Stop! Have you not raped the planet enough? Is it not time that you lifted your greedy foot from the head of the oppressed?
Put down that cup of steaming, hot coffee right now. Toss that doughnut away. Rip off your cotton T-shirt and consign it to the rubbish tip.
There. Doesn’t that feel so much better? And would you not like to feel this good all the time? Wouldn’t you just love to luxuriate in the warm, satisfying glow of self-righteousness? Tell me that would not like to tuck yourself up in your cosy bed at night and sleep the sleep of the just?
Well, now you can do all of those things. Yes, those guilty days and sleepless nights are at an end for you too can reach out for the ‘Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping’:
Along with the usual demons such as Nike and Gap, which are routinely accused of using sweatshops to keep production costs low, are other alleged villains. The fashion label French Connection is accused of having a “feeble” code on ensuring its clothes are not produced in sweatshops, while the Arcadia boss Philip Green, who owns Top Shop and BhS, has refused to join the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative.
Ah yes, the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative. Otherwise known as a ‘shakedown’
Bling Bling is a definite no-no unless aficionados can prove their diamonds have not come from war zones where human rights abuses have been perpetrated.
Like the people who buy this Guide can actually afford any sort of diamonds.
Perfume companies such as Calvin Klein are accused of continuing to test products on animals, while Greenpeace recommends avoiding Axminster carpets because of the chemicals contained in them.
Which could be very harmful if swallowed by members of the Carpetmunching Community.
Lovers of the Toblerone chocolate bar may want to think twice after discovering it is owned by the tobacco company formerly known as Philip Morris, now renamed Altria.
No chocolate?!! Damn. Just have to buy a packet of smokes instead.
And those who think they are doing their bit for global warming by shopping on the web rather than driving to an out-of-town mall should beware – AOL, CompuServe, Microsoft and Netscape Navigator are all major donors to George Bush, who infuriated campaigners by refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty on the environment.
Note that the moth-eaten lie about George Bush and Kyoto has now settled into leftie folklore.
The manual highlights some extreme groups, such as the fruitarians, who only eat uncooked foods that can be eaten without harming any organism, which limits them to fruits, berries and nuts.
Go on, have a spare rib. You know you want one. Go on, go on.
Another movement suggests that even the ethical shopping lobby is in the wrong because it encourages purchasing when in fact people should not be buying at all. With that in mind, 27 November has been declared national Buy Nothing Day…
Yes, but in order to find out about it you have to buy a copy of the The Independent and then…D’OH!
Its chunky boots and no-nonsense clothing are popular among public school-educated young men, but protesters claim Caterpillar sells bulldozers to Israel which could be used to bulldoze Palestinian homes.
No-nonsense. Sounds right to me.
Tiger Prawns. Prawn farms in Bangladesh and the Philippines drain villages of water, and pollute surrounding land. Human rights abuses including rape and murder have been inflicted on people forced from their homes to make way for man-made ponds.
Stop the genocidal Prawn Army now. No blood for shellfish.
Asda. Owned by Wal-Mart, which is notorious for anti-union activities in the US, selling guns and donating funds to the Republican Party.
I am pleased to note that the funds have been put to very good use.
Notice how much of this guff is qualified by terms like “accused” and “said by some” and “thought to be”. This ‘guide’ is just a tissue of po-mo smears, fabrications and wilful ignorance and it would be sinister were it not for the utterly po-faced earnestness with which is presented and which renders it achingly hilarious.
The supreme irony is that the publishers of this guide have concocted a near-perfect advertisement for the very system they purport to be against. The brilliance of capitalism is that it enables people to make all manner of weird, wacky, neurotic and irrational choices. They are not bound to follow any lead but their own and, if labouring under a guilty conscience, salvation is within their own gift. The market is about choices, though not necessarily sensible choices and hooray for that.
I, of course, will make different choices. Now, I wonder if Caterpillar make boots in my size?
The usual narcissistic, holier-than-thou drivel. But it is hard to find friends in some parts of the world if you don’t have an iBook and a pair of hemp trainers, so I do have some sympathy for the poor cretins.
I didn’t even know Caterpillar made boots. I have definitely got to look into acquiring a pair.
What? I can buy guns at ASDA, now?
Thank you, David.
Your well written commentary brought a much needed laugh at 0300 hours.
I love the part about the Fruitarians.
Huh. One man’s sweatshop is another man’s pretty decent job.
The egomania of these creeps never fails to amaze. Do they honestly think that say, a Brazilian or Indonesian working on “starvation” wages would be grateful if we went back to a pre-capitalist era where such folk had no chance whatever of even knowing what fridges, trainers or modern dental surgery were? What do these berks think would happen to folk in the “Third World” if the trading system was shut down? Do they think they’d all be studying for MBAs at Harvard?
But it is a waste of time trying to deply arguments about trade, the expanding wealth made possible by such. What matters is that you feel good.
Here is the translation of a letter I just received from Vietnam :
” My brother is still in Saigon. It has been 3 month he didn’t come back. He works now in a cap factory, 12 hours a day, six days a week. He’s tired but okay.”
I should add : he’s earning 400 000 dongs (less than 30$) a month, which is not enough to make a living in Saigon.
Four employees make 100 caps a day a day.
Those caps are selled 20 euros in Europe.
Make the computations !!!
As a liberal, I like to think this is due to communism. (corruption, liberties…, and so much more to say…)
But I don’t think it’s completly true.
Is capitalism moral ?
Well, it seems that it is not moral or immoral, it’s simply ammoral.
People are related to morality, not the economic system.
So, don’t count on the system to be moral for you.
I should add : he’s earning 400 000 dongs (less than 30$) a month, which is not enough to make a living in Saigon.
Four employees make 100 caps a day a day.
Those caps are selled 20 euros in Europe.
Make the computations !!!
I can’t make the computations. I only have your assertion that you can’t live on 400,000 dongs in Saigon. Perhaps if you gave us some idea what a meal costs, or a month’s lodging.
