Critics of market capitalism often emphasize the exploitation, coercion, alienation, worker (lack of) safety, sheer misery in employment. In a broader, less individualistic perspective one may add distributional unfairness, environmental catastrophe, corruption of the political system, the socialization of (speculative) risk by the well-connected rich at the expense of the rest of society, and the lack of responsibility of the for-profit (social) media which generates destabilizing cycles of anger and misinformation. More conservative critics will add that capitalism undermines craftsmanship and that its incessant adaptive-ness/change destroys local community and social order (and desirable forms of hierarchy/authority) and that it promotes cosmopolitan lack of rootedness. Even if one can debate to what degree all of these are all problems or essential to capitalism, and to what degree these are products of political interventions in the market, these are not negligible problems that are natural byproducts of really existing capitalism.
When one reads defenses of capitalism, one often encounters instrumental or consequentialist arguments: the system is praised for the relatively efficient way of organizing the economy, the material goods, technological innovation, and wealth it generates (including means to tackle environmental damage). Defenders of capitalism praise the reduction of famine and poverty it promotes and the diversity of lives it permits. Adam Smith hoped that capitalism would undermine servility and that it could promote more pro-social forms of interaction. Hayekians will also emphasize the epistemic functions of the market. Sometimes one even encounters the argument that market capitalism undermines the racist’s ability to promote his preferences without cost. I do not mean to suggest there are only consequentialist defenses of market capitalism; on certain (somewhat Lockean) conceptions of freedom and even justice, market capitalism follows naturally (say, from the right to contract, right to property, etc.).
Obviously, critics and friends of market capitalism are divided over the content and evaluation of the claims in the previous two paragraphs. These matters are often contested all the way down. They are also divided to what the degree the system promotes peace and international brotherhood. After all, networks of trade create increased interaction and friction, but they also increase the costs of going to war.
Even so given the enormous costs associated with market capitalism one may wonder how come it has lasted as long as it has. Obviously, the answer to that question will involve questions of power, ideology, and morality (of the sort I have just suggested are contested). But I would like to add a modest phenomenological observation that is the result of some recent (completely unscientific) discussions with a wide range of business-people from my own generation (again this is not scientific). By business-people I mean entrepreneurs, the self-employed, and what we may call management types. (So if I were a sociologist I would make important distinctions here.) All of them had some higher education, but not beyond Masters and generally focused on 'practical' degrees (accounting, business, law, etc.)
What struck me is that while income to buy stuff -- and not negligibly being able to help provide for others -- and authority, status (due to the jobs, goods, or role in the community) were all very important for all of them, a lot found intrinsic and highly motivational pleasure in their jobs. That is to say: my point today is that making money and organizing of the making of money can be fun. It's fun not primarily from avarice or from what can be done with money; but rather because in a global, capitalist economy, making money is both a creative and social activity. Sure, everybody complains about bad service from airlines, travel exhaustion, and the challenge of juggling meetings, family, and leisure. But the bottom line is that for certain kinds of people, business just is fun.
It is worth reflecting on why this is so. Here I ignore the joys of accumulation or what can be done with one’s income. In what follows, I make no claim to originality (although I do suspect the point is under-appreciated). I think the lure of business -- when one is doing it! -- consists of two facets: first, business-people have to solve lots of tactical and strategic problems on a day to day basis; this means that their activity is intrinsically creative. By this I do not mean to refer either to the kind of (mock-Nietzschean) heroic, Schumpeterian agent of creative destruction nor to the images of latte-sipping hipsters embodying the so-called ‘creative’ industries to be found in glossy magazines beloved by city-planners and urban boosters. But rather the more mundane activities involved in planning, allocation, satisficing, prioritizing, winging it, networking, etc. All of these take place under relative intense time and resource scarcity. These are challenging even stressful activities, but it also involves considerable agency and ingenuity.
Second, business people have to engage with a whole range of other folk. Obviously, there is a class of CEOs and rich and famous business-people that primarily interact with the 1% (and would-be-1%) and their enablers in the service professions. But the vast majority of business people are not part of this class, and generally do not aspire to be in it (even if they read about them and may admire them). For, business satisfies the all-to-human-needs of recognition, sociability, haggling, collaboration, team-playing, desire for power, and coalition-formation. (Again, all of these involve ingenuity and strategic creativity.)
In both facets there is a real uncertainty about outcomes and frustrated ambitions. But precisely in virtue of these, the satisfactions of achievement make the creativity and sociability worth it regardless of the further rewards (of accumulation, status, material comfort, etc.) that follow from one’s job.
Let me wrap up. I am not suggesting that the pleasures associated with business activity are the initial draw or main justification for these activities. Nor do I suggest that these can address the challenges that emanate from the moral and political critics of market capitalism. I do not even suggest that these satisfactions are central to the moral justification of market or even explain the attachment to capitalism by the propertied classes. But rather I suspect that these unnoticed, quiet daily satisfactions, help explain why for a few centuries now a capitalist way of life has survived and managed to sustain allegiance from ordinary individuals despite the collapse of Protestantism, the planning and destruction associated with several world wars and the despair and loss induced by stock-market crashes; this way of life has thrived despite enormous social transformations in the nature of the family, technology, and the political landscape. Maybe this is the effect of ideology, but the more likely explanation is that it satisfies many daily, fundamental psychological needs.
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