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CHAPTER8: ECONOMICJUSTICEAND WELFARE
imum wages, in fixing prices and putting a ceiling on rents, in curbing monopolies,
in erecting tariffs, in guaranteeing jobs, in managing the money supply? To these
and all similar questions the libertarian answers with an unequivocal no.
"But then you'd let people go hungry'" comes the rejoinder. This, the libertarian
insists, is precisely what would not happen; with the restrictions removed, the economy would flourish as never before. With the controls taken off business, existing
enterprises would expand and new ones would spring into existence satisfying more
and more consumer needs; millions more people would be gainfully employed instead of subsisting on welfare, and all kinds of research and production, released from
the stranglehold of government, would proliferate, fulfilling man's needs and desires
as never before. It has always been so whenever government has permitted men to
be free traders on a free market.. But why this is so, and how the free market is the
best solution to all problems relating to the material aspect of man's life, is another
and far longer story. . . .
NOTE
1 William W. Bayes,"What Is Property?" TheFreeman,July 1970,p. 348.
QUESTIONS
1 Somelibertariansarguethat from a moral standpointthereis no differencebetweenthe ac""
tions of an ordinary thief and those of a governmentwhen it seizesmoney from some
orderto supportothers.They assumethat if the former aiewrong, then so arethe latter.Ar~
they correct?
.
2 Do you agreethat the governmentshould have no role in assistingthe needy?What reasonscan you advanceto defendyour answer?
A Moral Casefor Socialism
Kai Nielsen
Kai Nielsen is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Calgary, Canada. He is
the author of Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism (1985), God, Scepticism and Modernity (1989), and Ethics without God (1990).
Nielsen puts forth a moral casefor socialism.He identifies and explicatesa
cluster of vaJuesthat are basic.toour culture-freedom and autonomy,equality,
justice, rights, and democracy-and then compares"pure socialism" and "pure
capitalism" in respectto thesevalues.Nielsen concludesthat a socialist systemis
much more likely to exemplify our basic valuesthan a capitalist system.
Reprintedwith pennission
from CriticalReview,vol. 3, Summer/Fall1989,
pp.542-552.~
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I
In North America socialism getsa bad press.It is under criticism for its alleged economic inefficiency and for its moral and humaninadequacy.I want here to address
the latter issue.Looking at capitalism and socialism, I want to consider, againstthe
grain of our culture, what kind of moral casecan be made for socialism.
The first thing to do, given the extensive,and, I would add, inexcusably extensive, confusionsabout this, is to say what socialism and capitalism are. That done I
will then, appealingto ae-uster ofyalues which are basic in our culturejconcerning
which there is a considerableand.indeeda reflective ~o~n~exaIn1ne
how capitalism and socialism fare with respectto thesevalues. Given that people generally,
at least in Western societies,would want it to be the casethat these values have a
stableexemplification in our social lives, it is appropriateto ask the question: which
of thesesocial systemsis more likely stably to exemplify them? I shall argue, facing the gamut of a careful comparisonin the light of thesevalues, that, everything
considered,socialismcomesout betterthancapitalism.And this, if right, would give
us good reason for believing that socialism is preferable-indeed morally preferable-to capitalism if it also turns out to be a feasible socio-economicsystem.
What, then, are socialism and capitalism? Put most succinctly, capitalism requires the existenceof private productive prope~ (private ownership of the means
of production) while socialism works toward its abolition. What is essentialfor socialism is public ownership and control of the mean~of production and public ownership meansjust what it says:ownership by the public. Under capitalism there is a
domain of private property rights in the meansof production wInch are not subject
to political determination.That is, even where the political domain is a democratic
one, they are not subject to determinationby the public; only an individual or a set
of individuals who own that property can makethe final determination of what is to
be done with that property. Theseindividuals make the determination and not citizensat large, asunder socialism.cIn fullX d~~~!opedsoc!alism,by contrast,ther~ is,
termin~~onb~ the pub!ic, namely by the citizenry at l~ge. Thus, where this public I
ownershipand control is genuine,and not a mask for control by an elite of statebureaucrats,it will meangenuinepopular anddemocraticcontrol over productive property. What socialism is not is state ownership in the absenceof, at the very least,
popular sovereignty,~.e.,genuinepopular control over the stateapparatusincluding
any economicfunctions it might have.
