Capitalism as cultural system, 2

Weston Hicks responds to my post on Joyce Appleby’s book on the history of capitalism:

“The state used to be a tool of the powerful to entrench themselves and press their advantage, but Christendom transformed it into an arbiter of fair play, unleashing the dominion-taking potential of everyone instead of only the entrenched.

“In turn, it also transformed dominion-taking itself, from oppressive to service-oriented. Now that everyone’s endeavor is in constant danger of being surpassed by someone else’s, bosses must  serve employees rather than  coerce them. Power is now, by consequence of good law, used for service-of-others instead of self-service. We increase ourselves by seeking the interests of others (consumer, employee) first.  It’s never existed in any ‘pure’ form, but welcome to the fallen world and the powerful are still on the hunt for ways to press their advantage.

“The point is, Americans instinctively know that hard work and the service of consumers and employees will lead to success for anyone willing perservere, in virtually any arena. These are new instincts in history, formed from the new reality of the state promoting fair play, largely by protecting the weak instead of enslaving them for the powerful. It wasn’t always so, and still isn’t most places.  As usual, evil ideologies exaclty invert the true state of things, e.g. socialism.

“As an aside, I think Capitalism needs a major PR facelift, starting with it’s name. It’s the promotion of fairness, therefore largely the restraining of the powerful. ‘Capitalism’ sounds like the evil guys going out of business got naming rights as a last gasp.

“As another aside, the old bad governments were an improvement on “no-governments”.  It’s likely that they were desirable due to the real horror of truly unaccountable power. This is another reason I’m not an anarcho-captialist; history gives anarchy third place behind good governement and bad government. In fact, we mythologize the heroes who stamped out anarcho-capitalism in the frontiers of our own country: Wyatt Earp, for example. They brought blessed government to a Rothbardian land.”