Capitalism and Competition: The Conclusion

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 18^th 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.