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Why intellectuals hate capitalism

Posted by Mike on January 19, 2008

“Why intellectuals hate capitalism” is an interesting short article on the World Magazine website.

That article summarizes a longer article “Why capitalism is good for the soul” by Peter Saunders.

Is the argument an interesting economic one? Is it a policial one?

It seems that a good part of the hostility some have for capitalism is a moral issue, one of Pride. Some intellectuals think that they can run things, and us, so well that something other than capitalism is needed. But we’ve seen over the decades that communism, socialism, etc., all fail, and not just because they haven’t been implemented properly.

Those systems are fundamentally flawed. And the thinkers promoting them may be morally flawed as well.

But the best explanation for the intellectuals’ distaste for capitalism was offered by Friedrich Hayek in The Fatal Conceit. Hayek understood that capitalism offends intellectual pride, while socialism flatters it. Humans like to believe they can design better systems than those that tradition or evolution have bequeathed. We distrust evolved systems, like markets, which seem to work without intelligent direction according to laws and dynamics that no one fully understands. (from the Saunders article)

Something to think about and discuss with the next person you hear bashing capitalism.

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