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CAPITALISM
Related or contrasting ideas may be found in these other categories: Equality, Freedom,
Leisure, Progress, Property, The State, and Work.
Capitalism defined
Unrestricted rights of private property and free exchange are the hallmarks of capitalism
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 24
“For if every individual has the right to his own property without having to suffer aggressive depredation,
then he also has the right to give away his property (bequest and inheritance), and to exchange it for the
property of others (free contract and the free market economy) without interference. The libertarian favors
the right of unrestricted private property and free exchange; hence ‘free-market capitalism.’”
Private — rather than government — ownership is the hallmark of capitalism
Campbell R. McConell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, Tenth edition, 1987, p. 38
“Under a capitalistic system, property resources are owned by private individuals and private institutions
rather than by government. Private property, coupled with the freedom to negotiate binding legal contracts,
permits private persons or businesses to obtain, control, employ, and dispose of property resources as they
see fit.”
No definition of capitalism is universally accepted
Campbell R. McConell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, Tenth edition, 1987, p. 38
“Unfortunately, there is no neat and universally accepted definition of capitalism. We are therefore required
to examine in some detail the basic tenets of pure capitalism to acquire a comprehensive understanding of
what it entails. In short, the framework of capitalism embodies the following institutions and assumptions:
(1) private property; (2) freedom of enterprise and choice; (3) self-interest as the dominant motive; (4)
competition; (5) reliance upon the price system; and (6) a limited role for government.”
There are multiple exceptions to the usual pattern of capitalist practices
Campbell R. McConell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, Tenth edition, 1987, p. 33
“But it must be emphasized that private ownership and reliance on the market system do not always go
together, nor do public ownership and central planning. For example, the fascism of Hitler’s Nazi Germany
has been dubbed authoritarian capitalism because the economy was subject to a high degree of
governmental control and direction, but property was privately owned. In contrast, the Yugoslavian
economy of market socialism is characterized by public ownership of resources coupled with increasing
reliance upon free markets to organize and coordinate economic activity. The Swedish economy is also a
hybrid system. Although over 90 percent of business activity is in private hands, government is deeply
involved in achieving economic stability and redistributing income. Similarly, the capitalistic Japanese
economy entails a great deal of planning and ‘cooperation’ between government and the business sector.”
Capitalism promotes high standards of living
Capitalism transforms society from static to dynamic
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 11
“Thus productive technology in precapitalist societies slumbered because there was little incentive to
search for change. Indeed, powerful social forces were ranged against technological change, which could
only introduce an unsettling element into the world. A society whose way of life rested on the reproduction
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
of established patterns of life could not imagine a world where the technology of production was constantly
in flux, and where limits were no longer recognized in any endeavor.”
The market must constantly innovate and improve
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 195
“The essence and the glory of the free market is that individual firms and businesses, competing on the
market, provide an ever-changing orchestration of efficient and progressive goods and services: continually
improving products and markets, advancing technology, cutting costs, and meeting changing consumer
demands as swiftly and as efficiently as possible.”
Profits promote prosperity
Ludwig von Mises (prof. of economics, New York Univ.), as quoted in Capitalism, ed. by Bruno Leone,
1986, p. 40
“An excess of the total amount of profits over that of losses is a proof of the fact that there is economic
progress and improvement in the standard of living of all strata of the population. The greater this excess is,
the greater is the increment in general prosperity.”
Capitalism promotes economic growth
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 302
“All economic improvement, progress, and growth is dependent upon capital accumulation — upon
constant increase in the quantity and improvement in the quality of the tools of production — machinery,
plant, and equipment. Now the capitalistic system does more to promote this growth than any alternative.”
Capitalism promotes science and technology
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 9
“The creation of a market society also paved the way for a change of profound significance in bringing
about modern economic life. This was the incorporation of science and technology into the very midst of
daily existence.”
Capitalism improves the lives of the masses
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 279
“Now there is no denying the fact that during the last twenty years, capitalism has done precisely these two
things. It has developed agriculture and it has raised the standard of life of the masses in the capitalist
countries. It is still doing both of these things.”
Only market systems can best ensure rising standards of living
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 54
“Whenever we find any large element of individual freedom, some measure of progress in the material
comfort of ordinary citizens, and widespread hope of further progress in the future, there we also find that
economic activity is organized mainly through the free market. Wherever the state undertakes to control in
detail the economic activities of its citizens, wherever, that is, detailed central economic planning reigns,
there ordinary citizens are in political fetters, have a low standard of living, and have little power to control
their own destiny.”
Hong Kong exemplifies capitalist prosperity
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 54
Hong Kong: “The density of population is almost unbelievable — fourteen times as many people per square
mile as in Japan, 185 times as many as in the United States. Yet they enjoy one of the highest standards of
living in all of Asia — second only to Japan and perhaps Singapore. Hong Kong has no tariffs or other
restraints on international trade (except for a few ‘voluntary’ restraints imposed by the United States and
other major countries.) It has no permanent direction of economic activity, no minimum wage laws, no
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
fixing of prices. The residents are free to buy from whom they want, to sell to whom they want, to invest
however they want, to hire whom they want, to work for whom they want.”
Capitalism allocates resources well
Capitalism is effectively equivalent to the American way of life
Wiliam Safire (Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated political columnist), Safire’s Political Dictionary, 1978, p.
28
On the phrase The American Way of Life: “Writing in the New York Times in 1935, American diplomat and
motion-picture executive Eric Johnston though the phrase was a euphemism, and attacked it head on: ‘And
the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed; we fear the word capitalism is unpopular. So we talk
about the ‘free enterprise system,’ and run to cover in the folds of the flag with talk about the American
Way of Life.’”
Under capitalism, production is targeted to human needs
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 196
“On the free market, in short, the consumer is king, and any business firm that wants to make profits and
avoid losses tries its best to serve the consumer as efficiently and at as low a cost as possible.”
Market capitalism is uniquely efficient at production
Leonard Silk (economics columnist, The New York Times; former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution),
Economics in the Real World, 1984, p. 121
“The market does provide strong incentives for work effort and productive contributions, and in their
absence society would thrash about for alternative incentives — some unreliable, like altruism; others
intolerable, like coercion and oppression.”
Markets maximize production
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 40
“It so happens that the free-market economy, and the specialization and division of labor that it implies, is
by far the most productive form of economy known to man, and has been responsible for industrialization
and for the modern economy on which civilization has been built.”
Markets optimize production
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 316
“By the constant play in the market of prices, wages, rents, interest rates, and other costs, relative profit
margins or losses, the market tends constantly to achieve not only maximum production but optimum
production.”
The market assures needed production without central planning
Robert M. Solow (MIT Institute Professor of Economics emeritus; Nobel laureate in economics, 1987),
“Hedging America,” The New Republic, December 30, 2009, p. 37
“One tried-and-true way to start off a course in elementary economics is to call the students’ attention to a
common object, such as the spiral notebooks in which they are presumably busy taking notes. Somewhere
paper is manufactured with the appropriate strength and slickness, somewhere else it is cut into blocks of
the right size, the corners rounded, printed with lines about the right distance apart, provided with cardboard
covers in the college colors, punched with the right number of holes, bound with those wire spirals that have
been manufactured in yet another place, and delivered in reasonable numbers to the college bookstore at the
beginning of each term. And all this happens smoothly, without any centralized direction, through the
normal operation of a market economy.”
The market system is uniquely efficient
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Douglas N. Rosenberg (prof. of sociology, Yale), The Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. by A.W. Frank, 1981,
p. 39
“Proponents of capitalism believe that competition on the open market invigorates the economy. The
market, private control of wealth and investment, and the profit incentive, they believe, will create the most
efficient way to organize production and distribution, and to promote total economic growth in a society.”
Capitalism produces what the masses need
Ludwig von Mises (prof. of economics, New York Univ.), in Capitalism, ed. by Bruno Leone, 1986, p. 38
“Modern capitalism is essentially mass production for the needs of the masses. The buyers of the products
are by and large the same people who as wage earners cooperate in their manufacturing.”
Capitalism has vastly improved the living standards of everyone
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 305
“But capitalistic or free-market competition is seldom merely competition in lowering the cost of producing
a homogeneous product. It is almost always competition in improving a specific product. And in the last
century it has been competition in introducing and perfecting entirely new products or means of production
— the railroad, the dynamo, the electric light, the motor car, the airplane, the telegraph, the telephone, the
phonograph, the camera, motion pictures, radio, television, refrigerators, air conditioning, and endless
variety of plastics, synthetics, and other new materials. The effect has been enormously to increase the
amenities of life and the material welfare of the masses.”
Only through capitalistic markets can consumer needs be determined
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 329
“What socialist writers fail to understand is that only through the institution of the free market, with
competition and private ownership of the means of production, and only through the interplay of prices,
wages, costs, profits and losses is it possible to determine what consumers want, and therefore what is to be
produced, and in what relative proportions. Under a system of capitalism, the interplay of millions of prices
and wages and trillions of price and wage and profit relationships produce the infinitely varied incentives
and deterrents that direct production as by ‘an invisible hand’ into thousands of different commodities and
services.”
The failure of other systems to optimize production reveals the moral worth of capitalism
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 330
“Now by any utilitarian standard (and the socialists themselves constantly appeal to a utilitarian standard)
any system that cannot solve the problem of production, that cannot maximize production and cannot direct
it into the proper channels, and system that would grossly reduce (compared with what is possible) the
material basis for social life, the satisfaction of human wants, cannot be called a ‘moral’ system.”
Capitalism allocates resources poorly
The use of self-interest as the key model for capitalism is not persuasive
Alan Wolfe (staff contributing editor), “Hedonic Man,” The New Republic, July 9, 2008, p. 47
“Neoclassical economists had insisted upon the primacy of self-interest only in order to model human
behavior, but the way rational choice theory developed (at the University of Chicago in particular)
suggested that self-interest was not just a fact for these thinkers, but also an ideal: not just how people do act
but also how they should act. Their relentless advocacy of market-based public policies was finally
ideological — and, by my lights, ideologically wrong. Also the jargon grew impenetrable, and the
mathematics ostentatious and obnoxious. When Chicago-style economists started to apply their methods to
other social science disciplines, and then to virtually all the perplexities of human life, the charge of
academic imperialism could be added. Friedrich August von Hayek and Milton Friedman had always
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
seemed to me to be marginal and somewhat bizarre thinkers, especially when compared to such intellectual
titans as John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. The rapid spread of their ideas throughout so much
of academia did not bode well for the future.”
Productivity by itself cannot justify capitalism
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 302
“If the capitalistic system is really worth preserving, it is futile today to defend it merely on technical
grounds (as being more productive, for example) unless we can also show that the socialist attacks on
ethical grounds are false and baseless.”
Capitalism is locked into inefficient production
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 67
“It is certainly beyond the present limits of capitalism to replace the guiding principle of production for
profit by that of production for use — which is to say, it is impossible to redirect the main flow of economic
effort away from the pull of market decisions to areas established by public policy decisions.”
Production does not focus on true human needs
The U.S. Socialist Labor Party, How Safe Is Your Job? 1992, p. 2
“Tens of millions of Americans have basic needs that are not being met. That’s because things aren’t
produced to satisfy human needs; they’re produced to be sold at a profit. When capitalists can’t sell what
workers have produced, production is cut back, factories are closed down, and unemployment spreads.”
Capitalism frees the seller to be arbitrary
Bill Armer (Lecturer in Social Policy, Univ. of Leeds, UK), “Eugenetics: a polemical view of social policy in
the genetic age,” New Formations, Spring 2007, p. 95
“A major policy problem here is that, in a free market economy, the vendor is under no obligation to supply
a product, or to supply a product at a uniform price. Just as the prospective purchaser has the right to
compare ‘value for money’, so does the vendor have the right to consider profitability and risk.”