What the things he makes sells for in Europe is obviously meaningless. What his wage will buy in his homeland is the point. And if he can’t make it on what he’s earning, how is he coping and why does he stay?
I suspect I know the answer, having done a bit of farm labor myself. Why is it that the most heartbreaking, gruelling, physically demanding work in the world is considered better than making hats in a shop? I suppose because it suits the pastoral fantasies of those who believe such things.
Tom
Capitalism is profoundly moral.
No it isn’t.
Capitalism is neither moral nor immoral. It gives no ethical teaching one way or the other, and seeks only a return on the capital invested. If that return comes from selling life-saving medical equipment or surface-to-air missiles, what difference does it make? The money doesn’t care where it comes from, after all.
The individual capitalist may be “moral” or “immoral”. He may decide that he would prefer to make a profit from “moral” things and thus invest in the medical equipment company. Another may decide that the returns from Technodeath PLC are greater, and thus put his money there. The freedom of the capitalist market allows individuals to add a moral dimension to their investment decisions, but does not force them to do so.
“Moral” economic systems are those which say you cannot buy cocoa from black Africa at market rates because it is “immoral” to pay Africans less than you pay Europeans. Or which say that you cannot invest in Technodeath PLC because your investment will contribute to the deaths of noble freedom fighters, or terrorists, or militants (depending on whether you live in Guardiana, the real world, or Planet BBC).
Capitalism is completely amoral. It works efficiently in part because it IS amoral and so eliminates subjective ethical considerations from the equation, leaving them instead to the discretion of the individual investor.
EG
“No blood for shellfish”…. That nearly cost me a keyboard soaked in tea.
Superb as ever, Mr Carr!
“Moral” economic systems are those which say you cannot buy cocoa from black Africa at market rates because it is “immoral” to pay Africans less than you pay Europeans.
Please clarify. Are you saying that Africans are immoral for being willing to work for less than Europeans?
Another movement suggests that even the ethical shopping lobby is in the wrong because it encourages purchasing when in fact people should not be buying at all.
I love these guys! They would rather be living in Soviet Russia filling out soap requisition forms & being told there’s none left than going down to ASDA & buying some. It’s nice to know that there are still fundamentalist Communists about, believing that it’s possible to have a system without money where people only take what they “need”…
Of course not, and I’d have thought my language was clear enough. I’m saying that economic philosophies which pretend to a “moral” content tend to make this kind of distinction for the would-be investor or consumer, rather than allowing him to make up his own mind. Capitalism doesn’t do this (without being forced to, at any rate), and this is because capitalism is not a moral system – it’s a purely economic one.
ISTR speculation that the increasing use of automation to replace wage labour will in due course – a couple fo centuries, probably – lead to the redundancy of this wage labour, which will in turn lead to the irrelevance of money. In such a case you actually would have a system without money. Of course, it is capitalism that will achieve its own obsolescence in this scenario, by continually driving real prices down. If this is true, then Marx would be correct in stating that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, but of course he’d be correct for all the wrong reasons.
EG
S Weasel – excellent reply to Tom’s sodden post.
If that kid can’t live on $30 a month in Saigon, how is he, uh, living? And obviously what the caps sell for in Europe is completely irrelevant. Sounds as though the writer has an agenda.
I have seen malnourished children in India combing the gutters for a button, a disgarded sandal, a broken knife – anything they think they could sell or could be used in a home which survives on almost no money at all. To these stupid, self-righteous first worlders who want to close these factories down, or make the wages so unrealistic that the owners will close down voluntarily: this is what the poorest of the poor children who aren’t employed by Nike, Gap et al do all day. They are not in school taking trigonometry exams. They are malnourished and in the gutter. Wouldn’t you rather they were in the Nike factory contributing $30 a month, every month, to their families? This may even mean that one of the younger children will be freed up to actually go to school.
These hectoring, self-righteous interferers have no concept of the damage they are doing to the humblest and most defenceless people.
Great post from Euan Grey !!
To Weasel,
Small room with AC and bathroom : 1M
Rice with pork : 10 000 vnd
Small vegetable sup : 5 000 vnd
“Why is it that the most heartbreaking, gruelling, physically demanding work in the world is considered better than making hats in a shop?”
The point here is not the job (practical, physical, intellectual) but the profit of it.
Most part of the added value will be taken by the party. (a single one in Vietnam, whose name begins with c…), or more precisely, by the politics.
Eventually, they will share a small part with Eastern companies. Those only follow the rules fixed by the Vietnamese government… (rule n1 : money can make wonderful things in the administration)
Here appears the responsability principle : don’t expect from the system to be moral instead of you.
(some Wcompanies are doing wonderfull things in Vietnam, thanks to those…)
You have the choice…
ps : “I suppose because it suits the pastoral fantasies of those who believe such things.”
I don’t see the relationship. If it is for me, well, I am an atheist (don’t shoot!!), so, it is funny.
“These hectoring, self-righteous interferers have no concept of the damage they are doing to the humblest and most defenceless people.”
Nor do they care, or to be more precise, they care, but only about their own feelings. That is why the Left is so keen to assert that reality is a “construct” and the only thing that counts is power.
The Left is a cult of self-righteous immorality. It never has been, and probably never will be, the slightest bit interested in actually helping people.
The BBC is telling us all about “the scary religious right” at the moment – with all the intensity of a religion protesting at another sect.
I remember at university when you asked Leftists what they did at a practical level – as opposed to shouting and handing out leaflets – to help people the answer was always zero. When you asked the “scary right-wing Christians” they would invariably give you a list of charitable voluntary activities.
The Left is and always will be for adolescents. Asserting that you are on the Left is equivalent to hanging a notice on your neck saying “I am morally retarded please ignore me”.
To Verity :
India is not Vietnam..
India has starving problems and high illeteracy rate, which is not the case in Vietnam….
