WHAT’S WRONG WITH CAPITALISM?

 Alan Dent

            It’s useful to the Left, and we should remind ourselves of it, that the world is not intelligible. The great advance in this regard was made by Isaac Newton who, having worked out the mathematics of what we call gravity, recognised what he’d discovered was absurd: “..so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.” Newton revolutionised the way we think by dismissing “hypotheses” ie speculative thinking. A theory had to be based on evidence and reasoning had to be inductive ie moving from specific observations to general theories. Deduction plays its role too ie,as in the famous example, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, Socrates is mortal. The important point is that Newton made us aware that between a cogent theory and understanding of the world, there is an infinite distance.  If we believe  a cogent theory gives us direct access to how the world works, we are deluded. Everyone used to believe the intelligible theory that the earth is the centre of the solar system, as they believed that species arrived one after another in a strict hierarchy. Freud elaborated a cogent theory of psychology but it may all be wrong. How is this an advantage for the Left?

            Like every other living thing, we are a product of evolution and natural selection. That’s what our cogent theory tells us and it has been tested many times. It stands until it can be shown not to fit the evidence. Every species has its endowed scope and limits. It’s part of the scope of rats that they have extraordinary olfactory powers, way beyond ours. Our brains are bigger, but we don’t have the same dedicated neurons for odour. On the other hand, language is our biological endowment and no other creature has it. Our capacities are biologically limited: we can’t run at a thousand miles an hour or live to be nine hundred years, but we can compose symphonies and solve equations.

            One of the features of our biological endowment, our nature, is that we choose how to act. That we do so in specific circumstances and under various influences, doesn’t alter the essential fact. How do we know we choose? How do we know we dream? We can’t prove it intellectually, even though neuroscientists can put electrodes in our brains and detect forms of activity associated with people saying they are dreaming. Dreaming is too fundamental an aspect of our experience to be denied. Even if philosophers were to argue we merely imagine we are dreaming, even if our very existence is imaginary, the experience remains beyond question. The same is true of choosing how to act, or free will as it gets called in philosophy.

            Our given nature establishes a moral barrier. For example, suppose a newborn was removed from all human contact and therefore deprived of the community necessary for linguistic development ( language, as Darwin says, is an instinct to acquire an art), that would be an insult to its nature. At a more basic level, respiration is part of our nature; to deprive someone of oxygen is equally such an insult. In the same way, as it is our nature to choose how to act, to deprive people of that choice is a moral outrage. We act in social circumstances, because being social is part of our endowment, and so must always avoid as far as possible limiting the free will of others; which doesn’t mean we should permit people to rape, murder or abuse, for the obvious reason ,which fits our argument :these are actions which offend against the right of others to choose how to act and are therefore by definition morally unacceptable.

            If we do not have a given nature, there is no moral boundary. If people are what they are entirely through their economic and social circumstances, why shouldn’t they be units of production, concentration camp inmates, gulag inmates, servants of big business or the State ? There is no means of recognising a moral boundary except by acceptance of a given nature. Of course, there is the argument that no moral boundary is necessary because some abstract force will deliver us to a moral end; but no moral end can be attained without making moral choices. It is in our nature to do so, and we do it ceaselessly.

            Our nature is given and immutable. It would be absurd to argue the human visual system, or endocrine system, or circulation of the blood, or vestibular system change with changing economic and social conditions. The same is true of our higher faculties. We have been linguistic since language emerged some hundred thousand years ago, no one knows for sure. Language in use changes every five minutes, but the language faculty doesn’t. If it did, we would be a different species. Part of our nature is that we can’t comprehend the world directly, as Isaac Newton demonstrated; we do so by elaborating cogent theories. We know by experience we have free will, but we can’t understand it directly. We have to elaborate a theory. Our nature is immutable, but our theories aren’t. They change all the time. Our theories aren’t reality, simply our attempt, within our cognitive limits, to explain reality. Usually, they are wrong. It may be they are bound to be because of our cognitive limitations.

            Right-wing theory proposes that biological differences become inevitable social distinctions, an attempt to reduce theory to nature. This is a mistake so disastrous it should be a permanent embarrassment to the Right. Skin colour is a biological difference but it implies no social distinction. When coloured people were denied basic rights in apartheid South Africa, that was not a direct result of the given difference in skin colour, but a moral and social choice. It was a distinction not a difference. The differences we don’t choose, the distinctions we do. Some people are taller than others, can run faster, have better vision, are more competent at maths and so on. None of these endowed differences imply any social distinction. Yet that is the essence of right-wing ideology. Entrepreneurs have special talents, presumably provided by nature and therefore have the right to command the work of others and to make themselves rich from it. The logical fallacy is patent. No doubt it’s true some people are better at organising economic entities than others, but that doesn’t imply a right to command their actions or to accumulate wealth. No biological difference implies any social distinction. The latter are chosen and are therefore moral questions.

