Channeling Marx

In the Christian Science Monitor:

Interviewer: "Mr. Marx, not that long ago, lovers of capitalism pronounced your ideas dead. Now, according to at least one source, we are all socialists. What changed?"

Marx: "It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society."

Interviewer: "Nowadays we call these 'crises' recessions. You predicted that over time, capitalism would become dominated by larger and larger firms."

Marx: "[T]he concentration of capital and land in a few hands."

Interviewer: "And how does this concentration bring on socialism?"

Marx: "By paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."

Interviewer: "So the bigger firms become, the harder they fall. In the US economy, some firms have become 'too big too fail,' and the government has moved in. As this plays out, what will happen to capitalism?"

Marx: "Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

The author, Paul McDonnold, then goes on to note that capitalist "hero" Adam Smith's writings on the economy of his day favored competition between decentralized businesses. The economy of Smith's day, it is worth noting, included both regulations and protectionist measures, many of which Smith supported. McDonnold's plea to conservatives to revise their stance on deregulation ends with the following:

Marx and Smith each saw a piece of the truth – two different sides of the coin of capitalism. Capitalism itself is not fatally flawed. But a hyperconservative approach to it is. Regulations that promote decentralized competition on a human scale are regulations that conserve Smith's side of capitalism. These regulations should not be the enemy of conservatives; they should be our aim.

Many conservatives will want to stick to the dogmatic ideological line of deregulation. But the capitalism produced by blind support of deregulation is one of bureaucratic corporations, greed-fueled booms, and fear-riddled busts. If conservatives do not embrace regulations that preserve Smith's capitalism, we might just wake up one day to see it gone and socialism in its place, just as Marx predicted.

This is why I like to joke and call myself a regu-libertarian. I have no fundamental problems with laws and regulations that protect the people from the corporation. I also favor regulation (and even tolls) that hold corporations liable for externalities. The modern corporation, while at best neutral, is all too often a profiteering and psycopathic scourge on society. I am all for maximum freedom and liberties to individuals, not to fictional, government-privelaged entities.