No, the Winner Wasn't Known all Along

No triumph is preordained, unless one side is overwhelmingly stronger. Strike that: even then, the occasional David does defeat the Goliath. And yet, the fact that we don’t know the outcome until the fight ends doesn’t stop us from believing that the victor’s victory was preordained. And so we continue to write history as if the victor was known all along!

I read this blog that cited the triumph of capitalism as an example of what many now believe as something that was inevitable all along. The blog mentions multiple examples that proves the reality of how things were really perceived while the capitalism v/s communism fight was still ongoing, even in the US:

“(The US fought the disastrous Vietnam war) because it feared communism would succeed, not that it would fail – that communism could supplant capitalism… When Khrushchev spoke of “burying” and “overtaking” western capitalism, nobody laughed. The danger was a serious one. And the launch of Sputnik suggested to the world that Communism could produce technologies that eclipsed capitalist ones.”

In fact, the question as to whether capitalism is sustainable is much older than the Cold War. Way back in 1848, John Stuart Mill wrote:

“The increase of wealth is not boundless: that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this, and that each step in advance is an approach to it.”

And right before the Cold War, Joseph Schumpeter wrote in 1943:

“Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can…[Capitalism’s} very success undermines the social institutions which protect it, and “inevitably” creates conditions in which it will not be able to live and which strongly point to socialism as the heir apparent.”

In fact, the belief in capitalism as the way to attain sustained higher standards of living only started in the 1980’s. China’s growth has added to that belief. But is that really true? I think that blog ends with the right assessment:

“It’s easy to be a capitalist triumphalist if you think the only alternative is Soviet-style central planning, just as you can believe yourself fit if you compare yourself to a fat slob. Yes, capitalism has seen off one rival. Whether it can see off all - and whether it deserves to - is an open question.”

Of course, that still leaves open the question as to which alternative systems are the rivals to capitalism? None is visible today, but that doesn’t prove anything. We’ll just have to live and see what happens next: there’s no direction to history.