My answer is "no"

Because it is my week to post, I’m going to frame this as an argument against the morality of capitalism, though I very much mean it as a response to you, Phong, and a contribution to the greater conversation.

Phong, I know you said that you are not stubborn, but for a lack of a better word I just want to say that I appreciate your stubbornness and you asking questions and pushing as hard as you do helps me to better understand everything. I don’t mean for any of this to sound like an attack but it’s too time consuming to add like “no offense” or “maybe it’s just me” every sentence.

I want to make some comments on your ideas. The last three start with quotes from your post.

1.I think that you argument that “capitalism promotes charitable needs” needs some definition and thought behind the concept of ‘charitable deeds’. Obviously there is information and data to back up your idea that there are groups, companies, corporations, individuals, what have you, that do/have done ‘charitable’ things – and they can do there charitable things because of the fruits of capitalism. So people are doing works of charity by willingly giving money to those in need (the definition of charity says something like this)… to me, this begs the question of why are these people in need in the first place. (I’m not going to try and address the idea of the fact that many many people are in no way reached by the charitable acts of these supposed people.) To me, to say that capitalism is moral because of the good deeds that people involved in the system have done, is like saying that I am a moral person because I hand Ben a band-aid after I kick him to the ground. Also, if you are going to talk about government and politics as part of this argument, then you must use them as confounding factors to these charitable acts as well. Giving money to organizations is often a political move though it is technically giving to a charity, and the tax breaks and so forth that companies get form being “charitable” (not that I’m claiming to understand the tax system/business world) basically nullifies the “morality” of the act in my mind. I don’t disagree that these donations and charitable giving is good, but is it moral if the intentions are not necessarily charitable and is the capitalism moral if it created the problem in the first place??

2.“immoral means that capitalism denies a right to live or it denies basic human needs.” In think Marx would argue that there are basic human needs being denied in the alienation from labor. Like consciousness’ search, I think that the ways in which the laborer is alienated from the object, the process, herself, others (what we were talking about in class) are denying a form of a basic human need for connectedness to self, other, etc. Though the writing may simply be about labor for production/capitalism’s sake, the effects of this alienation can be, like Dr. J said in class, soul-crushing, which sounds immoral to me.

3.“Some people will make it and others probably not.” I think that you are right about this, though I think it almost works against your argument/position that capitalism is moral. As I understand it, capitalism, like a stage of consciousness, is defined as having such a structure that it will eventually come to a point of frustration where something must change. I don’t know if you are considering these expected changes in your concept of capitalism. So, I might agree that the idea of “haves” and “have nots” will always exists in one way or another, but capitalism is designed/explained in such a way that “have” and “have not” becomes “extreme poverty/borderline inability to live and function” and “grossly wealthy and in control”. So to say that some probably won’t make it, almost concedes to the idea that people will be worked harder and harder and stretched thinner and thinner in exploitation. Unless you are thinking with the mentality of “making it” meaning that you have a nicer car and a pool in the back yard. There is an inherent immorality in accepting a system that has people “not making it” in its structure if “not making it” includes a denial of basic human needs, as you defined immoral…?

4.“How can anyone condemn an entire system unjust without realizing personal responsibility?” I have something that I want to say about personal responsibility here, but I’m not quite sure what it is. I don’t know what Marx would say… but if I were to read this sentence out of the context of your post, I would assume that by personal responsibility you meant personal responsibility in terms of class unity working together to not let the exploitation of capitalism get to the extreme that obviously it can. Maybe this would be the bourgeoisie revolution…? Obviously you don’t mean to reference a “my brother’s keeper” kind of responsibility do you? I just don’t think there is a very strong argument for “personal responsibility” as a cause of capitalism’s problems.