There is serious mismatch between what is produced and what is truly needed
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
“The radical position is that ample evidence of the eye makes clear that capitalism makes use of its
resources irrationally. The economy produces incredible quantities of automobiles, television sets,
cosmetics, and alcoholic beverages while, at the same time, many households are without adequate
housing, medical care, or diet.”
Overproduction is the natural result
The U.S. Socialist Labor Party, How Safe Is Your Job? 1992, p. 1
“Workers can buy back only a fraction of their product. The rest — the difference between what they
produce and what their wages can buy — is either consumed by the capitalists, spent on expanding and
modernizing industry, exported to other countries, or simply wasted.”
Capitalism causes obscene overproduction and misallocations
Robert Marcuse (prof. of philosophy, Univ. of California), in Capitalism, ed. by Bruno Leone, 1986, p. 46
Capitalism: “This society is obscene in producing and indecently exposing a stifling abundance of wars
while depriving its victims abroad of the necessities of life; obscene in stuffing itself and its garbage cans
while poisoning and burning the scarce foodstuffs in the fields of its aggression; obscene in the words and
smiles of its politicians and entertainers; in its prayers, and in its ignorance, and in the wisdom of its kept
intellectuals.”
Capitalist production promotes irrational materialism
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
“The basic point is that under capitalism, production priorities are determined not on the basis of the real
needs of the people, but rather in accordance with what is profitable to the capitalist class. The outcome is
the irrational use of resources on the one hand, and the creation of a ‘commodity fetish culture’ with undue
emphasis upon rank materialism, on the other. Capitalism, so to speak, is producing more and enjoying it
less.”
The market cannot produce public goods rationally
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 236
“First, the market is an inefficient instrument for provisioning societies — even rich societies — with those
goods and services for which no price tag exists, such as education, or local government services, or public
health facilities. A market society buys such public goods by allocating a specific amount of taxes for these
purposes. Its citizens, however, tend to feel these taxes as an exaction in contrast with the items they can
voluntarily buy. Too easily, therefore, a market society underallocates resources to education, city
government, public health, or recreation, since it has no means of bidding funds into these areas, in
competition with the powerful means of bidding them into autos or clothes or personal insurance. Thus
private opulence and public squalor: New York, the city of the richest people in the world, lacks the money
to keep its streets clean and safe.”
Markets are fragile and require constant supervision
Eliot Spitzer (New York Attorney General 1998-2007; New York Governor 2007-2008), “Better Regulate
than Never,” The New Republic, September 23, 2009, p. 9
“We know markets are still the best way to allocate resources and to set prices and wages. But the first and
essential corollary to any theory of markets should hold that they are fragile and must be protected.”
Capitalism completely ignores critical issues such as security and culture
Bryan Magee (UK television documentarian, former Member of Parliament, and former philosophy lecturer
or visiting fellow at Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge), Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey
through Western Philosophy, 1997, p. 325
“In fact, there are several areas of national life which are of fundamental importance yet whose
requirements do not correlate with market forces. National defense is one. Intellectual and artistic life
present others — if these were left freely to the operation of market forces our great national theatre, ballet
and opera companies, our public art galleries and libraries, and our great universities (not to mention much
of the research that goes on in them) would be shipwrecked. In these and multiple other ways a free-for-all
would have the effect of destroying some of the most important bonds and activities that make for
community, culture, and continuity. I believe strongly in the principle of cost-effectiveness as applied to
public expenditure, and I believe also that private providers of goods and services are usually more
cost-effective than public ones, but I do not believe that it makes sense in any of the areas I have mentioned
to allow the overall level of provision to be determined by market forces.”
Flaws in the U.S. capitalist system feed the rich and starve the poor
David Baltimore (prof. of biology, Rockefeller Univ.; Nobel Prize in Medicine, 1975), “On Doing Science in
the Modern World,” from The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Delivered at Cambridge University,
March 9 and 10, 1992, p. 269; Online: www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/Baltimore93.pdf,
accessed April 30, 2008
“Our present-day economic system, which has poured money into the pockets of the already-wealthy while
the middle and lower socioeconomic groups fall further and further behind, rewards financial manipulation,
not effective manufacture or industrial innovation. As people’s salaries have declined, they have turned
away from progressive forces hoping that conservative approaches will return prosperity. This misreading
of the solution explains why the country has turned in the last decade to leadership that has simply stolen
their labor and turned it into profits for the rich. I am not exaggerating: a recent report showed that in the
booming 1980s 60% of the economic growth went to the richest 1% of American families and all but 6%
went to the top 20%.”
Pure capitalism is ultimately self-destructive, absent close regulation
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Eliot Spitzer (New York Attorney General 1998-2007; New York Governor 2007-2008), “Better Regulate
than Never,” The New Republic, September 23, 2009, p. 9
“No matter how frequently large swaths of the world loudly shout, ‘We love the market!,’ virtually nobody
does. In the absence of rigorous enforcement of rules, market players seek monopoly power and unfair
advantages; they take risks at the undisclosed expense of others, or violate fiduciary duty. None of this
means these actors are ‘evil’ or ‘immoral.’ But their actions demonstrate that self-interest, unbridled by
enforcement of rules, will destroy the very market so many people so ostentatiously claim to adore.”
Capitalism promotes democracy
Economic freedom is crucial for political freedom
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 2
“Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one
another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In
addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political
power may arise. The concentration of economic and political power in the same hands is a recipe for
tyranny.”
Modern democracy arose with capitalism
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 15
“Democratic political institutions far preceded capitalism, as the history of ancient Athens or the Iceland
medieval parliamentary system shows. Nonetheless, the rise of the mercantile classes was closely allied to
the struggle against privileges and legal institutions of European feudalism.”
Liberty does not exist in nations which reject capitalist markets
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 15
“It is true nonetheless that political liberties do not exist or scarcely exist in communist nations that have
deliberately sought to remove the market system. This suggests, though it does not prove, that some vital
connection between democratic privileges as we know them and an open society of economic contract,
whether it be formally capitalist or not.”
Modern capitalism demands wide power-sharing
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 815
“Modern capitalism is a pluralistic system wherein power is rather widely dispersed among business, labor,
consumers, and government, so that consensus decisions are reached which are consistent with the general
welfare. Hence, argue mainstream economists, the system’s problems and shortcomings can be ameliorated
or resolved within its present institutional and ideological framework.”
Capitalism is not conducive to democracy
National prosperity does not create a drive toward democracy
Robert Kagan (senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior
transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund), “The End of the End of History,” The New Republic, April
23, 2008, p. 41
“Growing national wealth and autocracy have proven compatible after all. Autocrats learn and adjust. The
autocracies of Russia and China have figured out how to permit open economic activity while suppressing
political activity. They have seen that people making money will keep their noses out of politics, especially
if they know their noses will be cut off. New wealth gives autocracies a greater ability to control
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
information — to monopolize television stations, and to keep a grip on Internet traffic — often with the
assistance of foreign corporations eager to do business with them.”
Capitalism can be integrated with multiple political systems
Douglas N. Rosenberg (prof. of sociology, Yale), The Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. by A.W. Frank, 1981,
p. 39
“It should be pointed out, however, that capitalism has occurred in such widely diverse political systems as
Nazi Germany, on the one hand, and Sweden’s ‘welfare state’ on the other.”
Capitalism is compatible with tyranny
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 15
“We must resist the temptation of claiming that capitalism either guarantees, or is necessary for, political
freedom. We have seen some capitalist nations, such as pre-Hitler Germany, descend into totalitarian
dictatorship.”
The lag time between prosperity and democracy may be excessive
Robert Kagan (senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior
transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund), “The End of the End of History,” The New Republic, April
23, 2008, p. 41
“In the long run, rising prosperity may well produce political liberalism, but how long is the long run? It
may be too long to have any strategic or geopolitical relevance. As the old joke goes, Germany launched
itself on a trajectory of economic modernization in the late nineteenth century and within six decades it
became a fully fledged democracy: the only problem was what happened in the intervening years.”
Under capitalism, government is propped up by big business
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 817
“The success of political parties in realizing and maintaining power depends upon the financial support of
wealthy corporations; in turn, government follows policies which are responsive to the needs of the large
corporations.”
Government policies pander to big business
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 819
“Third, political power has sustained economic inequality. Given the domination of the state by the
monopoly capitalists, it is no surprise that big business has benefited from a variety of tax loopholes and
subsidies. from protection against foreign competition, and from lucrative government contracts.”
Big business controls government
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 817
“The radical view, however, is that the corporate giants have come to dominate the political state; hence,
rather than control corporate power in socially desirable ways, the public sector has become the
handmaiden of the corporate giants.”
Economic leverage creates political inequality
Sidney Hook (department chairman and prof. of philosophy, New York University), Political Power and
Personal Freedom, 1959, p. 31
“Matters become more complex when, because of inequalities in social status and political power, political
equality before the law is in effect undermined. This is an insight that goes back, not to Marx, but to
Aristotle and Madison, although Marx made the most out of it. Differences in economic power make it
possible for the more powerful economic group to exercise a much greater influence upon decisions that
affect public welfare than their numbers or deserts warrant.’
Income gaps handicap democracy
Philip Wogaman (prof. of ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary), Guaranteed Annual Income: The Moral
Issues, 1968, p. 123
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
“Moreover, wide disparities of wealth and income may be much more damaging to democracy than the
existence of large numbers of people whose basic income is derived from public sources. The most corrupt
period in American political history may have been the era of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism when the
tycoons manipulated state legislatures, and even Congress, almost at will.”
Capitalism eventually overwhelms democratic systems
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 87
“But the voice of money still speaks very loudly, and the capacity of wealth to surmount the
half-acquiescent opposition of a democratic political system promises that it will continue to resound in
America for a long time to come.”
Capitalism promotes individual independence
America was founded on capitalism as a means of maximizing liberty
Walter Williams (John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University), “Future
Prospects for Economic Liberty,” Imprimis, September 2009, p. 2
“The Founders favored the free market because it maximizes the freedom of all citizens and teaches respect
for the rights of others. Expansive government, by contrast, contracts individual freedom and teaches
disrespect for the rights of others. Thus clearly we are on what Friedrich Hayek called the road to serfdom,
or what I prefer to call the road to tyranny.”
Economic liberty is critical to all other freedoms
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 339
“When economic liberty has been destroyed, all other liberty disappears with it. Alexander Hamilton
recognized this clearly: ‘Power over a man’s subsistence is power over his will.’”
Capitalism’s independence of labor is nearly unique in human history
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 4
“A capitalist employee has the legal right to work or not work as he or she chooses; and whereas the right
may seem to count for little under conditions of Dickensian poverty, it must be compared with the
near-slavery of the serf legally bound to his lord’s land and to the work his lord assigns him.”
Capitalism’s success is what allows for criticism of capitalism
Walter Williams (John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University), “Future
Prospects for Economic Liberty,” Imprimis, September 2009, p. 3
“Ironically, the free market system is threatened today not because of its failure, but because of its success.
Capitalism has done so well in eliminating the traditional problems of mankind — disease, pestilence, gross
hunger, and poverty — that other human problems seem to us unacceptable. So in the name of equalizing
income, achieving sex and race balance, guaranteeing housing and medical care, protecting consumers, and
conserving energy — just to name a few prominent causes of liberal government these days — individual
liberty has become of secondary or tertiary concern.”
Capitalism destroys individual independence
As markets develop, fewer people are free to be their own bosses
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 28
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
“Supporters of Marx argue the opposite case. They stress that capitalism almost did collapse in the 1930s.
