Native Americans.
Later, they took on slaves to increase their productivity and exports.
kgotthardt – Sounds like you have come up with a great economic plan for Barack Obama. We invade Africa, steal all the land, and enslave the population. Prosperity! Here we come!
Actually, kicking the Indians off their land resulted in some nasty warfare. Got a bunch of people killed — no prosperity in that. I suggest you read about King Phillip’s War, 1675–1676. The Pilgrims and the Puritan settlers definitely were into land theft, but it turned out to be a bloody mess.
The North dropped slavery. The South continued it. At the time the Civil War started, the North was doing just fine. I suppose you could say the Southern Whites were just as prosperous as Northern Whites, but the Black slaves were not doing especially well. However, if you enjoy keeping a wary eye on unruly slaves, I guess that is a good way to live.
Perhaps I should be more open-minded. Bush never did anything right. Undoubtedly, his attempt to deal with the AIDS problem in Africa was also a mess. So why don’t you run your idea past Obama? If you pitch stealing the land and enslaving the population as the kindest possible solution for the AIDS epidemic, he might go along with it. Just make certain you give him a good reason why he should not enslave you (and me too, of course) while you are at it.
–Got a bunch of people killed — no prosperity in that.–
But that’s what it got us in the long run. Remember the breaking of the treaties? How is it Native Americans ended up on reservations while we got our 50+ states?
The slave trade made some colonists very wealthy, though it didn’t do much for the slaves.
I will gladly cite my sources when I’ve got more time, but you’re right. Enslaving people will make more money for some. Do you really think Obama NEEDS the money, though? I doubt it.
kgotthardt – The number of Indians in the area we call the United States was never particularly large. After diseases from Europe got to work, the number was quite a bit smaller. Should colonists have treated the survivors with so much murderous contempt? Should Indians have tortured and murdered colonists? No, but it happened.
In any event, the takeover of this land by European settlers was almost inevitable. Think not? Then I suggest you reflect a bit on the nature of the laws that concern the practice of eminent domain and the simple fact the Indians could not defend “their” land.
There is little question that the availability of so much land helped to make the colonists prosperous. Nonetheless, the Spanish colonies to the south also had lots of land and they succeeded reducing the Indian population to slavery or peasant status. Yet in the long run, the Spanish colonies did not prosper. Why success in one place and not the other?
Success requires that we do the right thing the right right way. We rarely do that perfectly. After all, we are only human. However, with respect to government and economics, the English colonists did get closer than most people. Democratic Capitalism is a model that allows individuals to pursue their own goals and to retain the fruits of their labors. It is a system that minimizes government interference. That was the system the colonists chose, and they did a pretty decent job of implementing it — with the exception of slavery. That problem got fixed in the North. In the South, it took longer. Fixing slavery cost over 600,000 lives and left the South an impoverished land of ruins. Yet the South recovered. Amazingly, even without all the “advantages” that attend slavery, in time the South still managed to prosper.
–Amazingly, even without all the “advantages” that attend slavery, in time the South still managed to prosper.–
A good example of how we can prosper without hurting one another, don’t you think?
kgotthardt – Yes. Unfortunately, people don’t always define “hurting one another” quite the same way.