The war on civilization and its peaceful inhabitants is testing us like nothing else in our lifetimes. It is not only testing our resolve, but our principles. And nothing has tested the latter more than what has come to be called, “woke capitalism.”
As I wrote in last week’s installment of this series, it is important that the resistors have the right ideas. It is not enough simply to defeat our enemies. We must do so in a way that we don’t win battles but lose the war. And as with the political system, the arguments against woke capitalism are riddled with errors that will ultimately undermine our cause.
To understand if and why woke capitalism is a problem, we must first understand what capitalism is and why it is the only economic system compatible with a free society.
Our principles
We believe that every human being is created equal in one way and in one way only: no one has an inherent right to rule over another person. As a result of that equality, every individual owns himself or herself.
This state of self-ownership implies certain rights. They are first and foremost to not be killed by another person (right to life), to act according to one’s will (right to liberty) and to exercise ownership over legitimately acquired possessions. The natural limit to these rights is that one does not violate the equal rights of others.
John Locke reduced all of the above to a single word, saying people enter society and form governments for the “mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property.”
Another way to say this is that everyone has a right to what he or she owns and nothing more. This is the standard by which to determine what is a legitimate right and what is not.
One’s physical body, thoughts, beliefs, speech, actions, and peacefully acquired possessions are all one’s property. They cannot be taken away by someone else without one’s consent. Therefore, “healthcare” cannot be a right, it being the thoughts, speech, actions, and possessions of someone else. Neither does anyone have the right to involuntarily dispossess Person A to trade with Person B to provide healthcare to himself or Person C.
One may not claim a right to something that requires the labor of others without violating the property rights of those others. This applies equally to conscripting either Person A or Person B in the above example.
The right to possess real and movable estates contains within it three basic elements: use, exclusion, and disposal. If one owns a thing, he may use it as he sees fit as long as he does not do so in violation of the property of others. He may exclude others from its use without his consent. He may also dispose of the thing as he sees fit, meaning give it away as a gift, exchange it for other property, or destroy it.
Justice consists of preserving the property of individuals or making them whole when their property has been violated. Conversely, injustice is harming the property of individuals other than in self-defense. There is no other legitimate definition of justice, nor does legitimate justice require modifiers like “social” or “racial.”
Governments are formed ostensibly to administer justice, or, as John Locke put it, for the “preservation of their property.”
The American Declaration of Independence unnecessarily complicated the matter by separating “property” into myriad enumerated and unenumerated “rights,” going on to say, “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” But the intent of those words was the same as Locke’s:
Anarcho-capitalism disputes none of the above other than the means for administering justice. Rather than a monopolist agency designated for the purpose, anarcho-capitalism proposes a free market solution. But the purpose of that solution is the same: to administer justice, meaning to preserve property.
What is capitalism?
The economic system generally known as “capitalism” or “the free market” derives directly from these principles. Capitalism assumes only one rule: that transfer of property may occur only with the voluntary consent of the owner. All other elements of the system: contracts, market prices, competition, etc., proceed from this rule.
Inherent also in capitalism is an element of property described by the founders as the right to “the pursuit of happiness.” This was listed separately from the right to liberty to emphasize that one is entitled to act exclusively in one’s own self-interest, rather than towards ends determined by others, within the same limit of not violating the property of others.
Adam Smith famously observed that people acting exclusively in their own self-interest do more good for society as a whole than those who intend to do so.
This is known as the “invisible hand” of the market. It is this aspect of the capitalist system from which all benefit to society springs. It is the reason capitalism always outperforms socialism. To reject the right of economic actors to pursue exclusively their own interests is to deny the right to the pursuit of happiness and to negate capitalism’s benefits to society.
How is woke capitalism a problem?
Woke capitalism rejects the invisible hand principle. It postulates that businesses should not merely pursue profits within a framework of property rights, but rather should also pursue “environmental, social, and governance (ESG)” goals. It also seeks to limit or exclude market participation by people who do not accept and demonstrate their support for various progressive dogmas.
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Tom Mullen is the author of It’s the Fed, Stupid and Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?