They not that more and more people have been reduced to a ‘proletarian’ status, working for a capitalist
firm rather than for themselves; in 1800, for example, 80 percent of Americans were self-employed; today
the figure is 10 percent.”
A consensus is emerging that capitalism is morally corrosive
David Nirenberg (Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor in history and the John U. Nef Committee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago), “Love and Capitalism,” The New Republic, September 23,
2009, p. 39
“Are we facing an economic crisis? I do not mean the crisis of the credit markets that has wiped trillions off
the global balance sheet and plunged the world into recession. I mean a spiritual crisis, of which the crash is
but a symptom. According to Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, we are in the midst of a ‘late
capitalist ... countdown to social dissolution and the triumph of infinite exchangeability and timeless,
atomized desire.’ The only way to interrupt this countdown, he suggests, is for all of us to pattern our
actions on divine love. A number of intellectuals — ranging from former Maoists such as Alain Badiou to
dialectical materialists such as Slavoj Zizek — have made similar diagnoses, and proposed similar
solutions. And to their company must now be added the pope.” [ellipsis in original text]
Capitalism does not foster greed
Capitalism uses self-interest to evoke the moral good of social cooperation
Lewis A. Engman (former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission), in Capitalism, ed. by Bruno Leone,
1986, p. 132
“Some have called this system immoral because it is propelled forward by greed. But the openly-expressed
desire to improve one’s circumstances is what economic development is all about. And in the free-market
economy, the only way for the individual to improve his circumstances is by providing what his fellow
citizens want. If acting morally means acting in the interests of one’s fellow citizens, then democratic
capitalism must be the most moral of systems. In addition to being moral, the system offers another plus: it
works.”
Some scholars, at least, have found capitalism consistent with Christian doctrine
Philip Wogaman (associate prof. of ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary), Guaranteed Annual Income:
The Moral Issues, 1968, p. 52
“There have been many conflicting interpretations of economic ethics among Christians. A periodical
which bears the self-confident title Christian Economics identifies Christianity with economic
individualism of the most unrestrained sort and suggests that laissez-faire capitalism may be God’s own
economic system. At the other extreme, some Christian thinkers have identified socialism or communism
as the best economic expression of Christian faith.”
America’s religious tradition and capitalism are mutually reinforcing
Paul Baumann (editor, Commonweal), “The Invisible Hand of God,” The Washington Monthly, May-June
2009, p. 41
“But the story as told by Micklethwait and Wooldridge emphasizes a cultural dynamic and ideology —
namely, competitive free enterprise — over any individual contribution. As the authors rightly note,
because religion was divorced from the state in America, religious leaders and communities had to fend for
themselves, building their own institutions while competing strenuously for believers with other religious
groups. This separation of church and state is akin to the rules of the free market, which may explain why
religion has flourished in America in contrast to other developed nations where the state has had a much
heavier hand in the support of religion. This, in turn, demanded greater innovation and an emphasis on what
might be called customer service. God Is Back traces this church model to the revivals or ‘awakenings’ of
the nineteenth century as well as the pragmatic outreach and organization of the Methodist Church, once the
nation’s largest Protestant denomination. We follow Evangelical Protestantism’s ups and downs like a
stock price, from Prohibition and the Scopes trial to George W. Bush and right up to the current moment.
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
(The crestfallen reaction of conservative evangelicals and Catholics to Barack Obama’s election gets little
attention, however.) Faced with the challenge of marketing faith in a postindustrial society, contemporary
American ‘pastorpreneurs’ have turned to sophisticated business models for inspiration and instruction.”
Capitalism promotes immoral greed
Legal and extra-legal constraints make the corporation focus on profit-making
Darian M. Ibrahim (Associate Professor, University of Arizona Rogers College of Law), “A return to
Descartes: property, profit, and the corporate ownership of animals,” Law and Contemporary Problems,
Winter 2007, p. 97-98
“First, the laws of Delaware (where most large corporations are incorporated) and other states impose
fiduciary duties on corporate managers to act in the best interests of the corporations they serve. Under the
traditional view of corporate law, acting in the best interests of the corporation means acting with a myopic
focus on the shareholders. Because the vast majority of shareholders invest to earn a profit, acting in their
best interests means maximizing corporate profits. The relinquishment of operational control by
shareholders in publicly traded corporations creates the typical agency problem of ensuring that corporate
managers do in fact act in the best interests of shareholders. The threat of legal liability is thought to be one
way to reduce agency costs and induce profit-maximizing behavior. Second, and more importantly, there
are non-legal pressures on corporate managers to maximize shareholder profits. Corporations constantly
compete for investors. If managers do not produce sufficient gains for shareholders, shareholders will
respond by moving their investments elsewhere. Public corporations must report their earnings each
quarter, so both managerial success and shareholder appeasement are defined by meeting market
expectations in the short-term. Given the paucity of management rights retained by shareholders of public
corporations, the ability to sell their stock at any time is an important form of market sanction. Managers
who lose existing investments or cannot attract new ones experience a decline in job security and
reputation. Also, the portion of a manager’s compensation that is paid in company stock is often substantial,
which is meant to align the financial interests of managers and shareholders. So, to a considerable extent,
‘market constraints — product markets, capital markets, the market for corporate control, and so forth —
keep directors focused on maximizing profits and share value.’”
Capitalism is rooted in self-interest
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 32
“Pure, or laissez-faire, capitalism is characterized by the private ownership of resources and the use of a
system of markets and prices to coordinate and direct economic activity. In such a system each participant is
motivated by his or her own selfish interests; each economic unit attempts to maximize its income through
individual decision-making.”
Capitalism propels each individual to maximize profits
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 38
“Because capitalism is an individualistic system, it is not surprising that the primary driving force of such
an economy is the promotion of one’s self-interest; each economic unit attempts to do what is best for itself.
Hence, entrepreneurs aim at the maximization of their firms’ profits or, as the case might be, the
minimization of losses.”
Self-interest destroys a common social conscience
Calvin B. Hoover (assistant prof. of economics, Duke University; founder of the field of comparative
economic systems), “Capitalism” in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968, Volume 2,
p. 303
“Critics in the past attacked capitalism, especially on the ground that an economic system based upon
self-interest and the pursuit of profit was essentially without social ethics.”
Plato found commerce destroyed the common good of the community
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David Nirenberg (Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor in history and the John U. Nef Committee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago), “Love and Capitalism,” The New Republic, September 23,
2009, p. 40
“In pursuit of profit, every individual attempts to exact the highest possible price, treating fellow citizens
not as friends but as ‘foemen,’ thereby destroying the love of fellow citizens that is necessary for the
common good of the polity. In order to promote the love of the common good over the love of self, Plato
banned the citizens of his ideal city from trading with each other, assigning foreigners to carry out the
misanthropic work of the markets.”
Capitalism turns greed into a “virtue”
Leonard Silk (economics columnist, The New York Times; former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution),
Economics in the Real World, 1984, p. 107
“It [capitalism] had transmogrified greed and philistinism into social virtues, and had subordinated all
values to commercial values. The business civilization, he [Karl Marx] argued, combines liberty and
selfishness, egalitarianism and extremes of wealth and poverty, democracy and vulgarity, creativity and
waste, respect for the unique and autonomous individual and wage slavery, the conquest of space and the
destruction of the environment.”
Capitalistic greed is seen as immoral
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 301
“The main challenges to our traditional ‘bourgeois’ ethical standards and values come from the Marxists,
the socialists, and the Communists. What is under attack is the capitalist system: and it is being attacked
mainly on ethical grounds, as being materialistic, selfish, unjust, immoral, savagely competitive, callous,
cruel, destructive.”
Western culture has long recognized the moral rot caused by the marketplace
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 5
“It is interesting to reflect how twisted and grasping are the faces of merchants depicted by medieval artists,
in contrast to the noble mien of soldiers and courtiers. Moneymaking was generally considered to be
beneath a person of noble blood; indeed, in Christendom it was a pursuit uncomfortably close to sin. Usury
— lending at interest — was a sin — in fact, a mortal sin.”
Christianity has a tradition of hostility to commerce
David Nirenberg (Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor in history and the John U. Nef Committee on
Social Thought at the University of Chicago), “Love and Capitalism,” The New Republic, September 23,
2009, p. 40
“Jesus himself was studiously indifferent to the business of getting and spending — when he needed a coin
to pay his taxes, he drew it from the mouth of a fish — and actively hostile to the accumulation of capital. ‘It
is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven’
(Matthew 19:24). Far from short-term, his investment horizon was eternal: ‘store not your treasure on earth,
where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store for yourselves treasure in
heaven’ (Matthew 6:19-20). This widening of the distance between heavenly and earthly goods threatened
to reverse the traditional metrics, making prosperity in this life an index not of the properly pious love of
God and neighbor, but of the one thing every would-be Christian had to overcome: self-love. ‘If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself.... For he that will save his life shall lose it.... For what shall it
profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? What exchange shall a man give
for his soul?’ (Matthew 16:24-26). Given these strictures, it is small wonder that by the Middle Ages,
‘merchant’ and ‘Christian’ were nearly mutually exclusive terms.” [ellipses and brackets in original text]
Capitalism is not hostile to the environment
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Resource depletion is overstated — and capitalism doesn’t cause it
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 247
“But confident — and completely faulty — predictions of exhaustion of raw materials have been made
countless times in recent centuries. What the soothsayers have overlooked is the vital role that the
free-market mechanism plays in conserving, and adding to, natural resources.”
Environmental abuse occurs because market mechanisms have been thwarted
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 250
“It is true that several particular natural resources have suffered, in the past and now, from depletion. But in
each case the reason has not been ‘capitalist greed’; on the contrary, the reason has been the failure of
government to allow private property in the resource — in short, a failure to pursue the logic of private
property rights far enough. One example has been timber resources. In the American West and in Canada,
most of the forests are owned, not by private owners but by the federal (or provincial) government. The
government then leases their use to private timber companies. In short, private property is permitted only in
the annual use of the resource, but not in the resource itself. In this situation, the private timber company
does not own the capital value, and therefore does not have to worry about depletion of the resource itself.
The timber company has no economic incentive to conserve the resources, plant trees, etc.; its only
economic incentive is to cut as many trees as quickly as possible, since there is no economic value to the
timber company in maintaining the capital value of the forest. In Europe, where private ownership of forests
is far more common, there is little complaint of destruction of timber resources.”
Private property excludes air and water resources
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 255
“Note, for example, the two critical areas in which pollution has become an important problem: the air and
the waterways, particularly the rivers. But these are precisely two of the vital areas in society in which
private property is not permitted to function.”
Non-capitalist systems have equal or greater environmental problems
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 255
“Government ownership, even socialism, has proven to be no solution to the problem of pollution. Even the
most starry-eyed proponents of government planning concede that the poisoning of Lake Baikal in the
Soviet Union is a monument to heedless industrial pollution of a valuable natural resource.”
Capitalism hurts the environment
Capitalism is linked to resource exploitation and pollution
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
“In the first place, the great emphasis upon industrial growth and materialism in capitalism exacerbates the
problem of environmental deterioration. Resources are devoured and waste products are dumped into the
environment at an accelerating rate.”
Demand for high output makes capitalism inherently hostile to the environment
Leonard Silk (economics columnist, The New York Times; former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution),
Economics in the Real World, 1984, p. 107
“But in the end this mighty industrial machine spews forth so much output that it depletes the earth’s
resources and pollutes its environment, jeopardizing human life.”
