The foundation of many societies functioning in the world today is power. This power, though, has a rather salient definition. In some cultures, power manifests itself as money. In others, prestige or family lineage. Capitalism’s brand of power is somewhat of a combination of these things and many others. This affects the way our brand of capitalism functions on an everyday basis. If there is an economic system that works better than capitalism, at least at the moment, then I am unaware of it.
With this in mind, it is wildly unnecessary and even dangerous to pretend capitalism, especially our brand of it, is some flawless system of hegemonic equality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is nothing inherently wrong with pride in the capitalistic system. The system starts to get dangerous when a narrow epistemological framework meets idealistic presuppositions.
Let us begin to challenge these presuppositions. The United States of America does not employ “true capitalism.” As Lawrence Lessig, Professor at Harvard Law School, has noted, even the American farming system is not “truly capitalistic.” It is still subsidized by the government of the United States.
To say the U.S. is a place where everyone has the opportunity to earn and keep what they have earned is rather idealistic. This treatment of American capitalism implies substantial equality among individuals. Again, nothing could be farther from the truth. If 10 percent of public schools are responsible for 50 percent of dropouts, then I, an alumnus of a wonderfully funded high school in the best urban school district in the nation, certainly did not and do not experience the same ability to earn and keep what I earn as someone who went to a public school with an empty library.
Paris School of Economics professor Thomas Piketty, in his magnum opus, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” notes the high level of inequality in America; almost 70 percent of wealth belongs to the top 10 percent of earners in America. When this information is coupled with former “New Yorker” columnist David Cay Johnston’s critique of many of these individuals who do not pay their fair share of taxes, the inequality inherent in the American capitalist system is incredibly compelling.
According to the World Bank, the U.S. owns a Gini coefficient of over 41; one of the highest of any nation of our economic stature. What this means, in short, is 41 percent of income would need to be redistributed for the U.S. to enjoy total income equality. The treatment of socialism as a system of “a small group of rich and powerful ruling over a large group of poor” sounds an awful lot like the American brand of capitalism.
The argument that asserts America as a place where men and women can pull themselves up by their bootstraps is an attractive one. It is nice to think the country and society in which we live affords everyone the opportunity to build their own future. However, for every Oprah who builds her influence brick by brick from the ground up, there are hundreds of others who could not — try as they might — make it out of the cycle of poverty. I am unconvinced we can see equality in a system where some start the race miles behind others based on conditions out of their control.
Capitalism is a spectacular system to found a country on. The hegemonic success of the U.S. over the last 230 years or so can attest to this fact. However, when we idealize capitalism and its implications, we rob ourselves of the chance to improve our society. Also, and more importantly, we rob the marginalized in our society of the help they need by asserting the perfection of a system which has shortchanged them for years upon years. To have a critical and skeptical eye towards society is not unpatriotic. In fact, to not approach with a critical eye is to refuse to improve ourselves.
