Abstract
Socialist economies, rejecting competitive profitability in favor of cooperation by which all benefit from the progress of each, consequently eschew “free rider,” development inhibiting, strategies. Furthermore, unlike competitive economies’ wasteful duplication and dispersion of R&D expertise, socialisms’ cooperative ethos pools it to great synergistic effect. Moreover, unconstrained by competition and profit maximization, as soon as the most basic material needs are met socialism moves to enhance worker, and general social and environmental, welfare; remaining surpluses being reinvested in economic growth. Thus, notwithstanding the introduction of profit taking to motivate production in some non-essential economic areas, the direct reinvestment of surplus in the other areas further contributes to the dynamic growth of the Chinese economy; development in the USSR falling victim to an arms race.
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Notes
- 1.
Thus, as analysis of Utilitarian ethics, for instance, reveals, the pursuit of general wellbeing, or in the case of Utilitarianism, more specifically, the “sum total of human happiness,” not infrequently finds itself in tension with the upholding of individual rights. While, as the notion of Eminent Domain in the US, as well as, more generally, enforced quarantine in an attempt to stem the coronavirus epidemic demonstrates, many governments committed to capitalist principles, and usually willing to stand up for the individual’s relatively unconstrained right or positive freedom to act in his/her own interests—even at the cost of the common social or communal good or negative freedom from the potentially deleterious impact of such unconstrained rights—are, under some circumstances, prepared to override individual rights in the name of general social or communal utility or wellbeing. The differences in the relative weight given to individual rights in relation to overall social or community wellbeing, often, although clearly not always, being as much dependent upon the nature of the rights and wellbeing in question, as upon the degree to which the one may take precedence over the other. [For a much fuller explication of the differences between positive and negative freedom see Sir Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958)].
- 2.
Note that although the bailout of GM and Chrysler was government funded, and thus socialist corporate welfare, unlike the Manhattan Project and NASA, the aforementioned capitalist corporations maintained control over the organization and direction of their government funded technological R&D.
- 3.
See Ibid.
- 4.
See Leffler, op. cit. (Chaper 14, footnote 1) p. 18.
- 5.
While it is to be acknowledged that this particular development was to some extent facilitated by German scientists working, post-WWII in the USSR, it should not be forgotten that the West, and in particular the US, availed itself of, at the very least, comparable, German expertise.
- 6.
Thus, in addition to the stress put on the Soviet system by the need to devote so much of its economic capacity to the production of armaments to defend itself, the increasingly evident corruption within the political class lead, from about the mid-1960s onward, to a legitimation crisis; workers who had previously been prepared to work hard and make great sacrifices in the name of social solidarity, becoming increasingly self-interested and ever less prepared to do so.
- 7.
Indeed, the joke going around Washington at the time was that while the arms race had bankrupted one economy, it had come close to bankrupting two.
- 8.
Note that these idealistic and pragmatic motives for a more equal sharing of wealth may not, as much Western commentary has implied, necessarily be mutually exclusive. For if the communist leadership seeks to maintain its legitimacy, and thus remain in power, in order to proceed further upon the course of reducing poverty, and increasing the material wellbeing of an increasing proportion of its citizenry, then the pragmatic desire to achieve the former is in no way antithetical to the idealistic desire to achieve the latter; the relationship between the two thus being a mutually reinforcing, virtuous, circle!
- 9.
See Chapter 8, footnote 1.
- 10.
From which we may, perhaps counterintuitively, infer, as previously implied, that any funding, by capitalism, of economically unproductive social welfare projects—such as those associated with care for the young, the aged, those among the chronically ill who will not return to productive labor, the creation or/and maintenance of fulfilling social and cultural spaces and interactions, and the like—is a direct function of its failure to maximize its efficiency; a failure which it can only survive if, insofar and so long as it does not in fact submit to competition in a transparent, laissez-faire or free market. Put otherwise, insofar and so long as free market competition maximizes efficiency, which is to say the value of outputs divided by the value of inputs, then this, the raison d’etre and ultimate justification of competitive free market capitalism, is, other things being equal, precisely derived, as is the interest or dividends derived from investment therein, at the expense of all else, including general social welfare! The search for the highest rate of return from investments, therefore, other things being equal, being, concomitantly, the search for those enterprises which contribute the least to general social welfare!
- 11.
Thus in addition to the argument against Smith’s view that each, in pursuing their own self-interest, will maximize the sum total of human wellbeing outlined in Chapter 8, footnote 4, wide disparities in wealth will not only mean that the wealthy will be able to pursue their economic wellbeing at the expense of the poor, but the diminishing marginal utility of wealth (see Chapter 12, footnote 3 and Chapter 21, footnote 6) means that the increase in human happiness that they derive in doing so is, after a point, likely to be increasingly less than would be derived by the poor were the same capacity to direct resources available to them. Their lack of efficacy in this regard being remediable by direct government intervention in order to achieve the redirection of resources to the production of goods and services with the greatest social utility .
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Glynn, S. (2020). The Alternative: The Pragmatic and Moral Advantages of Globalized Socialist Cooperation. In: The Economic Logic of Late Capitalism and the Inevitable Triumph of Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52667-2_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52667-2_17
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