Global Capitalism: Curing Oppression and Poverty
Capitalist Nations Are the Wealthiest in the World
Andrew Bernstein (www.andrewbernstein.net) is the author of The Capitalist Manifesto (University Press of America, forthcoming next year).
Although leftist agitators continue to protest global capitalism, they overlook the key points in the debate. Capitalism has been instituted on three continents—in western Europe, North America, and Asia. These nations—England, France, the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, and the others—are among the world’s wealthiest countries with per capita incomes in the range of at least $20,000–$30,000 annually. Additionally, even the prosperity of a so-called “socialist” country like Sweden is based on significant elements of capitalism, including Volvo, Saab, and Ericsson, as well as countless private small shops.
But capitalism is not merely the system of prosperity; fundamentally, it is the system of individual rights and freedom. The inalienable rights of individuals are largely protected in these countries. For example, their citizens enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, and of intellectual expression. They have freedom of religion. Similarly, they possess economic freedom, including the right to own property—their own home or farm—to start their own businesses, and to seek profit. These countries hold free elections, and their governments are subject to the rule of law.
By contrast, the noncapitalist nations of the world, past and present, lack both freedom and prosperity. For example, in feudal Europe, before the capitalist revolution of the late eighteenth century, serfdom and its legacy dominated. Peasants were often legally tied to the land and possessed few rights. Commoners, more broadly, were subordinated to the king, aristocrats, and Church, and free thought was punished. Voltaire, for example, was imprisoned for his revolutionary ideas, as was Diderot. Galileo was threatened with torture and Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for supporting scientific theories that clashed with the teachings of the Church. The minds and rights of individual citizens were thoroughly suppressed.
What were the practical results of such repression? Poverty, famine, and disease were endemic during the feudal era. The bubonic plague wiped out virtually one third of Europe’s population during the fourteenth century, and recurred incessantly into the eighteenth. Famine killed sizable portions of the population in Scotland, Finland, and Ireland—and caused misery and death even in such relatively prosperous countries as England and France. According to one economist, economic growth was nonexistent during the centuries 500–1500—and per capita income rose by merely 0.1 percent per year in the years 1500–1700. In 1500 the European per capita GDP was roughly $215; in 1700, roughly $265.1
The world today is filled with countries more brutally repressed even than those of feudal Europe. In Sudan, for example, the Islamic government arms Arab militias that murder, rape, and enslave the black Christian population. There are currently tens of thousands of black slaves in Sudan. In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu tribesmen slaughtered 800,000 innocent victims, mostly members of the Tutsi tribe. In communist North Korea, political prisoners are enslaved, starved, and used for target practice by prison guards and troops.2
The practical results of such oppression are the same as in feudal Europe. In Sudan per capita GDP is $296; in Rwanda it is $227. In North Korea, where nighttime satellite photographs reveal utter darkness because the country lacks electricity, conditions are just as grim. Despite massive aid from the capitalist West, tens of thousands of human beings starved to death there in recent years.3
What must be recognized is that freedom is a necessary condition of wealth. Cures for disease, economic growth, agricultural and industrial revolutions—the means by which human beings rise above deprivation and misery—are products of the rational mind operating under conditions of political-economic freedom. When a James Watt, an Edward Jenner, a Cyrus McCormick, an Alexander Graham Bell, or a Thomas Edison exists under an oppressive regime, whether feudal, communist, fascist or theocratic, his intelligence and revolutionary thinking make him a threat and he is suppressed. But when such a genius lives under capitalism, he is free to create a perfected steam engine, a treatment for smallpox, a reaper, a telephone, and an electric lighting system, respectively.
Liberation from Bondage
The freedom of the capitalist system liberates creative human brainpower from bondage to the state. The ensuing advances in science, medicine, agriculture, technology, and industry generate vast increases in living standards and life expectancies. It is not surprising that during the capitalist epoch, roughly 1820 to the present, the free countries of western Europe and North America saw their total economic output increase 60 times, and per capita income grow to be 13 times what it had been previously.4
Even minimal capitalist elements have already produced salutary results in communist Vietnam. The annual minimum wage there is $134; but Nike, which owns Vietnamese factories—misleadingly dubbed “sweatshops” by anti-capitalist ideologues—pays an average salary of $670, which is double the country’s per capita GDP.5 Western companies in the poorest countries pay their workers, on average, twice what the corresponding native firms pay. Most important, workers voluntarily seek such employment, and unlike the repressive governments, these private companies have no legal right to initiate force against them.
