"Selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our problem. Arising from a thousand different fears and self-delusions...." No. I do not hold that selfishness is a virtue. I am intrigued by some concepts of the "free market" but am also intrigued by the theories put forth by Karl Marx. It should be noted that Marx much as the title of this thread suggested, that capitalism was necessary to bring about socialism. That the greed and selfishness of capitalism would bring about the "uprising of the proletariat". For that reason he believed the US to be fertile soil for that transformation. What he did not forsee was the ability of capitalism to adapt and even to morph into what we see today.
To think that unbridled capitalism would not revert back to turn of the century abuse of labor and almost robber-baron capitalism is to me naive in the extreme. Think about it. What happens when a natural disaster (Katrina) threatens oil supplies? Do the oil companies lose money? Absolutely not. They raise the price at the pump. No regulation. No nothing. Now take away their subsidies. Think they are going to be selfless and caring. Oh, hell no. They will bleed every cent they can.
The theory is intriguing. The practice impossible.
In my case, the mistake you may be making is thinking that I consider the terms Free Market and capitalism as synonomous. That, I do not do and in fact I believe capitalism in fact opposes true free markets regardless of the glowing talk by so-called advocates of exclusive capitalism or monopoly capitalism. Capital is nothing more that one of 3 factors of production, those being capital, property and labor. Does one plant a backyard garden every year and then all who do so declare they've just committed an act of capitalism? No, but those backyard gardens are excellent examples of the 3 factors of production and yet we also don't take say propertyism or laborism and ascribe it in sigularity to having planted a garden and then taken that aspect of production and monopolized it as chief component of all things economic. Why have we thus taken capital, singled it out and then built all things economic around it while ignoring the other 2 equally important factors in economic production?
If one can take capitial and convert it into a single unit we call money or medium of exchange, grant monopoly control over that medium including it's creation to an exclusive group whether that be gov't or a private collective of persons, pass legal tender laws making other potential forms of capital illegal, then just how hard is it then for abuse and moral wrongs to enter the marketplace and corrupt it? What should be a normal process of interaction between human beings that for the most part is peaceful and not a winners and losers situation but an honest exchange of equal value where bothsides of the action benefit to their own self interests becomes violent and fraud ridden as an embedded degree of shortage is encouraged. Once capital is controlled, property and labor shortly follow and what use to be a society where persons were typically individual craftsman, shopkeepers and farmers along with a widespread of wealth through society now see just the opposite and then all other manner and aspects of society follow into the centralized, monopolized world where the bigger only get bigger and less in number as wealth becomes even more concentrated and the rest are left in varying degree to be exploited.
Marx analysis of exploitation by what was called capitalism does have a point as well as some of his class theory. His endgame of Stateless society was worth admiring but his system IMO was still largely flawed in that for one, when his communist theory was put into practice, his theory never advanced beyond the 2nd stage that being the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In the great Soviet experiement, under Stalin the Soviet Union in classical definded terms actually became more rightwing than it's left roots from which it started, not unlike our own oligarchic system that birthed out of classical liberalism and classical liberal free markets which were root in the ideal of political left of the 18th century French system. I believe the Lord Acton principle in both cases to again having proven itself as the major root cause of this. As an aside, the major leaders who became the foundation of Neo-Conservatism ironically were themselves Trotskites in earlier times so to think many of these ideals as extreme opposites of one another is IMO missing a huge mark.
Another reason I believe both the grand Marx experiement as well as the grand Jeffersonian experiment have failed is because both models although shared much in the endgame were doomed because they ended up trying to control not only ever larger & larger populations but also geographic areas. This may however be a discussion for another time and place. Of recent I've read much on what is called the
Dunbar number along with the ideas of small scale from the likes of Kirkpartick Sale and Ralph Borsodi, both men being more ascribed to what is called left but both advocated not stateless societies but rahter vastly decentralized societies. Sale although a self described progressive and liberal is also a big advocate of successionism mostly and wrongly ascribed to rightwing tea party types only. Even
Harvard Business Review has discussed the impact of scale in the busines world and for those UPSers who read the Harvard piece, I'm betting you'll have visions of UPS as well.
As for capitalism itself and some of the thinking where I come towards it, Sheldon Richman, Senior Fellow Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) editor of it's house publication "The Freeman" and also senior fellow at "Future of Freedom Foundation" put it very well and over the last year his analysis has opened up a very large and even heated discussion about capitalism verses free markets.
Is Capitalism Something Good?
Much of what you say there is very, very true and what you pointed out about Keynes was excellent analysis on your part! Your analysis of people taking advantage of one another IMO is dead on. The current monopolistic markets have created shortages amongst the masses and it's corrupted the Lockean Provisio of one mixing property and labor to create wealth or capital. Legal tender laws further aggravate this condition that prevent the poor from joining together in beneficially mutual arrangements or contract and working their own micro economy thus lifting the entire community upward. Thus they find themselves dependent on a monopoly system of exploitation and then to make matters worse, when many in frustration throw their hands up and quit because the odds are against them, we want to blame them rather than stepping back and doing analysis on the system itself for the root cause.
The Corp. state therefore has us too busy blaming "those lazy, worthless bums" rather than seeing the lack of true free markets that welcomes the skills they have and allow them to use as best allocation of local resources. Our centralization models do just the opposite.
Can I make a suggestion on something you might try. Understanding (and I think we both agree with this) that a free market is truly free in that market actors outside of force or fraud are able to bring to the marketplace anything they so choose and that exchanges are made on conditions decided by the 2 parties of the exchange and in what manner the exchange is made is according to a voluntary, mutual contract reached upon by the 2 market players. Using that as a basis for free market, look across the entire spectrum of our economy for where those very conditions are violated, by who and at all levels both public and private. Just a suggestion!
BTW: Another book worth consideration IMO and one that pushes into a very different realm of thinking is Ivan Illich's book
Deschooling Society. Thought provoking as well as vastly radical in thinking towards a de-centralized as well as de-institutionized society and one looking for liberty and free markets I do think one can profit from what Illich has to say.