Capitalism has us on a path toward human destruction
Political Affairs, November 1992, p. 26
“Today it is possible to instantly annihilate humanity and higher nature by nuclear, chemical, or biological
war, or by manipulation of the human gene. The destruction of the living environment has continued and is
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becoming irreversible. The basic premise of this society is to accumulate capital. Under capitalist
conditions, every scientific-technological achievement is accompanied by destruction and deformation.”
Capitalism is not deceptive
Capitalistic competition keeps deception to a minimum
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 222
“There will always be shoddy products, quacks, con artists. But on the whole, market competition, when it
is permitted to work, protects the consumer better than do the alternative government mechanisms that have
been increasingly superimposed on the market. As Adam Smith said in the quotation with which we began
this chapter, competition does not protect the consumer because businessmen are more soft-hearted than the
bureaucrats, or even because they are more competent, but only because it is in the self-interest of the
businessman to serve the consumer.”
Advertising does not shift consumer demand
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 224
“What about the claim that consumers can be led by the nose by advertising? One answer is that they can’t
— as numerous expensive advertising fiascoes testify. One of the greatest duds of all time was the Edsel
automobile, introduced by Ford Motor Company and promoted by a major advertising campaign. More
basically, advertising is a cost of doing business, and the businessman wants to get the most from his
money. Is it not more sensible to appeal to the real wants or desires of consumers than to try to manufacture
artificial wants and desires?”
Capitalism is based on deceptive advertising
Want-creation is a natural product of the market system
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
“Capitalists attempt to assure themselves of an adequate demand for their products both directly and
indirectly. Direct efforts center upon want-creating, consumer-manipulating activities. Given the highly
unequal distribution of income under capitalism, the poor cannot afford to partake of an expanding output.
The rich, in contrast, are already glutted with most goods. Hence, the heavy hand of advertising and the
technique of ‘planned obsolescence’ are mustered to induce the consumption of essentially unneeded
output.”
Advertising shows that production fails to meet human needs
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
“The fact that almost $90 billion is ‘squandered’ each year on advertising is ample evidence that the
production of many consumer goods fails to fulfill the true needs of consumers.”
Capitalism urges producers to deceive consumers
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 189
“Can we depend solely on Adam Smith’s invisible hand? A long line of economists, philosophers,
reformers, and social critics have said no. Self-love will lead sellers to deceive their customers. They will
take advantage of their customers’ innocence and ignorance to overcharge them and pass off on them
shoddy products. They will cajole customers to buy goods they do not want.”
Consumer culture discards rationalism in favor of magical thinking
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Jackson Lears (Professor of History, Rutgers University; Editor-in-Chief, Raritan Quarterly Review), “The
Usefulness of Cranks,” The New Republic, October 7, 2009, p. 41-42
“The problem with it is that the process of rationalization is never complete: in modern consumer
advertising, commodities (not to mention money itself) can be endowed with a shimmering aura, a magical
promise of purchasable pleasure and possibly even self-transformation. The magic is not in the Angus, but
in its associations with sizzling steaks or pastoral plenitude.”
Deception in marketing denies human integrity
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 46
“Cagily phrased advertisements, dubious testimonials, outright deception in television ‘demonstrations,’
glittering packaging and shoddy contents are all too familiar elements in consumer selling. From time to
time these instances make the newspapers, as when the Federal Trade Commission found that General
Foods was charging more per unit of weight for its ‘economy sized’ packages than for its regular packages.
But leafing through the pages of Consumer Reports at any time hardly leaves one with a sense of
overwhelming corporate solicitude for the consumer.”
Capitalism is not exploitative
U.S. history shows that capitalism allows unlimited opportunity for advancement
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 36
“A myth has grown up about the United States that paints the 19th century as the era of the robber baron, of
rugged, unrestrained individualism. Heartless monopoly capitalists allegedly exploited the poor,
encouraged immigration, and then fleeced the immigrants unmercifully. Wall Street is pictured as conning
Main Street, as bleeding the sturdy farmers in the Middle West, who survived despite the widespread
distress and misery inflicted on them. The reality was very different. Immigrants kept coming. The early
ones might have been fooled, but it is inconceivable that millions kept coming to the United States decade
after decade to be exploited. They came because the hopes of those who had preceded them were largely
realized. The streets of New York were not paved with gold, but hard work, thrift, and enterprise brought
rewards that were unimaginable in the Old World.”
Capitalism makes racism unprofitable
George Reisman (associate prof. of economics, Pepperdine Univ.), in Capitalism, ed. by Bruno Leone,
1986, p. 108
“Indeed, profit-seeking employers qua profit-seeking employers are simply unconcerned with race. Their
principle is: of two equally good workers, hire the one who is available for less money; of two workers
available for the same money, hire the one who is the better worker. Race is simply irrelevant. Any
consideration of race means extra cost and less profit; it is bad business in the literal sense of the term.”
Capitalism exploits the worker and society
Business extorts its profits from the labor of workers
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 813
“The propertyless working class is therefore dependent upon the capitalists for employment and for its
members’ livelihood. Given the workers’ inferior bargaining position and the capitalists’ pursuit of profits,
the capitalist will exploit labor by paying a daily wage which is much less than the value of the worker’s
daily production. In short, the capitalist can and will pay workers a subsistence wage and expropriate the
remaining fruits of their labor as profits, or what Marx called surplus value.”
Marxism views profits as theft from exploited workers
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 37
“It is the labor theory of value, the theory (1) that all wealth is produced by labor, living or congealed labor;
(2) that the owners of capital are totally unproductive; and (3) that they exploit labor by taking from it an
‘unearned increment’ or the ‘surplus value’ that labor produces. The profits of capitalists come from
exploiting labor; therefore, profit is theft.”
[Note: Adler here is explaining Marxist theory, not necessarily endorsing it]
By its nature, capitalism tends to exploit workers
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 814
“Consider the forces bearing on workers. The institution of private property divorces them from the means
of production — machinery and equipment — and allows the capitalist to pay a subsistence wage and
expropriate much of their production as profits. The substitution of capital for labor, coupled with the
growing divergence between capitalism’s capacities to produce and consumer, leads to a growing body of
unemployed workers. Finally, in an effort to offset falling price rates, capitalists will increase their
exploitation of labor by increasing the intensity of work, lengthening the work day, and bringing more
women and children into the labor force.”
U.S. history shows pervasive exploitation of the labor force
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 46
“This is the oldest and purest exercise of economic power — the market exploitation of the weak. Among
those who big business has exploited, the classic victim has been labor. For example, as late as 1919 the
workweek at United States Steel consisted of a 12-hour day and a 7-day week, with a 24-hour swing shift
every other week — a schedule that was, according to Judge Gary and other steel officials, impossible to
change.”
Crime is rooted in capitalist competition
The New Unionist, March 1993
“While identifying the causes of violence, the commentators are nevertheless at a loss to find a solution for
it. It’s not because no solution exists. It’s because they all — liberals and conservatives alike — share an
allegiance to the profit economy, an allegiance that is a prerequisite for being a recognized ‘expert.’
Intellectually chained to the status quo, they are prohibited from acknowledging that the social breakdown
they describe is the inevitable product of the competitive system and can only be reversed by building a new
economic system.”
The criminal justice system entrenches capitalism
Gus Hall (chairman, U.S. Communist Party), Violence, 1996, p. 122
“The simple truth is that we live under the most violent and criminal social system in history. It is the
socioeconomic system that has run amok. In its efforts to salvage itself and its profits by tightening all the
screws on working people, the poor, the racially and nationally oppressed, it commits the most violent
crimes and abuses. To carry out this effort, monopoly capital maintains a vast army, a national network of
penal and criminal control systems, backed up by the force of the law. It uses the FBI, the National Guard,
and other enforcement agencies to keep the people under surveillance and under control.”
Capitalism is psychologically sound
Capitalism is based on — and reinforces — character virtues
Alan Greenspan (former chairman, Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System), as quoted in
“iHero” by Grady Hendrix, Slate, May 1, 2008. Online: www.slate.com/id/2190373, accessed May 2, 2008
“Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal
virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue,
not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of
preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.”
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Alienation is common under all economic systems
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 826
“Similarly, there is ample evidence of environmental pollution, alienation, and discrimination, not to
mention repression, in other systems with widely varying ideological bases and institutions.”
Capitalism is psychologically damaging
Capitalist division of labor produces alienation
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 14
“The division of labor altered social life in other ways as well. Work became more fragmented,
monotonous, tedious, alienated. And the self-sufficiency of individuals was greatly curtailed.”
Capitalist exploitation feeds alienation
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 821
“Radical economists argue that the institutions and operations of capitalism are a major source of
alienation. That is, under corporate capitalism, individuals have less and less control over their lives and
activities; the masses of people are increasingly remote from the decision-making processes which
determine the character and quality of their lives.”
Worker specialization degrades the humanity of the individual
Alexis de Tocqueville (French Statesman and historian, 1805-1859), Democracy in America, Volume 2,
Book 2, Chapter XX. Published 1840. Translated by Henry Reeves. Online:
www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816.txt; retrieved April 10, 2008
“When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately
does his work with singular dexterity; but at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind
to the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said
of him, that in proportion as the workman improves the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man
who has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? and to what can that mighty human
intelligence, which has so often stirred the world, be applied in him, except it be to investigate the best
method of making pins’ heads? When a workman has spent a considerable portion of his existence in this
manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed
habits, which it can never shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the calling which he
has chosen.”
Capitalism is a key cause of juvenile crime
Elliott Currie (criminologist, Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley),
Dissent, Spring 1991
“We also need to consider the impact on crime of the specifically psychological distortions of market
society — its tendency to produce personalities less and less capable of relating to others except as
consumer items, or as a means to the consumption of goods, or the attainment of social status. And we need
to consider the long-term political impact of market society — in particular, its tendency to eclipse
alternative political means by which the dispossessed might express their frustration and desperation. It’s
not simply by increasing one or another discrete social ill that conservative market tendencies promote
crime; it’s through the growth and spread of a way of life that at its core is inimical to social order and
personal security. In the words of another keen critic of market culture, R.H. Tawney, it is a ‘false magnetic
pole that sets all the compasses wrong.’”
Capitalism is the root cause of all crime
Elliott Currie (criminologist, Institute for the Study of Social Change at the Univ. of California at Berkeley),
Crime and Criminals, 1995, p. 65
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“A market culture promotes crime by holding out standards of economic status and consumption that many
cannot legitimately meet, thereby creating pressure for them in illegitimate ways; and, more subtly, by
weakening values supportive of the intrinsic worth of human life and well-being. Much violent street crime
in America today directly reflects the consumerist values of immediate gratification; some of our
delinquents will cheerfully acknowledge that they blew someone away for a pair of running shoes (or a
suede jacket). The point is not simply to bemoan the ascendancy of such values among the urban young but
to recognize that they are, as Bonger said, the ‘result of powerful social forces.’”
Capitalism is compatible with effective government
Government economic planning does not eliminate capitalist markets
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 92
“In nearly every nation of Europe we have seen the formation of planning techniques that go considerably
beyond the mere application of fiscal leverage, to the conscious ‘design’ of the economic future. Yet these
techniques with few exceptions do not directly abridge the prerogatives of the market or interfere with the
capture of profits.”
Capitalism requires the rule of law to operate
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 303
“A free enterprise system is impossible without security of property as well as security of life. Free
enterprise is only possible within a framework of law and order and morality.”
Capitalism depends on public intervention and regulation by government
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 138
“Capitalism will remain, by and large, the massive, complex entity we know it to be — dependent on a very
large degree of public intervention, support, regulation, and interference.”
