The headline will seem to be an oxymoron to most readers because they see capitalism as the system that benefits capitalists. Capitalism is what capitalists do after all. But that only emphasizes the poverty of public education and its capture by Marxists.
Why should we allow Marx to define capitalism when we don't accept his definition of Christianity as the opium of the people? Those who distilled the principles of capitalism, theologians at the University of Salamanca during the Reformation, and its most important proponents, such as Adam Smith, should define what capitalism means. According to them, capitalism is a system of government that enforces individual rights to life, liberty and property. Those require the rule of law, equality before the law and very limited government.
Capitalists have often been the greatest enemies of capitalism. Adam Smith wrote that, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices," highlighting the tendency for businesses to collude for gain. They do so by buying politicians to give them favors. Politicians are easily and cheaply purchased.
The economist James Buchanan won a Nobel prize for making the same point. Known as public choice theory, Buchanan exposed politicians for who they really are, self-centered egoists trying to advance their careers:
"As James Buchanan artfully defined it, public choice is 'politics without romance.' The wishful thinking it displaced presumes that participants in the political sphere aspire to promote the common good. In the conventional 'public interest' view, public officials are portrayed as benevolent 'public servants' who faithfully carry out the 'will of the people.' In tending to the public’s business, voters, politicians, and policymakers are supposed somehow to rise above their own parochial concerns."
Politicians exist to sell their power to the highest bidder, usually rich capitalists. Those capitalists, as Smith wrote, seek some favor from the government to give them an edge over their competitors. That's why most of the regulations that make up the 100,000 pages annually of the Federal Register are written by capitalists to exclude competition from smaller firms. Those regulations are the reason that most industries in the U.S. are oligopolies in econ-English, or cartels in Okie.
Even seemingly good environmental regulations do little more than reduce competition. Read Bootleggers and Baptists: How Economic Forces and Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics by Bruce Yandle. Baptists want to make alcohol sales illegal. Bootleggers join with them in passing the legislation because it reduces competition. Environmental organizations may sincerely want to protect nature, then capitalists support them and make the regulations overly burdensome for smaller companies to limit competition.
Capitalists demand tariffs to protect them from foreign competition and appeal to the patriotism of voters. But tariffs benefit domestic producers at the expense of consumers and other producers because consumers must pay higher prices for imported goods, which forces them to buy fewer other goods.
If capitalists are enemies of capitalism, who benefits from capitalism? Consumers! Smith argued that competition in a free market forces selfish businessmen to please their customers and serve the common good or their business will fail. Those of us who work are producers of something, but we produce to consume so production should always be in subjection to consumption, producers to consumers, capitalists to capitalism. Capitalism has always sought what is best for consumers.
Ludwig von Mises, the greatest economist of the last century, wrote in his book Human Action the following:
"The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. [p. 270] Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt, and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him."
The consumer is more important than the worker, too, which is why unions are evil when they extract higher wages for their workers that cause higher prices for consumers. Socialists promote the interests of workers. Capitalists promote the interests of consumers. That's why the West is 30 times richer today than two centuries ago.
The Dutch Republic, which first implemented the principles of capitalism, called them simply Godly government. Adam Smith called them the system of natural liberty. The French called it laissez-faire. Marxists called the system capitalism and since it's the most common name for the system we're stuck with it. But let's be clear what it means. It's biggest enemies are often capitalists.
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