From each according to his ability, to each according to his
need.
It can be said with more than a modicum of historical certainty that the
approach to reality constellated in this thought, popularized by Marx as a
navigational waypoint to a perfected society, has been in our lifetime
thoroughly discredited, and, to judge solely by the suffering wrought in the
course of the its experiential elaboration, justifiably so. Western capitalism
stands triumphant. But whether this triumph is the result of its absolute
correspondence to an immutable truth of the human psyche or merely evidence of
a temporally conditioned superiority to its prime historical antagonist is as
yet unclear; the judgment awaits a much longer unfolding, requires most likely
the millennial scope of a history yet unlived, impossible now to write and thus
secure against analysis.
Nonetheless, such
security is insufficient proof against a grave doubt that now and then troubles
still thought and silent observation: that capitalism ascendant has done little
more than wrench the dictum of defeated Marxism inside out and set about its
societal navigation according to a precept that time will prove to be equally
errant, equally soul deadening: From each
according to his need, to each according to his ability.
What we understand as
capitalism is the effort to monetize all reality, to apotheosize metrics and to
insist that only that is actual that yields to calculation. It labors to submit
all existence to the rule of number, to establish the notion of metrics as the first
principle of the universe, and to proceed on the basis of that effort to
reorganize matter. This project of the human psyche, seemingly based on
knowledge as certain as that divinely revealed, as discoverable as that
inherent in the scientifically observed, is then understood, at least in the
West, as essential to the architecture of society, the very fundament of
reason. This is so most fervently in America, where it is held,
correctly or otherwise, to be enshrined in the national foundational documents
and thus definitive of the common consciousness, the very substance of the
national identity. Certainly, unbiased thinking grants that material
reorganization is perhaps the central force of human history, and observation
confirms it as at least the most immediately perceptible. Indeed, though it disdains
the qualification and asserts only the declarative, all our science shares the
germ of this thought. But science does not stand alone in consideration of this
project.
For what
shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his
soul? It
is not necessary to subscribe to any theology to find value in this caution;
even unflinching reason, having divested itself of any consideration of the
divine as actual, finds it possible, perhaps even logically necessary, to see
in scripture, itself a foundational document, an elementally valid modeling of
human psychological and social development. Still, though it reluctantly grant
a psychological value to such scriptural modeling, reason may yet refuse to
abstract from that concession a blanket proscription against profit.
Reason recognizes need as a consequence
of the materiality of the world through which we move. That materiality is
questionable only in the more esoteric schools of philosophy and physics, its
primal importance debatable most appropriately only in those of theology and
psychology. Life as we live it --- the life of the five senses, the life of the
frailty of the flesh and of its mortality, the life of the tenuous coherence of
solidity and thought --- demands that we recognize in matter and in need as a
consequence of matter a bedrock of reality, especially so as our technology
drives relentlessly toward an engulfing simulacrum of the material, a virtual
unreality complete with entirely new, entirely unreal, needs.
In answering the persistent question of
need, capitalism presents itself as a sort of perpetual motion device,
sustained, like the universe itself,
by limitless expansion and dogged
replication. Capital, effectively assembled, begets profit, which is assembled
as new capital which in turn begets new profit and so on endlessly self
renewing, a fugue of plenty. This dim
mimicry of the most basic biological drive toward perpetuity ensures that the
notion of "profit" occupy an enduring position in the structure of
the rational mind. Again, simple observation appears to confirm not only the
inherent reasonableness of that notion but also the superiority of social
organization on a capitalist model as the manifestly most efficient means for
the generation of profit and by virtue of such generation the satisfaction of
need.
All well and good. The prevalent American
notion of capitalism as a fundamentally utopian mechanism seems justified. Upon
reflection, however, simple observation falters. How then account for the
prevalence of discord? Having granted the reasonableness of profit and the
efficacy of capitalism in its production, the question devolves to this: is
there then, in a truly free society, an inherent necessity for some manner of
constraint on profit and its accumulation? And from that this corollary
question: can a society be judged truly free absent such constraint?
Society
does not exist for the creation of profit; profit exists for the creation of
society.
All that we identify as the flaw in the more common understanding of capitalism
and capitalist endeavor derives from the failed apprehension of this primal
reality. The oft repeated notion that the highest virtue and most durable
strength of American society is to be found in the putative opportunity it
provides to every individual to accumulate without restriction as much wealth
as talent and good fortune permit, so long as that accumulation be accomplished
within the law, is suspect. Capitalism tends toward malevolence to the extent
that the goal of capitalist endeavor is understood to be simply the
unrestrained accumulation of wealth; it is then mere profiteering.
To deflect from
capitalist thought this and similar indictments requires that both reason and
the soul's innate yearning for justice be satisfied by the term of the defense,
a defense that therefore requires an earnest consideration not only of the
mechanics of capitalism but also of its purposes. Such consideration must
endeavor to apply itself both in the aggregate and in the individual case, in
the corporate as in the personal instance. As a consequence of our
understanding of freedom, reason demands that we acknowledge a right to be
rich; as a consequence of our understanding of justice, the soul insists that
such a right be somehow tempered.
Capitalism, like any
economic system, must prove itself capable first of satisfying the basic needs
of the society it organizes; these basic needs are understood to be the root
exigencies of material existence: food, shelter, clothing. Minimally provided
with these, man can survive; limited to these minimums, he will likely go mad.
Thus as capitalism succeeds as an organizing force it encounters the social and
civilizing imperative to amplify its understanding of basic need and place
further and accelerating emphasis on education and security. Having assured
itself, whether by demonstration or delusion, of its superior fitness to
satisfy these basic needs, capitalism then turns its attention to securing its
perpetuity and does so by creating entirely new need...and in the process often
confuses novelty with progress. It is in the creation of such new need (the
peculiar genius of American capitalism), in its pre-emptive nature and narrow
focus, that capitalism lays itself open to suspicion.
The impetus of American
capitalism as presented in its simplest form to the soul --- its focus, its driving force, that which
when it reflects upon itself it recognizes as its root and justification --- is
the production of profit. It is
precisely at this point, profit having been produced, that American capitalism
must be submitted to the strictures of distributive justice and is thereby subject to the authority of the State, acting
upon its charge to "ensure domestic tranquility." Taxation is the compulsive
fiscal mechanism whereby this authority is manifested. To the extent that its
employment is for purposes beyond those constitutionally proper (for example,
provision for the common defense), taxation is most effectively considered as
essentially compensatory to a deficit of societal caritas and as such is a corrective necessary only to the extent
that the capitalist dynamic is flawed, failed, or unresolved. It is not structurally necessary to submit
capitalism to the norms of distributive justice; properly ordered capitalism is the norm of distributive justice. But
that proper ordering must move capitalist thought beyond the production of profit
to its deployment.
Again: society
does not exist for the creation of profit; profit exists for the creation of
society.
It is in this sense that greed is not only an individual moral failing but
social sabotage as well. It is not that so many of the rich make so much money
that piques the soul and disturbs the social equilibrium, it is that so many of
them spend so much of it on themselves.