Utopiascope

A string of articles that share a startling pair of words have appeared in the press recently: 'Capitalism' and 'Failed'. Communism, of course, is a word we easily associate with the word failure. Our gut reaction to the prospect of communism is similar to that that we might have to an over-enthusiastic choir leader rushing into the street and calling on us to spontaneously fall into perfect song. The result will, of course, be atonal, and we can rightly accuse the choir leader of having no understanding of human nature.

Capitalism on the other hand is more often presented as holding up a mirror to human nature. As Guy Sorman has written, “the free market is finally only the reflection of human nature, itself hardly perfectible.” Human nature can certainly be flawed, but it cannot fail -- it isn't a system that we artificially impose, we don’t have an assortment of other options. To say that something is in our nature is essentially to say that it's our base condition, our lot in life.

So, if capitalism can fail, then far from being in our nature, it follows that it is instead an ideological system that requires belief on our part. We may have thought that we were behaving as perfect cynics, ruled by our instincts, but in fact we were closet idealists. If capitalism has failed, then it means it never was in our nature. And that leaves us with a daunting and terrifying question: if the secret to economic and social harmony lies in living according to our nature, how do we routinely fail to live according to our nature?

Far from being fated to live by instinct, as sceptics or as cynics, it would appear that we are fated to live as idealists, dreaming and designing a new society just as our current model begins to reach its limitations. There is no perfect political system, but instead humans are involved in a process of imagination named utopia in order to uncover the values that they use to develop their political and economic systems. Human society runs into trouble when this process of imagination is discouraged and labelled avoidable.

Over the next few weeks, meandering through the philosophy of Walt Disney, le Corbusier, Plato, Orwell, Borges, and Ayn Rand, I will endeavor to show how our concepts of love, happiness, community, work, death, sex and family change shape as they pass from the hands of different social architects. Odds are that we won't find a single utopia that we would like to call home; but in visiting them, we may find the perfect therapy for a society that is undergoing great upheaval and change.

John Lidwell-Durnin is a writer and regular contributor to The School of Life.

Comments

[Gary]

Free-markets or Capitalism or both, by any rational definitions of them, have not failed. They can't possibly have failed because they do not exist (yet). Free markets or free-market capitalism cannot exist at the same time as a centralised authority that uses coercion and force any more than a glass can be full and empty at the same time. Governments exist, therefore free markets do not. The two are mutually exclusive.

The media and the vast majority of people, however, belief that two things that directly contradict each other - free markets and government - do exist together. This is the same as believing that a person can be dead and alive at the same time. My five year old nephew understands contradictions arising from mutual exclusivity cannot exist, which means most adults are chronically retarded in their ability to reason clearly and consistently about one concept in particular - government. Otherwise most people are smart and can reason perfectly well of course; they will laugh if you suggest a person can be dead and alive at the same time, but when asked about government and capitalism, reason and logic shuts down and Orwellian double-think sparks into life.

"Free markets and government by their very nature are opposite, like a full and empty glass, agreed?
"Agreed."
"Does government exist?
"Yes."
"Right. So does free market capitalism exist?
Definitely, because our economy is in crises and greedy free market capitalists are the cause!"

This irrational thinking is the result of the false premise that government is necessary and good. It goes like this. Government cannot be unnecessary and bad therefore *something else* must be the problem, even something that does not exist.

Many very intelligent people spend their lives thinking about or trying to create the perfect political system and the human opportunity cost is incalculable. That there is no perfect political system or system of governance is true because there is no MORAL political system or system of governance and that the virtue or benevolence of government per se is a delusion.

Unless people realise that the idea of government (violence = virtue) is a perfect contradiction of the moral principles we all hold and live by privately (violence/theft is wrong), then most people will discover through painful experience that their belief in government as a way of making a better world was a delusion and its failure inevitable. Realising this truth now through clear thinking and reasoning is less painful, but most importantly allows you to prepare you and your children for the chronic social upheaval we are heading for.

In a world WITH governments, corporations are able to commit acts of fraud and theft against hundreds of millions of people because they exploit the institionalised powers of government to initiate force against others for their own unjust gain (e.g. 'nationalising' private investment losses). Politicians allow this to happen because they need to keep creating more debt in order to prop up the facade of democracy, and they can only do this for as long as the most profitable private corporations are willing to buy government bonds.

In a world WITHOUT governments, corporations simply have no mechanism by which to shift their own private investment losses on to the shoulders of innocent people. How can they do it? There's no government guns to force people to comply. Could they build their own police force or army? Highly unlikely. Raising an army would require huge investment, which would mean investors approving such a costly (and risky) endeavor, or else raising the cost of the companies' products or services resulting in profit loss. Also, it's hard to order 100 tanks or 1000 machine guns without someone noticing. Corporations are simply businesses whose actions are determined by the need to make profits for their investors, satisfy their customers, and by market forces.

In fact, the notion of a corporation couldn't exist in a world without government, because a 'corporation' is a legal concept designed to shield individuals from the consequences of their actions. With no laws forced upon people by a violent institution and no guns to enforce them, there can be no corporations.

We routinely fail to live according to our nature because of the irrational belief that the initiation of force to solve social problems is not only necessary but virtuous. In other words we believe that government is moral. Every day we live anarchically in our private lives, we negotiate and cooperate voluntarily and peacefully with others, never using coercion or force to solve problems; and yet when it comes to thinking about society we advocate the exact opposite.

First, we must recognise this contradiction between our private ethics and our 'public' ethics, then we can stop moving away from utopia, turn around, and take our very first step towards it.