Theprope~ that is ownedin commonundersocialismis the meansof existencethe p:oductive property in the society. Socialism does.n.otproscribe the .ownership /
of pnvate personalproperty, suchashouses,cars,televIsIon setsand the lIke. It only
proscribesthe private ownership of the meansof production.
The abovecharacterizationscatch the minimal core of socialism and capitalism,
what usedto be called the essenceof thoseconcepts.But beyond thesecore features,
it is well, in helping us to make our comparison,to seesome other important featureswhich characteristicallygo with capitalism and sQcialism.Minimally, capitalism is private ownership of the meansof production but it is also, at least charac-
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teristically, a social systemin which a classof capitalistsowns andcontrolsthe means
of production and hires workers who, owning little or no meansof production, sell
their labor-power to some capitalist or other for a wage. This meansthat a capital"
ist society will be a class society in which there will be two principal classes:capi",
) talists and workers. Socialism by contrast is a social system in which every able,;;
bodiedpersonis, was or will be a worker. Theseworkers commonly own and control
the meansof production (this is the characteristicform of public ownership). Thus
in socialism we have, in a perfectly literal sense,a classlesssociety for there is no
division betweenhuman beings along classlines.
Thereareboth pure and impure forms of capitalism and socialism.The pure form
of capitalism is competitive capitalism, the capitalism that Milton Friedman would
tell us is the real capitalism while, he would add, the impure form is monopoly or
corporatecapitalism. Similarly the pure form of socialism is democratic socialism,
with firm workers' control of the meansof production and an industrial as well asa
political democracy,while the impure form is statebureaucraticsocialism.
Now it is a noteworthy fact that, to understateit, actually existing capitalismsand
actually existingsocialisms tend to be the impure forms. Many partisansofcapital~
ism lament the fact that the actually existing capitalismsoverwhelmingly tend to be
forms of corporatecapitalism where the statemassivelyintervenesin the running of
the economy. It is unclear whether anything like a fully competitive capitalism ac"
tually exists-perhaps Hong Kong approximatesit-and it is also unclear whether
many of the actual players in the major capitalist societies(the existing capitalists
and their managers)want or even expectthat it is possibleto have laissez-fairecap"
italism again (if indeed we ever had it). Some capitalist societiesare further down
the corporateroad than other societies,but they are all forms of corporate,perhaps
in some instanceseven monopoly, capitalism. Competitive capitalism seemsto be
more of a libertarian dreamthan a sociological reality or even somethingdesiredby
many informed andtough-mindedmembersof the capitalist class.Socialismhashad
a similar fate. It~ historical exemplifications tend to be of the impure forms, namely
thebureaucraticstatesocialisms,Yugoslaviais perhapsto socialismwhat Hong Kong
is to capitalism. It is a candidatefor what might count as an exemplification, or at
least a near approximation, of the pure form.
This paucity of exemplifications of pure forms of either capitalism or socialism
raisesthe question of whether th~ pure forms are at best unstablesocial systemsand
at worse merely utopian ideals. I shall not try directly to settlethat issuehere. What
I shall do insteadis to comparemodelswith models.In asking about the moral case
for socialism, I shall compareforms that a not inconsiderablenumber of the theoretical protagonists of each take to be pure forms but which are still, they believe,
historically feasible.But I will alsobe concernedto askwhetherthesemodels-these
pure forms--can reasonablybe expectedto come to have a home.If they arenot his~
torically feasible models, then, even if we can make a good theoretical moral case
for them, we will have hardly provided a good moral casefor socialism or capitalism. To avoid bad utopianism we must be talking aboutforms which could be on the
historical agenda.(I plainly here do not take "bad utopianism" to be pleonastic.)
