JAPANESE CAPITALISM

 

            What kind of capitalism is practiced in Japan? Is it a more humanistic version than the U.S.? Or more totalitarian?  The notion of capitalism is itself quite and abstraction, but we will go with a working definition that capitalism is an economic system based on the rational pursuit of profit by individuals for that individual.  

Though capitalists can be altruistic, it is not their primary motivation. The pursuit of one’s individual profit is a priori, essential, and all-pervading. Only after one takes care of one’s primary needs and wants can one then go on to choose altruism. In this sense, for the true capitalist, capitalism is not a choice, but a fundamental fact of life, the organizing principle behind all endeavor. Classical economic theory (as well as social Darwinism) indeed is based on this assumption that all social action is founded on the individual profit motivation.

            Japanese cultural ideology does not highlight the notion of the individual working for himself for his own aggrandizement, but rather one works for one’s family and for society/the nation. It’s considered in rather bad taste to be explicitly working only for one’s own benefit and pleasure. Of course people do, but the ideology reiterated  again and again is that one works for one’s family, one’s company (an extension of the family), and for society (a further extension of that).

            Is this a more humanistic version of capitalism? Or not? ……

….Not, I think….. I would argue that it is a more totalitarian version of capitalism.

In Japan there is a moral imperative to work for the group—to sacrifice oneself for the greater good. The problem is that this a false consciousness— a lie one force to articulate and believe in but obviously serves the interests of the powerful more than anything else. Though on the face of it this might appear to be a better, more humanistic approach than Western dog-eat-dog capitalism, it is really just capitalism with a totalitarian face. However it has enabled the nation to mobilize its “human resources” (don’t you just hate that term) to make it one of the richest nations in the world in terms of GDP.