All extremes tend to touch, and Marxism and Capitalism are no exception. Access to capital is the key.
We live in a postmodern world where "nothing seems to be what it seems". There are no longer absolute and unappealable ideas in almost any field. The concept of relativity has penetrated, albeit in different ways, in Physics, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, etc. Even the traditional social roles of women and men have been relativized, showing more and more that the absolute and extreme does not exist, that everything ends up connecting with everything, and evolving into something new, as today's modern science of Complex Systems shows, and from always the Chinese Philosophy.
Marxism and Capitalism are not the exception at all, in fact they never were, and after 200-300 years of dialectical struggle, today it is clear that, although by very different paths, they tend to converge at a key point, the access to capital.
Karl Marx, in his classic book "Capital", speaks of the "end of history" as a stage / epoch to which capitalism would come in its final decline, when the class struggle for production's resources ended (capitalists vs workers, the dynamics of history), since no one would discuss property, because "everything would be for everyone", without violence, but voluntarily.
Words more, words less, Marx described the utopian situation where "all would be owners of everything", looking for an ideal of well-being without material tensions, but seriously misunderstanding the concept of productivity, the key to sustainable economic growth, and sine qua non condition to distribute wealth. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, it is clear that the productivity of private enterprise is much higher than that of public enterprise, being the main reason why communism has failed in all its real experiences, at least in economic terms.
However, there is a very interesting vision that derives from Marx's thought, and that connects with the modern capitalist approaches of sustainable economy (B Companies, etc.): not being the owner of anything bothers the human being, it makes him nervous , it makes it enter into the mental logic of the class struggle (proletarian vs. capitalist), it takes it out of the focus of its personal projects of self-realization, by plunging it into the mud of the permanent struggle for a roof, production tools to work, quality education credentials, among other desired property titles to achieve their own inner neuropsychological balance, also called personal well-being. Modern and sustainable capitalism today is asking how to make a world of private companies with happier people. It is the subject of many current forums and congresses.
The point is that current political visions, the consensus, from J.M.Keynes onwards, focus mainly on equalizing starting conditions via subsidies to the most disadvantaged, which in some cases have worked as social progressiveness, but in many others they have ended up creating a community of addicts to "subsidies to poverty", a true vicious circle, but very convenient electorally, being Latin America, Asia, Africa, among others, an eloquent example.
However, modern approaches to Welfare Economics, backed by Cognitive Neuroscience, among other emerging fields, today show with some clarity that people need to own, have capital assets, among other basic issues, in order to be able to aspire to a sustainable internal well-being, and that also strengthens community bonds, generating a true neuro-social balance, which allows communities of long-term well-being, sustainable, away from the internal neuropsychological tensions of having nothing, present and future.
But public policies in the developing world are far from meeting this goal. Far away!! The housing deficits are gigantic, there is overcrowding, suburbanism, very high rents in proportion to wages. It is urgent to move from the traditional poverty subsidy to the vision of the "constitutional right to access to capital", through very long-term credits, including intergenerational ones, that promote a world of families and small communities with their own capital, and / or Community's credit funds, without traditional guarantee, just trustworthy. That is, the vision of a world with all families with capital, as in the Marxist vision, but of private capital, or private-community, which is the only one that guarantees productivity.
Each family (or small organized community, by ties of friendship or neighborhood), without own capital, of the developing countries, should, by the mere fact of existing, have the constitutional right to a lifetime credit for, at least, the following options of "capital":
- housing,
- physical capital for ventures (correctly formulated and evaluated),
- quality education, in its 3 levels, for children.
In summary
An effort must be made to move from the vision of the "subsidy to poverty" to the vision of the "right to access to capital", either for families or organized micro-communities, especially housing, physical capital for entrepreneurship and qualified education, if we really want to build "welfare states" seriously, and not, as now, "societies in anguish and in permanent restlessness", condemned to the electoral subsidy, and with people working only to pay a rent for their house and eat, without real dreams of progress.
Author: Sebastián Laza
Sebastián Laza is a Behavioral Economist, specialized in the interrelation between Cognitive Neuroscience and Decision Making.
He also is the Executive Director of the Applied Neurosciences to Management and Economics Program (National University of Cuyo, Argentine) and the Neuroeconomics's Coordinator of the of the Latin American Institute of Applied Neurosciences (http://neurociencias.online/).
Additionally, he is the author of NEUROECONOMICS: THE DISRUPTIVE PATH (2018): https://www.amazon.com/NEUROECONOMICS-DISRUPTIVE-PATH-Sebastian-Laza/dp/1718177844
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