Realizing that socialism doesn’t (yet!) play well at the ballot box, some liberal politicians are calling for more nuance.
Whole Food CEO John Mackey’s view of socialism isn’t nuanced—he realizes that historical experiments with socialism have been disastrous and calls socialism “trickle-up poverty.”
Mackey doesn’t believe capitalism is perfect. He believes is must “evolve.” But it is the best instrument for prosperity ever devised by human beings.
It is worth quoting what Mackey said at some length:
“[Capitalism] needs to evolve,” Mackey said of the business culture. “Otherwise, the socialists are going to take over — that’s how I see it, and that’s the path of poverty. They talk about trickle-down wealth, but socialism is trickle-up poverty. It just impoverishes everything. That’s my fear, that the Marxists and socialists, the academic community is generally hostile to business. It always has been. This is not new.”
Mackey argued that the purpose of business is to create value for others and blamed colleges and progressives for spreading the negative view of capitalism.
“That’s why we’re seeing this move toward socialism — because capitalism they see as inherently corrupt,” Mackey said.
“That is wrong. Capitalism is the greatest thing humanity’s ever done,” he continued. “We’ve told a bad narrative, and we’ve let the enemies of business and the enemies of capitalism put out a narrative about us that’s wrong. It’s inaccurate and doing tremendous damage to the minds of young people.”
While Mackey argued against outright socialism, he said there are some progressive ideas that are important and should be utilized.
“Socialism has been tried 42 times in the last 100 years, and 42 failures, it doesn’t work, it’s the wrong way,” he said. “We have to keep capitalism, I would argue, we need conscious capitalism.”
Mackey is founder of a school called “Conscious Capitalism,” which can be explored in his book of that name (coauthored with Rajendra Sisodia).