Socialism vs. Capitalism: Which is the Moral System

by C. Bradley Thompson

Throughout history there have been two basic forms of social organization: collectivism and individualism. In the twentieth-century collectivism has taken many forms: socialism, fascism, nazism, welfare-statism and communism are its more notable variations. The only social system commensurate with individualism is laissez-faire capitalism.

The extraordinary level of material prosperity achieved by the capitalist system over the course of the last two-hundred years is a matter of historical record. But very few people are willing to defend capitalism as morally uplifting.

It is fashionable among college professors, journalists, and politicians these days to sneer at the free-enterprise system. They tell us that capitalism is base, callous, exploitative, dehumanizing, alienating, and ultimately enslaving.

The intellectuals’ mantra runs something like this: In theory socialism is the morally superior social system despite its dismal record of failure in the real world. Capitalism, by contrast, is a morally bankrupt system despite the extraordinary prosperity it has created. In other words, capitalism at best, can only be defended on pragmatic grounds. We tolerate it because it works.

Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another’s wealth but also the desire to see another’s wealth lowered to the level of one’s own. Socialism’s teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: “Common good comes before private good.” Fascism, said Mussolini, is ” a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests…realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies.”

Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

Despite the intellectuals’ psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders–that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one’s birth or station in life.

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