Capitalism is hostile to government
Minimizing government is a core doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 32
“Advocates of pure capitalism argue that such an economy is conducive to efficiency in the use of
resources, output, and employment stability, and rapid economic growth. Hence, there is no need for
government planning, control, or intervention. Indeed, the term laissez faire roughly translates as ‘let it be,’
that is, keep the government from interfering with the economy. The reason is that such interference will
disturb the efficiency with which the market system functions.”
Business objects to government’s hand in the marketplace
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 41
“Traditionally, opposition to such measures as minimum wage laws, public spending, unionism, business
regulation, or economic planning — not to mention liberal social policies — finds its most vociferous
advocates in the millions of small-scale enterprises quite as much as, and oftimes more than, among big
businessmen.”
Capitalism is not inherently unstable
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
External factors account for economic surges and recessions
Murray Rothbard (prof. of economics, Polytechnic Univ. of New York), For a New Liberty, 1978, p. 24
“But there is no reason to expect boom-bust cycles in the overall economy. In fact, there is reason to expect
just the opposite; for usually the free market works smoothly and efficiently, and especially with no
massive cluster of error such as becomes evident when boom turns suddenly to bust and severe losses are
incurred. And indeed, before the late eighteenth century there were no such overall cycles. Generally,
business went along smoothly and evenly until a sudden interruption occurred: a wheat famine would cause
a collapse in an agricultural country; the king would seize most of the money in the hands of financiers,
causing a sudden depression; a war would disrupt trading patterns. In each of these cases, there was a
specific blow to trade brought about by an easily identifiable, one-shot cause, with no need to search further
for explanation.”
Capitalism inherently is unstable
The capitalist economy is always jittery
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 133
“The capitalist economies are always in a state of nervous tension, of actual or potential movement, of overt
or latent disequalibrium. Wars, changes in political regimes, resource changes, new technologies, shifts in
consumers’ tastes, all constantly disturb the tenor of business life. Ask any businessman if he lives in a calm
pond or a choppy lake.”
The lack of central planning triggers boom and bust phases
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 88
“The persistent breakdowns of the capitalist economy, whatever their immediate precipitating factors, can
all be traced to a single underlying cause. This is the anarchic or planless character of capitalist production.
Essentially, capitalism malfunctions because the output of its individual firms is guided solely by the
profitable opportunities open to each, without regard to the state of the market as a whole.”
Technological changes can trigger mass unemployment
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 14
“However, the changes introduced by technology also had their negative side as well. Already buffeted by
market forces that could mysteriously dry up the need for work or just as mysteriously create it, society now
discovered that entire occupations, skills acquired over a lifetime, companies laboriously built up over
generations, age-old industries could be threatened by the appearance of technological change.
Increasingly, productive machinery appeared as the enemy, rather than the ally, of humankind.”
Wages can never generate sufficient demand to assure production and consumption will match
The U.S. Socialist Labor Party, How Safe Is Your Job? 1992, p. 1
“The ‘recessions’ and ‘depressions’ that bring unemployment are caused by the capitalist system itself.
That’s because the capitalist system has a fatal defect. That weakness is that wages are never enough for
workers to buy back all that they produce. Wages may go up in ‘good times’ and fall in bad ones, but in the
long run and on the average workers get what is loosely called ‘a living wage.’ As a result, workers can buy
back only a fraction of their product. The rest — the difference between what workers produce and what
their wages can buy — is either consumed by the capitalists, spent on expanding and modernizing industry,
exported to other countries, or simply wasted.”
Business cycles squeeze out small enterprises
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 27
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
“In Capital, Marx sees instability increasing until finally the system comes tumbling down. His reasoning
involves two further, very important prognoses for the system: The first is that the size of business firms
will steadily increase as the consequence of the recurrent crises that wrack the economy. With each crisis,
small firms go bankrupt and their assets are bought by the surviving firms. A trend toward big business is
thus an integral part of capitalism.”
Competition squeezes out small business
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 814
“In particular, the competition which characterizes the early stages of capitalism will give way to increased
monopolization of industry in its later stages. Bluntly put, the falling rate of profits and the growing gap
between production and consumption will force the weaker capitalists to go out of business. Hence, over
time the ownership and control of industry will become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a
diminishing number of capitalists.”
Big business dominates the arena
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 32
“What are the hallmarks of this new capitalism? A number of themes emerge from the lectures. One is the
universal recognition that big units of business rather than small individual enterprises are now the
economic backbone of our industrial society.”
The trend toward monopoly is already obvious
Douglas N. Rosenberg (prof. of sociology, Yale), The Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. by A.W. Frank, 1981,
p. 39
“Without government interference, it is said, the consumer would be at the mercy of profit-seeking
competitors over which he has no influence. Whatever its effects, the trend in the leading capitalist
economies seems to be toward ever-greater concentration of wealth and industrial power in the largest
companies.”
The U.S. is dominated by near-monopoly
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 816
“The radical view holds that capitalism has reached an advanced stage in the United States wherein huge
monopolistic corporations dominate the economy. Small corporations tend to succumb through merger or
bankruptcy. Proprietorships and partnerships flourish only on the relatively unimportant fringes of the
economy.”
The erosion of broadly-based markets makes the consumer a victim
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 47
“The only force that can be counted on to keep consumer prices down is competition.”
Economic globalization has made all nations victims of capitalism’s caprices
Michael H. Shuman (vice president for enterprise development, Training & Development Corporation,
Bucksport, Maine) and Hal Harvey (founder and president, The Energy Foundation; former member of the
President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology), Security Without War: A Post Cold-War
Foreign Policy, 1993, p. 16; Westview Press edition, online:
www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Security/S93-23_SecurityWoutWar.pdf, accessed May 1, 2008
“The United States is now part of a globalized economy in which distant events can lead to dramatic
repercussions at home. When other countries drop minimum wages, eviscerate worker rights, or tolerate
greater pollution, companies with operations in the United States will be tempted to move abroad to lower
costs of production. With more than $500 billion circulating through the world’s foreign exchange markets
every day, a significant drop in a nation’s interest rates can set off a devastating tsunami of capital flight. As
much as some Americans wish to insulate the country from economic oscillations abroad by erecting trade
barriers and building a strong Fortress America, this is no longer possible. As the nations of the East Bloc
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
discovered during the Cold War, isolated economies are doomed to stagnation and a declining standard of
living.”
The financial sector in the modern capitalist economy endangers everyone’s well-being
Robert M. Solow (Institute Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT), “Getting It Wrong,” The New Republic,
September 10, 2008, p. 32
“Everyone must have noticed that the total sums at risk in the markets for complex derivatives are
enormous compared even with the $14 trillion size of the national economy itself. In addition to financing
and allocating the uncertainties that arise inevitably out of production and consumption decisions, modern
financial engineering creates unlimited opportunities for bets that are only remotely related to productive
activity, if at all. A can bet B that C will be unable to meet its obligation to pay D. (A may then try to
manipulate the odds by spreading rumors about C’s financial condition.)
Should the rest of us care if A and B want to gamble their fool heads off, whether on credit-default swaps or
basketball games? If these were private arrangements between consenting (and rich) adults, one might say
that it’s their business and nobody else’s .But in the world as it is, A and B seek leverage — that is, they
borrow from banks and others so that they can bet larger amounts than their own private capital would
permit. Even a small return on the leveraged bet amounts to a large return on equity. And once the banking
system is involved in a big way — owning, and holding as collateral, assets whose likely value is hard to
understand and impossible to calculate — then we are all at risk.”
Capitalism does not cause poverty
All societies grumble about wage distribution
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 22
“In every society, however it is organized, there is always dissatisfaction with the distribution of income.
All of us find it hard to understand why we should receive less than others who seem no more deserving —
or why we should be receiving more than so many others whose needs seem as great and desserts seem no
less. The farther fields always look greener — so we blame the existing system. In a command system envy
and dissatisfaction are directed at the rulers. In a free-market system, they are directed at the market.”
No society can guarantee income equality
F.A. von Hayek (prof. of economics, Univ. of Chicago) in Economics in the Real World by Leonard Silk,
1984, p. 120
“Equality in material position is wholly impossible, because that would require a completely directed
system. In any free-market system you are bound to get great inequality of material conditions, and
inequalities which have no connection with recognizable merit, because they are very largely due to
accident of one kind or another. The market system is a discovery procedure in which those profit who
make discoveries of new possibilities. You can never foresee this, and discoveries are not always a matter
of merit but very frequently a matter of accident.”
Income gaps have widened in non-capitalist nations
Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution) and Rose
Friedman (former staff member, National Bureau of Economic Research), Free to Choose, 1980, p. 22
“Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything close to equality of
opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of existing never dreamed of before.
Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor wider, nowhere are the rich richer and the poor poorer, than in
those societies that do not permit the free market to operate. That is true of feudal societies like medieval
Europe, India before independence, and much of modern South America, where inherited status determines
position. It is equally true of centrally planned societies, like Russia or China or India since independence,
where access to government determines position. It is true even where central planning was introduced, as
in all three of these countries, in the name of equality.”
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Capitalism is morally good because it has reduced poverty
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 325
“Capitalism has enormously raised the level of the masses. It has wiped out whole areas of poverty. It has
greatly reduced infant mortality, and made it possible to cure disease and prolong life. It has reduced human
suffering. Because of capitalism, millions live today who would otherwise have not even been born. If these
facts have no ethical relevance, then it is impossible to say in what ethical relevance consists.”
Wages have increased under capitalism
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 77
“Certainly the productivity of the great mass of workers under capitalism has steadily increased, and so
have their real wages.”
Progress has been especially remarkable since 1900
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 31
“The progress toward equality we have made since the turn of the century is more than phenomenal: it is
like the crossing of a great divide. In the United States, as in all other societies before the Twentieth century,
the political and economic haves were everywhere the privileged few — those who were both citizens and
owners of property. The deprived — the have-nots — were everywhere the many. For the first time in the
Twentieth century, the proportions of the total population have been strikingly reversed.”
The money of the rich benefits the poor
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 317
“Socialists are never tired of condemning ‘poverty in the midst of plenty.’ They cannot rid themselves of
the idea that the wealth of the rich is the cause of the poverty of the poor. Yet this idea is completely false.
The wealth of the rich makes the poor less poor, not more. The rich are those who have something to offer in
return for the services of the poor. And only the rich can provide the poor with the capital, with the tools of
production, to increase the output and hence the marginal value of the labor of the poor. When the rich grow
richer the poor grow, not poorer, but richer. This, in fact, is the history of economic progress.”
Ending wage exploitation would not end poverty
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 77
“One alleged cause of poverty has always been wage exploitation — that is, the systematic diversion to
property owners of workers’ income. There is clearly an element of truth in part of this contention, in that
the income of the favored groups in capitalism does indeed stem from institutions that divert income from
the community at large into the channels of dividends, interest, rent, monopoly returns, etc. What is by no
means clear, however, is that the amount of this diversion, if distributed among the masses, would spell the
difference between their poverty and their well-being. On the contrary, it is now generally established,
including by most Marxists, that the level of wages reflects workers’ productivity more than any other
single factor.”
Actions to end income inequality would just make everyone poor
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 317
“Any serious effort to enforce the idea of equality of income, regardless of what anyone does or fails to do
to earn or create income — regardless of whether he works or not, produces or not — would lead to
universal impoverishment. Not only would it remove any incentive for the unskilled or incompetent to
improve themselves, and any incentive for the lazy to work at all; it would remove even the incentive of the
naturally talented and industrious to work or to improve themselves.”
The socialist program of enforced equality denies liberty
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
William Graham Sumner (prof. of sociology, Yale Univ.), as quoted in Haves Without Have-Nots by
Mortimer J. Adler, 1991, p. 17
“Socialists are filled with the enthusiasm of equality. Every scheme of theirs for securing equality has
destroyed liberty.”
