10 Minute Essay (2/12)

The Guilt of Capitalism

The interesting fact about a state-run economy is not that it was experiencing economic woes, it is that the change to a capitalistic system was so very painful. State run economies cannot be efficient because supply and demand act very unnaturally, and therefore some companies produce more goods than are needed and some less. As the video states, workers were supplied to shops that had no need for them, creating a system in where there were thousands of surplus workers in any given factory. This translates directly into dollars lost and inefficient production. Perhaps the most surprising fact is that workers within a Communistic system, where the ability to work and be proud of that labor is the most valuable commodity, took full advantage of the inefficient system. Workers could choose to do their jobs or not to do them, and the work was easy because there were so many hands doing the same job within the company. Workers had full knowledge that they did not need to work extremely hard or adapt with new skills and training to maintain their wage and status within the company. This lead to further inefficiency, but the workers seemed to be generally happy.

The conversion to capitalism seemed to benefit those who would have suffered most under government control—the ambitious and adaptable. People who would have been bored and frustrated under the communist system which limited personal enterprise suddenly had the chance to innovate. These driven individuals could succeed in a swiftly-changing capitalist economy, while the complacent workers of the iron rice bowl era were doomed to unemployment and poverty. It is a sad reality that the type of worker most easily created by the Communist system is the most easily destroyed by the termination of that system. In many ways the improvised worker is merely a product of Communism, and has to try and weather the betrayal of that inefficient system.

As an American raised in a state of relative prosperity, it is easy to judge the current situation in China with a great deal of cultural arrogance. It is easy to say that the Chinese are both wrong and extremely callous for taking a state-run economic system and converting it into a market economy, leaving perhaps millions unemployed and in a state of extreme poverty. From a human rights standard, this is wrong indeed. There is no excuse for the starvation of millions and the repression of information about the state of these individuals. However, was the American economic system not founded on cultural bias and repression? Did the early American capitalists not use disinformation to lure immigrants to this nation in order to work in sweatshop conditions? Perhaps the real question should not be one of the ethics of China, but of the ethics of capitalism itself. Moral judgments aside, is it not possible that the system of capitalism requires such harsh treatment of a group of individuals for success? Perhaps there is no other way to successfully begin capitalism. This is in interesting moral and intellectual thesis that would require further much further research to begin to prove or disprove.