Capitalism is freedom—and freedom leads to prosperity. The moral is the practical. On the other hand, statism is oppression—and oppression leads to destitution. The immoral is the impractical. After two centuries of capitalism, 80 years of socialism, and a millennium of feudalism, the contest is over and the scores are on the board. The alternatives open to human beings are stark: freedom and prosperity or statism and misery. We have only to make our choice.
Notes
- Angus Maddison, Phases of Capitalist Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 4–7.
- Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 547–64; Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), pp. 199–223; Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Genocide,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2001. See also www.iabolish.com/.
- Gerald O’Driscoll et al., The 2001 Index of Economic Freedom (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal, 2001), pp. 229–30, 317–18, 341–42. See also Courtois.
- Maddison. Also see his essay “Poor Until 1820,” Wall Street Journal, January 11, 1999.
- Johan Norberg, In Defense of Global Capitatlism (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2003), p. 219.
Comment by abdo allah on 31 March 2009:
While the G20 summit in London aims to continue the hegemony and oppression of Capitalism, Hizb ut-Tahrir convenes two press conferences on Friday to save the world from Capitalism and its crises
Since 1999, G20 summits have taken place and formulated financial plans for the world – plans that brought crises and calamities to human beings and the world. They claim that through these summits they will save the world even thought it is inconceivable that the wolf would save its own prey! The leaders of the G20 will meet in London, the spiritual capital of Capitalism and its corporations, on Thursday 2nd April 2009. Instead of formulating a plan to rescue the world from the financial cirsis, they only devise solutions that aim to increase the wealth of the rich capitalists even if that further impoverishs the poor.
Meanwhile, Hizb ut-Tahrir, the global Islamic political party, has convened two emergency press conferences in Beirut and London on Friday 3rd April 2009, a day after the London G20 summit. At both press conferences, Hizb ut-Tahrir will launch its new book “Towards a Tranquil Safe World under the Shade of the Economic System of Islam”. The book examines the global economic crisis, explains its reality, critically examines its symptoms and exposes the flaws in the solutions proposed by the flagbearers of Capitalism. The book concludes by illustrating the correct solutions to the economic crisis from Islam – solutions that are from the Creator of the universe and the Creator of mankind, who knows what is best for His creation.
(أَلا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ).
“Should not He Who has created know? And He is the Most Kind and Courteous (to His slaves) All-Aware (of everything).” [TMQ Al-Mulk: 67]
At the press conferences, there will be speeches in Arabic and English outlining Hizb ut-Tahrir’s solutions to the economic crisis and its response to the London G20 summit. There will be an opportunity for open discussion and debate and both press conferences will be broadcast live on the Internet.
The press conferences will take place in Beirut and London on Friday 8th Rabi` al-Akhar 1430 Hijri / 3rd April 2009
BEIRUT
10:30 a.m. Medina and Beirut time.
As-Safir Hotel, al-Rawsha, Beirut, Lebanon
LONDON
6:30 p.m. BST (8:30 p.m. Medina and Beirut time).
The London Continental Hotel, 88 Gloucester Place, London, W1U 6HR,
United Kingdom
The live Internet broadcast will be streamed on the Hizb ut-Tahrir Media Office website: http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.info
It can also be followed on the following websites:
Video: http://kstreamvideo.blogspot.com/
Audio: http://kstreamaudio.blogspot.com/
For more information please contact us on:
Beirut: +961(0)3927056
London: +44(0)7074192400
Comment by Vincent Perillo on 7 October 2010:
At the base of all this idealogical thought on social economic politics is this: What do we do with the poor in a purely capitalists society? History has show us that social dawinism is what has been the theory in practice from all of your about mentioned countries.
The United States was great at the beginning because it had two elements of a working capitalism fully alive; that is freedom to
exercise capatlism and the support of the government to equal access to the market.
No matter how hard tea party people try to “get back” to that time
it fails to approach the core reasons for the United States past
successes in a whole and healthy society engaged in a capitlist society; answering the question of what to do with the poor underemployed and those who have failed to run the race without stumbling and falling for which the Keysians offered some relief in this model here in the U.S..
Welfare was a substitute or alternative for those falling down in this economic experiment and those tea party types are not honest
in defining the situation. They have no plan for the poor even if they speak out against decades of welfare living. I want them to
put forth a better plan than Keynes did before I converse with them and include there ideas in my world.
