Unchecked Capitalism Is Essentially Socialism For Conservatives
Five minutes spent with the average socialism opponent and it’s clear that the term is severely misunderstood. Thanks to the talking heads on conservative media, socialism is the new McCarthyism for Republicans, an invisible enemy that barely exists in America.
So, what do conservatives believe socialism to be and what is it actually?
By all appearances, the overarching theme for “socialism” on the likes of Fox News and Newsmax is forced dependence on the government for nearly every aspect in an attempt to control the population. Things like universal basic income and health care are designed to destroy capitalism and freedom according to detractors of socialist policies.
The government will decide what’s best for you and get rid of anyone who pushes back against its tyranny. There is no individual. At least that’s what they are told socialism is.
In the simplest terms, socialism can be described as the idea that society and communities should look out for the best interests of its population as a whole rather than at an individual level. Shelter, food, health care, and other necessities are guaranteed by society, which controls the means of production and profits from them.
Pro-capitalism conservatives see this ideology as an existential threat to what they feel is the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps chase for the “American Dream.” Depending on the federal government for everything will stifle the motivation for innovation and progress. Capitalist policies allow anyone willing to work hard enough to be financially secure and provide for themselves.
The reality of what we actually see happen when capitalism is left to its own devices is vastly different from the theory, however.
Many policies of the working world today were designed to counteract some of the worst offenses of unchecked capitalism a century ago. According to the 1900 census, over 18% of children between the ages of ten and fifteen were already in the workforce. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 people because all their exits were locked to prevent them from taking any breaks.
It wasn’t until the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act that things we take for granted today, like a forty-hour workweek and child labor laws, were enacted.
The worst offense of capitalism may very well have been the existence of company-owned towns. Famously practiced by mining and logging companies, temporary housing and dining services for employees were built in remote areas near the natural resources looking to be exploited.
As time went on, company-owned permanent housing was erected and the Company Store was established. Isolated due to the nature of their work, employees were forced to rely on the Company Store for food, clothes, and everything in between.
Worse yet, in some instances company scrip was necessary for purchasing items in the store. Company scrip is a form of currency issued by a company as pay to its employees, only being able to be used at company-owned establishments. Think of them like game tokens at an arcade.
Steep exchange fees to obtain the scrip would basically force employees to spend all their pay to sustain themselves. The inability to use the currency at any town that may be nearby essentially created an economic monopoly for the company and made employees entirely dependent on their employers for almost every aspect of their lives.
That sounds awfully familiar.
I don’t know about you, but I would rather not have to spend Amazon Bucks to pay my Amazon Electric bill for my Amazon House.
The biggest difference between government socialism and company socialism is that when the resources being exploited by a company dried up, they would shut down operation and essentially kill the town, leaving people homeless and with little to no savings to their name. The West Virginia countryside is littered with the ghost towns of exhausted coal mines, for example.
Government socialism is able to pull from diversified sources of funding encompassing all industries and businesses, ensuring continued support even if one business sector suffers. That’s not to say that there aren’t drawbacks to the socialist theory, which any OANN or Fox News personality will be happy to lay out for you at all hours of the day.
Like most things in life, the best way of doing things is probably somewhere in the middle. What we can’t have is rampant, unchecked corporate capitalism that many on the right are proponents of.
The free market does indeed root out bad business ideas and rewards those that fill a need efficiently. It also led to dangerous work conditions, labor exploitation, and economic collapses like the Great Depression and the 2008 housing market crash when left to its own devices.
