Two concerned economists — both calling for economic reform, advocating the rights of small business owners, and decrying crony capitalism — engaged in a fierce debate hosted by Enactus on Friday. Both voiced disgust for Wall Street corruption. Both supported worker’s rights, fair working conditions, and fair wages. Both think the current socioeconomic system is in a bad place.
One is the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis — a capitalist — and one is a member of the Socialist Party USA.
“Socialism tends to be misrepresented,” Socialist Party member John Strinka said. “When I say, ‘I’m a socialist,’ people say ‘Oh, like Obama!’ And I say, ‘No, that’s not what we mean.’”
In the past century, America has allowed an “unholy agreement between government and big business,” Strinka said. “Capitalism [teaches] that humans are commodities to be bought and sold. At this point in American history, corporations can buy government policy. Democracy has been eaten up by corporate interests.”
Strinka is reacting to capitalism gone wrong in American society. He sees the evils of corporatism and the corruption of Wall Street — which are both fostered by capitalism — and has turned to socialistic reforms as a way to divorce big business and politics. Without proper regulation, the rich and powerful do what they want, according to Strinka.
“We see a free-market system that has failed to distribute the goods,” Strinka said.
At Hillsdale College, we receive a rigorous education that teaches us how to evaluate the good, the true, and the beautiful. But in the politics and economics departments, Hillsdale tends to be one-sided in its teaching. Contrary to common Hillsdalian belief, capitalism is not “the good.” Capitalism, just like socialism, has its flaws. “Corporatism,” aka “crony capitalism,” is the spawn of capitalism gone wrong in the hands of sinful men.
American socialists aren’t self-assured, freedom-hating wackos out to destroy everything America stands for. According to Strinka, socialists want exactly what conservatives want: government policy free from the lobbying of CEOs, communities where small businesses can succeed, and jobs that fulfill the individual and don’t turn the daily eight hour grind into a miserable chore. They just propose a different way of implementing much-needed reform (whether or not their way is correct is a different debate entirely). While capitalism doesn’t teach, as Strinka puts it, that “humans are commodities to be bought and sold,” crony capitalism certainly does.
Perhaps the important thing to remember is that there is a reason socialists don’t adhere to a capitalist philosophy. They are not insane or inherently evil, and they are ultimately trying to achieve the same things as Hillsdale conservatives. Since we identify common problems and share a common goal, maybe it’s time we listen to what socialists have to say about the state of Corporate America. After all, it was improperly regulated capitalism that got us into the ugly state we’re in now. Movements like #OccupyWallStreet and the recent #FloodWallStreet recognize the dangers of corrupted capitalism, even if their indignation and solutions are somewhat naive.
If we sit in our booths in A.J.’s arguing over the particulars of anarcho-capitalism with fellow students and decrying the ludicrosity of liberals, we won’t be ready to engage smart, compassionate liberals who are much more refined and less crazy than we think.
More debates between different schools of thought would help students get out of Hillsdale’s philosophical bubble and explore different views and find common ground with economists and philosophers who look at issues from a different, but valuable angle. Even economists who adhere to an agrarian or Distributist philosophy — which advocate small capitalism, caps on business size, widespread ownership of private property, and farm-centered communities — provide a much-needed voice in the search for a healthy, functional society.
After all, it was Wendell Berry who said in his Agrarian Essays, “In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else’s mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one’s own place and economy.”