Enforced economic equality damages all of society
William Graham Sumner (prof. of sociology, Yale Univ.), as quoted in Haves Without Have-Nots by
Mortimer J. Adler, 1991, p. 17
“We cannot go outside this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; [or] non-liberty, equality,
survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries
society downward and favors all its worst members.”
Diverting income from wage-earners to the poor is immoral
Philip Wogaman (associate prof. of ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary), Guaranteed Annual Income:
The Moral Issues, 1968, p. 44
“To take from some who have worked in order to give to others who have not raises immediate questions of
deserving. Is this rendering to each man his just due? Some of the classical economists, who held to a labor
theory of value, were particularly impressed by this problem. Since they believed that economic goods were
a result of specific inputs of labor, it could readily be considered ‘immoral’ to take the fruits of the labor of
some in order to provide income for those who have not contributed those inputs of labor.”
Capitalism causes poverty
There is tension between market economics and claims of distributive justice
Nancy Fraser (professor on the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science at the New School for
Social Research), “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and
Participation,” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Delivered at Stanford University, April 30-May 2,
1996, p. 3. Online: www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/Fraser98.pdf, Accessed May 10,
2008
“In today’s world, claims for social justice seem increasingly to divide into two types. First, and most
familiar, are redistributive claims, which seek a more just distribution of resources and goods. Examples
include claims for redistribution from the North to the South, from the rich to the poor, and from owners to
workers. To be sure, the recent resurgence of free-market thinking has put proponents of redistribution on
the defensive. Nevertheless, egalitarian redistributive claims have supplied the paradigm case for most
theorizing about social justice for the past 150 years.
Capitalism leads to income inequality
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 819
“First, by providing unearned incomes to capitalist owners, the institution of private property is a basic
source of income inequality. Wealth is even more highly concentrated than is income.”
Consumerism punishes the middle and lower classes
Amitai Etzioni (German-Israeli-American sociologist, known for his work on socioeconomics and
communitarianism; founder of the Communitarian Network) “Spent,” The New Republic, June 17, 2009. p.
22
“Consumerism, it must be noted, afflicts not merely the upper class in affluent societies but also the middle
class and many in the working class. Large numbers of people across society believe that they work merely
to make ends meet, but an examination of their shopping lists and closets reveals that they spend good parts
of their income on status goods such as brand-name clothing, the ‘right’ kind of car, and other assorted
items that they don’t really need. This mentality may seem so integral to American culture that resisting it is
doomed to futility.”
Those with low market skills are excluded from society
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Douglas N. Rosenberg (prof. of sociology, Yale), The Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. by A.W. Frank, 1981,
p. 39
“Because most people must sell their labor, large pockets of poverty exist among those whose labor brings
little return — the aged, the disabled, dependent children, the unskilled, and groups suffering from
discrimination.”
A market’s failure to serve the poor is a moral failure
Robert Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research) and Lester Thurow (prof. of
economics, Sloan School of Management at MIT), Economics Explained, 1982, p. 236
“The market is an assiduous servant of the wealthy, but an indifferent servant of the poor. It presents us with
the anomaly of a surplus of luxury housing existing side by side with a shortage of inexpensive housing,
although the social need for the latter is incontestably greater than the former. Or it pours energy and
resources into the multiplication of luxuries for which the wealthier classes offer a market, while allowing
more basic needs of the poor to go unheeded and unmet. This is not just an economic failure. It is a moral
failure. Market system promote amorality.”
Capitalism creates an economic underclass
Bryan Magee (UK television documentarian, former Member of Parliament, and former philosophy lecturer
or visiting fellow at Yale, Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge), Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey
through Western Philosophy, 1997, p. 325
“In an already advanced technological society most of the population would do quite well out of it
[economic libertarianism], and some would do very well indeed, but many would come off badly. Those
who have to cope with serious physical or mental health problems, either in themselves or within their close
family; those who are simply no good at jungle warfare; the mild and the meek, or the ineffectual; also the
unintelligent, the old and lonely, unmarried mothers with several children, ill-educated immigrants, the
unlucky — these all sorts of other disadvantaged individuals number several million in a country like
Britain; and from them would breed an underclass in which crime, drug addiction, disease, and slumdom
were rife. The provision to them of adequate services in education, health, and old age, given their
inadequate (often hopelessly inadequate) purchasing power, can only too plainly not be achieved in a free
market.”
Income inequality damages social unity
Philip Wogaman (associate prof. of ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary), Guaranteed Annual Income:
The Moral Issues, 1968, p. 91
“Few wealthy men are able to view the poor as worth their social attention. Few poor people are able to
relate to the wealthy without a sense of inferiority. If genuine community is what we want, then equality of
income would seem a better way to get it than the inequalities to which we are accustomed. We can add one
other point to this: an assured equality of income is also the best way to avoid the manipulation of persons
by means of their economic need.”
Income gaps force family disintegration
Bill Hubbard, Jr., “Conservative Values,” The New Republic, October 5, 1992, p. 5
“On the theme of ‘family values,’ it is largely the unrestrained actions of the market that have necessitated
the two-wage-earner pattern that has put the ‘traditional’ family under such a strain. Free-marketers,
confronted with the strains, can only respond (if true to their beliefs) that ‘this is the reality of present
conditions.’”
Income disparities equal death
Arthur Okun (former chairman of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers) as quoted in
Economics in the Real World by Leonard Silk, 1984, p. 121
“The market is even permitted to legislate life and death, as evidenced, for example, by infant mortality
rates for the poor that are more than one-and-one-half times those for middle-income Americans.”
American poverty has vastly expanded
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 31
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
“In the last decade, the number of have-nots, the seriously deprived, has steadily increased in the United
States. For twenty percent of our population, average family income is less than $8,000 per year —
substantially below the so-called poverty line, under which people do not have what they need. Not only
does this nation now have less economic equality than justice requires, it also has more inequality — a
greater inequality between the have-mores and the have-lesses — than justice requires.”
Capitalism does not promote war
Capitalism ended the Cold War
Michael H. Shuman (vice president for enterprise development, Training & Development Corporation,
Bucksport, Maine) and Hal Harvey (founder and president, The Energy Foundation; former member of the
President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology), Security Without War: A Post Cold-War
Foreign Policy, 1993, p. 32; Westview Press edition, online:
www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Security/S93-23_SecurityWoutWar.pdf, accessed May 1, 2008
“Another factor hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union was the attraction of capitalism. ‘For the peoples
of the USSR and Eastern Europe,’ write Deudney and Ikenberry, ‘it was not so much abstract liberal
principles but rather the Western way of life — the material and cultural manifestations of the West’s
freedoms — that subverted the Soviet vision.’ East-West trade and citizen exchanges, which expanded
steadily after 1983, made more and more Soviet citizens painfully aware that their living standards were
falling behind those of the West.”
Non-capitalist nations also have shameful war records
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 106
“At the same time, it does not follow that capitalism is intrinsically war-producing just because it has been
the cause of international friction in the past. Even a cursory review of the nations initiating aggressive
actions since 1945 — North Korea, India, China, Israel, Britain, France, Russia, Indonesia, the United
States — should raise doubts as to the exclusive capitalist predisposition to war.”
Non-capitalist nations also have shameful records of imperialism
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 826
“Soviet policy toward Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan, among
others, makes it abundantly clear that monopoly capitalism does not have a monopoly on imperialism.”
Socialism is more likely than capitalism to provoke war
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 339
“And contrary to the Marxist propaganda of a century, it is socialism rather than capitalism that tends to
lead to war. Capitalist countries have, it is true, gone to war with each other; but those who have been most
strongly imbued with the philosophy of the free market have been the leaders of public opinion in
opposition to war. Capitalism depends on the division of labor and on social cooperation. It therefore
depends on the principle of peace, because the wider the field of social cooperation, the greater the need for
peace.”
Capitalism causes imperialistic wars
Capitalists find that underdeveloped nations are ripe for exploitation
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 814
“The underdeveloped areas are typically characterized by abundant and therefore cheap labor and,
frequently, cheap raw materials. Furthermore, their primitive state of economic development makes them
lucrative targets for capitalist investment or accumulation. These developments allegedly explain the
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
colonization and domination of the world’s underdeveloped areas by ‘imperialistic powers,’ a process
which reached its peak in the period between 1890 and World War II.”
Capitalist nations must seek new markets beyond their borders
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 814
“Faced with falling profits, diminishing ability to further exploit the domestic labor force, and increasing
difficulty in selling their products domestically because of the inadequate incomes and purchasing power of
the masses of workers, monopoly capitalists will inevitably turn their attention to exploitation of the
less-developed countries.”
The exploitation of underdeveloped countries is imperialism
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
“Given the dynamics of capitalism, it is inevitable that monopoly capitalism will transcend national
boundaries to dominate and exploit the less developed areas of the world. This ‘internationalization of
capitalism’ is, of course, imperialism.”
Imperialist exploitation increases global poverty
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 823
“Over time, the imperialistic countries derive profit incomes from their overseas investments which far
exceed the value of those investments, thereby contributing to a growing income gap between the have and
have-not nations.”
Imperialism driven by capitalist economics is a primary cause of war
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 278
“Lenin put forward his theory of the causation of war in his book Imperialism. He believed that capitalist
societies must attack each other in order to expand and secure markets and spheres of investment. If they
did not do so, they would stifle in their own ‘plethora of capital’ and overproduced consumer goods. Every
major capitalist society, Lenin taught, was a pressure-cooker which sooner or later must burst on the rest of
the world, or stifle.”
Imperialism and mercantilism lead to military conflict
Seyom Brown (prof. of politics, Brandeis Univ.), The Causes and Prevention of War, 1987, p. 61
“Marxists point out to the military arsenals of capitalist countries and the instances of their resorting to war
as ‘evidence’ that capitalist political economies need war in order to function. According to Marxist theory,
the domestic contradictions of capitalism inevitably produce rivalries for foreign markets that can become
so intense as to generate ‘imperialist wars’ among the capitalist states.”
Capitalism is the source of war
Steve Coleman (staff), The Socialist Standard, March 1991, p. 40-41
“The hard fact is that wars — all wars — are effects of a cause. Just as the mugger is the effect of the
brutalizing, alienated social environment of urban capitalism, so war is the effect of a system of persistent
rivalry over raw materials, resources (including oil), markets, and exploitable territories and populations.
This persistent rivalry is inherent to the world capitalist system. The profit system, without competing,
plundering, and — when push comes to shove — fighting rival gangs of capitalists could not exist. If you
accept capitalism you must accept that there will be wars.”
The demand for economic domination of overseas regions drive imperialism and war
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 105
“Lenin’s theory of imperialism maintains that capitalist firms must reach overseas for sources of cheap
supply or for new markets, and that where trade goes, the flag goes. Then, as rival economic interests
collide or (in the modernized version of the theory) as the interests of imperialist firms come into conflict
with those of colonists, national force must be used to ensure economic domination.”
Military spending is needed to absorb the excess output of the capitalist economy
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 822
“Starkly put, government engages in wasteful and unnecessary military spending to absorb the output of the
capitalistic system. Furthermore, government engages in imperialistic activities on a global basis to create
and sustain overseas markets and to secure cheap sources of inputs.”
Wars are started to consume the military surplus
Seyom Brown (prof. of politics, Brandeis Univ.), The Causes and Prevention of War, 1987, p. 61
“Twentieth-century Marxists also claim that capitalist regimes use armament buildups artificially to
stimulate their economies when they appear to be heading for depression — and that capitalists then
provoke international crises and wars to justify the buildups.”