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359
II
Settingasidefor the time being the feasibility question,let us comparethe pure forms
of capitalism and socialism-that is to say, competitive capitalism and democratic
socialism-as to how they standwith respectto sustainingand furthering the values
of freedomandautonomy,equality,justice, rights anddemocracy.My argumentshall
be that socialism comes out better with respectto thosevalues.
Let us fIrst look atfreed2!!! ~d autonomy.An autonomouspersonis a personwho
is ableto sether ends¥orherself andin optimal circumstancesis able to pursuethose
ends.But freedom doesnot only meanbeing autonomous;it also meansthe absence
of unjustified political and socialinterferencein the pursuitof one's ends.Somemight
even say that it is just the absenceof interferencewith one's ends. Still it is selfdirection-autonomy-not non-interferencewhich is intrinsically desirable. Noninterferenceis only valuable where it is an aid to our being able to do what we want
and where we are sufficiently autonomousto have somecontrol over our wants.
How do capitalism and socialism fare in providing the social conditions which
will help or impedethe flourishing of autonomy?Which model society would make
for the greaterflourishing of autonomy?My argumentis (a) that democratic socialism makesit possible for more people to be more fully autonomousthan would be
autonomousunder capitalism; and (b) that democraticsocialism also interferes less
in people'sexerciseof their autonomythan any form of capitalism..All societieslimit
liberty by interfering with people doing what they want to do in someways, but the
restrictions are more extensive,deeperand more undermining of autonomy in capitalism than in democratic socialism. Where there is private ownership of productive property, which, remember,is private ownershipof the meansof life, it cannot
help but be,thecase,thata few (the owning and controlling capitalist class)will have,
along with the managers beholden to them, except in periods of revolutionary tur-
moil, a firm control, indeed a domination, over the vast majority of people in the society. The capitalist classwith the help of their managersdetermineswhether workers (taken now as individuals) can work, how they work, on what they work, the
conditions under which they work and what is done with what they produce (where
they areproducers)and what useis madeof their skills and the like. As we move to
welfare statecapitalism-a compromisestill favoring capital which emergedout of
long and bitter class struggles-the stateplacessomerestrictions on some of these
powers of capital. Hours, working conditions and the like are controlled in certain
ways.Yet whetherworkers work andcontinueto work, how they work and on what,
what is donewith what they produce,and the rationale for their work are not determined by the workers themselvesbut by the owners of capital and their managers;
this meansa very considerablelimitation on the autonomyand freedom of workers.
Sinceworkersarethe greatmajority, suchsocio-economicrelationsplace a very considerablelimitation on humanfreedom and indeed on the very most important freedom that peoplehave,namely their being ableto live in a self-directedmanner,when
comparedwith the industrial democracyof democratic socialism. Under capitalist
arrangementsit simply cannotfail to be the casethat a very large number of people
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will lose control over a very central set of facets of their lives, namely central aspects of their work and indeedin many instances,over their very chanceto be able
to work.
Socialismwould indeedprohibit capitalistactsbetweenconsentingadults;the capitalist classwould lose its freedom to buy and sell and to control the labor market.
There should be no blinking at the fact that socialist social relations would impose
somelimitations on freedom,for thereis, andindeedcanbe, no societywithout norms
and somesanctions.In any society you like there will be somethings you are at liberty to do and somethings that you may not do. However, democraticsocialismmust
bring with it an industrial democracywhere workers by various democratic procedureswould determinehow they are to work, on what they are to work, the hours of
their work, under what conditions they are to work (insofar as this is alterable by
human effort at all), what they will produce and how much, and what is to be done
with what they produce.Since,insteadof therebeing "private ownershipof the means
of production," there is in a genuinely socialist society "public ownership of the
meansof production," the meansof life are owned by everyoneand thus each person has a right to work: shehas, that is, a right to the meansof life. It is no longer
the private preserveof an individual owner of capital but it is owned in common by
us all. This meansthat each of us has an equal right to the meansof life. Members
of the capitalistclasswould havea few of their libertiesrestricted,but thesearelinked
with owning and controlling capital and are not the important civil and political liberties that we all rightly cherish. Moreover, the limitation of the capitalist liberties
to buy and sell and the like would make for a more extensiveliberty for many, many
more people.
