Prof. Richard Wolff: Capitalism - Not China - Is to Blame for the Current Global Economic Decline

[Igel]

52. There was a political movement in the late 1890s and early 1900s like that.

It called for a lot of cottage industry--a business might be a person or a couple of people, perhaps a family. Nothing much larger than that. The people would work for the good of their families and their community. Socialist, it was.

It got mixed up with preserving identity and culture, avoiding cultural contamination and cultural appropriation. Sort of a call to return one's community to its roots and traditions and refusing to assimilate. It had nationalist roots, which was a common movement during this time. Independence movements, self-determination, and all that.

The movement's name came from the two strands of political thought, and was (self-)dubbed "national socialism." You may have heard of it. With a few shifts in philosophy it gained a lot of adherents, but ultimately ended badly. One might say "very badly," at the risk of hyperbole.

Part of the problem was defining what "the people" was. It's the same problem we have today when we talk about "the people." Some intend for it to be exclusionary--some people aren't really folk like the rest of us. Sometimes they're wealthier, more educated, or look or speak funny. In any event, they're not really the folk we're interested in helping. That's no more principled and just as self-serving as when the line "we, the people" were penned to claim universal rights while denying women many of them and slaves (whatever they were called) even more. "The people" were a subset of the population.


Ultimately the problem is the same everywhere, for both socialism and capitalism: One has to buy into the idea of free will and individuality tempered by a set of shared values. When the shared values aren't shared, then there is no basis for socialism holding together. This works if there are only a few renegades, but if more than that the choice is letting the economic (not political or democratic) system unravel or imposing that system on unwilling members through government power.

When the shared values aren't shared, then there are no constraints on individualistic gaming of the commons that capitalism presupposes. If there are only a few abusers of the commons, that's fine, but if more than that the choice is either letting the economic system unravel or imposing constraints on unwilling members through government power.