Can Capitalism Have a Soul?

The Economist just posted an interesting article on capitalism and development.

SOCIALISM and radical environmentalism evidently have the ability to inspire. Capitalism, on the other hand, tends to leave most folks cold, despite the not insignificant fact that it actually delivers the goods.

By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labour, freeing us to pursue ‘higher’ objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a ‘growth fetish’ has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other ‘soul-enriching’ pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an ‘imbalance’ between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history.

That's Peter Saunders of the Australian Centre for Independent Studies in a new essay in Policy aimed at the arguments of growth skeptic Clive Hamilton. Hamilton, Saunders says, admits that capitalism has opened up heretofore unimagined opportunities. But it has gone too far; we have lost the balance. Capitalism has made us tawdry and small, too obsessed with beady-eyed materialism to use our wealth in the quest for authenticity. Saunders replies:

The attraction of living in a capitalist society is not just that the economy works. It is also that if your version of the good life leads you to turn your back on capitalism, you don’t have to pick up sticks and move away. If you don’t like capitalism, there is no need to bribe people-smugglers to get you out of the country. You simply buy a plot of land, build your mud-brick house, and drop out (or, like Clive, you set up your own think tank and sell books urging others to drop out).

And people do drop out, or at least scale down. A survey conducted by Hamilton’s Australia Institute claims that 23% of Australians between the ages of thirty and sixty have taken a cut in their income to get more control over their lives, spend more time with friends and families, or achieve greater personal fulfillment. Clive calls them ‘downshifters.’

The fact that about a quarter of the population is opting out of the rat race is the best imaginable evidence that it is possible to take command of one's consumption habits and bend them to the service of deeper satisfaction. But apparently this is not good enough for Mr Hamilton, who writes:

The downshifters are the standard bearers in the revolt against consumerism, but the social revolution required to make the transition to a post-growth society will not come about solely through the personal decisions of determined individuals … Making [this] transition demands a politics of downshifting.

But what if those other 77% don't want to downshift. Too bad! False consciousness! They don't know what they really need! This is ominous not only for the implied authoritarianism of a "politics of downshifting" that will no doubt force people to be free, but for its egregiously stunted sense of the human horizon.

Growth skeptics are, among other things, people who think we are at a late phase of material development. But it seems to me the evidence points decisively in the other direction. We are in the infancy of the economic advance, and its humanitarian effects have only barely begun to register. That thought ought to be inspiring. At the end of this century, after lifespans have tripled and average incomes have multiplied many times over, the idea that we had "too much" at the beginning of the century will be seen as the sad absurdity it is.

Interesting article, what do you think?