Onecannotrespondto the aboveby sayingthat workersarefree to leavethe working classand becomecapitalists or at least petty bourgeoisie.They may indeed all
in theory, taken individually, be free to leave the working class,but if many in fact
try to leavethe exits will very quickly becomeblocked. Individuals are only free on
the condition that the great mass,ofpeople,taken collectively, arenot. We could not
have capitalism without a working classand the working classis not free within the
capitalist systemto ceasebeing wage laborers.We cannot all be capitalists. A peopIe's capitalismis nonsense.Though a petty commodity production system(the fam~
ily farm writ large) is a logical possibility, it is hardly a stable empirical possibility
and, what is most important for the presentdiscussion,such a systemwould not be
a capitalist system.Under capitalism, most of us, if we are to find any work at all,
will just haveto sell (or perhaps "rent" is the better word) our labor-power asa commodity. Whether you sell or rent your labor power or, where it is provided, you go
on welfare, you will not have much control over areasvery crucial to your life. If
theseare the only feasible alternativesfacing the working class, working class autonomy is .very limited indeed.But theseare the only alternativesunder capitalism.
Capitalist actsbetweenconsentingadults,if they becomesufficiently widespread,
lead to severeimbalancesin power. Theseimbalancesin power tend to undermine
autonomyby creating differentials in wealth and control betweenworkers and cap- italists. Such imbalancesare the name of the gamefor capitalism. Even if we (perversely I believe) call a systemof petty commodity production capitalism, we still
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361
must say that such a socio-economicsystemis inherently unstable.Certain individuals would win out in this exchangingof commodities and in fairly quick order it
would lead to a class system and the imbalancesof power-the domination of the
many by the few-that I take to be definitive of capitalism. By abolishing capitalist
actsbetweenconsentingadults,then (but leaving personalproperty and civil andpoliticalliberties untouched),socialismprotectsmoreextensivefreedomsfor morepeople and in far more important areasof their lives.
III
SOdemocratic socialism does better regarding the value that epitomizes capitalist
pride (hubris, would, I think, be a better term), namely autonomy. It also doesbetter, I shall now argue, than capitalism with respectto another of our basic values,
namely democracy. Since this is almost a corollary of what I have said about autonomy I can afford to be briefer.In capitalist societies,democracymust simply be
political democracy.There can in the nature of the casebe no genuineor thorough
workplace democracy.When we enter the sphereof production, capitalists and not
workersown, andthereforeat leastultimately control,'themeansof production.While
capitalism, asin someworkplacesin West Germanyand Sweden,sometimescanbe
pressuredinto allowing an ameliorative measureof worker control, onceownership
rights are given up, we no longer have private productive property but public productive property (and in that way social ownership): capitalism is given up and we
have socialism. However, where workei control is restricted to a few firms, we do
not yet have socialism. What makesa systemsocialist or capitalist dependson what
happensacrossthe whole society,not just in isolatedfirms. Moreover, managerscan
becomevery important within capitalist firms, but as long as ownership, including
the ability to close the place down and liquidate the business,rests in the handsof
capitalistswe canhaveno genuineworkplacedemocracy.Socialism,in its pure form,
carrieswith it, in a way capitalism in any form cannot,workplace democracy.(That
someof the existing socialismsare anything but pure doesnot belie this.)
Similarly, whatever may be said of existing socialismsor at least of someexisting socialisms,it is not the casethat there is anything in the very idea of socialism
that militates againstpolitical aswell as industrial democracy.Socialists are indeed
justly suspiciousof someof the tric~s played by parliamentarydemocracyin bourgeois countries,awareof its not infrequent hypocrisy and the limitations of its stress
on purely legal and formal political rights and liberties. Socialists are also, without
at all wishing to throw the baby out with the bath water, rightly suspiciousof any
simple reliance on majority rule, unsupplementedby other democratic procedures
and safeguards.But there is nothing in socialist theory that would set it againstpolitical democracy and the protection of political and civil rights; indeed there is
much in socialism that favors them, namely its stresson both autonomy and equality.
