On December 2 a walk for capitalism was held. Varsity writer Rob Thomas playfully mused that perhaps the walk showed that capitalism couldn’t walk on its own. November 26 the Varsity published an opinions story by Thomas called “Il ne marche pas.”
“One of my favourite sayings in the French language is ‘il ne marche pas.’ It means, literally, ‘it doesn’t walk.’ Colloquially, it means that something doesn’t work,” it began.
Thomas claimed that the virtue of free market capitalism was supposed to be its simplicity and that it would have worked out to everyone’s benefit, but that extremists like Ayn Rand and the Great Depression pointed out the theory’s limitations.
“Most sane governments eventually realized that a free market could work in their favour up to a point. Lessons that folks like the Objectivists (a group dedicated to the senseless reverence of Ayn Rand) seem to have completely missed,” he said.
Not only Objectivists are treading through streets in support of capitalism. So are libertarians like me. And it’s not to draw attention to Rand’s view of the market, although that’s part of it. It is also to draw attention to the market views of Bastiat, Von Mises, Locke, and many others, and for the recognition that capitalism is the only system that can benefit each of us. It is the only system based on a voluntary principle, and, therefore, the only truly moral system possible.
It is true that the simplicity of free market forces has been misconstrued. Although, I must say, I believe that to be the fault of the non-free marketeers themselves, rather than the free marketeers like Ayn Rand. It’s not entirely true to say that the Great Depression somehow showed the inability of a totally unhampered market. There are very convincing arguments to suggest that it was the government’s monetary and banking policies that led to the collapse. That’s how I see it. That’s why I still support the free and open market, without government “finessing” or
“fiddling.”
Ayn Rand has certainly managed her fair share of “avid,” shall we say, admirers. I suppose I fell into that category a few years ago. Mind you, I still admire Rand, but I no longer think she was entirely correct about everything. Especially her sweeping indictment of libertarianism in general. Which, ironically enough, she viewed as splitting objective ethical considerations from politics, and therefore unworthy of a second thought.
She was a system builder. Metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics all intertwined, dialectically, in a nexus that is dependent one level on another. Take out one part of it, the whole edifice falls apart. The whole thing has to be accepted from bricks to mortar. I take issue with that. And with a lot of what Rand has to say. But I agree with her that, conceptually, civil and economic liberties cannot be split. Sure, in practice, the two can be divorced, but not for very long, I don’t think.
You know how Marx talked about the “inherent” contradictions of capitalism that would eventually lead to a historical shift towards socialism and then, inevitably, to communism? I sort of accept the form of that argument, but not the content. Split economic and civil liberties (as you would in a shift from capitalism to socialism) and, at some point in the future, you’ll get tremendous confusion—especially in the formerly “simple” capitalist economy. But that’s neither here nor there.
I’ll be walking for capitalism here in Kingston. And I’ve got a favourite French saying to counter Mr. Thomas’ il ne marche pas (it doesn’t walk). The story goes that, back in the middle ages during some shitty economic period, the monarch of France approached a group of business folk. Asking them what he, through the government, could do to help the struggling businesses, one of them replied: “Laissez-nous faire, laissez-nous passer; la monde va de lui-meme.”
Peter Jaworski is a Queen’s Honours Candidate, Features co-editor at the Queen’s Journal and the Kingston co-ordinator of the Walk for Capitalism.