History shows that capitalist expansion breeds war
Robert L. Heilbroner (prof. of economics, New School for Social Research), The Limits of American
Capitalism, 1966, p. 106
“The fierce economic conflicts of capitalist nations prior to World War II, the long history of capitalist
suppression of colonials continuing down to the present in some parts of Africa, the huge and jealously
guarded interests of the United States and other capitalist nations in the oil regions of the Near East or Latin
America, all make it impossible to dismiss the notion of a belligerent capitalism as mere fiction.”
Economic development is good
Economic development is undesirable
Economic development marginalizes women
Valentine M. Moghadam (director of the women’s studies program and associate professor of sociology at
Illinois State University), Development and Women’s Marginalization, 1992, p. 215
“Another group argues that development, especially modernization of a capitalist kind, has everywhere
reduced the economic status of women, resulting in marginalization and impoverishment. A further
indictment of the integration into development and into the world system is that recession and debt crisis
during the 1980s have placed disproportionate burdens on women, especially poor women, but especially
working women.”
Development has traditionally led to the domination of women
Valentine M. Moghadam (director of the women’s studies program and associate professor of sociology at
Illinois State University), Development and Women’s Marginalization, 1992, p. 215
“The terms development and modernization obscure the relations of exploitation, unequal distribution of
wealth, and other disparities that ensue. And what is there to say after decades of development, when the
Third World are mired in and forced to accept the policing role of the World Bank and IMF in order to get
their balance of payments in order? Finally, there is a strand of feminist thinking which argues that
development has historically brought about the domination and domestication of women.”
Capitalist development leads to exploitation
Valentine M. Moghadam (director of the women’s studies program and associate professor of sociology at
Illinois State University), Development and Women’s Marginalization, 1992, p. 215
“It is argued that the private/public split whereby the latter becomes the domain of men while women were
relegated to the former — although men were in control — came with modernity and development, as did
the nature/culture dichotomy. Within the field of women-in-development, some have argued that economic
development has everywhere resulted in marginalization of women from production or their exploitation as
cheap labor. This is a rather dire assessment of development and its consequences.”
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Capitalism is preferable to socialism
A centrally planned economy assures mismatch between needs and production
Robert M. Solow (MIT Institute Professor of Economics emeritus; Nobel laureate in economics, 1987),
“Hedging America,” The New Republic, December 30, 2009, p. 37
“My late colleague Evsey Domar, who was, among other things, a student of the Soviet economy, told us
how the planning bureau began by setting production quotas for paper factories in tons per year. The result
was paper so thick that it could not fit in a Soviet typewriter or anywhere else. So the clever planning bureau
changed to setting quotas in terms of square meters per year. The result was paper so thin that even a
member of the planning bureau could see right through it. The lesson is that it is so much simpler and more
effective to tell paper producers that they have to compete to sell their paper to notebook manufacturers
(who are also competing with each other) and live off the proceeds.”
Each person is entitled only to the minimum for a decent life
Charles Fried (Prof. of Law, Harvard Law School), “Is Liberty Possible?” from The Tanner Lectures on
Human Values, Delivered at Stanford University, May 14 and l8, l981, p. 100-101; Online:
www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/documents/fried82.pdf, accessed May 7, 2008
“What is a man due? I would say these things: First, so much of the community’s resources that he has a
chance to live decently and to make a life for himself — by his own efforts if possible, by the community’s
aid if those efforts are insufficient. Beyond that he should demand nothing. Beyond that to use political
power to demand more is to violate the liberty of his fellows.”
Socialism is coercion
Henry Hazlitt (economist, journalist; former editor, The American Scholar), The Foundations of Morality,
1964, p. 338
“And coercion is the essence of socialism and communism. Under socialism there can be no free choice of
occupation. Everyone must take the job to which he is assigned. He must go where he is sent. He must
remain there until he gets orders to move elsewhere. His promotion or demotion depends on the will of a
superior, upon a singe chain of command. Economic life under socialism, in short, is organized on a
military model.”
Socialism has never been a serious political force in the United States
Cass R. Sunstein (Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Univ. of Chicago Law School and
Department of Political Science), Why Does the American Constitution Lack Social and Economic
Guarantees? The University of Chicago Public Law and Legal Theory working paper series #36, January
2003, p. 12. Available online from the Social Science Research Network,
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=375622; accessed January 10, 2009
“I now turn to what may well be the most tempting explanation, one that points to American exceptionalism
in general. Socialism has never been a powerful force within the United States. America is said to be
exceptional because ‘it didn’t happen here’: There was never a strong effort to move the United States in the
direction of socialism or social democracy. On this view, the absence of social and economic rights has an
explanation in terms of American politics or even culture. No group that might have been interested in such
rights was ever powerful enough to obtain them. In the debate over the Universal Declaration, social and
communist nations were most enthusiastic about social and economic guarantees, whereas capitalist nations
were most skeptical. Perhaps this, in a nutshell, is the best explanation for the American Constitution’s
failure to include such guarantees. The Constitution’s content is a political artifact, and American politics is
simply different. There is of course an extensive literature on American exceptionalism in general, with
many competing views. Some people suggest that American workers have had, or have thought that they
have, a high degree of upward mobility, muting dissatisfaction with any particular status quo. Others have
suggested that feudalism is a necessary precursor for socialism, and that because America lacks a feudal
past, socialism was inevitably going to fail. Others suggest that the American electoral system, with two
dominant parties and elaborate checks and balances, dampened socialist efforts in the period in which they
succeeded elsewhere. Still others suggest that powerful private groups were quick to suppress socialist
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
movements whenever they threatened to be effective. For present purposes, it is unnecessary to choose
among these competing explanations. What matters is the underlying weakness of socialism in the United
States.”
The political optimism that sustains socialism no longer exists
Alan Wolfe (staff contributing editor), “Obama vs. Marx,” The New Republic, April 1, 2009, p. 22
“Socialism was born in political conditions that no longer exist. In its most radical form, the one associated
with Marx and Engels, it had far more in common with European romanticism than with the moderate
reformism of a John Stuart Mill or a Thomas Hill Green, two of Great Britain’s most important liberal
thinkers. Socialism seemed possible when anything seemed possible. It was an ideology of progress when
progress was an unquestioned good. Even its less revolutionary adherents, those more likely to call
themselves social democrats rather than socialists, believed in economic planning and social transformation
in ways that seem embarrassing now. Once it appeared possible for government to control the major means
of production. Now it seems impossible to build a high-speed rail between Boston and Washington.”
The United Kingdom has quietly set aside socialism
Alan Wolfe (staff contributing editor), “Obama vs. Marx,” The New Republic, April 1, 2009, p. 22
“The story of socialism’s decline is essentially a European story. Socialism has never had much appeal in
the United States, but that was not always the case on the other side of the Atlantic. The temptation toward
socialism was not just on display in Eastern Europe; in the western half of the continent, too, left-wing
governments and parties quite openly embraced socialist programs for much of the twentieth century.
Those days, however, are largely over. In Britain, the Labour Party no longer pays much homage to its
socialist roots. Tony Blair revived the party only after leading a campaign to alter its notorious Clause IV,
which had explicitly endorsed the ‘common ownership of the means of production.’ The revised version
proclaimed Labour a ‘democratic socialist’ party, but the wording was so vague, and Blair so consistently
ignored it, that its purposes were symbolic only. On this crucial point, Gordon Brown has not backtracked
in the least.”
The rest of Europe has rejected socialism
Alan Wolfe (staff contributing editor), “Obama vs. Marx,” The New Republic, April 1, 2009, p. 22
“Elsewhere in Europe, the same movement against socialism dominates the political landscape. Socialism
in the form of social democracy was long the governing ideology of Scandinavia, but Swedes never much
liked the idea of nationalizing industries, and the Danes have for some time been governed by conservatives
— called, in European parlance, liberals. Angela Merkel is anything but a socialist; the same is true for
Nicolas Sarkozy. ‘Americanization’ was once a dirty word in France. Now it fairly well describes
Sarkozy’s domestic program. There is talk of reforming the country’s Napoleonic legal system with
something more resembling our insistence upon rights. Public bureaucracies, including France’s complex
system of higher education, are to be reformed along more ‘modern’ — read American — lines. Spain,
meanwhile, does have a socialist government; but its leftism is a reaction to the extreme conservatism that
governed the country for much of the twentieth century. For their part, the Eastern European countries now
outdo each other in their love for the free market.”
The global economy is too widely developed to be subject to central regulation
Amitai Etzioni (German-Israeli-American sociologist, known for his work on socioeconomics and
communitarianism; founder of the Communitarian Network) “Spent,” The New Republic, June 17, 2009. p.
20
“The world economy consists of billions of transactions every day. There can never be enough inspectors,
accountants, customs officers, and police to ensure that all or even most of these transactions are properly
carried out. Moreover, those charged with enforcing regulations are themselves not immune to corruption,
and, hence, they too must be supervised and held accountable to others — who also have to be somehow
regulated. The upshot is that regulation cannot be the linchpin of attempts to reform our economy.”
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Socialism would be preferable to capitalism
The collapse of the USSR has not discredited socialism
James A. Yunker (Professor of Economics at Western Illinois University), “A Future for Socialism,” The
Journal of Socio-Economics, Spring 1995, p. 253
“Roemer is not alone in arguing that obituaries of socialism are premature and despite widespread opinion
to the contrary, socialism might indeed have a significant future in the twenty-first century. It could be that
the waning of the Cold War is diminishing the unthinking, emotional anti-socialism associated with the
recent past. Socialism may have been unfairly discredited through its association with a dreaded national
enemy. Perhaps the future will see a calmer, more reflective attitude taken toward the notion of public
ownership of the capital means of production. Conceivably the death of oligarchic planned socialism in the
Soviet Union and elsewhere will mark the birth of serious, systematic consideration of the potentialities
which may reside in democratic market socialism — not only for the ex-communist nations but for the
capitalist nations as well.”
Soviet communism is not a representative example of socialism
James A. Yunker (Professor of Economics at Western Illinois University), “A Future for Socialism,” The
Journal of Socio-Economics, Spring 1995, p. 253
“As soon as the salient features of Soviet Communism began emerging in the 1930s (a totalitarian political
system combined with a highly centralized system of comprehensive economic planning), many socialist
sympathizers in the West commenced arguing that communistic socialism is not the highest possible form
of socialism and that democratic market socialist possibilities exist which would avoid the dysfunctional
characteristics of communistic socialism.”
Socialism is not Soviet-style tyranny
World Socialist Review, Summer 1991
“A good place to start is with the explanation of what socialism is not. Socialism is not the state capitalism
that is oppressing the workers in the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Poland, or any other country that claims to
be socialist. You see, these countries have wages, money, and a state. These things will not exist in
socialism. Socialism is not the nationalization of industries that Sweden, Great Britain, and others have set
up. They too have money, wages, and a state just like every other capitalist nation. To get to the fact,
socialism has never been tried anywhere on the face of the Earth.”