The fact that political democracycame into being and achieved stability within
capitalist societiesmay prove somethingabout conditions necessaryfor its coming
into being, but it saysnothing about capitalism being necessaryfor sustainingit. In
/
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Chile, South Africa and Nazi Gennany, indeed, capitalism has flourished without
the protection of civil and political rights or anything like a respect for the democratic tradition. There is nothing structuralin socialism that would prevent it from
continuing thosedemocratictraditions or cherishing thosepolitical and civil rights.
That somethingcameaboutundercertainconditionsdoesnot establishthat theseconditions are necessaryfor its continuedexistence.That men initially took an interest
in chessdoesnot establishthat women cannotquite naturally take an interest in it as
well. When capitalist societieswith long-flourishing democratic traditions move to
socialism there is no reasonat all to believe that they will not continue to be democratic. (Where societiespreviously had no democratictradition or only a very weak
one, matters are more problematic.)
IV
I now want to turn to a third basic value,ceCiii~. In societiesacrossthe political
spectrum,moral equality (the belief that ~~'s
life matters equally) is an acceptedvalue. Or, to be somewhatcynical aboutthe matter, at least lip serviceis paid
to iL But even this lip serviceis the compliment that vice pays to virtue. That is to
say, such a belief is a deeply held consideredconviction in modernized societies,
though it has not beenat all times and is not today a value held in all societies.This
c" is most evident concerningmoral equality.
~~j
While this value is genuinely held by the vast majority of people in capitalist societies, it can hardly be an effective or functional working nonn where there is such
a diminishment of autonomyaswe have seenobtainsunavoidably in suchsocieties.
Self-respectis deeply threatenedwhere so many people lack effective control over
their own lives, where there are structuresof domination, where there is alienated
labor, where great power differentials and differences in wealth make for very different (and often very bleak) life chances.For not inconsiderablenumbers,in fact,
it is difficult to maintain self-respectunder suchconditions unlessthey are actively
struggling againstthe system.And, given presentconditions, fighting the system,
particularly in societiessuch as the United States,may well be felt to be a hopeless
task~Under such conditions any real equality of opportunity is out of the question.
And the circumstancesare such,in spite of what is often said about thesestates,that
equality of condition is an even more remote possibility. But without at least some
of thesethings moral equality cannot even be approximated.Indeed, even to speak
"" of it soundslike an obscenejoke given the social realities of our lives.
if~
Althoughunderwelfare-statecapitalismsomeof the worst inequalitiesof capitalism areameliorated,workersstill lack effective control over their work, with repercussionsin political and public life as well. Differentials of wealth cannot but give
rise to differentials in power and control in politics, in the media, in education, in
the direction of sociallife andin what optionsget seriouslydebated.The life chances
of workers and thosenot even lucky enoughto be workers (whose ranks are growing and will continue to grow under capitalism) are impoverished comparedto the
life chancesof membersof the capitalistclassanditS docile professionalsupportstratum.
.
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363
None of theseequality-undermining featureswould obtain under democratic socialism. Such societies would, for starters,be classless,eliminating the power and
control differentials that go with the classsystemof capitalism. In addition to political democracy,industrial democracyand all the egalitarian and participatory control that goeswith that would, in turn, reinforce moral equality. Indeedit would make
it possible where before it was impossible. There would be a commitment under
democratic socialism to attaining or at least approximating, as far as it is feasible,
equality of condition; and this, where approximated,would help make for real equality of opportunity, making equal life chancessomethinglessutopian than it must be
under capitalism.
In fine, the very things, aswe haveseen,that makefor greaterautonomyunder socialism than under capitalism, would, in being more equally distributed, make for
greaterequality of condition, greaterequality of opportunity andgreatermoral equality in a democraticsocialist society than in a capitalist one. Thesevalues are values
commonly sharedby both capitalistically inclined people and thosewho are socialistically inclined. What the former do not seeis that in modern industrial societies,
democraticsocialismcanbetterdeliver thesegoodsthanevenprogressivecapitalism.
