Welcome to Part 2 where we will look at Capitalism vs Socialism proper. For reference, here are the books I read to get me up to speed on what Dinesh D’Souza calls the “New Civil Cold War”:
- The Hidden History of the The American Dream by Thom Hartmann
- The Hidden History of Democracy by Thom Hartman
- The Hidden History of Neoliberalism by Thom Hartman
- Exploitation as Domination—What Makes Capitalism Unjust by Nicholas Vrousalis
- Socialism 101 by Kathleen Sears
- Multisolving by Elizabeth Sawin
- United States of Socialism by Dinesh D’Souza
Vrousalis on Capitalism
Philosopher Nicholas Vrousalis provides us with an interesting continuum:
Feudalism <==> Shopkeeping—Homemade Crafts & Goods <==> Capitalism
Capitalism, Vrousalis argues, is the successor to Feudalism with Shopkeeping acting as the bridge between the two. Interestingly, Vrousalis argues that the gig economy of today (e.g., driving for Uber, or creating YouTube content) rather than being some sort of progression is in fact a regression toward Feudalism. Here’s Vrousalis’ model in a nutshell:
- Feudalism is a “shackle economy” where we see workers shackled to the land of a landlord
- The “legal fiction” of contract law was established
- Contracts allowed shackle workers to move to the “cage economy” of small shops
- Improvements in production methods (e.g., textile loom technology) took hold
- Technological improvements allowed shop owners to expand their shops into factories
Interestingly, Vrousalis suggests that “China and India are now undergoing this shackles-to-cage transition.”Taking a Marxist view, Vrousalis only sees two classes:
- The capitalist or s/he who owns the means of production
- The worker who provides labor
In talking about the economic concept of “division of labour,” Vrousalis writes, “Under slavery, feudalism, and the patriarchy … the claim maker [of labour] receives a share of the claim recipient’s surplus product—the product in excess of what she needs to subsist—by directly controlling her productive purposiveness.” Let’s unpack this a bit.
Much of Vrousalis’ model depends on his idea of “purposiveness.” The online version of the Miriam-Webster dictionary defines purposiveness as “having or tending to fulfill a conscious purpose or design.” It would appear that purposiveness is another way of referring to one’s purpose in life, one’s goals in life. According to Vrousalis’ model, the feudal landlord, the owner of a small shop, the industrialist, the capitalist, the patriarchy more generally, all do the same thing: they subsume the purposiveness of the worker. Again, turning to Miriam-Webster, subsume is defined as “to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive.” In other words, the feudalist, shop owner, capitalist, patriarch (e.g., the Strict Father using Lakoff’s frame), etc., all place their purpose in life, their goals in life, above those who provide work or labor. This is why Vrousalis frames all relationships between capitalist and worker as being one of domination and exploitation. Let’s unpack Vrousalis’ model a bit more.
Vrousalis provides the following example (which I’m paraphrasing). Let’s assume that the capitalist pays $10.00 an hour at his/her place of business. Let’s assume that it costs the worker four hours a week or $40.00 to subsist on. The worker is willing to give up four hours of her/his purposiveness per week in order to subsist. Beyond that, the worker wishes to pursue his/her purposiveness, not that of the capitalist whose purposiveness is to produce widgets to sell at a profit.
In Vrousalis’ model, any hours worked beyond those needed to cover subsistence represents those hours where the capitalist is stealing (i.e., subsuming) purposiveness from the worker. Vrousalis further makes the point that, to the capitalist, any wages paid beyond a level that affords subsistence for the worker, should be considered as a tax or burden on his/her business. In essence, beyond the subsistence level, the worker is freeloading, living off of the efforts of the capitalist.
All of this helps me to understand why Nurturant Parents (socialists) argue in favor of a “living wage” while Strict Fathers (capitalists) argue that such an inflated labor cost is an unfair burden or tax on their businesses. This also helps me understand that, yes, if we love our children, the minimum wage should be $25.00 as Scott Galloway suggests in his TED Talk (as talked about in my previous post series). But it also sheds light on how capitalists view Trust & Safety Systems talked about in Part 1. Outside of their own good will and brand value, Trust & Safety Systems represent a tax, a burden. Capitalists wish to run their engines flat out without any governor (i.e., the government) or Trust & Safety Systems.[1] In essence, they wish to be pure middle brain without concern for the lower or upper brains. Man O Man, that’s not going to work. In my opinion, this sheds light on both the current focus on “work-life balance” and workers wishing to work from home for part or all of the week. Both are salvos across the bow of capitalists wishing to subsume purposiveness. Could this be a move from a cage economy to, for lack of a better frame, a “free range economy”? Let’s look at things from the capitalist’s point of view.
