capitalism and existentialism

Though capitalism is often blamed for its impersonality and degradation (since this is not a writing assignment on economics, I won’t use proof to show that these arguments are actually biases against this market system), it’s safe to say that because of free trade, people can choose what they specialize in. The notion of comparative advantage lets people understand that it is not what you parents do that matters; instead, what counts is what you are really good at and want to do. Because of capitalism, human society had a huge boost in economic growth and living standards. In my opinion, the success of capitalism is actually a great application of existentialism. Existentialism accentuates that man is born to make choice. As Sartre says, “Existentialism’s first motive is to make every man aware of what he is…” In the free market, people are encouraged by self-interest, which is vital in human nature. In Wealth of Nation, Adam Smith writes that “give me what I want and you shall get what you want.” Capitalism, quite like existentialism, respects and protects the nature of human. The very existence of competition lets people free to pursue profits rather than live as ascetics in Middle age. Personally, I think that people in the Dark Age were miserable not only because they had no chance to enjoy a good material life; their misery also lies in the fact that their nature were repressed and had to be hypocrisy. The success of free marker system is because of the respect of human rights and choices, which are exactly what existentialists accentuate and advocate.

For Sartre, the existence in the world is divided into two types. The first is the substances that exist objectively and another human’s consciousness, which is highly subjective. The first type of existence is quite supernatural and incidental, which, as Sartre concludes, is nauseating. Obviously it doesn’t mean that the world makes us sick and prone to vomit; instead, it tells us that the absurdity of the world itself makes us feel anxious: we don’t know what to do. Like Camus said, “The Divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting truly constitutes the feeling of absurdity.” The innocence and vulnerability of human makes the world seems to be horrifying. Thus, in order to overcome the fear, we have to make choice because the God doesn’t exist. Both Nietzsche and Sartre argued that the God is dead because they saw the hypocrisy and greed of people under the shelter of religion: some people committed crime and slandered others shamelessly; on the other hand, these very same people went to church and prayed piously like decent citizens. Since the religion has become the shelter of sins, there’s no need for the existence of God, who cannot stop the degradation of man.

Without God, who is supposed to guide our thoughts and behavior, we human are helpless and alone in this world. But the good news is that without the so-called omnipotent icon, we are free to make choices and thus Sartre made a famous argument: Existence precedes essence. In Sartre’s view, men are disseminated to the world like seeds with no reason. A person has to exist first before he can be characterized. An object, however, is the reverse because its essence is bestowed by human. In short, human is different from objects because human can think. A great progress of existentialism is that it emphasizes that man is not controlled by the god. We possess our own consciousness.

Since human come to this absurd world with no guide and help, human have “the full responsibility of existence rest on him.” But if Sartre claimed that human have absolute freedom to make virtually any choices, I wouldn’t have thought his idea dialectic. Let me use an imaginative story to illustrate my point.

There is a civil war in country A. A political refugee, Alex, flees from country A to country B to turn to his friend, Bob, for shelter. Should Bob save Alex or give him back to Country A? If a man is really free to make any choice, he can certainly rat on his friend, but sometimes we are not prone to make this choice because we are not entirely free.

Fortunately, Sartre realized this flaw in his original argument and thus supplemented that a person cannot be considered free unless he respects others’ freedom. Just as Rousseau claims, people are born free but they are also pillared all the time. That’s pretty alike the situation in capitalism. In the free market system, we have property rights which ensure us to have exclusive use of our own properties. For example, if I own a 10-acre large land, I can cultivate whatever I want. But am I really free to grow things, like apples, as I wish? What if my land is not good for apple cultivation? What if customers prefer other kinds of fruit? So it’s an irony that we own the properties but we are not entirely free to do whatever we want. Both capitalism and existentialism are about choice, and people have to take full responsibility on what they choose.