Not Just Survival; Not Just of the Fittest
Museum of Modern Art, NY
Opponents of private-property rights and the market mechanisms they give rise to routinely appeal to emotional reflexes in their condemnation of capitalism.
As Murray Rothbard described one of their favorite lines of attack,
The free-market economy, they charge, is "the rule of the jungle," where "survival of the fittest" is the law. Libertarians who advocate a free market are therefore called "Social Darwinists" who wish to exterminate the weak for the benefit of the strong.
While such assertions meet the low standards of proof used by those who wish to override market results with ones they will dictate, anything approaching close logical scrutiny reveals them as baseless. To view capitalism as "dog eat dog" social Darwinism, in which only the very fittest survive at everyone else's expense, is not only erroneous, but in several ways, the exact opposite of the truth. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (11)
They're erroneously assuming that a free economy is a zero-sum game rather than a matter of mutual self-interest and mutual benefit. While I readily concede that liberty to does not absolutely gaurantee survival, a free market provides the very mechanism by which people can survive, and not just an exclusive elite of rich people.
This assumption of "dog eat dog" also suffers from the false premise that morality cannot exist in the absence of a central authority, as if social cooperation is something that must be planned rather than a spontaneous order resulting from the free interactions of individuals.
Published: April 4, 2008 10:22 AM
Excellent piece. If only more people would read, comprehend and digest these basic yet fundamental principles.
Published: April 4, 2008 10:49 AM
Good article! I heard an idiot on Kudlow last night blaming “cowboy capitalism” under Bush for the mortgage fiasco. Of course, like every good socialist, his answer was more government regulation of the market.
Those who see free markets as “law of the jungle” or “cowboy capitalism” are slaves of poker economics in which they believe that the world’s wealth is limited and the government must oversee its distribution. In other words, they’re flat-earth economists stuck in the middle ages. Maybe I shouldn’t insult people who lived in the middle ages, though.
As the author points out, the real law of the jungle is in politics where the politicians fight like animals (maybe worse than animals, I don’t want to insult the animal kingdom) over government money and power. As Mises pointed out, if you want harmony, reduce the size of the government; then people have less to fight over.
Published: April 4, 2008 12:27 PM
Excellent article, Gary. Truth with a capital T! I wish every newspaper in the country would print this.
Those who fear what they cannot control, be they socialists or neocons, will stop at nothing to gain control. Morality and rationality take a back seat when fear rules the day.
Published: April 4, 2008 1:15 PM
Piffle! What a mediocre argument! This article makes me think 'what if' had it been another article, say about 'racism'. Next to no one nowadays admits to being 'pro-racist'. Therefore Socialist articles would show how Capitalism is 'racist' whereas Socialism is the answer. The Libertarianist article would tell how their position is the true 'non-racist' position whereas the Statist is perfectly racist.
This article inevitably brings up Social Darwinism especially because the Eugenics movement have been involved with forced abortions and sterilisations. Gee, how evil are those Statists then? Yet the article extols Economic Darwinism (since Capitalism is about economics, right?). Still at what point does Economic Darwinism not cross over to peoples' lives? No country has been truly Capitalist and has had some form of government and welfare. Which is to say there has been quite a deal of wealth transferred from the creators to those who had little to no help. Maybe in a growing society more and more people don't directly compete in a fierce battle. Yet can the same be said for a declining society? In a declining society with no interference with the free market prices rise across the board. Only those who have lots of money can buy necessities of life and, as such, net worth provides a good measurement as to who will/should survive for the next upswing of society and those who won't/shouldn't. Or, ultimately, could not a case for Economic Darwinism be one where Socialism engenders a dysgenic population because creativity and individual was suppressed whereas incompetence and slackerism rewarded?
Published: April 5, 2008 12:45 AM
Even in situations of decline, capitalism is far more humane than any form of socialism, with its inefficient "rationing" schemes.
Published: April 5, 2008 7:24 AM
In "Down With Primitivism: A Thorough Critique of Polanyi," Murray Rothbard writes,
Published: April 5, 2008 9:51 AM
TLWP: "Yet the article extols Economic Darwinism (since Capitalism is about economics, right?)."
I understood the opposite. Did we read the same article?
TLWP: "Maybe in a growing society more and more people don't directly compete in a fierce battle. Yet can the same be said for a declining society? In a declining society with no interference with the free market prices rise across the board."
What do you mean by a declining society? For the sake of argument, I'll take it to mean that the society is getting poorer. That won't happen in a capitalist society. So prices won't rise either. History and economics has proven that an unhampered free market produces enormous wealth because that's what humans naturally do when set free.
TLWP: "Only those who have lots of money can buy necessities of life..."
Have you ever visited a third world country? I have many, and the odd thing is how low the prices are, especially food. The wealthy are so few in number that they don't affect prices much. I guess such a thing could happen in an isolated area, with little trade between countries when a drought hits and famine sets in, such as happened frequently in the middle ages, and still happens in Africa.
TLWP: "...net worth provides a good measurement as to who will/should survive for the next upswing of society and those who won't/shouldn't."
The rich always survive better than the poor, but the real question is what makes you think there will be an upswing in society? You seem to think that downturns and upswings are forces or nature beyond the control of man. They're not. They're caused by man, specifically, the man in government. In a truely free market economy, such cycles would end, just as the Dutch through free markets were the first people in Europe to escape the frequent famine cycles.
Published: April 5, 2008 10:16 AM
When I clicked the first link, I noticed that the font changes size in various locations. This isn't the first article I've noticed this in since the website changed. It's probably something into which you're going to want to look.
Published: April 5, 2008 10:41 AM
Excellent article! To counter the comments of people such TLWP, we ought to avoid the appearance of utopian ideas - that if only the "free market" (in quotes because people don't always understand what it means) could be instituted that all problems would instantly disappear.
I find it simpler to boil questions of human interaction to voluntary or involuntary. To the extent that nature requires a certain level of sustenance to survive, survival of the fittest can never be fully refuted no matter what social arrangements are established. The question to be answered is whether we ought to sanction involuntary methods of instituted violence at any time. Most of us seems to respect the power of human collaboration. Revealing institutions of coercion for what they are may go a long way to reforming some opinions.
Published: April 7, 2008 11:38 AM
I think critics of capitalism misunderstand who is competing with who. Generally, business owners try to beat each other in the eye of the customer. But that's a headache only to the rich guy (if he is losing, that is). It's not a headache to the well-diversified small investor. And certainly not a headache to the employee. Employees don't really compete very hard for jobs in my experience, usually it's enough to do it well enough, you rarely need to do it better than the next guy.
Published: April 9, 2008 9:56 AM