D’Souza on Socialism
In his book United States of Socialism, Dinesh D’Souza presents the model of a parking attendant at one of Donald Trump’s luxury high-rise hotels in a section of his book entitled Who Gets the Surplus? referring to the extra productivity that Vrousalis argues is always being stolen from the worker. Here’s the parking attendant model.
- Parking attendant earns $100.00 per day
- Parking attendant parks on average 100 cars per day
- It costs $30.00 to park a car overnight
- The hotel earns $3,000.00 per day
D’Souza, using a Vrousalisian frame for a moment, says, “So, from the point of view of the parking guy, he’s being cheated.” D’Souza continues, “Why? Because he’s the one doing the work. … Why does he get so little?” D’Souza now launches into a description of where the other $2,900.00 goes. In doing so he brings up the Marxist argument (one that Vrousalis promulgates) that there is a “deep conflict” between capitalist and worker that results in “thievery and exploitation” (as described above). In contrast, the capitalist does not see conflict, thievery, nor exploitation. Interestingly, D’Souza argues that marxists view capitalists as “lifelong leeches” stealing purposiveness from workers. Socialism then tries to redress this thievery and exploitation. This is Robin Hood stealing from the rich to feed the poor. Here’s D’Souza’s capitalist view:
- The capitalist or entrepreneur is the one who comes up “with a big new idea for a venture.”
- The capitalist is a visionary in that s/he envisions “a new product, a new landscape, a new way of doing things or a new way of living.”
- The capitalist then has to figure out how to bring this visionary landscape into the real world.
- Economist Joseph Schumpeter[2] calls the entrepreneur a Mann Der Tat or “man of action” (i.e., he is the engine that makes things work).
- The capitalist takes on all of the risk; the worker takes on very little if any risk.
“The entrepreneur gets paid only after the profit is calculated—that is to say, after everyone else is paid—and if the venture fails, he does not get paid at all,” alerts D’Souza. That’s where the other $2,900.00 goes. Interestingly—in an ironic twist—the worker only thinks of him or herself while the entrepreneur has to think about the entire business system. Here’s another interesting twist: to be a visionary, one has to be able to access the Executive Functions of the upper brain where we find such things as imagining the future, planning, modeling, and running what if scenarios.
So, yes, the entrepreneur does access the upper brain. However, they do so in limited and specific ways. They use what neurobiologist Louis Cozolino calls “splinter cognition.” Splinter cognition could be looked at as a form of being a savant. Steve Jobs had it in spades. Bill Gates, yes. Heck, the tech giants of today all have it. This is why David Anderegg wrote the 2007 book entitled Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them. Or why in his 2004 book The Essential Difference psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen argues that the male autistic brain will be (or, more accurately, is) the brain of the future. As Cozolino describes in his work, the middle brain can in essence “hijack” the resources of the upper brain for its own purposes. As a result, someone could be a visionary (EF skill) while at the same time lack empathy (another EF skill). This too describes the sociopath.
As uncomfortable as this notion may be, capitalists (Strict Fathers) believe that some are born with, for lack of a better term, God-given talents. Even Vrousalis admits that he “cannot be LeBron James.” Capitalists need the engine, the vision, that gifted individuals bring. If allowed, they will run their lives, their businesses, flat out or “balls out” referring to the centrifugal governor of early steam engines. Socialists strive to “level things out” so that everyone prospers, gifts or no gifts. There’s no right answer. We need both. They need each other. And apparently the Founding Fathers felt the same as we will see in the next section.
The Founding Fathers (Some Strict, Some Nurturant)
In his book Hidden History of American Democracy, Thom Hartmann reveals that the Founding Fathers were concerned with the lower brain, the middle brain, and the upper brain. Equally, they were concerned with all three brain centers working together coherently, so much so that this vision of a coherent system guided them as they forged a new nation.
The Upper Brain (the Executive Functions)—Hartmann tells us that “one great universal impulse that animates humans working toward self-governance the world over is freedom: an escape from bonds laid on one people by another, by the powerful over the powerless, by the rich over the poor.” Apparently the Founding Fathers wished to “bake” this idea of a “great universal impulse” into the new nation. To do so, they turned to a source that is often overlooked: the Indians, the Native Americans. Apparently many of the Founding Fathers were enamored of Indian life. As Hartmann puts it, “Stories spread of these extraordinary people—these Indians—who governed themselves without prisons, chains, or even police.” These stories so engaged the minds of the Founding Fathers that they began to believe that “egalitarian self-governance might not just be possible but might even be the ‘natural’ or ‘original state’ of humankind” (quoting Hartmann).
