Social Justice and Capitalism
Have you ever wondered why social justice and "woke" adherents so often seem to be socialists, or at least of the wealth-redistribution mindset that's the current incarnation of “socialism” (see, “Democratic…”? Why do people who claim such interest in addressing racism and other cultural bigotries via anti-racism, equity, reparations, and affirmative action usually also embrace heavy-handed government, the taking of money from some to give to others, a disdain for individual liberty, and a hatred of capitalism itself?
Cynical answers satisfy: the movements are co-opted by the power-hungry, by divisive agitators who sell tales of unfairness and "systemic" everything, and by unrepentant Marxists looking to reinvigorate that asshole's aspirations.
Were it only cynics moving against the tide, though, I don't think the intersection of socialism and woke would be so significant.
The answer lies a bit deeper.
At the core of social justice is the notion that society divides into oppressors and oppressed. As I recently discussed, these identities are somewhat fluid based on circumstances: an oppressed in one situation (e.g. woman vs man (excuse me, cisgender, heterosexual man)) can be an oppressor in another (e.g. TERF vs trans).
Fluidity aside, the dynamic is always that of winner-loser. The oppressor only advances at the expense of the oppressed, accumulates wealth at the expense of the oppressed, and accrues power by disempowering the oppressed. Life in this worldview is zero-sum.
Consider what capitalism (not cronyism, not corporatism, not anarchy) teaches, however.
John sells apples. Jane wants some apples. Jane inspects the apples, decides they are of good quality and worth the price John asks.
Jane buys apples from John. Jane is happy - she got what she wanted. John is happy - he got what he wanted. Both get on with their lives, pleased with the synergistic exchange.
Win-win, mutually beneficial voluntary interaction and transaction. There is neither oppressor nor oppressed.
If your worldview is that of oppressor-oppressed, this makes no sense to you. If you cannot fathom an interaction between people of different identity groups where both parties walk away happy, you are very unlikely to accept the tenets of capitalism or free markets.
That leaves the collectivist mindset as your only option. If such interactions are necessarily oppressor-oppressed, then government's heavy hand balancing the scales is the only remedy that will occur to you. Coercion to correct the ubiquitous, inevitable, and forever wrongs. That puts you into some sector of the socialist camp.
That collectivism doesn't work should not be in dispute. It has failed everywhere it has been tried, and it has been tried in just about every permutation of human existence (rich, poor, hot, cold, wet, dry, dense, sparse, religious, secular, and so on).
The smarter attempters realized this, and unraveled or are unraveling their domestic socialism. Israel, India, and the UK went socialist after World War II. All walked away (but remain stuck with some underperforming structures). Sweden built a wealthy market-based society across the mid 20th century, then went socialist around 1970. In a mere two decades, her socialist experiment went badly awry, her economy lagged, and she's been unraveling it ever since. The Baltic states, after the end of the USSR, experienced explosive growth thanks to the abandonment of collectivism in favor of market-based policies. China's economic growth across the past four decades derives from its market-based reforms, not from collectivist economics.
Unfortunately, like a bad penny, kudzu, or a cold sore, socialism keeps returning. That our most-educated, Best-and-Brightest are so often its biggest advocates is incomprehensible - until we realize that they've been insulated from the realities of collectivism vs markets by the system that made them Best-and-Brightest, i.e. our universities.
As Gandalf the Grey taught us,
It's why we see the most resistance to socialism in people who lived under it (Cubans, Iron Curtain emigres, former Soviets, etc), and the least in those who've never actually experienced the problems caused by collectivist government. That collectivists continue to emerge from those insulated spaces is therefore not surprising. If your neighbor is growing bamboo, and won't let you into his yard to kill it, it'll keep invading yours.
This isn't a new problem, either. The persistence of socialist ideas across the past century has always been rooted in universities and think tanks. The 'Frankfurt School' that preserved Marxism across the 20th century was formed in 1924, moved to Columbia University in 1934, then returned to Europe in 1951. Therein lie the origins of social justice, a melding of Critical Theory and Political Correctness. This spawned the oppressor-oppressed model of society, so it is no surprise that there is no compatibility with capitalism or free market principles therein.
This means that the oppressor-oppressed model, like socialism itself, is inherently and irredeemably corrosive. Until its adherents and advocates realize it's a fundamentally unworkable idea, our society’s harmony and progress will continue to suffer.
As for socialism, biologist and Pulitzer laureate E. O. Wilson summed it up well:
‘But, wait!’ some will cry. ‘We aren’t living in a genuinely capitalist society!’
Aside from the gag of comparing an idealized socialist system to the real-and-imperfect current state, or asserting that ‘real socialism hasn’t been tried,’ or ‘democratic socialism is different!’ (no, it’s not), what I discuss here is mindset, not comparative systems. The mindset that prompts one to ‘woke’ is the mindset that prompts one to socialism.
At the risk of repeating myself - socialism fails in comparison to even a terribly imperfect market- and liberty-based system. So does woke.
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Peter.
My theory on the relationship between wokeness and socialism goes back to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Warsaw Pact.
This put the far left into a crisis, because most of the world now saw that they didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground about economics, since they had been so consistently unable to create an economy that delivered the goods.
A lot of moderate Democrats decided to learn something about economics. A basic understanding of Econ 101 became much more widespread among the moderate left in the US.
But the far-leftists had a problem. No one was going to listen to them about economics any more, and it had always been the main thing they wanted to talk about. So where to go? They went into:
- social justice
- the environmental movement
Both of these fields afforded them the opportunity to vilify their traditional enemies, just from new angles.
Social justice had the added plus that a large share of the population doesn't feel "free speech" should apply to it. Over the years, the SJW's have evolved this intolerance into the ability to get their enemies fired at will.
They've made a godawful mess of environmentalism, since most environmentalists do not understand or pursue market-friendly solutions. In 2016, I was at a panel discussion by some environmentalists talking about a carbon tax, and one of them foamed at the mouth for a couple of minutes about how much he hated "markets", and then he said "Even if I were talking with a conservative, not that that would ever happen, I wouldn't describe a carbon tax as a 'market solution'.".
When a socialist cries about poverty and inequality, the free market defender is usually playing…defense, citing wonky statistics or finger-wagging about “class warfare” and appearing about as empathetic as Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life”.
The campaign against socialism needs to play offense, not defense. Point out the many ways that government interference in personal freedom and free markets blocks opportunities to rise out of poverty. Just a few examples:
- Millions of poor/minority kids are trapped in dysfunctional urban public schools while “progressives” oppose school choice.
- NIMBY and environmental home building restrictions raise the cost of housing while killing potential construction jobs.
- Occupational licensing (ok for brain surgeons, not needed for hair braiders)
- In general, excessive business taxes and regulations hit hardest at manufacturing companies that offer decent paying jobs for non-college educated “regular folks”
- Lower income people don’t have much left to save and invest after putting 12.6% of every paycheck (including employer matching) into the Social Security Ponzi scheme.