He’s living like the others, 5 or 6 in a tiny room, and he is not unhappy.(and he is not a kid !!!). He makes some extra money to pay school for his little brother and for his family.
Besides, I quite agree with your post.
If you just could be less agressive.
There is no reason in behing vehement like this, is there ? (except for those who suffers of personnal problems)
You’re opinion that capitalism is immoral has been refuted for all time here:
http://www.atlasshrugged.tv/speech.htm
tanstafl@gmail.com
Is the small room with AC and bathroom 1 metre? Otherwise, what does the M stand for?
What is Tom’s addled post all about? The kid has air conditioning? That seems pretty luxurious to me, given that there are plenty of people living in large, modern, first world SE Asian cities who make do with ceiling fans. Maybe if he gave up the ac, he could live on $30 a month. What is ‘small vegetable sup? A small vegetable supply? A small vegetable supplement to the pork and rice? A soup made of small vegetables? Is 5,000 vn a lot of money, or a real snip?
The point here is not the job (practical, physical, intellectual) but the profit of it. No, it’s not. The profit made by the factory owner is none of your business, unless you own shares in the company. Even if the owner’s name begins with c. It’s not the kid’s business either.
I should perhaps point out that I in no way disapprove of the amorality of the capitalist economic system, and furthermore that I am emphatically not a liberal in the American sense of the term. I am in fact a pragmatic and socially conservative minarchist, and I believe that free market capitalism is a good thing purely because it is the most efficient wealth creation mechanism so far discovered.
Morality is for philosophers, churches and one’s own conscience. It has no place in the capitalist market, but having said that the individual should be free to decide where he invests his money and from whom he buys the things he needs or wants. I think it is somewhat silly to pretend that capitalism is somehow inherently moral, or morally superior to any other given economic system.
One might as well ask how moral dynamite is. You can use it to extract minerals from the ground for the betterment of all, or you can use it to kill people. The dynamite itself has no morality, and the concept is meaningless. The moral dimension comes in how one uses the dynamite. So it is with capitalism – it can be used for purposes which one person may consider horrid and immoral, or it can be used for what he considers are good, moral and uplifting ends. Capitalism is completely neutral on the issue of morality, as for that matter are communism, socialism, “fair trade” capitalism, mercantilism, whatever. All these things are amoral, in the sense that morality is not a meaningful attribute of an economic system. How people use the system is where the morality comes in, and you can have immoral capitalists just as readily as you can have moral communists.
I don’t buy “fair trade” products, but that’s my choice. If others want to make a moral decision to buy them, then that is their business. The marketplace in which these choices exist should be free from moral considerations – it just needs to permit the freedom of choice (which is not in itself a moral issue outside religious argument on the matter of free will).
EG
Tom, many thanks. I’m aware that India is not Viet Nam. I’ve lived in both India and SE Asia and the people look entirely different.
Actually, India doesn’t have a huge illiteracy (illiteracy is spelled thusly) rate. Given that it has a population of 1.2bn, it is doing a very impressive job of giving almost all children at least a primary education and teaching them to read and write. But the parents of the poorest of the poor keep them out of school to trawl for things to sell or to hawk items from door to door or beg outside tourist hotels. (Raj – are you lurking? Can you help me out here? Or another Indian?)
Now you are telling us that this man is not unhappy. (I apologise for assuming him to be a child; a platform of ethical shoppers is the exploitation of children and I made an unwarranted assumption.) Yet his sister wrote to you and said he couldn’t live on $30 a month.
This is how a lot of labourers get their foothold on the ladder in industrialised/industrialising societies. The Irish who came over to Britain, and the United states, looking for work slept six or eight to a room. So did the Chinese who went to the US and worked as navvies on the railroads. So did the W Indian men who came over to Britain to do menial jobs just 40 years ago. It speaks wonders for human ambition that they endured it to better themselves and their families, and succeeded in doing so.
I really cannot see what this woman is complaining about.
EG: I believe that free market capitalism is a good thing purely because it is the most efficient wealth creation mechanism so far discovered.
Yuk. No doubt you would advocate slavery if you thought it had a good economic outcome.
Mm, tobacco-based chocolate. What a treat that would be.
And as for boots, get military boots. They seem to last forever, and are pretty comfy. (At least the Norwegian M77 type does/is.)
Tom, I suspect we’re having language problems that are keeping us from communicating clearly. As it is my native language we’re speaking, I’ll try to be politer about it.
If your complaint is that the government is taking too much of what he earns…well, yeah. Absolutely. All government is acquisitive, and when you’re in a very tight financial position and your government is of the particularly greedy kind, it’s infuriating. And this imposition by the government will surely slow economic development.
But the difference in wages between East and West are what’s bringing the jobs into the area despite the government’s behavior. It has to be a big difference to make it worth a company’s while to ship materials over and finished goods back and deal with things like training workers and language problems. If wages were closer, companies would rather hire locally (for all sorts of reasons).
As Verity said above, this kind of initial grinding experience is common to all peoples when they start moving from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. Conditions in the slums of New York City in 1900 were astounding.
And, relax — I’m an atheist, too (more or less). By “pastoral fantasies” I was referring to those people who believe working the land is the highest calling of humans, and fight to keep people subsistence farming and prevent them building factories and modernizing. See: Africa.
When slavery was economically efficient, it was used. It hasn’t been economically efficient in western economies for some time now. Slavery was, of course, common enough in the west up to the 19th century, and there is nothing in Judaeo-Christian moral teaching that says slavery is actually reprehensible. Parenthetically, one might note that the prime movers behind the abolitionist cause, at least in Britain, were largely Deists, freethinkers or atheists, and few were Christians. However, industrialisation made slavery inefficient, and it might also be noted that the first industrialised nation, Britain, was also the first one to abolish slavery. I suspect that had the world never industrialised we would still have slavery. Indeed, in some backward parts of the world, slavery is alive and well today. Popular opinion in the west today is that slavery is repugnant. This is, however, a relatively recent innovation, and for 90% of the west’s Christian history slavery was considered perfectly normal and reasonable.
