A provocative discussion we do not have often enough.
Here is the video (1 hour and 20 minutes long) on C-Span:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?436640-1/capitalism-socialism-debate
Capitalism is a system driven by profit. Is that (such) a bad thing?
To answer one of the debate questions myself, the pursuit of profit is not inherently evil or bad. Whats problematic is the status of profit in society.
That profit is the most basic and driving force of social relationships and institutions-- THE main organizing principle-- of capitalist society.
My initial reactions about some missing topics from the debate:
The unsustainable nature of capitalism, environmentally
(I practically wanted to scream this / might have screamed it out loud at some point during the debate. The profit imperative requires capitalists to create money out of money and relies on the continual depletion of natural resources at rates unseen and striking in the history of the planet. This basic truth is, I do believe, is one that necessitates the transition to a more sustainable system. It WILL have to be a different system than capitalism as economic growth imperatives and sustainability are fundamentally opposed concepts.
The inherent violence of capitalist relations
(ie the violent history of the rise of private property, colonial expansion through the globe, slavery and the post-slavery convict labor systems in the U.S., the undemocratic and divisive history of policing of the American working class, etc. There was apt mention of Pinochet and Chile, but there is room for expansion on the ways capitalism is spread and enforced coercively. There are plenty examples of undemocratic coups and violent repression, quite literally upheld with the Chicago Boys/ Milton Freedman free-market, supercapitalist "shock therapy" and the Washington Consensus.
This is particularly important as the issue of violence is always brought up in the pro capitalist standpoint. As the anticapitalists pointed out when asked about alternatives to capitalism, it will of course have to be different than those authoritarian versions of "actually exisiting socialism" or state socialism--- I would add that socialism is not theoretically linked to authoritarian state regimes or dictatorships. On the contrary, Marx suggested that in a society organized by collective ownership, the state should "wither away". I also find it downright bigoted that the woman arguing for Capitalism said that all experiences of socialism have been coercive and violent.. What about the experiences of non-Western and traditional human societies?)
The effects of Western political ideologies on the rest of the world
(Related to the last point, this would be particularly helpful in response to the libertarian speaker who is arguing for capitalism, he explains, from the standpoint of classic liberal theory and individual rights.)
An intersectional voice representing the most vulnerable and exploited statuses in our society
(How the systems of racial oppression, gender-based divisions of labor, repression of labor unions and workers' collective rights etc. are historically and practically linked to the rise and operation of capitalism.)
... But then again, one debate is hardly enough to feature all the critiques of and issues with capitalism as a historically specific mode of organizing society.
Let's just keep the discussion going.
Props to the Jacobin Magazine speaker and sociologist who made critical and verifiable points about capitalism. So too did the moderator.
I appreciate the intentions of the pro-side as well. They are just wrong in many of their basic claims in this debate, as rightly pointed out by the socialist speakers, and I would add, what we know from social science research.
Further reading: Naomi Klein's books, Capitalism Vs. The Climate and The Shock Doctrine; Rosa Luxemborg and David Harvey and the violence of "primitive accumulation"
Further watching: Plutocracy, a documentary on the history of violence against the working class in the U.S. http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/plutocracy/
