Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism

Capitalism relies on greed and selfishnessThe second lesson is that these mutual benefits comeabout despite the individual being an unwitting and unconsciousplayer. The profit motive provides incentives forpeople to do good even when they are not trying to. A selfishand uncharitable entrepreneur can benefit society bymeeting the wants and needs of his customers. Indeed, hewill have to meet their wants and needs if he is to prosperin business. He may understand the laws of economics ormay be totally ignorant, but so long as he labours for himself,he ‘necessarily labours to render the annual revenueof the society as great as he can’ even though he ‘neither intendsto promote the public interest, nor knows how muchhe is promoting it.’Smith’s great heresy was to show that there is nothinggrubby or disreputable about selling at a profit. FriedrichHayek believed that Smith’s ideas ‘offended a deeply ingrainedinstinct that man … should aim at doing a visiblegood to his known fellows (the “neighbour” of the Bible).These are the feelings that still, under the name of “socialjustice”, govern all socialist demands and easily engage thesympathies of all good men, but which are irreconcilablewith the open society to which today all the inhabitantsof the West owe the general level of their wealth’ (Hayek1991: 118). Today, even those critics who concede that capitalismsuccessfully creates growth and prosperity retaintheir disgust at the mechanism of self-interest that drivesit. Skidelsky and Skidelsky (2012: 5), for example, complainthat ‘the present system relies on motives of greed and acquisitiveness,which are morally repugnant.’9