I repeat the point I made earlier – economic systems do not have any morality, it is the use to which they are put that is judged moral or not. Furthemore, what is considered moral and immoral changes over time, often quite considerably.
EG
Verity:
“Given that it has a population of 1.2bn, it is doing a very impressive job of giving almost all children at least a primary education and teaching them to read and write.”
“it?
What do you mean “it”?
You sound like a Lefty claiming credit for the State for “giving” good things to the masses.
State education sector in India is no better than anywhere else (i.e. expensive, bureacratic and politicised). The boom in education in India is a product of cultural aspirations and a vibrant private educational sector (see James Tooley’s excellent piece in the Spectator a while back (Link))
Euan Grey
Utterly priceless.
Though you might have saved me the trouble of wading through your pompous ramblings when a simple “yes” would have sufficed.
I think Tom might also be making a point that the State is running a monopoly or near-monopoly or at the very least controlling entry to keep its own take above what the market would set otherwise. So long as they sell below the rate of other countries, the Party could continue making a nice profit off the populace for a long time.
If the market there was truly open, the wide cost to price difference would attract competitors into the area; prices would come down as they fought for market share and inevitably wages would be forced up as they fought for employees.
I doubt we are talking about anything like what we would call a free-market.
Nonetheless, the same effects will happen. You can slow something down by State interference, but you can’t really stop it.
Julius – “a lefty”!!! You really know how to put the knife in!!
When I said “it”, yes, I was referring to the government because governments. I don’t think they generously “give” education to anyone, but they can make sending your child to school compulsory. Now only the poorest of the poor – I hate to keep using this phrase; I’m not trying to be emotive – of no fixed abode keep their children out of school for the purposes of contributing to the family income.
I absolutely agree with you that the boom in education is fuelled by cultural and monetary aspirations, as is right and proper. Thank you for the link. Yes, it’s a good piece. But for the people whose parents can’t afford one pound fifty a month, learning to read and write in a state school is better than not learning to read and write.
I was defending India’s educational achievements against his accusation that India has a huge illiterary problem.
Tim,
That is an absolutely absurd assumption. Euan points out that capitalism is an economic system that is seperate from moral or philosophical issues. He supports that system as the best one to be employed. He in no way implies that that is all that is necessay in life.
Philosophy and moral values, personal property rights, rights to freedom, etc. are the things that keep just anything that makes profit from being engaged in or supported. Capitalism happens to be the most effective system to use in a philosophy that involves individual freedom and right to property. It is a tool and is employed as such. Tools are amoral, and as such they are not all someone believes in. I use a phillips screwdriver for phillips head screws, that does not have anything to do with what I believe or support.
Your argument is a poor one anyway, slavery never has a better economic outcome. Compare the overall wealth of free nations versus feudalistic ones. For that matter compare the wealth of the North and South at the time of the US Civil war. The South lost largely because it was not economically able to compete with the industrialized north. The stagnation of technology and wealth is historicaly obvious in any slave based society.
Euan,
A terrific series of posts, well argued. I suspect you and I might differ on many matters of philosophy, and be at different points on the political spectrum even (from some of your previous posts, I’m guessing this), but this type of clear analysis, devoid of the ad hominem spitefulness and name-calling that so often passes for argument here, is Samizdata at its best.
Persevere with the reason, against the unreasoning hordes. It is appreciated!
“Capitalism happens to be the most effective system to use in a philosophy that involves individual freedom and right to property. It is a tool and is employed as such. Tools are amoral…”
I don’t think of capitalism as a “system”. Capitalism isn’t merely the best choice out of a range of systems where liberty is respected, it is the only one.
In other words capitalism is simply synonymous with liberty. You don’t think liberty is a moral “system”?
“Your argument is a poor one anyway, slavery never has a better economic outcome.”
Hahahaha! When people have views like you and EG, thank god for that!
Euan:
“economic systems do not have any morality”
Was communism moral? Is socialism moral? Is corporate fascism moral? Was mercantilism moral? Of course not. They were (and are) all systems built upon violence, force and political power. The free market is unique in needing none of these things. It may not be moral, but all the alternatives are most certainly immoral.
No, but neither are they immoral. They are amoral. Morality is not a meaningful attribute of an economic system. As limberwulf said above, an economic system is only a tool. One does not question the ethical rectitude of a soldering iron because it is meaningless to do so.
I don’t agree with this. The free market does actually need to be enforced, and any enforcement of anything does ultimately need the ability to resort to force and violence.
Companies will not (willingly) freely compete with each other in a perfect market, because it is disadvantageous to them in the shorter term. Since companies are run by people, the shorter term is pretty much as far as they will look. Furthermore, the average lifespan of a corporation is of the order of 10 to 15 years, so they are not long-term operations anyway.
Left to themselves in an entirely unregulated market, companies will tend to form cartels and oligopolies, because that is the easiest way to short term profit – and companies exist to make a profit. It is far easier to set prices in collusion with your competitors than it is to actually compete in an open market, so this is what tends to happen. Note the use of the word “tends” – it doesn’t always happen. The richer the potential profits and the greater the cashflow in the specific market in question, the more likely it is to happen.
This may be theoretically incorrect, at least in the view of some here, but in practical reality this is what happens. Adam Smith knew this perfectly well. Whilst it is of course true that it is better to take a chance on a smaller share of a bigger pie, the short term outlook is that it is better to carve up the smaller pie to guarantee a bigger share. Note the difference between “chance” and “guarantee”. This is why we have anti-trust regulation, laws on fraud, food and drug purity laws, etc. It’s not to stifle the market, but to make sure a free and open market keeps existing. This is not to say that the regulation isn’t frequently excessive, but you do need some regulation.