The Middle Brain (the Capitalist)—Hartmann talks about Tench Coxe, a businessman who influenced the thinking of the Founding Fathers. “Tench Coxe was a friend of many of the Founders of America,” writes Hartmann. He continues, “A small businessman who never achieved the prominence of a John Hancock, he was nonetheless constantly active in the politics of the day. … One of Coxe’s biggest concerns was that the newly emerging American industries would be wiped out by foreign competition.” According to Hartmann, Coxe “agitated for a national commercial system, starting with a system of tariffs to protect American products and workers.” Coxe’s idea was to support the new nation by creating a stream of income the headwaters of which would be located outside America. Today the Trump administration’s plan of implementing tariff’s would fit this model.
The Lower Brain (Trust & Safety Systems)—In his book entitled United States of Socialism, Dinesh D’Souza points to “Lincoln’s 1859 lecture on discoveries and inventions, in which Lincoln attributed much of the economic success of his country to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution.” D’Souza writes:
Among the few express powers granted to Congress, the framers charged it “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
So, yes, the scientific citation economy I spoke of previously was written into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers. “Before the advent of the patent system,” writes D’Souza, “Lincoln says, ‘any man might instantly use what another had invented.’ ” Continuing to quote Lincoln from his lecture, D’Souza tells us that the patent system (and I would argue the citation economy too) “secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention, and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.” The patent and citation systems are two forms of Trust & Safety Systems. And, again, the creation and maintenance of these systems is a Constitutional matter.
All this to say that the Founding Fathers were concerned with creating, balancing, and maintaining all three forms of mind from lower to middle to upper. They were concerned with creating an overall coherent system that worked well together using a system of checks and balances.
Socialism: An Ideology In Search of the Right Class of People
Let me wrap up by pointing out a common criticism often leveled against socialism: Socialism is an ideology in search of the right class of people to make it happen. Dinesh D’Souza tells us that there have been over twenty attempts at creating a socialist government that have crashed and burned. On the extreme end are the two colossal failures of Hitler and his concentration camps, and Pol Pot and his killing fields.
D’Souza suggests that the civil rights marches of the 1960s here in the U.S. were about creating a class of people centered on the concept of “rights.” Today D’Souza argues that the DEI movement is about trying, once again, to create a class that will work using the concepts of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” D’Souza admits that Norway may be a lone example of a class of people that works. However, D’Souza argues that this “right class of people” is an anomaly. “If an American leftist visited … Norway,” D’Souza writes, “he or she would find a country that is 90 percent white, with over 80 percent of its population being ethnic Norwegians of Germanic descent and another 10 percent being whites from other European regions.” D’Souza gives us this bottom line: “If diversity is the American left’s mantra for America, there’s not a whole lot of that in Norway, or in most of the Scandinavian countries.”
Again, D’Souza draws our attention to the fact that the DEI movement is about creating a class that will make socialism work. Looked at another way, DEI is about creating a class that (finally) has the ability to undermine the capitalist class, and, in doing so, bring about the Marxist promise of a revolution. Upper brain in effect attacking middle brain is not how an effective coherent system is created. How do we create this mythical overall coherent system? The Founding Fathers put a lot of effort into solving this problem. And I think they did a pretty decent job of it. However, this constitutionally mandated coherent system—one that depends on checks and balances—appears to be falling apart at the seams.
In my next post I’ll talk about what are known as Human Cognitive Maps. After all, ideologies like capitalism and socialism are in fact human cultural cognitive maps. Maybe looking at Human Cognitive Maps: Past, Present, and Future—the title to a 1996 book by Ervin Laszlo et al.—might shed some light on what is going on today. And I cannot end without saying that at its heart Bowlby’s theory of attachment is about how early safe and secure attachment relationships lead (if all goes well) to well-functioning Inner Working Cognitive Maps or Models. Yes, cognitive maps exist on a continuum that connects the individual to the social milieu. See you next time.
Notes:
[1] – I should point out that capitalists do like the Trust & Safety Systems found in patent law and the courts that uphold patents. As we will see, the Founding Fathers also believed that patent law was important.
[2] – Schumpeter wrote the book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, a book that D’Souza refers to quite often.
