This theoretical paper argues that capitalism simultaneously promotes and attempts to address deviant activities in modern societies. Defining capitalism as an economic system based on private ownership, free market competition, and individual decision-making, the paper identifies five major categories of deviant behavior encouraged by capitalist structures: human affliction and suffering, labor exploitation, environmental destruction, erosion of community values, and systemic corruption. The analysis demonstrates how capitalist economies create these social harms while also establishing foundations, policies, and institutions ostensibly designed to mitigate them. The paper concludes that capitalists must recognize their responsibility in perpetuating inequality and work toward policy reforms that address both the root causes of deviance and their consequences.
The saying "feeding us the poison and the cure" relates well to capitalism and how it promotes deviant activities while simultaneously offering the means to address them. Capitalism refers to an economic structure distinguished by corporate and private capital goods ownership through production, distribution, and prices measured mostly by free market competition and reserves measured by personal decision (Enderwick, 2005). Studies often refer to Adam Smith as the "Father of Capitalism." Smith defined capitalism as an "invisible hand" that maintains the market without the intervention of government. According to Smith's theory, administrations exist simply to safeguard individual rights and establish an army that defends against overseas aggressors, law enforcement to shelter against internal criminals, a court system to resolve arising disputes, implement contracts, and discipline criminals using independently predefined decrees.
Sociologists term capitalist economies as complex, and these economies could survive or operate effectively only if they consisted completely of market competition and private property institutions (Gerald, 2003). Capitalism also requires other organizational arrangements to work. The features of capitalist nations differ significantly over place and time. American capitalism is founded on personal rights and "free enterprise," which falsely implies that capitalism is socially and economically progressive. In reality, capitalism benefits the interests of privileged leaders of the developed world and harms the wellbeing of other people. Several capitalist economies have robust, regulatory states that regulate numerous market aspects and empower employees to manage particular characteristics of the labor process. Additionally, capitalism encourages deviant activities but later gives the means to address them.
The first way capitalism promotes deviant behavior is by enabling preventable types of human affliction (Harvey, 2005). We exist in a world that possesses a combination of amazing productivity, wealth, and improved opportunities for people's resourcefulness and fulfillment alongside ongoing human depression and frustrated lives. This observation remains true whether one looks at the world in general or at the livelihood of citizens in capitalist nations. One can say that "poor people will always exist," or alternatively, the situation may be temporary and advanced economic growth will eventually eliminate poverty. Some capitalists believe that people are responsible for their daily suffering and unhappy lives. However, unnecessary suffering in this aspect means that suitable transformation in socioeconomic relationships could eliminate problems that create suffering and unhappy lives.
Supporters of capitalism fail to admit that capitalism causes significant illness in modern society. Most people believe that "profit-seeking" entrepreneurialism and "free market" systems bring technological advancement, prosperity, and economic development (Horsley, 2010). Nevertheless, human suffering and societal problems continue existing in wealthy capitalist communities. Capitalism has produced amazing scientific and technical development over the past two centuries, such as improved life expectancy, decreased illness, and enhanced nutrition (Hurst, 2004). Most countries prefer capitalist structures because they believe these developments improve quality of life. Regrettably, these developments brought about by capitalism have also created many deviant behaviors.
Today, people are using technology to commit crimes. There have been many instances in the United States where young people have died because of cyberbullying. Other cases of deviant behaviors brought about by technological advancement include hacking of private information for blackmail. Although capitalism does not fully contribute to these ills in society, it is partly to blame as it has promoted scientific and technological advancement. Human affliction remains rampant in the modern world despite these developments. Nevertheless, capitalists create some of these problems and then attempt to tackle them. For instance, some capitalists establish foundations to help people affected by diseases caused by modern food or equipment. There are foundations for cancer, survivors of cyberbullying or other forms of bullying, and other foundations aimed at supporting affected people.