It is true that less violence is needed to enforce a free market than to enforce a communistic system, but this is a difference of degree rather than kind. I think somewhere in between lies the case of fascism, which in economic terms is private enterprise regulated for the benefit of the state – corporatism, essentially. In purely economic terms (please note that phrase), I suspect there is little fundamental difference between state corporatism and the way a completely unregulated market would end up, at least in the case of the larger companies and richer markets. For small scale stuff this doesn’t apply, because the benefits aren’t worth it.
Define “moral” and “immoral” – and do it in an absolute way such that the definitions are always true and would always have been true in history. You cannot, because morality changes over time. What is “moral” or “immoral” now was not necessarily so in the past, and will not necessarily be so in the future.
EG
Euan,
Christians weren’t opposed to slavery because the Bible actually permits slavery. Provided that the slave isn’t treated any worse than the owner would expect to be treated. For an example of “permissible” servitude, look at early Massachusetts.
Of course, the plantation owners in the South forgot about the non-exploitative bit…
Ken
PS I am NOT, and would NOT have been in favour of slavery. However, I think the point I have raised is certainly worth thinking about…
Euan Gray:
“Was communism moral? Is socialism moral?
No, but neither are they immoral.”
I am not terribly interested in moral philosophy, but if communism was not immoral, then “morality” is an empty word. It is hard to think of anything more immoral then the enslaving of millions of people for over half a century.
“Since companies are run by people, the shorter term is pretty much as far as they will look.”
And your point is?
“Left to themselves in an entirely unregulated market, companies will tend to form cartels and oligopolies, because that is the easiest way to short term profit”
A fairy tale, and a damaging one at that; but this thread is not the place to debate it.
I concur with Limberwulf; slavery, and the equating of land with wealth which was linked to it, were factors in the defeat of the Confederacy. That’s right, I have long argued that they lost because they had an economy built on slavery. Slavery becomes increasingly unprofitable as tasks become more complex; complex tasks create greater wealth. In particular, manufacturing and metal working were less common than in the North, and by the end of the war this meant a difference in firepower. Note that the decisive battle was fought at Gettysburg rather than perhaps at Mechanicsburg (a better strategic target) because Federal patrols spotted Rebel scroungers who were reportedly looking for shoes.
There is also a fascinating book, now out of print which argues that the deciding factor in the ACW was a lack of salt. Drying salt and collecting it from tidal basins apparently was not labor intensive enough to produce a good return on an investment in slaves, and there was no good business model for switching slaves in and out of another endeavor. At the same time slavery produced a culture in which such work was beneath free men. End result, little salt, which, at the time meant little preserved meat, which meant soldiers less fit for combat.
Once again, marvelous post from Euan Gray.
( I would like to be able to express as clearly as you do in English…. thanks to Weasel for being comprehensive)
“Was communism moral? Is socialism moral?
No, but neither are they immoral. They are amoral. Morality is not a meaningful attribute of an economic system. As limberwulf said above, an economic system is only a tool.”
Communists are “ridiculous” because they confuse morality (which is an individual notion) with the economic system.
Their morality becomes then the definition of which is good.(the permitted) Everything which goes against this, is therefore evil, and needs to be eradicated.
(the forbidden). The individuals haven’t the choice of their own morality.
I think that’s what we call totalitarism.
Warnings : in this case, being ridiculous can kill innocents…
Adam Smith didn’t think so, and real-world experience tends to suggest he was right.
Yes, and then you get the willingness to kill the immoral dissenters for the sake of the moral purity of the rest of the people. The experience of Soviet communism is an example of what you get when you try to turn an economic theory into a moral absolute.
I don’t like or trust ideology. It’s history is lamentably full of death, misery and oppression. Equating an economic theory with morality is, IMO, dangerous as well as stupid – and it makes no difference if it is capitalism or communism, the principle is wrong. The economic system is just a tool, and it is I think a mistake to elevate it beyond that status.
Capitalism is a neat and efficient way to create wealth. With only a little light regulation it works very well indeed, and ought to be encouraged. But outside the sphere of wealth generation, it is irrelevant. Again, it is a tool, nothing more. And it is a tool for generating wealth, not for doing anything else.
EG
Euan Gray:
“But outside the sphere of wealth generation, [capitalism] is irrelevant”
Read Hayek. He at least understood that economic and social liberty are inseparable.
I think it is almost self-evidently clear that no economic system of itself can be immoral. The problem comes in the way it is implemented. Admittedly, this depends on how you define the term “economic”. The exploitation of labour, especially in the form of slavery, is immoral. This, though, is dependent upon semantics. I would say that these economic systems are amoral because their economics are not necessarily punitive; maybe ridiculous, misguided, or not optimal, but not punitive. The use of force that the systems have used to prop themselves up has been. That is entirely different from the economics themselves.
It is a serious error to define an economic system as something which floats in the air, disconnected from the daily lives that, and moral context within which, humans live.
Frequent reference is made to “how things actually work”, but the most fundamental aspect of human reality is that the economic activities they engage in constitute a major part of their lives.
To postulate the belief that the way these activities are conducted is without moral context is to deny that human life itself exists within a moral context.
All the disembodied talk about “economic systems” as if these activities existed in some sort of vacuum, unconnected with the everyday minutiae of human life is deeply fallacious. There is nothing complex about economic activity—it is what the vast majority of humans spend most of their time doing day in and day out.
There is nothing esoteric about an economic system. It is the framework within which these activities occur. It is the intertwined relationships between human beings.
There are two basic economic interactions between people. In the first, one person trades a pint of milk to another in exchange for a sack of apples. In the other, one person smashes the other over the head, takes the milk, and gives nothing in return except pain and injury.
All the fancy economic theories are but variations on these themes. Which interaction is moral, and which is immoral? If you do not know the answer, or claim there is no difference in moral value between the two, then I would state you have forfeited any claim to moral coherence for the sake of sophistry.
I agree that, like a screwdriver, capitalism, communism, etc., as long as they are merely ideas in a book and not in use, have no inherent morality or immorality. The analogy breaks down, however, once in use.