There is, without doubt, legitimate worry about bureaucraticcontrol under socialism. But that is a worry under any historically feasible capitalism as well, and it
is anything but clear that statebureaucraciesare worse than great corporatebureaucracies.Indeed,if socialist bureaucratswere, asthe socialist systemrequires,really
committed to production for needs and to achieving equality of condition, they
might, bad as they are, be the lesser of two evils. But in any event democratic socialism is not bureaucratic state socialism, and there is no structural reasonto believe that it must-if it arisesin a societywith skilled workers committed to democracy-give rise to bureaucratic state socialism. There will, inescapably, be some
bureaucracy,but in a democratic socialist society it must and indeed will be controlled. This is not merely a matter of optimism about the will of socialists,for there
aremore mechanismsfor democraticcontrol of bureaucracywithin a democraticsocialism that is both a political and an industrial democracy,than there can be under
eventhe most benign capitalist democracies-'-democracies
which for structuralreasonscan never be industrial democracies.If, all that notwithstanding, bureaucratic
creepageis inescapablein modern societies,then that is just as much a problem for
capitalism as for socialism.
The underlying rationale for production under capitalism is profit and capital accumulation. Capitalism is indeed a marvelousenginefor building up the productive
forces (though clearly at the expenseof considerationsof equality and autonomy).
We might look on it, going back tp earlier historical times, as something like a
forced march to develop the productive forces. But now that the productive forces
in advancedcapitalist societiesare wondrously developed,we are in a position to
direct them to far more humaneandmore equitableusesundera socio-economicsystem whoserationale for production is to meet humanneeds(the needsof everyone
as far as this is possible). This egalitarian thrust, togetherwith the socialists' commitment to attaining, as far as that is possible,equality of condition, makes it clear
that socialism will produce more equality than capitalism.
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V
In talking about autonomy,democracy.andequality, we have,in effect, alreadybeen
talking aboutjustice. A societyor setof institutions that doesbetter in theserespects
than anothersociety will be a morejust society than the other society.
Fairnessis a lessfancy namefor justice. If we comparetwo societiesand the first
is more democraticthan the second;there is more autonomyin the first society than
in the second;there are more nearly equal life chancesin the first society than in the
secondand thus greater equality of opportunity; if, without sacrifice of autonomy,
thereis more equality of condition in the first societythan in the second;and if there
is more moral equality in the first societythanin the second,then we cannotbut conclude that the first society is a society with more fairnessthan the secondand, thus,
that it is the morejust society. But this is exactly how socialism comesout vis-a-vis
even the best form of capitalism.
A societywhich underminesautonomy,heelsin democracy(where democracyis
not violating rights), makes equality impossibleto achieveand violates rights cannot be a just society. If, as I contend, that is what capitalism does, and cannot help
doing, then a capitalist society cannot be a just society. Democratic socialism, by
contrast,does not need to do any of those things, and we can predict that it would
not, for there areno structuralimperativesin democraticsocialismto do so and there
are deep sentimentsin that tradition urging us not to do so. I do not for a moment
deny that there are similar sentimentsfor autonomy and democracyin capitalist so"'"
cieties,but the logic of capitalism, the underlying structuresof capitalist societies-c-even the best of capitalist societies-frustrate the realization of the statesof affairs
at which those sympathiesaim. A radical democratwith a commitment to human
rights, to humanautonomyand moral equality and fair equality of opportunity ought
to be a democratic socialist and a firm opponentof capitalism--even a capitalism
with a humanface.
QUESTIONS
1 DoesNielsenprovide good argumentsin supportof his claim that a socialist systemmakes
it possiblefor more peopleto be more fully autonomousthan a capitalist system?
2 What arguments,if any, could Hospersoffer to refute Nielsen's claim that a socialist sys.
temis more democraticthan a capitalist system?