            Because we have a given nature, there is a moral boundary which must be observed when we relate to others, if we are not going to insult that nature. How do we recognise the moral boundary? In the same way we recognise free will. It is such a fundamental facet of our nature, it can’t be denied, though intellectually we can’t comprehend it beyond cogent theory. Another way of saying this is we have biologically endowed moral intuition. If that weren’t so, how would we know rape is wrong, or assault or child pornography? It works at a much lower level: why do we respond negatively to the person who pushes to the front of the queue? The idea we have been taught all these responses is a as absurd as the notion children need to be taught to speak. Try to stop them. If we had to be taught all our moral responses, we’d be dead before we learned them. The context in which our moral intuition functions changes with the choices which produce history: simply the story of those choices over time; but the moral faculty doesn’t alter. In the 17^th century people had to make a moral choice, as well as a political one, about whether to support the cavaliers or the roundheads, but in doing so they were employing their endowed moral faculty, just as we do now when we choose between Farage or anarchism. Like the language faculty, only we have this. Other animals may display elements of moral choice but none has the fundamental characteristic of our faculty: the necessity of choosing continually.

            The biological differences between us are petty. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be enjoyed and celebrated. We can enjoy Bach’s music, Shakespeare’s plays and Isaac Newton’s logic. But the identity of our nature swamps the differences. Bach walked, ate, slept, drank, laughed, dreamt, grew old and died like everyone. Difference is exciting but it is no grounds for power because of our essential identity. This is where the right-wing mistake lies: biological differences provide a moral justification for power. That idea is without any rational or logical basis. There is no moral justification for what offends against our nature. It is everyone’s nature to choose how to act. Of course, there are circumstances in which we intervene: a blind person about to step out into traffic we would restrain; but that is obviously done for their safety not our pecuniary or power advantage. We restrain a child about to shove a metal object into the plug socket for the same reason; but our intuition works in these instances. We see the use of “power” here is benign.

            What’s wrong with capitalism? All systems which permit the actions of some to be controlled by the will of others are morally unacceptable (leaving aside what is explained in the previous paragraph). The fundamental relation of capitalism, employer and employee, offends against our nature because it submits the actions of one person to the will of another, and in many cases the actions of a large number to the will of a few. We can say with confidence we are endowed to choose like we are endowed to breathe. Because we have to choose along with others, we have to work out mechanisms for everyone to enjoy as much liberty of choice as possible, but the moral outrage of our economic system is its being founded on people having to renounce their freedom of action in order to eat.

            In the right-wing view, this is due to the generosity of the entrepreneurs who altruistically provide a means of life to the majority. From our experience we know we choose how to act, but do we know we are entrepreneurs? How can we, when by definition they are few? Whence then, the idea of the entrepreneur? Right-wing theory. However, right-wing theory, like any other, is not an understanding of reality. The theory needs to be tested. What evidence is there some are born to be entrepreneurs? None. That entrepreneurs exist is no proof they were born to be so, any more than the existence of strippers is proof nature destined them for the role. The problem for the Right is that if it admits its view of the world is theoretical, it undermines its own assumptions: the world is intelligible; we understand it; our view is the truth and it never changes. As we have seen, theory changes frequently.

            The Right likes to invoke an immutable human nature, but it reverse engineers this from prevailing social norms: millions are poor, thus it must be true that human nature equips some to be rich and others to struggle and so on. For something to qualify as human nature it must be, pathology aside, universal over time. Language, for example. It’s human nature to have two eyes, two lungs, one stomach, a pancreas, to sleep for about eight hours a day; but there is no reason to believe nature endowed some to have power over others. The Right needs to claim so as it has no other justification for power. It needs to reduce theory to nature, which takes us back to Isaac Newton. He worked out the maths but was still baffled by gravity. The theory is not comprehension of reality. Neither right-wing nor left-wing theory can be proven, but they can be shown to be wrong. The Left should spend more time and energy exposing the false thinking of the Right than on the impossible task of proving its own theory.

            According to right-wing theory, our given human nature not only permits but insists some must make use of others for their enrichment or power. Yet wherever such usage and power exist there is resistance. If right-wing theory were right, and nature endowed coloured people to be slaves, why would they rebel? If workers are endowed by nature to be made use of by employees, why do they form unions or embrace ideas of replacing employment? The use of some by others for economic benefit and the rule of power are of long endurance, but they have never been accepted by their victims. Can there be any explanation for this except that we have an instinct for freedom, that it, to choose how to act?

            It is advantageous to us to push the idea that the world is not directly intelligible but that we are constrained by our limited cognitive abilities to elaborate cogent theories and try to prove them wrong. The core of right-wing theory is that we are endowed by nature for inequality of wealth and power. Like any theory, this can’t be proven; but it can  very easily be disproven. Everywhere such inequality exists or has existed, it has to be or had to be protected by violence, imprisonment, denial of free speech or freedom of organisation, riot police, secret police, denial of democracy or, top of the bill, a propaganda system. If inequality corresponded to our nature, not of that would be required.  

Alan Dent.