It is true that economic systems are tools, but they are tools that have social interaction as their components, much like a screwdriver is composed of steel, plastic or wood. You cannot really say steel is inherently moral or immoral, but any social interaction may be judged on a moral basis, or not, depending on the individual.
Social interaction is precisely what morals deal with. Since economic systems are composed of social interactions, once one is put into use, it may, and arguably should, be assessed on a moral basis.
“economic systems do not have any morality”
I’m sure this topic is dead but I have to add….
When you look at an economic system solely by the theoretical equations, no, you are right morality cannot be applied to it anymore than morality can be applied to General Relativity. But economic systems are not merely numbers, equations, dollars. They are HUMAN BEINGS interacting with each other. Therefore, an economic system CAN be moral or immoral when you look at it as the mechanisms of human interaction (freedom versus coercion).
Simply put, Capitalism is the only moral system because it is VOLUNTARY and as is (somewhat) self-evident, humans have the right to excercise their FREE WILL and interact on a voluntary basis. By violating or accepting this premise the individual players will be immoral or moral, as you pointed out. But the overall system, as applies to every individual at once, is either moral or immoral.
Morality is absolute. Either you respect man’s right to act voluntarily (moral) or you do not (immoral). This is absolute in any context, no matter how many people are willing to accept it and respect it of others — free will is not contextual. You have to admit that. If you don’t then don’t complain when someone brutalizes and enslaves you.
It is precisely the notion that morality is transiegnt or non-existent that results in brutality and misery.
Phew!
Live naked! In a cave! Eating sticks and leaves!
And you can sleep the sleep of the just… or the cold… or something.
Honestly, the mind boggles.
“Stop! Have you not raped the planet enough? Is it not time that you lifted your greedy foot from the head of the oppressed?”
Also, as an individual who believes in strong moral values (his own, of course), I have to say that making fun of these people is surely God’s will, and David Carr is carrying it out beautifully.
Thanks for the product endorsements!
While I agree that capitalism, communism or any system designed to manage scarcity is morally neutral, I have to point out that the practical application of these systems have profoundly moral consequences.
The Marxist economic system was never designed to operate in individual countries. Lenin and Trotsky fully believed the Bolshevik Revolution would inspire a worldwide revolution. When to their incredulity the workers of the world did not unite to bring this about they had to invent a “communism in one state” model. This was based on coercion and bore it’s bitterest fruits in its bastard progeny Stalinism, the immorality of which I hope is beyond argument.
Capitalism is indeed a mechanism (and in my view the most efficient one) for wealth creation. However once an individual has generated that wealth.. what then?
Should that wealth be allowed to be subject to extortion or theft; should I fear that I may be murdered out of jealousy or greed? So follow property rights and prohibitions against ‘unjust’ killings. And so follows rule of law and something to enforce it. Then if my chief or king or government asks me to give him/her/it some of my wealth to help pay for this shouldn’t that gift give me the right to comment on how that wealth is spent. So follows Magna Carta and democracy. Again i hope the morality of all these are beyond argument.
I am fully aware that I have simplified many strands of socio-political-economic theory to make a point. But to further illustrate my argument I would point out that there has never been a mature capitalist economy without rule of law or democracy or a communist one that did not actively coerce its populace into remaining part of it
This is true, at least to the extent that when one is permitted the other generally follows.
Then I ask you the same question I asked Julius, and which he either ignored or didn’t see – define moral and immoral in non-modish terms.
No it isn’t. It changes over time, and people have different ideas of what is and is not moral. You can say an economic system is “moral”, but essentially all you are saying is “I think it is right”. Outside religion, there is NO absolute morality.
This is precisely the point I have been making all along.
EG
> Insufferably Sanctimonious
Doesn’t that pretty much describe the Left in general?
What a great thread. It certainly has helped to weed out the moral relativists among us.
According to these people, communism, fascism and even just plain old slavery are morally equivalent to systems based on individual liberty, property rights, and the principle of consent. Wow!
The problem with these people is that they are impossible to pin down. Ask them a straight question such as “would you advocate slavery if it were economically efficient?” and they firstly pontificate and obfuscate by saying that slavery *isn’t* efficient (whew! thank heaven for that!), and secondly, that morality changes over time anyway (the question wasn’t asking for a history of other people’s perceptions of morality, an answer which simply invokes moral relativism, it was a direct question about what *you* think).
According to these people, liberty and freedom (which as I’ve said, are simply synonymous with capitalism, properly defined), are merely “tools”. To those people I might ask, tools to what end? And whose ends?
Some might say this is all mere semantics. It is not. Veryretired seems to be the only one who understands this correctly: economic “systems” are not disembodied activities operating in a vacuum, the economic “system” is either consistent with liberty, or it isn’t. The “implementation” of the system simply follows from the identification of rights embedded within it.
One might be able to get around all this evasion and wrong-headed confusion about “systems” and “implementation of systems”, by simply asking, “do you think murder is immoral?” (which is actually all that my original question about slavery was asking). If someone’s answer to that is yes, murder is immoral, then their error in identifying capitalism as amoral is simply an intellectual error. No problem. But if their answer is that murder is moral or amoral, well, then there’s nothing much left to say is there. Best to just steer clear of such people.
As for religion, all I can say is that anyone who thinks that morality, if it exists at all, comes from some fictitious ghost in the sky, and who thinks that there is more to one’s existence than one’s life itself, is bound to place a very low value on human life. It is hardly surprising that such people will think that liberty has no moral context.
To explore further the morality or otherwise of economic systems, one might consider the moral arguments made for some of them.
Some people argue that capitalism, because it only functions efficiently when the rule of law is enforced, and because it requires that the freedom to invest or not is given to the investor, is morally superior in that it values and indeed requires freedom and equity. In general, in the west, freedom and equity are considered good things, but not everyone agrees to the same extent.
Others argue that free trade is morally wrong, or at least ambiguous, because they consider that it deprives people in developing countries of the riches enjoyed by the developed nations. Most here would probably agree that this is a dubious notion at best, and betrays a lack of understanding of how the capitalist market works, but nevertheless it is a moral viewpoint.
