Posts Tagged ‘capitalism’

No man is an island! Being social animals, our success in this world very much depends on our ability to get along with others. This includes our ability to communicate with others, to influence others, to convince them of the worth of both ourselves, and our ideas. Thus, we are always selling in one way or another. Sounds logical enough! In fact we have all heard this so many times before, that it is practically self evident. The only problem is that it is unadulterated bullshit.

Equating teaching teenagers about the ideals of the French revolution, or attempting to convince your toddler to go to bed tonight, are not the same as selling vacuum cleaners, or financial services.

True, they all involve some form of persuasion that much is undeniable. However, what distinguishes the latter examples from the former is that for the teacher and the parent it is done for the benefit of the students and the toddler. In the case of the sale, the salesman stands to benefit. In fact this benefit is the primary motivation for the entire exchange.

By blurring this distinction, selling is elevated, somehow ennobled. At the same time, persuasion that which is altruistic is minimized, or even invalidated. Everything becomes reduced to one simple common denominator – selling! For many people compulsive self-promotion and selling has become so deeply ingrained, that they literally do not know when to stop. For such people, selling does not stop in the boardroom, or in the showroom, but extends to friends, neighbours, and the family alike.

In the best case selling is selective truth; in the worst case it is outright misleading. What it does not do is convey the whole truth, as we would be asked to do in a court of law. Truth may be subjective, but when we are embellishing, or editing to convey an impression we are misleading others in some way. Technically, we’re not lying, in the legal sense. But in the moral sense, we most certainly are.

The typical justification of the salesman is that we all do it, we all have to make a buck somehow. This is the morality of the herd –which is not morality, but tribal group think masquerading as ethics.

The horror of it is that these days, all are compelled to sell. Teachers have to jump through hoops to amuse their students, university professors are evaluated on how much their students enjoy their lectures, and parents have to compete with cartoon characters and sanitized versions of classic fairy tale characters to communicate values to their children.

In such a world to not sell, to refrain from embellishing and entertaining, to simply tell it as you see it, is to be inaudible. You simply do not register, you do not count, and you do not exist.

Another more insidious consequence of this “everyone is a salesman” mindset is that it implies that the market is the ultimate arbiter of value. If something does not sell, it is not of value. This progressively crowds out anything whose deliverables to the consumer can not be squeezed into a sound byte, while promoting that which titillates the senses and appeals to the vanity. Over time we become progressively more indulgent, superficial and addicted.

Ultimately, it has taken us to where we find ourselves today as a society: relating to one another only as Buyers and Sellers, nothing more. The filter through which we hear is “what is in it for me now?” In order for our message to get out there, to not get lost in all the noise out there, we talk louder, faster, longer, – all the while saying next to nothing!

“Greed is good!” This is the proclamation of Gordon Gecko, the character loosely based on Ivan Boesky, in the film “Wall Street”. It is the bastardization of Adam Smith’s concept of ‘enlightened selfishness’ which was the guiding ethos for industrialization in the early 19th century. Without accepting, or rejecting, this premise it is worth taking a closer look at what lies behind it.

The theory we all learned in school is that capital fosters technological advance, which increase profits through enhanced efficiency, and this is then reinvested in the productive process, which further increases efficiency, etc. This then creates greater abundance for all.

During the initial phases of development this may hold true to some extent, but once this honeymoon period of win-win is over, it becomes more of a zero sum game. Sooner or later, this enlightened selfishness reveals itself for what it truly is – a narcissistic derive to have more, to win, to dominate. This drive always existed, and no doubt in its proper context helped us to survive at an earlier point in our development. However, under Capitalism this drive is allowed to run amok.

This goes a long way to explaining something that leaves the rest of the world simply dumbfounded: Why the Americans seem to have such a visceral resistance to any institutional attempts to lend a helping hand to the underdog.

It only stands to reason that if it is morally righteous to desire to have more than our brethren; the poor, those who cannot sustain themselves, must then be morally lacking. After all, God is good; God is just, so why would He punish the virtuous? The two positions, go hand in hand, and are inextricably linked. We cannot accept one, without accepting the other.

This may sound nonsensical, or something right out of a Dickens novel, but it represents the core underlying beliefs of those comprising the upper ranks of the Capitalist variation of the Game. Beneath their thin veneer of Christian altruism, they actually loathe those who have less, look different, or deviate from them and their views in any way. They are very careful not to reveal this in any public forum, but amongst themselves, there is a shared belief that there is a natural order to this world that has their caste as its undisputed masters.

These days the reactionary element, represented by the Republicans, finds themselves besieged. Watching the downfall of Communism two decades before, they felt that the Capitalist system was validated as God’s natural order of things, the way things have to be. Now it is capitalism’s turn to be exposed as being yet another artificially fabricated system, nothing more. This begs the question: With socialism being eliminated as a viable option, should Capitalism prove inadequate for the challenges we face today, where are we to turn next?