Oliver Balch

In defence of capitalism – ‘the greatest engine of human progress ever invented’

Martin Vander Weyer swats away leftist critiques of the system quicker than Lord Sugar can say ‘You’re fired’

[Getty Images]

For all its faults and foibles, its busts and bailouts, modern market capitalism demonstrates a remarkably bullish resilience. We don’t always love it. We might not even trust it. But, like a cranky old spouse, we doggedly stick with it.

It’s not hard to guess why. Look around, and people today in the main are better off. More importantly, the alternatives seem doubtful. As Bill Gates once put it: ‘Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.’ Even so, there’s a nervousness afoot in the epicentres of free enterprise. Inequality is growing, executive pay is spiralling, high street favourites are disappearing, employment terms are worsening. Forget levelling up; just staying afloat feels like achievement enough.

What’s gone wrong? Has Schumpeter’s destructive capitalism gone rogue and started cannibalising itself? Or are these just hiccups in a dynamic, ever-evolving system? There is little question which side Martin Vander Weyer comes down on. A former investment banker and longtime business editor of this magazine, he views capitalism as the ‘greatest engine of human progress ever invented’. Defending it against attack feels almost personal. In energetic, sometimes pugnacious prose, The Good, the Bad and the Greedy swats away leftist critiques quicker than Lord Sugar can say ‘You’re fired’.

Much of the moaning from ‘bien pensant circles’ derives, says Vander Weyer, from woolly idealism or straightforward wealth envy. Despite Britain’s long history of mercantilism, money-making still carries a certain cultural grubbiness, he notes: ‘That makes us very different from the Americans — and indeed from the Chinese… for whom business success has generally been seen as an unmixed good.’ Not that all alternatives are bad. Co-operatives, building societies and employee-owned businesses all get favourable treatment. But as ‘viable large-scale substitutes for shareholder capitalism’? Not a chance.

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