The second way capitalism promotes deviant behavior is by depressing local production and supporting free development of enormous collaborations that exploit local labor for profits (Enderwick, 2005). Capitalists justify their actions by saying that their philosophy fails to recognize any authority that surpasses their personal opinion of reality. The theory offers a scapegoat to individuals who hurt other people to pursue their self-interest. Capitalists believe that violating a person's rights for the good of other people remains contradictory because the person is a society member as well.
For example, a rich person or businessman may have ideas on how to expose affluent leaders in the country. The capitalists may realize that some of the influential members about to be exposed are capitalists themselves, including top politicians and business heads. Punishing and incarcerating them may damage the financial aspect of the country. Capitalists may order their deaths citing protection of the "public good," which is mostly identified as protecting collective welfare. Killing is a deviant behavior punishable by law. The United States punishes killers through death or life imprisonment. Unlike normal criminals, capitalists vindicate themselves using this individualistic attitude as justification for the perpetuation of unfairness. They become conscious free despite living in a state wherein 23.5 percent of total income comes from the top one percent of Americans.
Capitalists depress local production and uphold free development of enormous collaborations that exploit local labor for profits but simultaneously attempt to tackle these problems (Hurst, 2004). Sometimes, capitalists support labor unions aimed at protecting employees from their employers. Employees require working in a positive environment, a situation that most organizations fail to provide. Some of these firms are capitalist-owned. Yet, other capitalists may encourage labor unions to fight for the rights of employees working in unfavorable conditions despite having created such situations themselves. These capitalists may even go further by compensating exploited people after they realize the injustice they have inflicted. Additionally, capitalists may influence the government to create laws that protect employees from exploitation.
The third way capitalism promotes deviant behavior is through environmental destruction (Horsley, 2010). Capitalism considerably plays a huge role in ecological issues in three major ways. The first way capitalism affects the environment is that capitalist organizations overlook ecological expenses because of the absence of robust countervailing demand. People litter their environments by tossing cans out of vehicle windows since it is cheaper than proper disposal. However, capitalist firms face different kinds of pressure. Capitalist organizations face cutthroat demands to decrease expenses and externalize environmental costs as the best strategy. Only state or organized societal forces can perform non-capitalist intervention to counter this pressure. Nevertheless, some capitalist organizations dispose of their waste to the environment, such as oceans, rivers, and lands where people use those resources for their daily livelihood.
Capitalist organizations systematically under-price nonrenewable natural resources as demand and supply dynamics do not register their value to future generations (Harvey, 2005). Capitalist market actors over-use natural resources. Capitalists fail to ensure that future generations have sufficient resources during their time. Some of these capitalists over-exploit resources based on selfish interests rather than ensuring that other people who provided the labor benefit from the resources.
Everyone has a role to play in protecting the environment. Unfortunately, capitalist organizations are often the first to harm the environment by disposing of waste in unsuitable places. Capitalists collaborate with the media to inform people about the dangers of destroying the environment, despite creating the situation themselves. Capitalists also sponsor media advertisements aimed at informing people how to protect the environment and water sources.
The fourth way capitalism promotes deviant behavior is by corroding communities. Political and social debates use the word "community" in a broad variety of ways for diverse purposes. Robust communities have shared obligations that run deep, while weak communities are easily disrupted because they lack any mutual obligations. Communities have moral values like shared caring and concern, reciprocity, and solidarity. Community is both an ethical question of things that define a good civilization and an influential question of ways to solve intense, inherent human problems. Community helps people to thrive through cooperation. On the contrary, capitalism possesses a different relationship with community. Capitalism assumes frail community forms, because some degree of shared obligation is important for contracts and market exchanges to become possible. Markets could devastate civilization unless robust communal organizations constrain them. Alternatively, capitalism weakens community. For instance, capitalism produces unfairness that destabilizes extensive social cohesion.