Still others argue that the private ownership of stock is morally wrong because it leads to inequality in wealth, and therefore that the means of production and ownership should be held in common by all the people for their common advantage. In practice, this doesn’t work very well on anything but a small scale, but it is still a moral point of view.
It is true enough to say that some people support capitalism because they want to enrich themselves and to hell with anyone else. Others support restricted trade because they have an anti-capitalist agenda. Still others support communism because they like the idea of controlling everything (as long as they are the ones doing the controlling, of course). But having said that, some people support these things for what we might call good reasons. The capitalist because he thinks that free trade ultimately enriches everyone, the fair trader because he truly wants to improve the lot of people in poor countries, the communist because he genuinely thinks it is fairer to enable all people to benefit at once from everyone’s efforts without exploitation.
If three people support three different systems for three different and genuine moral reasons, then in the absence of a moral absolute (and outside religion there are NO moral absolutes) which one is right?
Capitalism is a simple theory that works pretty well. Fair trade is a slightly more complex system that doesn’t work as well as its proponents think and has numerous unintended consequences. Communism is a deeply flawed theory which has so far never worked in practice, and probably never will as long as money exists. In the west, freedom is prized and therefore capitalism is supported because it also prizes freedom. But for as long as there are people living in squalor somewhere in the world, fair trade will have a moral appeal to some people. As long as there are rich people and poor people, communism will hold an emotional and moral appeal to some.
Does the morality then come down to “it works, therefore it is moral?” Maybe so, but that is pragmatism, not morality, and it is incorrect to pretend otherwise. The moral advantage of one system over the other depends entirely and solely on one’s personal moral viewpoint.
To consider religious morality very briefly, the Christian moral teaching, the moral basis for western civilisation, does not condemn slavery and it does condemn usury and undue devotion to money. One cannot, it says, worship both God and wealth. It also says that the love of money is the root of evil, and that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. One can argue, and people do, that unrestricted capitalism is an un-Christian system. Is it then immoral?
The system itself is amoral. What you do with it is where the morality comes in.
EG
Tim Sturm:
“all I can say is that anyone who thinks that morality, if it exists at all, comes from some fictitious ghost in the sky, and who thinks that there is more to one’s existence than one’s life itself, is bound to place a very low value on human life. It is hardly surprising that such people will think that liberty has no moral context.”
This is wrong. As someone who does believe that morality is related to God, I do not place a low value on human life. On the contrary, as a Christian I believe that every life has value: “Love your neighbour as yourself” is a statement about the value of human life. And unlike Euan I do think that liberty has a moral context as free will is a gift from God.
I dont want to turn this into a discussion about religion, but it was important to correct Tim’s assertion.
Euan:
True morality, summed up by Christ as “Love God, love your neighbour” does not change. But our impressions, interpretations, applications and understandings do.
And while I dont know about Britain, in the US most of those who opposed slavery were Christians.
In a truly unregulated market monopolies cannot survive and anti trust laws are unnecessary. Most long term monopolies have been maintained, and often started, by governments. Utilities, postal services etc. Where true free markets exist there is always someone willing to undercut the major player.
For example Standard Oil who through producing kerosene cheaper than anyone else managed to get to the remarkable position at one time of controlling 90% of the worlds refineries.
For a short while the consumer could not lose because no one else could produce kerosene at such a low price. But the seeds of Standard Oil’s downfall were sprouting before the anti trust legislation that the government sponsored because, despite Rockefeller’s attempts to set up cartels so he could raise prices, there was always someone else who was prepared to break the agreement and undercut him.
Real capitalism, without any government interference, is self regulating provided that laws against coercion, violence and protecting property rights, are effectively enforced.
What the “bleeding hearts” never seem to understand is that it is the oppressive, corrupt and over regulated governments of many third world countries that keep their people poor. It is NOT the fault of people living in the industrialised countries. Like anyone, we want to buy at the cheapest price.
Also trying to influence these countries through political pressure, embargos, fair trade etc etc rarely succeed and often have unfortunate and unforseen consequences. Regime change hardly ever happens as a result of external forces (unless one actually invades and that is rarely a satisfactory solution). The oppressed have to free themselves.
It is possible for an economic system to have a moral component if implementing that system necessarily requires someone to commit moral or immoral activity.
Morality, by definition, requires at least some minimum standards. For example, universality, internal consistency, avoiding causing suffering unnecessary to the achievement of “moral” goals, etc etc. Bear in mind that a society’s commonly accepted behaviour is not the same as a “morality”. The term “morality” has a specific meaning, which is why certain standards must be met.
Thus if one can devise an economic system which requires action that contradicts the minimum standards of all moralities, then the notion that economic systems are amoral is refuted.
It is not hard to think of examples. The economic system enforced in the Congo by King Leopold of Belgium paid people for the number of severed native hands they could collect. Even the King didn’t pretend that this was anything other than immoral. People trafficking in young children for sexual exploitation in brothels do not think what they are doing is anything other than immoral. Do Euan Gray, Ken, and dunderheid think such economic systems are morally neutral? Does any human being who has ever lived think so?
VeryRetired:
“All the fancy economic theories are but variations on these themes. Which interaction is moral, and which is immoral? If you do not know the answer, or claim there is no difference in moral value between the two, then I would state you have forfeited any claim to moral coherence for the sake of sophistry.”
Perhaps for the first time, we are in complete agreement.
If you are paying 1 million dong per month for a small room with a bathroom and air conditioning, I suggest changing hotels. I paid about half that amount for a large room with a large bathroom, air conditioning, a television (all three government channels!), a refrigerator and a sitting area. Try getting off the main avenues. I was on Vo Van Tan street.
You overpaid for the rice and pork also. I often fed 5 or 6 of my in-laws for 10,000 dong, including tea.