Many modern governments guarantee economic rights to citizens
Cass R. Sunstein (Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Univ. of Chicago Law School and
Department of Political Science), Why Does the American Constitution Lack Social and Economic
Guarantees? The University of Chicago Public Law and Legal Theory working paper series #36, January
2003, p. 3. Available online from the Social Science Research Network,
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=375622; accessed January 10, 2009
“Many modern constitutions follow the Declaration [The Universal Declaration of Human Rights] in
creating social and economic rights. They guarantee citizens a wide range of social entitlements. Of course
this was true for the Soviet Constitution. But many non-communist and post-communist constitutions
contain these rights as well. The Romanian Constitution, for example, includes the right to leisure, the right
to work, the right to equal pay for equal work, and measures for the protection and safety of workers. The
Syrian Constitution proclaims that the ‘state undertakes to provide work for all citizens.’ The Constitution
of Norway imposes on the state the responsibility ‘to create conditions enabling every person capable of
work to earn a living by his work.’ The Bulgarian Constitution offers the right to a holiday, the right to
work, the right to labor safety, the right to social security, and the right to free medical care. The Hungarian
Constitution proclaims, ‘People living within the territory of the Republic of Hungary have the right to the
highest possible level of physical health.’ It also provides that ‘Everyone who works has the right to
emolument that corresponds to the amount and quality of the work performed.’ The Constitution of Peru
announces, ‘The worker is entitled to a fair and adequate remuneration enabling him to provide for himself
and his family material and spiritual well-being.’”
Socialism is the economic analogy of democracy
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 20
“In the economic order, socialism parallels democracy to the political order. It stands for the ideal of
economic equality, as democracy stands for the ideal of political equality.”
Socialism is immediate, not a distant utopian goal
Samuel Leight (prof. of economics, Univ. of Arizona), The Futility of Reformism, 1984, p. 3
“The deluge of propaganda surrounding the reformist administration of capitalism produces the
distractions, confusions, and purposeful misrepresentations that have so drastically hampered the
presentation of the socialist case. We are always being advised that socialism is for the distant future and
that ‘immediate’ needs must receive attention. Quite the contrary — the highest, most urgent, immediate
need of the working class is the establishment of socialism within the shortest possible time.”
Socialism uses the economy to benefit everyone
Douglas N. Rosenberg (prof. of sociology, Yale), The Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. by A.W. Frank, 1981,
p. 39
“But because human labor produces both the products and the profits that pay for the new equipment,
sociologists feel the wealth should not accumulate in the hands of a private individual who can own and
control the means of production. Rather, it should be held collectively and used to benefit all.”
Democratic socialism is preferable to democratic capitalism
Mortimer J. Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research; member, board of editors, Encyclopedia
Britannica), The Common Sense of Politics, 1971, p. 57-58
“The end of socialism is the establishment of social and economic equality, brought about by the abolition
of privileged classes and by the participation of all in the general social and economic welfare. As thus
specified, the socialist ideal is definitely cumulative with regard to the ideals aimed at by the two preceding
revolutions. Social and economic equality are not merely compatible with the political equality of universal
suffrage, but, upon closer examination, they will be seen to be indispensable to the fullest realization of
political democracy. The socialist democratic republic is an advance over the republic that is democratic
only in the narrowly political sense, by going still further in the direction of achieving the truly classless
society — the society in which an equality of all conditions obtains, not just an equality of political status
and opportunity, but also an equality of economic and of social conditions.”
A pro-socialist unrest simmers in the United States now
Manning Marble (prof. of political science and history, Univ. of Colorado), The Progressive, February 1993,
p. 20
“And inside the United States, that same spirit of political unrest which has erupted into socialist and labor
movements elsewhere simmers just below the surface of our political culture.”
Capitalism is on its last legs; now is the chance for U.S. socialism
Cliff Durand (prof. of philosophy, Morgan State Univ.), Monthly Review, December 1990, p. 17:
“What would give the peoples of the Third World a real chance to build socialism would be a move by the
U.S. toward becoming socialist, or even social democratic. That may sound utopian at this moment in
history. But it may well be that in its unrelenting efforts for a half century to exhaust socialist projects
elsewhere, U.S. capitalism has brought itself to the brink of exhaustion as well.”
Capitalism’s problems will lead to a socialist America
Socialist Action, June 1992, p. 6:
“Capitalism itself, as we can see, is paving the road toward the only way out for working people — toward
the Third American Revolution. A revolution which will establish a truly democratic order extending into
every nook and cranny of our society — in every workplace, in every community. Real democracy — not
dollar democracy — will lead to the abolition of all forms of social, economic, and political injustice. This,
in turn, will lead humanity toward creating a world socialist order based on production for human needs, not
profits.”
The solution is a revolutionary challenge to capitalism
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Gus Hall (chairman, U.S. Communist Party), People’s Weekly World, January 15, 1994
“Ultimately, the long-term solution has to be direct, revolutionary challenge to the capitalist system itself.
Because lasting solutions cannot be found with a system in crisis, socialism will inevitably be seen as the
only rational, viable, humane way to end class exploitation and oppression. Crime and violence,
inhumanity, competition, and dog-eat-dog individualism will be replaced by a sound system that allows the
full flowering of every individual’s potential: a socialist system.”
The socialist transformation is a peaceful revolution
World Socialist Review, Summer 1991, p. 11
“As socialists, we see the state as the executive committee of the ruling class that makes and breaks the laws
through the use of coercive power. While the state does control the armed forces, it does hold
somewhat-democratic elections which allows for the capture of state power by a socialist majority for the
purpose of ensuring a peaceful, democratic revolution. This revolution will dismantle the state with it
coercive powers, so that a truly democratic administration over things, not people, can be set up. Hence, the
establishment of a wageless, classless, stateless society known as socialism.”
Patching up capitalism is a futile exercise; embrace the transition to socialism
Samuel Leight (prof. of economics, Univ. of Arizona), The Futility of Reformism, 1984, p. 3
“An acceptance of capitalism is indicative of a political approach that must inevitably enmesh itself with the
reformation of the system and not with its abolition. Conversely, a genuine opposition to capitalism implies
an understanding and knowledge that should preclude any desire to embark on a reformist program,
recognizing the futility of such action, irrespective of the merits of the reforms contemplated.”
Poverty, education, and health care are solved only under socialism
Women and Revolution, Winter 1992, p. 47
“AIDS in America has rapidly become a disease of poverty. Black youth have been tossed on the slag heap
by a ruling class that sees them as a troublesome ‘surplus’ population. The only way out of the literal dead
end they face is a thorough-going socialist revolution that creates jobs, free equality, education, and health
care for all.”
Socialism ends all the social ills of American decay
The Socialist Republic, Winter 1992, p. 1
“Every single degrading aspect of capitalistic society in decay — wars for profit and plunder abroad, race
hatred dividing the working class, the slums we live in, the ruin of our environment, expensive or
non-existent medical care, inadequate education, the second-class status of women, drug abuse, riots, crime
— in short, every one of the brutal, callous, cruel, and desperate things which goes on every hour, every
minute in capitalist society grows out of exploitation. If we want to stop the degradation, we must end
exploitation. If we want to free ourselves from wage slavery, we must abolish the profit system. If we want
to live decent lives of freedom and fulfillment, we must build a socialist economic democracy.”
Only socialism can ensure survival
Political Affairs, November 1992, p. 26
“Today, as we are confronted with the threat of the self-destruction of the human race, this mission is more
acute than ever. Our survival is at stake. Therefore these ‘global problems,’ the great problems confronting
humanity, are political problems to be solved by the class question. The strength of the working class in the
class struggle will determine the solution to global problems.”
The perpetuation of capitalism dooms humanity
Internationalism, Spring 1992, p. 1
“Let there be no illusions: if we do not destroy capitalism, even without a new world war we will destroy
humanity, through an accumulation of local wars, epidemics, destruction of the environment, famines, and
other supposedly natural disasters.”
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Socialism is compatible with capitalism
Private-property capitalism fuels socialist distribution
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 66
“Human beings have natural needs that should be fulfilled., and they have innocuous wants that also
deserve fulfillment. A society that aims at nonegalitarian socialism serves basic human needs by securing
the right to a decent livelihood for all. Private-property capitalism, not state capitalism, is the effective
means for producing enough consumable wealth and providing a decent standard of living to satisfy all the
reasonable wants of its members.”
[Note: Adler means Communism or Marxist socialism by the reference to “state capitalism”]
Capitalism has now co-opted elements of socialism
Calvin B. Hoover (assistant prof. of economics, Duke University; founder of the field of comparative
economic systems), “Capitalism” in The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1968, Volume 2,
p. 301
“Capitalism, in all countries where it still exists, has come to contain elements formerly associated with
socialism. The further development of social security legislation; a continuation of redistribution of income
through legislative measures and labor union activities; and the development of institutions for the tripartite
economic planning by government officials, the management of labor unions, and corporate managers have
blurred the separation between socialism and capitalism.”
The United States now has a socialist economic system
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 21
“In this century, the private-property, free-enterprise, and market economies of the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Sweden were socialized. Another way of saying the same things is that they gradually
became, in the Twenties and Thirties, ‘welfare states.’”
Socialism is incompatible with capitalism
Markets work best when government steps back from intervention
Ralph Waldo Emerson (American transcendentalist philosopher, essayist, and poet, 1803-1882), “Wealth”
in Essays: The Conduct of Life, 1860, reprinted in The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Black’s Readers
Service: 1928, p. 345
“Wealth brings with it its own checks and balances. The basis of political economy is non-interference. The
only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you
snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
Reform delays the transition to socialism
The World Socialist Review, Summer 1991
“Capitalism, even with reforms, cannot function in the interests of the working class. Capitalism, by its
nature, requires continual ‘reforms’; yet reforms cannot alter the basic relationship of wage-labor and
capital and would not be considered to begin with, if their legislation would lead to disturbing this
relationship. Reforms, in other words, are designed to make capitalism more palatable to the working class
by holding out the false hope of an improvement in their condition. To whatever extent they afford
improvement, reforms benefit the capitalist class, not the working class.”
Legal reforms are inconsistent with socialism
Samuel Leight (prof. of economics, Univ. of Arizona), The Futility of Reformism, 1984, p. 8
“The law constitutes part of the composition of the capitalist system. It is not the cause of the problems, but
remains an important, essential segment of society’s superstructure. It serves the role of an enforcer that
helps maintain the barriers of private property rights, while creating the illusion of so-called fairness within
a class community that is asked to accept, without question, its rich and poor. It should not be confused with
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smiling policemen helping old ladies to cross the street. It should be recognized for what it is — a
conglomeration of enactments and judicial precedents deemed necessary by the state to maintain the status
quo.”
Communism is opposed to capitalism
Communism is the polar opposite of capitalism
Campbell R. McConnell (prof. of economics, Univ. of Nebraska), Economics, tenth edition, 1987, p. 32
“The polar alternative to pure capitalism is the command economy or communism, characterized by public
ownership of virtually all property resources and collective determination of economic decisions through
centralized economic planning. All major decisions concerning the level of resource use, the composition
and distribution of output, and the organization of production are determined by a central planning board.
Business firms are governmentally owned and produce according to state directives.”
Totalitarian communism is Marxist socialism
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 43
“State capitalism, or Marxist socialism, is totalitarian communism. Totalitarianism comes into existence
when all the governing and managing power of a society, both its political and economic power, in
concentrated in the centralized bureaucracy of the state.”
Communism is just one kind of socialism
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 80
“There are many forms of socialism; Marxist communism is only one of them. All forms of socialism tend
to concur in the ultimately economic goal, differing from one another in the means and methods by which
they seek to achieve that goal.”
Communism has been discredited
Communism has failed to establish a functional socialist economy
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 226
“By abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, totalitarian communism is the wrong
method for trying to achieve socialism as the end in view. The past five years have persuaded all of us,
including Soviets, that communism does not work at all as a means, or as the only means, for achieving
socialism.”
Communism is still viable
Communism merely took the wrong means — force — to establish socialism
Mortimer Adler (director, Institute for Philosophical Research), Haves Without Have-Nots, 1991, p. 65
“The verdict of history, looking back at the rise and fall of communism in the 20th century, will be that
communism chose the wrong means to establish socialism as a desirable goal.”
Prager’s LD Vault: Capitalism · Revised July 2010 · © 2010 John R. Prager