Cohen (1994) explained capitalism and its effects in his essay "Back to Socialist Basics," stating that:
"I mean here by 'community' the anti-market principle according to which I serve you not because of what I can get out of doing so but because you need my service. This is anti-market because the market motivates productive contribution not on the basis of commitment to one's fellow human beings and a desire to serve them while being served by them, but on the basis of impersonal cash reward. The immediate motive to productive activity in a market society is typically some mixture of greed and fear. In greed, other people are seen as possible sources of enrichment, and in fear they are seen as threats. These are horrible ways of seeing other people, however much we have become habituated and inured to them, as a result of centuries of capitalist development" (27).
Markets cultivate characters in individuals that harshly oppose the forms of motivation necessary for robust communities (Knudsen and Swedberg, 2009). Both the community and the market can coexist despite the contradictions. Nevertheless, unfairness is a very negative dynamic in a community. Unfairness may create several deviant behaviors. For instance, people may start stealing from each other. People who have been treated unfairly feel that the community does not value them. They may start stealing from the rich in order to feed themselves and their families.
Knudsen and Swedberg (2009) state that capitalism undercuts communities through ways that foster financial inequality whereby these communities undergo fundamental exploitation mechanisms in capitalist class relationships. In an unfair relationship, the exploiting group possesses dynamic interests to maintain the deprivations and vulnerability of the oppressed category. This situation produces aggressions of interests, which weaken the feeling of shared fate and generosity.
The fifth way capitalism promotes deviant behavior is through corruption (Stockman, 2013). The world believes that the United States is the best democracy in the world, but the wealthiest rule the government. Very few affluent people in the United States govern many citizens and the economy using enormous businesses, which obtain special governmental treatment, thwart commercial competition, and manage many people using soaring debt and low wages. According to Stockman (2013), this kind of corruption makes American government legitimacy questionable. Questions arise because a country ruled by one percent of the citizens fails to qualify as a true democracy. Some Congress members also admit that the government has serious problems. Senator Dick Durbin claimed that big financial institutions owned the country.
Capitalism motivates corruption in the United States such that policies are established by political parties dominated by corporate interests to create unjust regulations that ensure people accumulate huge debts (Enderwick, 2005). The poor lack basic education and services, putting them in financial peril. Public money allocated to pay for fundamental education and services enables the greedy conduct of huge corporations. Some of the welfare recipients include the top banks and Walmart. Walmart remains the biggest private company that employs a large number of Americans. Nevertheless, the company heirs have more wealth compared to the bottom forty percent of all Americans collectively. The Walmart heirs' wealth originates from huge government subsidies, such as tax breaks from local and state administrations for approximately 5,000 retail stores in the country. The company also receives government subsidies for staff members, such as housing, food, and healthcare since the firm pays poverty-level wages.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major global bank that offers loans but issues Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) to recipients, mostly developing nations (Hurst, 2004). The SAPs require privatization and austerity of resources and social amenities. The SAPs undercut the economy and the government and augment suffering and poverty, thereby causing social turbulence. Capitalism promotes corruption through policies that control the operations of government (Knudsen and Swedberg, 2009). Capitalism also claims to help the development of other countries. These actions make the poor remain poorer and the affluent amass their wealth. Capitalists then attempt to tackle the situation by pretending to let the people vote for their desired candidate. They claim to allow America to vote for their preferred leaders. These capitalists also provide additional finance through the IMF to prevent countries from borrowing money elsewhere and questioning the SAPs.
In summary, capitalism allows private corporations and individuals to run the markets and sometimes the economy. Capitalism motivates deviant behaviors but at the same time tries to tackle them. Some of the deviant activities promoted by capitalism include human affliction, exploitation, environmental harm, communal value corrosion, and corruption. Some of these deviant activities have caused the deaths of many people. Some have died because of lack of necessary medical care or other fundamental amenities. Therefore, capitalists should understand that not every poor person caused their current situation. They should also realize that some of the policies they help establish, especially in the market and entrepreneurship, kill the dreams of people trying to build themselves and the economy. Therefore, capitalists should encourage amendments to policies that prevent people from becoming entrepreneurs.
You’re 96% through this paper. Sign up to read the full paper.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.