Euan Gray:
Your argument that economic systems cannot be judged moral or immoral because all morality, outside religion, comes down to “I think this is right / wrong,” can be applied to everything, including the purposes to which economic systems can be put.
If it is true, then we are no longer able to say anything is immoral or moral, including genocide, because all right and wrong comes down to opinion. So, someone can say “I believe genocide is wrong.” And someone else, like a group committing genocide, can disagree and say, “Au contrare, I think it is right.” And who’s to say which is correct?
If you want to argue that, it’s a valid theory. But then you are making your argument about economics backwards. Your argument should proceed: There is no morality, therefore we cannot judge economic systems to be either moral or immoral.
And then this doesn’t follow at all. How can you say we cannot judge an economic system right or wrong because morality is just opinion, and then say that what you do with that system can be judged moral or immoral?
This lot is just copying the Rainbow Coalition who have been doing the “guilt shakedown” on American companies for many years. The pathetic thing is that companies still fall for his load of all tosh.
Jesse’s latest weeze is that the latest election was all based on race and that no blacks voted for Bush (in fact his vote went up amoung blacks). He called the Republicans a “white” party…which, of course, is news to Amb Alan Keyes, Condi Rice, that Rep from Maryland and Colin Powell.
This whole thread of arguments largely misses the point and falls into so many semantic traps and category errors I hardly know where to start.
Capitalism is not a moral system, it is an economic system in which moral behaviour is possible. Socialism is an economic and political system in which the inherently immoral use of force to prevent a vast range of civil interactions and free associations in integral to the system.
So in essence moral behaviour is simply not permitted under socialism because moral choice is subordinated to political direction, reducing behaviour to a series of politically derived forumae which are imposed by force.
You can be an immoral capitalist thief or you can be a moral capitalist whose word is his bond… capitalism itself does not speak to either way. However you cannot be a moral socialist outside the context of a voluntary collective (such as a kibbutz or similar voluntary collectivist commune), because the system by which socialism is imposed by force on others without prior concent is inherently immoral.
There is no point in continuing to pound this subject any further. I find the moral relatavism so overriding in some of the posts to be an unfortunate result of an educatonal system that tells unknowing children that right and wrong are merely matters of opinion, and I am not surprized at its appearence here.
The demand that morality be defined for the development of a discussion on a comments thread before it can proceed is disingenuous at best. The question I asked has been answered.
I will end with this final comment.
If one believes that various cultural or societal structures, or systems, are morally neutral, and morality is but a current fashion of what people approve and disaprove, then one must accept the unfortunate consequence of that view, i.e., that if one had a medical problem which came up in a small town with only two doctors, Dr. Pasteur or Dr. Mengele, you would have no moral standard upon which to base a decision as to which to patronize.
I would.
VeryRetired
Like you I am finished with this subject. But not before a couple of bouquets: to you and Perry. Both of you crystal clear and inciteful as always.
Thanks.
The simple fact is that these examples like that of slavery are not economic systems. These are not ways of managing at fundamental level the problem of scarcity. In fact these examples are merely forms of capitalism where the “capital” has taken abhorrent and terrifying forms. This is because everything that can have a tradeable value between 2 or more people is “capital”. Thus just as one does not consider the use of cattle to create wealth as a economic system distinct from capatalism in general, neither should we unfortunately with slavery.
So if capitalism in practice can take such immoral forms and yet as shown on my previous post be directly and indirectly responsible for such moral “goods” as rule of law and democracy to debate its morality or immorality is meaningless. It is both and neither
In other words in a self contained and wholly voluntary kibbutz or commune it is perfectly possibe to be a moral socialist. So if in these circumstances if it is possible to be moral and a communist how can one argue communism is by its very nature immoral. In practical terms communism’s fundamental and devestating flaw is that it is impossible to find outside the limited examples above, societies where every single individual willingly and happily seeks no more wealth and comfort than his neighbour. If these societies ever existed the economic theory of communism could have profoundly good moral consequences. But when communist economic theory is applied without this absolute and unanimous consensus history has shown what terrible “immoral” consequences can occur
In both the cases of Capitalism and Communism it is impossible to operate those economic systems without moral consequences. However the success of one and the failure of another is not due to either theories inherent morality or immorality. Rather it is due to the simple and banal fact that one is a better, more realistic, more pragmatic system than the other.
I more or less subscribe to the Christian morality, in a sort of unorthodox almost-Orthodox way, if that makes any sense. Indeed, free will is not something humanity makes a conscious choice about, whether it is something that evolved or something that was granted by God.
I personally think liberty is a good thing, and slavery a bad thing. My point is not whether these things are morally good or not, but whether a given economic system can be considered moral or otherwise. And to my mind, the answer is no – the question is meaningless. It is the end to which the tool is put that can be considered moral or not, not the tool itself. You can build communism on slavery, which could be considered immoral. You can also build capitalism on slavery, which would be just as immoral. But you can build either with consent, which would not be considered immoral.
Which is exactly what I was saying. The system is amoral, what you do with it can be moral or immoral. Capitalism does not necessarily make one moral, any more than communism necessarily makes one immoral.
But within it, you can. Again, it is not the system that is moral or immoral, it is what you do with it. Given consent, there is nothing inherently immoral about communism. Given a lack of consent, there is nothing inherently moral about capitalism. Communism won’t work without the consent. Capitalism won’t work without the consent, either, but some of its mechanisms reinforce consent.
EG
The fact that such a weak, soul-salving book could spark such debate among you all means that it is good for something, if not its intended purpose.
However, you have to ask yourself:
Is it printed on 100% recycled paper?
Is murder moral?
Of course not. Murder is immoral killing. Any killing which is morally justified (e.g. self defense, for one) isn’t moral.
Did they print the material on paper? Did whoever printed the material get paid? Did someone actually give currency for the ink?
Fortunately for Mr. Carr being utterly stupid is both amoral and universal.
An article on the insufferably sanctimonious written by
the insufferably smug.
Smirking, facile, facetious bollocks.