Capitalism vs. Socialism: Part One
The argument of individualism versus the collective has been debated for the past century. Our social conscience tells us that the collective is ideal. The utopian idea of three meals a day for all, never a strained or stressed life for anyone, and the idea that war and aggression are barbaric and should be eliminated. Yet after decades of trying to shift to a collective mentality, we find that individualism is as strong as ever. How can this be?
The biggest fallacy of socialism is that everything is a social construct and therefore, can be altered or manipulated as they see fit. How, from birth, a child can be raised by teaching them the socialist ideal, and hope that they will grow up continuing the socialist/collectivist ideal. In many socialist societies, this has been done for generations and every instance, it has failed. Many of them tend to move towards more coercive/totalitarian methods to force people to believe in this ideal, which almost guarantees a general failure of this idea.
The reason why is because it is ingrained in us to be individualistic. Only through a mass populace of individualism can an indirect collectivism take place. By this I mean that the competition is strong enough to where everyone’s lifestyle improves manyfold while collectivist societies spin their tires or often times, go backwards. How does individualism work to improve the lives of others? It is very simple:
"A," tired of farming with a hoe, decides to make a machine to make it easier. He gets money, either from savings or by credit, and assembles a machine. He finds a market and sells it for a profit. "B," seeing the newfound wealth A is receiving, decides to make his own machine. He sells it and makes money himself. "C," sees the money but thinks that the product can be improved by using alternative materials. C uses new material and a new design that sells better than the others. A and B change and compete to deliver the best product for the lowest price.
A, B, and C were being individualistic. They were offering a service. The story behind it is that getting the parts and raw materials for assembly required a mining crew to get the material, workers to assemble it into parts, and salespeople (if not A, B, or C themselves) to sell the product. The people behind the scenes get work and get money from it that they wouldn’t otherwise. The buyers of these products benefit because now they have an easier time farming. That means better harvests and more free time to pursue other things. Everyone has won and this comes from the idea of competitive capitalism.
With socialism, there is no A, B, or C. There is the state. They are motivated by almost nothing, other than to provide at least subsistence. They have no need to design better products because the original model works fine, therefore, no more effort is needed. These models can be backwards and inefficiently produced because all levels of workers see few benefits in putting in the extra labor. They eat, have free services offered to them regardless of how they do. The drive and motivation now becomes simply just doing the bare minimum. Few people win with this arrangement but that is the reality of socialist societies. People need their upside, their reason for labor. If they are given everything, they will be less likely to work harder. It is given to them and is supposed to be there no matter what.
It is not a surprise that many socialist societies created famines that have yet to be touched by any other government structure or type. The idea of the collective discouraged the very people that it was supposed to help: the peasantry. Why? People like the idea of ownership. They will work harder if the land is theirs.
The Soviet Union proved this example when 1% of agricultural land was moved to private ownership. Eventually, this 1% of land provided 33% of the food needed for survival! This was after roughly two generations of socialist "new men" who were raised to be socialists. How could this be? Biology cannot overcome utopian ideals that require coercion. Its how societies flourished when they moved away from mercantilism and towards capitalism. As the individualistic ideals become strengthened, the better off everyone becomes from the very poor to the very rich.
Today, we might think of the collective as the ideal but it will never happen. The main reason is that people might like the collective but they like the individualism more. Due to this, we will never achieve a collectivist system unless by harsh, brute force, which will cause rebellion, not compliance.
April 1, 2007 at 6:15 pm
wow, heady stuff; summarize! this is waaaay too serious for this kind of forum and the kind of guys who read this stuff. That said, it was thoughtful, well written and made some great points. but, seriously, dude, who’d you write this stuff for!!?!?!?!?!