Richard Wolff: "Pure" Capitalism Is Pure Fantasy

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"Pure" Capitalism Is Pure Fantasy

Thursday, 27 June 2013 15:24
By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed


As the global economic meltdown drags most of us through its sixth year, one kind of explanation is heard often and from several sides, including the libertarian right. The crisis since 2007, we are told, is not capitalism's fault or flaw. That is because capitalism is not the system we now have; it is not the systemic problem the world now faces. If only we could "get back to" something like "pure" capitalism, that would dissolve our economic woes.

Policy prescriptions flow smoothly from this explanation. We must end the bad economic system we now have. "Crony," "gangster," "casino" and "monopoly" are among the adjectives designating today's actually existing - impure - capitalism. It fails to achieve all the progress and prosperity that a pure capitalism would deliver. Those who reason in this way then denounce one or another of the demons they believe to have rendered capitalism impure. Those demons - external and antithetical to pure capitalism - include big government, monopolies, the Federal Reserve, welfare, taxation, labor unions, etc. Their intrusions interfere with pure capitalism and block its intrinsic efficiency. They prevent economic justice: how pure capitalism would allocate incomes according to each person's and each enterprise's contributions to economic output. Those demonic outside institutions distort economic rewards to favor "special interests." And so the economy and society suffer.

By celebrating pure capitalism, such arguments can criticize the economic crisis without sounding anticapitalist. They reaffirm their loyalty to capitalism in the abstract even as they attack its concrete here and now. The trick is to identify the present system and its enduring, deep crisis as anything but capitalist.

This is fantasy. Impure capitalism is the only kind we have ever had. For example, government always accompanied capitalism. Government often served a rising capitalist class to undermine, defeat and destroy other classes. In the French Revolution, the rising class of merchants, bankers and small capitalists captured state power and used it to undermine French feudalism. American revolutionaries took over government from Britain and used it to facilitate the growth of capitalism in the United States in countless ways. Those include the wars on native people and the taking of their land; the enabling and often also building of crucial infrastructure (harbors, canals, railways, roadways and airports); the Civil War and its aftermath; the postal system; the judicial system (police and courts to adjudicate disputes); modern public education and so on. Capitalism without government is a fantasy. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17256-pure-capitalism-is-pure-fantasy