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Capitalism is inevitable – it is the only system that is capable of running the industrial world
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Capitalism is inevitable – it is the only system that is capable of running the industrial world.Stromberg, 04 (Stromberg, a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute, and previously held the JoAnn B. Rothbard chair in History at the Ludwig von Mises Institute (Joseph R. Stromberg, Ludwig von Mises Institute, “Why Capitalism is Inevitable?” 7-9-2004, http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1562) The result is that interventions are cheered from all sides. For example, the movement for the (government-imposed) family wage spans left and right, when the state intervenes to curb mass retailing, free trade, sound money, freedom of association, private property, and all the other institutional marks of commercial society, it can count on wide intellectual agreement. Capitalism, it seems, despite its triumphs, remains an irresistible target of the opponents of liberty and property. How striking to discover, then, how few writers and thinkers are willing to spell out precisely what they mean when they refer to the economics of capitalism. For many, the term capitalism is nothing but a vessel into which they pour all the people, institutions, and ideas that they hate. And so capitalism emerges as a synonym for greed, dirty rivers and streams, pollution, corrupt businessmen, entrenched social privilege, the Republican Party, criminal syndicates, world Jewry, war for oil, or what have you. In fact, the advocates of capitalism themselves haven't always been entirely clear on the meaning and implications of capitalist theory. And this is why Murray Rothbard went to such lengths to spell out precisely what he was endorsing when he championed the economics of capitalism. This was especially necessary when he was writing in 1973, a time which was arguably the low point for capitalist theory. Mises died that year, all economists were said to be Keynesians, Nixon closed the gold window, wage and price controls were fastened on industry as an inflation fix, and the US was locked in a titanic Cold War struggle that emphasized government weaponry over private enterprise. Murray Rothbard, meanwhile, was hard at work on his book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, an effort to breath new life into a traditionally liberal program by infusing it with a heavy dose of political radicalism. It must have seemed like a hopeless task. The same year, he was asked to contribute an essay in a series of readings called Modern Political Economy (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973). He was to address "The Future of Capitalism" (pp. 419-430), the conclusion of which might have seemed self-evidently bleak. But not to Rothbard. His contribution to the volume was lively, optimistic, enormously clarifying, and prescient to the extreme. Above all, he used the opportunity to explain with great clarity what precisely he means when he refers to capitalism: no more and no less than the sum of voluntary activity in society, particularly that characterized by exchange. Keep in mind that this was 1973, when hardly anyone else believed these countries capable of reform: "In Eastern Europe, then, I think that the prospects for the free market are excellent--I think we’re getting free-market capitalism and that its triumph there is almost inevitable." Ten years later, it was still fashionable to speak of authoritarian regimes that could reform, as contrasted with socialist totalitarianism that could not be reform and presumably had to be obliterated. Rothbard did not believe this, based on both theory and evidence. Rothbard saw that all sectors in all countries moving either toward capitalism or toward socialism, which is to say, toward freedom or toward control. In the US, the trends looked very bleak indeed but he found trends to cheer in the antiwar movement, which he saw as a positive development against military central planning. "Both in Vietnam and in domestic government intervention, each escalating step only creates more problems which confront the public with tile choice: either, press on further with more interventions, or repeal them--in Vietnam, withdraw from the country." His conclusion must have sounded impossibly naïve in 1973 but today we can see that he saw further than any other "futurists" of his time: "the advent of industrialism and the Industrial Revolution has irreversibly changed the prognosis for freedom and statism. In the pre-industrial era, statism and despotism could peg along indefinitely, content to keep the peasantry at subsistence levels and to live off their surplus. But industrialism has broken the old tables; for it has become evident that socialism cannot run an industrial system, and it is gradually becoming evident that neomercantilism, interventionism, in the long run cannot run an industrial system either. Free-market capitalism, the victory of social power and the economic means, is not only the only moral and by far the most productive system; it has become the only viable system for mankind in the industrial era. Its eventual triumph is therefore virtually inevitable." Perm do both – we solve the link by rejecting the status quo of unequal transportation. By building better mass transit infrastructure, we allow better access for minorities in inner cities. The focus is on those who have previously not had good, reliable mass transit.The perm solves because transportation plays a key role in solving for poverty, that’s our Mann 06 evidence. Improving mass transit precludes the K – Mann says that an effective policy option is necessary before cultural movements can work. Once a policy is made to give the disadvantaged better access to services and opportunity, effective action can be made to target capitalism.Revolution will never happen overnight—progressive policies need to be built upon over time.Wilson, 2000 (John K Wilson, coordinator of the Independent Press Association’s Campus Journalism Project, How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People, pages 121-123) Progressives need to be pragmatic in order to be powerful. However, pragmatism shouldn't be confused with Clintonian centrism and the abandonment of all substance. Pragmatists have principles, too. The difference between a pragmatic progressive and a foolish one is the willingness to pick the right fights and fight in the right way to accomplish these same goals. The current failure of progressivism in America is due to the structure of American politics and media, not because of a wrong turn that the movement took somewhere along the way. What the left needs is not a "better" ideology but a tactical adaptation to the obstacles it faces in the contemporary political scene. A pragmatic progressivism does not sacrifice its ideals but simply communicates them better to the larger public. The words we use shape how people respond to our ideas. It's tempting to offer the standard advice that progressives should present their ideas in the most palatable form. But palatable to whom? The media managers and pedestrian pundits who are the intellectual gatekeepers won't accept these ideas. By the time progressives transform their ideas into the political baby food necessary for inclusion in current debates, it barely seems to be worth the effort. Leftists need to seize the dominant political rhetoric, even though it may be conservative in its goals, and turn it in a progressive direction. Progressives need to use the antitax ideology to demand tax cuts for the poor. Progressives need to use the antigovernment and antiwelfare ideology to demand the end of corporate welfare. Progressives need to translate every important issue into the language that is permissible in the mainstream. Something will inevitably be lost in the translation. But the political soul underlying these progressive ideas can be preserved and brought to the public's attention. The left does not need to abandon its progressive views in order to be popular. The left only needs to abandon some of its failed strategies and become as savvy as the conservatives are at manipulating the press and the politicians. The language of progressives needs to become more mainstream, but the ideas must remain radical. In an age of soulless politicians and spineless ideologies, the left has the virtue of integrity. Until progressives become less self-satisfied with the knowledge that they're right and more determined to convince everyone else of this fact, opportunities for political change will not be forthcoming. Progressives have also been hampered by a revolutionary instinct among some leftist groups. According to some left wingers, incremental progress is worthless-that is, nothing short of a radical change in government will mean anything to them. Indeed, for the most radical left wingers, liberal reforms are a threat to the movement, since they reduce the desire for more extreme changes. What the revolutionaries fail to realize is that progressive achievements can build on one another. If anything approaching a political revolution actually happens in America, it will be due to a succession of popular, effective, progressive reforms. 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