[From my blog]. As effective altruists make increasing forays into politics, I thought it would be good to share what I have found to be one of the most useful conceptual distinctions in recent political philosophy. Many people think if you’re in favour of capitalism you have to be in favour of ruthless selfishness. But this isn’t so. As the philosopher Jason Brennan has argued,[1] we ought to distinguish capitalism – a system of ownership from selfishness – a social ethos.
Capitalism = The private ownership of the means of production.
Socialism = The collective ownership of the means of production.
People have an ethos of selfishness insofar as they pursue their own self-interest.
People have an ethos of benevolence insofar as they pursue the interests of others.
Why accept these definitions? Firstly, they align with the commonsense and dictionary definitions of ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’. The elision between capitalism and an ethos of selfishness tends only to happen in an informal or unstated way. People unfairly compare capitalism + selfishness with socialism + universal benevolence and conclude that socialism is the superior system, when in fact universal benevolence is doing a lot of the work. Secondly, if we conceptually tie capitalism and an ethos of selfishness, then we will be left with no term for a system in which the means of production are privately owned and everyone is perfectly benevolent. On the other side of the coin, if we conceptually tie socialism and benevolence, then we will be left with no term for a system in which the means of production are collectively owned, but people are extensively motivated by selfishness.
With these definitions in tow, we can infer the following important point:
The stance one takes on the correct social ethos implies no obvious stance on the justifiability of capitalism or socialism.
Many effective altruists are strongly critical of the ethos of selfishness: Peter Singer believes that you should give up on all luxury spending in order to help others. However, this does not mean that capitalism is bad because capitalism is not conceptually tied to selfishness.
The question of which system of economic ownership we ought to have is entirely separate to the question of which ethos we ought to follow. Effective altruists and others have made a strong case for an ethos of benevolence, but finding out whether capitalism or socialism is better involves completely different empirical questions.
Update: To pre-empt a criticism that I don't think it hits the mark, note that I am saying that capitalism is not, as a conceptual matter, defined as a system in which people are selfish. I am not arguing for or against the proposition that capitalism creates incentives for people to be selfish, or makes people more selfish than the socialist alternative. This is a distinct empirical question.
Thanks to Stefan Schubert for advice.
"So why wouldn't the benevolent individual give their share of the company to whatever collective system that determined the needs of the world? They could still be ceo, so that they could manage the company better (as they have good data about that). It seems like the capitalist system would morph into either socialism or charity-sector owned means of production, if everyone were benevolent."
I don't understand this. Do you suggest that all companies should be trying to fulfill (all) the needs of some collective. It is very useful for companies to specialize.
I think charityism and capitalism can work well together. The question of how to best produce something (1) is separate from what to produce (2), and these are in turn separate from the question how to best donate (3).
Basically, in a market economy, investors (capital owners) are making bets on how to answer the first two questions. Consumers (which includes also capital owners) are collectively affecting and largely determining (2) and also (3) (to the extent they decide to donate). If you are a large investor (own a lot of capital) you can donate all your returns if you wish, EA-style.
"So why wouldn't the benevolent individual give their share of the company to whatever collective system that determined the needs of the world?"
I expect all benevolent companies to fulfil the needs of others with their profits (if they are not reinvesting them in expansion). For that is the definition of benevolence right? People have an ethos of benevolence insofar as they pursue the interests of others.
There are two aspects of ownership of the means of production
I would exp... (read more)