Capitalism is the ideological expression of the bourgeois concern for establishing
political and economic conditions necessary for, or conducive to, the wealth of nations
and of individuals. Capitalism, as an ideology, is very concerned about creating and
constituting those institutions which are instrumental to profit maximization for
individual business and corporate enterprises. The ideology of capitalism theorizes
commercial markets, commodity production, and even the modern capitalist state,
from an instrumentalist perspective.
Market efficiency has everything to do with efficiency in maximizing the rate of return on
capital investment. And that is the problem. Profit maximization is not the competency
I look for, or hope for. The end of poverty is the competency that I desire and demand
from an efficient political-economy. If capitalism only succeeds in creating extreme
prosperity for the proprietors of capital, while doing too little, or doing nothing, to fully
and finally eliminate the extreme poverty of the marginalized and the expendable, then
capitalism is not a success; capitalism is a failure. There is too much unemployment
for anyone to claim that capitalism has ever been a satisfactory success. There is too
much unhappiness for anyone to assert that capitalism has been a sufficient success.
The ideological capitalist measures the success of capitalism by the ideological
capitalist's very own standards of success. If the standard of success is developing
and enabling a many-sided personality for every person, then capitalism has not
succeeded, largely because capitalism does not have this standard. If the standard
of success is to strengthen and to capacitate the promotion of full-fledged individuality,
then capitalism has not succeeded, and largely because capitalism will not succeed
in realizing such a purpose. The profiteering capitalist can never be a many-sided
person; the acquisitive proprietor will never be a fully-fledged individual.
The ethical values of individuality and democracy are not the ethical values of capitalism.
Of what profitable use is a wage-worker with a developed sense of individualism, or with
a mature awareness of equality, and a sophisticated desire for a true and genuine
democracy.
The assumption of all bourgeois thinking is that all economic activity is always and
everywhere driven by a profit motive, and that all economic actors, in a purely economic
context will seek to maximise their returns--this holds both for individuals and for groups.
But, the assumption is nothing more than an assumption. Capitalism is constituted
and constructed upon the assumption. It is no wonder that capitalism succeeds in
doing what ideological capitalism assumes ought to be done. The institutions of
capitalism are built and geared to succeed only in achieving the lowest expectations
modern human beings have inherited from the past, and/or invented for themselves.
Capitalism is all about the maximum private acquisition of property, the maximum private
gaining of profits. The individual capitalist obeys the general principles of capitalism when
succeeding in the practice of capitalist ways.
"Karl Marx wisely shuns any epistemic skepticism (as promoted by the deconstructive
critics of our day) and explanatory agnosticism or nihilism (as intimated by those
descriptivist anthropologists and historians bitten by the bug of epistemic skepticism).
Instead, Marx refuses to conflate epistemic and methodological issues, philosophic
and social theoretical ones, matters of justification for the certain or absolute grounds
for knowledge -- claims and matters of explanation that provide persuasive yet
provisional (or revisable) accounts of social and historical phenomena. Like so many
critics today, Marx's immediate followers often made a 'category mistake' of collapsing
epistemological concerns of justification in philosophy into methodological concerns
of explanation in social theory. This unwarranted collapse is the basic reason why anti-
foundationalists in epistemology became full-fledged skeptics and why descriptivists
in the social sciences shun subtle explanations of change and conflict in society and
culture. Needless to say, the complex relation of epistemic skepticism and explanatory
nihilism to the sense of political impotence and historical cynicism among such critics
-- even as they monotonously invoke slogans that knowledge is culturally constructed,
historically constituted, and politically-laden -- cries out for explanation. One major
reason is that they are reacting against narrow conceptions of social theory, especially
positivistic, economistic, and reductionist versions of Marxism. Despite the deep
tensions in Marx's thought, there are other and better versions of Marxism put forward
by Marx himself in his best moments. My point is not that Marx's social theory fully
accounts for all social and historical phenomena; rather, it is that social theory wedded
in a nuanced manner to concrete historical analyses must be defended in our present
moment of epistemic skepticism, explanatory agnosticism, political impotence (among
progressives), and historical cynicism."
-- Cornel West, The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought, 1991