There is a gamble to this action and that is that without me they might form a government where I will be led to the “poor house” or in practicality the “mental hospitals” as one disgruntled member of society!
Comment by Vincent Perillo on 7 October 2010:
Comment by Vincent Perillo on 7 October 2010:
At the base of all this ideological thought on social economic politics is this: What do we do with the poor in a purely capitalists society? History has show us that social Darwinism is what has been the theory in practice from all of your above mentioned countries. The United States was great at the beginning because it had two elements of a working capitalism fully alive; that is freedom to exercise capitalism and the support of the government to equal access to the market.
No matter how hard tea party people try to “get back” to that time it fails to approach the core reasons for the United States past successes in a whole and healthy society engaged in a capitalist society; answering the question of what to do with the poor underemployed and those who have failed to run the race without stumbling and falling for which the Keynesians offered some relief in this model here in the U.S.
Welfare was a substitute or alternative for those falling down in this economic experiment and those tea party types are not honest in defining the situation. They have no plan for the poor even if they speak out against decades of welfare living. I want them to put forth a better plan than Keynes did before I converse with them and include their ideas in my world.
There is a gamble to this action and that is that without me they might form a government where I will be led to the “poor house” or in practicality the “mental hospitals” as one disgruntled member of society!
Comment by Samuel on 10 March 2011:
You’re an idiot. Capitalism is the cause of poverty. Freedom for you is free makrets and free markets will always become more and nore centralized. Cultivate yourself and read Marx Capital and then try to undersand the dialtectic he is trying to present. He never had an axe to grind with Capitalism. He only shows scientifically it’s internal contraqdiction and one of them is that Capitalism creates wealth for the few and wage labor and poverty for huge majority. Your idea of liberty and freedom are “Bourgeois freedom” look it up and cultivate yourself!
Comment by Anonymous on 10 March 2011:
Vincent said “The United States was great at the beginning because it had two elements of a working capitalism fully alive; that is freedom to exercise capitalism and the support of the government to equal access to the market.”
What?? You mean to say that the state doesn’t support capitalism today in 2011? Wow are you ever misinformed. Tea partiers then and now are Bourgeois free marketeers. What people don’t realize is that taxes are in integral part of free market capitlism. It is a transfer of wealth from the working poor to the capitalists and free marketeers. Marx was very critical of taxes. Again people are very miseducated about Marx. If they would read Capital and take a class to help guide them through it they would understand who is really exploiting them. Government and State operate to keep free markets elive that is their function. Any resistence against the accumulation of wealth, which is the main cause of poverty, was won by the workibg poor. Welfare, pubic housing, collective bargaining are all bandaids for the damage that Capitalism causes. Capitalism will happily turn the US into a third world nation. Most EVERY third world nation is capitalist and more so than the US. Third World means that they have been exploited by Western capitalists. They are NOT underdeveloped they are MAL developed.
Obama is the most free market Neo-Liberal capitalist the US has ever seen. He has approved the largest military budget in the history of the earth. THis is public information, don’t believe me. His aim is to privatize healthcare not to socialize it. He rejected univeral single payer option. It’s out of the question for him. So, Beware all you liberals! Obama is a Neo-Liberal in disguise as a “moderate” democrat. Dems or Reps, nothing can change within the framework of destructive,exploitative and inequitable capitalism. Join us Socialists for real change!
Comment by anonymous on 10 March 2011:
andre bernstein my mouth is just hanging open at your ignoramce. I don’t know where to begin to disabuse you of your capitalist education/indoctrination. just unbelievable.
Comment by Kenneth on 10 March 2011:
Any free thinking, rights and equality that we have today, however insufficient, were obtained in a struggle against wealth and Capitalism and the State/Government which protects,abets and expands it.
Comment by Kenneth on 10 March 2011:
Do you know the definition of Fascism? It is the fusion of State and Corporate entities.
If you were truly “rational” you would know this
Comment by Carolyn on 10 March 2011:
To the contrary, everything claimed in this article about Capitalism should be said about Socialism. Socialism cures “opression and poverty” not Capitalism. Nice try.
Comment by Kenneth on 10 March 2011:
Everything claimed about Capitalism in this article is true only of Socialism. Socialism cures opression and poverty not capitalism. Capitalism forced the expulsion of people from their own plots of land and means of subsistence to urban centers of industry to work as wage labor in order to enrich private property owners. These private property owners are the new kings and lords.
Nice try, epic fail.
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