Caustic Ramblings

Just some notes I've been jotting down:

First off, we have to distinguish capitalism from a mere "free enterprise" system. The latter simply denotes the existence of a market economy. Whereas, Capitalism is a system whereby an investor class of Capitalists effectively run the entire economy; and by extension, the entire social order of the society in question.

1. The most obvious flaw of Capitalism is the fact that Capital always ends up grossly overcompensated, as compared to labor. Obviously, a certain degree of earnings inequality between the two is both just and natural. But a stable system cannot persist when Capital is earning many hundreds of times more than that of reasonably-skilled labor.

2. A Capitalist system produces an intellectual culture that has a tendency to reduce people to little more than soulless economic units; i.e. atomized individuals that have no purpose except to produce and consume goods and services. From the perspective of my own spiritual worldview (and anyone else who had a spiritual worldview), the Capitalist analysis of human affairs is hyper-materialist and anti-life; and it always ends up championing quantity over quality.

3. As mentioned above, Capitalism means that the Capitalists, the super-wealthy investor class, ends up calling the shots and running the show. Referring back to the Social Threefolding model I mentioned in the last few posts, this means that the Economic sphere ends up with a disproportionate degree of power, which makes the other two spheres (Politics and Culture) subordinate to the dictates and whims of the Economic powers. The Economic sphere is that which is most closely oriented toward Matter and thus the most distant from Spirit, of the three. The Culture sphere has the greatest potential to be the most infused with Spiritual qualities. Of course a debased Culture sphere will contain very little of that, but that overall pattern I above still stands. The ideal Political sphere is an intermingling of both Material and Spiritual concerns; a political system that's nothing more than an appendage of Capital, is wholly a slave of Material imperatives. And thus any system where the Economic sphere is the most powerful, is one which turns the people away from Spiritual aspirations. Such a system is "demonic" ... if we're to use such crude descriptors.

4. From the perspective of social class and personality type, Capitalism is a system where the Merchant/Producer/Vaishya order is the ruling class. In all traditional, metaphysics-based social doctrines, natural law dictates that the Merchant class should always be subordinate to both the Warrior and Priestly classes. If we're to look at this from the perspective of personality types, the Merchant class will be comprised largely of Hylic (matter-bound) and some Psychic (mixed) types, and entirely bereft of Pneumatic (Spiritual) people. And thus in Capitalism we get a social order run by people who are lacking in innate Spiritual facilities. Spiritually-oriented people must first and foremost prove their "worth" to the system on wholly materialist, quantity-based terms. The honor-seeking Warrior type must also serve the marketplace before all other concerns. In the Platonic schema, a society run by Capital is what Plato would have called Oligarchy, and thus we can say that Capitalists are a type of Oligarch. In The Republic, Plato calls the collective character temperament of the public under Oligarch rule, "Oligarchic Man." In many Hindu writings, a society where the lower orders are in charge is one that's in the dark age, or Kali Yuga.

5. Last but not least, I need to reiterate the quantity problem inherent in Capitalism. It's a system that, by-design, (1) demands infinite growth, (2) reduces human interactions to the state of mere exchange, and (3) promotes greed as a virtue (as opposed to the vice it is) above all others. On the growth problem, it's quite clear that the investors who own a Capitalist enterprise will always demand that the business keeps growing and growing and growing, and consuming more and more and more resources; and driving wages more and more and more downward, in a race-to-the-bottom sort of way. A Capitalist enterprise becomes a mindless eating machine. And because of this inherent expansionist nature, the most successful enterprise will actively work to snuff out any serious competition, often through buying up the weaker competitor. And thus what always results is a grand consolidation of like businesses into an ever-shrinking inventory of monolithic, monopolistic behemoths. When this process is nearly complete, we get the classical Oligarchy found in historical city-states, whereby a tiny clique of owners/investors colludes with one another to run the entire state and maintain their collective power in perpetuity. States like Sybaris, Carthage and Venice come to mind. However, in our modern system, we have complex systems of government intervention to mitigate the worst aspects of what I'm getting at here. Though government and the black-box credit system, we get boom/bust cycles in the modern age. The infinite growth never happens because too much growth always results in bubbles divorced from the reality of what consumer can actually afford; when supply (or simply hype) vastly outpaces demand, the whole thing goes bust.

6. As in later be talking about, decentralization is the only way to go if we're to avoid the pitfalls of both Capitalism and its false solution, Socialism. Distributism and Syndicalism (both are quite similar) will be alternatives I'll be looking at.