The Woodstock of Capitalism

Capitalism encourages individual initiative. Socialism and Communism squelch it. By responding to the profit motive, productivity is increased as is innovation. By comparison economies predicated on the collectivity are less expansive. When the Soviet Union and China opened their economies to free enterprise they experienced huge growth spurts. However, while a free society may lead to the growth of private enterprise and mercantilism, it requires a kind of regulation that is not necessary in the already regulated economy which Marx termed “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” Individuals as Thomas Hobbes would have agreed have to be protected against each other or self-will will run riot. That’s why it’s almost disconcerting to read that one of the great capitalistic juggernauts of all times, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, is run totally on trust. Thomas Hobbes would have been shocked to read the headline of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s recent Dealbook, “Berkshire’s Radical Strategy: Trust” (NYT, 5/5/14) In the piece Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire, is cited on the occasion of the company’s annual meeting, which Sorkin describes being “known as  'Woodstock for Capitalists.'” “By standards of the rest of the world, we overtrust,” Sorkin quotes Munger as saying. “So far it has worked very well for us.” Sorkin offers another Munger quote from 2007 thusly: “A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance—checks and double checks and so forth—you could create a better result in the world. Well, Berkshire has had practically no process. We had hardly any internal auditing until they forced it on us. We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful whom we trust.” Herbert Spencer, who was responsible for the term “survival of the fittest," turned Darwin’s natural selection into a capitalist concept which rendered a dog eat dog view of human existence. But Munger obviously puts much stock in altruism which in the Berkshire model can also be naturally selective. If there had been a stock called Altruism, it would hit the ceiling every time Berkshire held one of its Woodstocks.

Velocirapturists

If capitalism is part of the dialectical process that leads to communism and the eventually withering away of the state, why were Lenin and Marx so intent on destroying it? If the antichrist as manifested by the advent of the secular nation-state is the process by which the world is destroyed and the Rapture and Second Coming occur, why try to impede its progress? These are the contradictions raised by Mathew Avery Sutton, a professor of history at Washington State University, in a recent Times Op-Ed piece (“Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics,” NYT, 9/26/11). “Like orthodox Marxists who challenge capitalism even though they say they believe it represents an inevitable step on the road to the socialist paradise,” Professor Sutton remarks, “conservative Christians never let their conviction that the future is already written lead them to passivity.” Both Marxists and Rapturists (or, as I like to call them, Velocirapturists) are species of fundamentalists who have an attraction-repulsion relationship with dialectics. In other words, though both these troglodyte specimens would be great candidates for a reality show called “The Best of Hegel,” both are dialectically challenged. The good news is that this learning disorder is imminently treatable through the use of antipsychotics and experience-based cognitive therapy. Last May 21 came and went with not even a chance to refund our misery, and one only need take one of the battered cruise ships that the North Korean government is running out of Pyongyang as a means of attracting foreign currency to see the pathetic residue of Utopia at work.