The End of Capitalism

“Capitalism” may be the most contentious idea in the world today. To invoke only a tiny sample of countless commentaries through the ages, capitalism has been defended as the most reliable guarantee we have of political freedom and economic prosperity, assailed as an impostor for meritocracy and as an economic order that encourages acquisitive behavior at the expense of civic virtue, and excoriated as the root of systemic alienation and intolerable socioeconomic inequality.

In the 35 years since the fall of the former Soviet Union, a pivotal historical signpost that the acclaimed and “outspoken socialist” Robert Heilbroner saw as announcing the victory of a system that proved adept at organizing “the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism,” capitalism has remained iconic for some and a scapegoat for others. But, for the rest of us, it has become a focal point of examination and analysis in many, if not most, attempts to spell out what has gone right and what has gone wrong about the world we all must come to terms with.

Personally, I have defended capitalism in the past, but my stronger conviction always has been that the putative contest between “capitalism” and “socialism” (or “communism”) is a false dichotomy. I have even gone so far as to contend that “capitalism” and “socialism” are meaningless standalone terms that do not matter and should be discarded. It does not take a great deal of research, for example, to appreciate that debates about whether capitalism and socialism are better suited to effective social and economic policy, as economist Noah Smith has explained, “ignore and obscure the multiple dimensions of policy, as well as changes over time, and thus make it harder rather than easier to think about concrete ways to fix the problems in the U.S. system.”