Capitalism is a Liberal Concept

Something I often times hear is how Liberals hate Capitalism, how Liberals are anti-Capitalism, and other such sentiment. This always make me chuckle, for it ignores something inherent in Capitalism, that Capitalism itself is a Liberal concept.

This will likely confuse people, so indulge me.

It helps if you first understand what Capitalism, and even more what a Capitalist is. To understand these, you need to think on the word Capital a moment. Capital, in order words, Money, is what defines both Capitalism and Capitalist. Capitalism is the use of Money as the basic framework of the economy. Capitalists are those who use their money in order to perform economic development.

Example, a Capitalist buys a factory, hires managers, and lets the managers hire workers and run the factory. Every so often, the money generated by the factory is split, a portion for the operating costs of the factory, and a portion to the Capitalists, who own it. Capitalistic Economies are those where this is the main structure of production, owners, managers, workers, each splitting the income accordingly.

The problem comes when people start trying to apply Capitalist concepts to areas it does not apply to. Remember, Capitalism is about production, nothing else. It works great, for production, the making of something or the trading of services. But it starts falling apart when one of these three pieces, Owners, Managers, Workers, starts getting Greedy. Without Workers, Managers have no one to work, and the factory looses. Without Managers, Workers lack direction. Without either, the Owners do not get a return on the money they put into the factory.

When this system fails, when any one of these elements becomes reduced in importance, the system starts to break down.

So, what does this have to do with Liberals? Everything, actually. Every single piece of Capitalist structure came from a Liberal mindset. Liberals think, they think a lot. They thought how to make production easier. They thought that the people with money don't know how to produce,the people who know how to produce can't do all of the work themselves, and those who can work don't have a direction to work for. So they put this all together, and viola, we have Capitalism.

So, the counter arguments, that Liberals are for Socialism, or are Communist. Well, think on it a bit. We think. We have Capitalism, but we found it evolving into something it was never intended to be, where "production" involves things like asset backed securities and derivatives trading. So, we studied solutions to the issues. Socialism was a moderate approach, putting a firm regulatory body in place while eliminating the profit motive from areas where Society judges it should not be, such as in healthcare or retirement. Communism was a more severe approach, eliminating both managers and owners and putting Workers in charge of the full system.

Are all Liberals for Socialism, or Communism? Of course not, no more than all Conservatives are for the KKK or the Nazi's. The claims make good talking points, but just don't have any basis in reality.

So, if Liberalism created Capitalism, why do so many Capitalists dislike Liberalism? Simple, because they're not Capitalists. There is something else, the Conservative counter-argument to Liberal Capitalism, that is Corporatism. Corporatism is that these companies are self-existing entities, and should be given unfettered rights accordingly. It has pieces of Capitalism, but the underlying logic is that Money is the goal, as opposed to production is the goal for Capitalism. Money, to a Capitalist, is but a tool, not the end result.

When the pursuit of money overrules all else, your system becomes sick, and will eventually die.