The Single Biggest Thing Separating Capitalism and Socialism
“Shall it be willing or unwilling exchange?”
I recently was invited to Texas Tech University to participate in a debate in February on capitalism and socialism.
I’m looking forward to the event, but am also a little nervous. Though I do a lot of radio these days, I’ve never really relished public speaking. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to discuss.
In some ways it’s crazy we’re even having such a debate.
The 20th century, one would think, would have shown that capitalism is the superior system—both economically and morally. We ran the test, sadly, and the Soviets lost—and they were not the only ones. Similar experiments have been tried in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and many other countries. I’ll have lots of data on this front and lots of examples, so this will be the easy part, I think.
The harder part is the moral question. People tend to see socialism as a more virtuous system because they believe it’s about helping others. Politicians and media tend to focus on all the programs and promises of government, all the noble things that will be created with the wealth taken.
The government does all of this with its monopoly on force, of course. And that brings me to what I think is the biggest difference between capitalist systems and socialist ones.
Above all else, capitalism is consent.
The great thinker Leonard Read talked about this at lengthy in his 1967 book Deeper Than You Think.
“Shall it be willing or unwilling exchange?” Read asked.
Read had a knack for cutting to the heart of things, and he realized that this clear, direct, and simple moral question had the power to move people and cause them to think—regardless of their politics.
“Standing for willing exchange, on the one hand, or for unwilling exchange, on the other, more nearly accents our ideological differences than does the employment of the terms in common usage,” Read wrote, “there is a minimum of verbal façade to hide behind.”
When I go to Texas, I’ll be armed with Read’s arguments (and I hope to channel his warm, wise, and generous spirit as well).
And I’ll make a simple point: if you value consent, you should value capitalism.