I don’t way to be too harsh, but this is the apotheosis of obtuse Oxford-style analytic philosophy. You can make whatever conceptual distinctions you like, but you should really be starting from the historical and sociological reality of capitalism. The case for why capitalism generates selfish motivations is not obscure.
Capitalism is a set of property relations that emerged in early modern England because its weak feudal aristocracy had no centralised apparatus by which to extract value from peasants, and so turned to renting out land to the unusually large number of tenants in the country—generating (a) competitive market pressures to maximise productivity; (b) landless peasants that were suddenly deprived of the means of subsistence farming. The peasants were forced to sell their labour—the labour they had heretofore been performing for themselves, on their own terms—to the emerging class of agrarian capitalists, who extracted a portion of their product to re-invest in their holdings.
The capitalists have to maximise productivity through technological innovation, wage repression, and so forth, or they are run into the ground and bankrupted by market competition. There is, as such, a set of self-interested motivations which one acquires if one wants to be a successful and lasting capitalist. It is a condition of the role within the structure of the market. The worker has to, on the other hand, sell themselves to those with a monopoly of the means of subsistence or face starvation. To do so they have to acquire the skills, comport and obedience to be attractive to the capitalist class. Again, one has to acquire certain self-interested motivations as a condition of the role within the market. Finally, capitalism requires a sufficiently self-interested culture such that it can sustain compounding capital accumulation through the sale of ever-greater commodities.
In the first paragraph you suggest that I have argued that it is not the case that capitalism generates selfish motives. I have not argued for this or against it. I have just argued that capitalism is not defined as a system in which people are selfish. This is entirely separate to the question of whether capitalism causally produces more selfishness than socialism. If you accept that it is an empirical question whether capitalism or socialism causally produces more selfishness, then you agree with my argument since you don’t need to do empirical work to find out whether a conceptual claim is true.
General point: conceptual distinctions are very useful. It is difficult to have debates about things when the concepts are not clearly defined. And conceptual distinctions are not, nor did they pretend to be in my piece, to the exclusion of history and sociology. Actually, they make historical and sociological arguments better because more precise.
I’m not sure whether capitalism causally produces more selfishness than socialism. In ‘Why Not Capitalism?’ and in the blog I linked to, Brennan argues that market societies actually produce more virtuous people than socialist societies, though I haven’t looked into this very deeply. Studies of traditional (hunter gatherer and other societies) show that people in market societies are nicer in ultimatum games and that kind of thing, though I’m not sure how much weight to put on this.
You have presented an abstract argument showing that capitalism creates incentives for selfishness. But we really want to know whether capitalism creates greater incentives for virtuous conduct than socialism. To answer that question, we’d need to look at actual socialist societies and compare them to how people are in actual capitalist ones. e.g. You could look at how nice people are in capitalist countries and compare that to how nice people are/were in Venezuela now, during the Cultural Revolution, in communist Russia or Cambodia etc.
Finally, capitalism requires a sufficiently self-interested culture such that it can sustain compounding capital accumulation through the sale of ever-greater commodities.
This is a common claim, but seems completely wrong. An economy of perfectly patient agents will accumulate capital much faster than a community that consumes 50% of its output. The patient agents will invest in infrastructure and technology and machines and so on to increase their future wealth.
The capitalists have to maximise productivity through technological innovation, wage repression, and so forth, or they are run into the ground and bankrupted by market competition
In an efficient market, the capitalists earn rents on their capital whatever they do.
I don’t way to be too harsh, but this is the apotheosis of obtuse Oxford-style analytic philosophy. You can make whatever conceptual distinctions you like, but you should really be starting from the historical and sociological reality of capitalism. The case for why capitalism generates selfish motivations is not obscure.
Capitalism is a set of property relations that emerged in early modern England because its weak feudal aristocracy had no centralised apparatus by which to extract value from peasants, and so turned to renting out land to the unusually large number of tenants in the country—generating (a) competitive market pressures to maximise productivity; (b) landless peasants that were suddenly deprived of the means of subsistence farming. The peasants were forced to sell their labour—the labour they had heretofore been performing for themselves, on their own terms—to the emerging class of agrarian capitalists, who extracted a portion of their product to re-invest in their holdings.
The capitalists have to maximise productivity through technological innovation, wage repression, and so forth, or they are run into the ground and bankrupted by market competition. There is, as such, a set of self-interested motivations which one acquires if one wants to be a successful and lasting capitalist. It is a condition of the role within the structure of the market. The worker has to, on the other hand, sell themselves to those with a monopoly of the means of subsistence or face starvation. To do so they have to acquire the skills, comport and obedience to be attractive to the capitalist class. Again, one has to acquire certain self-interested motivations as a condition of the role within the market. Finally, capitalism requires a sufficiently self-interested culture such that it can sustain compounding capital accumulation through the sale of ever-greater commodities.
Thanks for the comment.
In the first paragraph you suggest that I have argued that it is not the case that capitalism generates selfish motives. I have not argued for this or against it. I have just argued that capitalism is not defined as a system in which people are selfish. This is entirely separate to the question of whether capitalism causally produces more selfishness than socialism. If you accept that it is an empirical question whether capitalism or socialism causally produces more selfishness, then you agree with my argument since you don’t need to do empirical work to find out whether a conceptual claim is true.
General point: conceptual distinctions are very useful. It is difficult to have debates about things when the concepts are not clearly defined. And conceptual distinctions are not, nor did they pretend to be in my piece, to the exclusion of history and sociology. Actually, they make historical and sociological arguments better because more precise.
I’m not sure whether capitalism causally produces more selfishness than socialism. In ‘Why Not Capitalism?’ and in the blog I linked to, Brennan argues that market societies actually produce more virtuous people than socialist societies, though I haven’t looked into this very deeply. Studies of traditional (hunter gatherer and other societies) show that people in market societies are nicer in ultimatum games and that kind of thing, though I’m not sure how much weight to put on this.
You have presented an abstract argument showing that capitalism creates incentives for selfishness. But we really want to know whether capitalism creates greater incentives for virtuous conduct than socialism. To answer that question, we’d need to look at actual socialist societies and compare them to how people are in actual capitalist ones. e.g. You could look at how nice people are in capitalist countries and compare that to how nice people are/were in Venezuela now, during the Cultural Revolution, in communist Russia or Cambodia etc.
This is a common claim, but seems completely wrong. An economy of perfectly patient agents will accumulate capital much faster than a community that consumes 50% of its output. The patient agents will invest in infrastructure and technology and machines and so on to increase their future wealth.
In an efficient market, the capitalists earn rents on their capital whatever they do.