My conclusion must start off
with the notion that the state is made up of people, not numbers. The idea of
the state derives from an idea of protection and overall benefit that
ameliorates the individual away from the lack of justice in the state of
nature. This idea of some benefit permeates all forms of government from
monarchy to democracy. People willingly (in theory of course) are part of the
state because they derive greater benefits being socially tied than to be
individually detached from others. Democracy, in turn, made the government the
people. Thus, the government, elected by the people, represents the wants and
ideals of the people that voted for it. For this reason, I never really
understood such animosity towards the faculty or the idea of government. Are we
supposed to give up on government (our own faculties) for the results of
economic liberation, which are not elected? Of course, some will argue that
choice dictates economic liberation. I make the choice where I want to buy
something, and thus in the end, the capital accumulation of a certain entity
ultimately relies on my choice. But, I deduce this thought to two questions: 1.
Since when did political freedom ever have to do with money? 2. At what point
was I making a decision on the social and political structure of the state when
I chose to buy a cheeseburger at McDonalds or a notebook at Wal-Mart? On the
first question, I would argue that money would have to be the antithesis of
political freedom. Repressive monarchies, nobility, and religious institutions
used their faculties and ideas to gain more wealth and prestige. Monarchies
waged war, nobility claimed their role as warriors as a good excuse to tax
people, and religious institutions (Christianity) discouraged usury as a way to
collect inheritances (along with tithes and indulgences) to accumulate more
wealth. The beauty of voting for a government is that ideally the people that
are voted in represent the ideals of the majority and the general will. In
history, the great accumulation of wealth never benefited the political
well-being of the majority. Karl Marx wrote in a time when factories and the
bourgeoisie (those with the capital to mass produce) were more favored than the
workers. For this reason, Marx is very pessimistic and negative towards the
socialists. He believes that they are completely unrealistic to believe that
the government would ever help the worker because the government would only
help the capitalist. But, we can even go farther back in history to the French
Revolution. Turgot’s enlightened idea to tax the nobility in order to alleviate
growing economic deficits in 18th century France came under intense
scrutiny from the nobility showing that the political order of the day still
favored the 1% of the population that was part of the nobility while completely
ignoring the 97% of the population that belonged to the third estate. As we
slowly progress to the contemporary, democracy and government have slowly
become more for the people, from the direct election of senators to the
granting of collective bargaining rights. In the end, the government is the
people by proxy of vote, and the government makes decisions made by the
majority will. So, the decision of the government is sovereign because it is
legitimized by the will of the majority. Capitalism is an economic theory that
is based on competition, but because capital seems to accumulate it becomes the
responsibility of the government to regulate it. Competition must be regulated
because if it is to work in the state it must work for the benefit of the
majority, not the few, which is the political legitimacy of our political
state. But, moreover, we must concede that competition is what makes the term
“capitalism.”Monopolization by the lack of competition and government
regulation renders the loose usage of the term “capitalism” more of an ideal
than a practice. People and politicians argue that government intervention
hinders capitalism, but if the government and the majority choose to regulate
competition to favor the majority, then how does that hinder capitalism?
Capitalism is based solely on the preservation of competition between everyone
and government regulation just keeps political influence more focused on voting
than on consumption.