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Capitalism in the 19th century stood in contrast to agrarian society and the ancien regime. In the 20th century, it stood in contrast to Communism. It lacks a defining point of contrast today—the only competing system, Chinese-style managerialism, is itself labeled capitalist.
Part of the significance of this is that to be anti-Communist usually entailed being capitalist, in at least relative way. Capitalism picked up support by default. Now capitalism has to stand on its own, without automatically getting support from another system’s opponents.
Another upshot is that capitalism has lost the ability to make comparatively credible promises about the future. 19th century capitalism and socialism/communism both promised a future of rationally created wealth and ease, beyond the limits of the irrational trad economy.
The future was an unknown ideal, as Ayn Rand later said of capitalism in another context. In the 20th century, the promise of capitalism was that once socialism was gone—Communism abroad, socialist compromises at home—we’d be free and happy, with leisure, security, and plenty.
Now there isn’t as plausible a future for capitalism to promise because capitalism is the status quo. There may be mopping up to do—shrinking government—but as a system, this is it. And shrinking gov’t just doesn’t sound like a dramatic change. Its promise is modest or dubious.
Capitalist propaganda is ever less persuasive as it tries to ignore the illiberal realities of China and India in boasting of the billions lifted from poverty, while at the same time painting beautician licensing in the U.S. as the gravest of evils. Abolish it, and riches follow?
I’m sympathetic to the arguments against licensing beauticians. My point is that it’s hard to convince anyone that this is a cause worth living and dying for. Libertarians highlight relatively small evils and sources of discontent while downplaying large ones.
Not all of this is the fault of those who make arguments for capitalism—they had a vision of the future in the 19th century, they had a meaningful struggle in the 20th. Now that the mission is accomplished, its defense necessarily has to be very different. But old tropes linger.
The problems of the 21st century—declining life expectancy for some Americans, a perceived loss of dignity and security in work, a lack of fulfillment among those who do succeed, a cultural elite that deplores much of the public—are not things capitalism offers to remedy.
All this is context for the right’s drift away from capitalist ideology. It’s not a new development, though it’s accelerating. It was strongly represented by Buchanan in the ‘90s, and weakly by “compassionate” Bush conservatism, Huckabee ‘08, Santorum ‘12.
The counterexample to the right’s move away from capitalism is Ron Paul. But he was the staunchest critic of the banking system that underpins “capitalism” as we have it. Paul is in fact representative of the trend, not a departure from it.
Ron Paul had a deep and radical reservoir of Austro-Rothbardian thought to draw upon to create a plausible contrast that less radical libertarians cannot—a contrast between the economic system we have and the promise of the one he wants to replace it with.
A Ron Paul or a Murray Rothbard could make capitalism right-wing, populist, radical, and exciting. But they’ve had few heirs—libertarian institutions have mostly continued to be technocratic, culturally trumphalistic, left-drifting, and timid.
A final problem for capitalist-libertarian arguments is that ordinary people increasingly have to fear having their speech policed & jobs threatened not by government but by algorithms, heresy hunters, and paternalistic corporations. Left & centrist friends are going to FB “jail”
