Reciprocal Capitalism

I began reading the works of Ayn Rand in the fall of 1972. The effect was significant. A year later, as a college senior, now full of myself as well as full of her theories and philosophy, while discussing Marxist economic theory during a required class covering Modernization Processes, the chairman of my department who was one of the three professors teaching the class, told me I was uneducable. As the reigning liberal, he did not beat around the bush any either; his proclamation had been directed at me rather than the entire class. I know this because his original admonishment was preceded by his half-hearted attempt at throwing a piece of chalk in my direction (I didn’t even need to duck), and followed by his glib finger pointing and the even more tendentious statement, “You are uneducable until you stop believing in reality”.

Of course, you really need the amusement of the longer version of what isn’t a fairy tale, but, per my indoctrinating experience way back when, I believe I should now be the poster child for David Horowitz and his immaculately conceived kids over at Front Page Magazine as they wage their war of victimization and sophistry against their perception of ‘liberal’ college professors. The longer version of my adventure includes the Viet Nam War, draft deferments, the draft lottery, an actual desire to finish college, my conversion from liberal to ultra conservative, my conversion from ultra conservative back toward liberalism, and - even more to my amazement - to what actually became some bureaucrat changing history in order to fit the proverbial square peg into the round hole.

Even though this screed of mine may seem self-indulgent, it truly has significance regarding my creating this website and naming it Reciprocal Capitalism. Knowing I won’t succeed, I shall try to be brief.

I graduated high school in 1967, smack in the middle of the Viet Nam war. I started college in the fall because it was the expected thing to do, not in order to avoid the draft. Two years later, like many from my generation, I flunked out, then left Wisconsin for San Francisco. While there, I attended college part-time, worked, and became more liberal. The following year, I returned to Wisconsin to attend college at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Since I had drawn a very high number in the draft lottery, military service was no longer a concern, so my intent was to actually obtain the education I should have pursued three years earlier.

Prior to the mid-sixties, the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay (UWGB) was a two-year junior college. When I arrived in the fall of 1970, it was in the midst of converting to a four-year university. Much of the sixties was about causing change and making public statements. Along with publicly proclaiming itself as the nation’s environmental university, the powers at the time, in what even then was considered a very left wing move, chose to proclaim itself as the nation’s first environmentally focused university and at least partially as a consequence, to re-name and reconfigure their traditional academic departments or disciplines. Among the monikers were the new fangled departments of  Urban Analysis, Analysis Synthesis, Creative Communication, and mine, Modernization Processes - which mostly combined economics, political science, and social psychology.

Humans have the tendency to proudly display their creations, while attaching high levels of self-satisfying importance to them. It makes them feel good as individuals, celebrate as groups, and lionize the creation without concern for how it will be received by outsiders. UWGB was no exception. When time came to send out the first announcements and college catalogues touting the new four-year university, the administrators found some abbreviations were needed to accommodate the space requirements in their written materials. The designers of the four year university were so proud of their achievement, they never noticed these new abbreviations for the departments conveyed meanings other than those intended: Urban Analysis proudly became 'Urb Anal'; following right along behind, Regional Analysis claimed the moniker, 'Reg Anal'; but their tameness seemed almost scatologically indicted when the tender emotions of the Humanities glittered forth as Analysis Synthesis, then lost all pretense when reduced to the infamous, 'Anal Syn'. The authors may not have noticed their embarrassing creativity prior to mailing, but upon receipt, students and folks on the outside certainly did, and then word of mouth took over. Other colleges and universities of course thought it was very funny but their reaction came and went without any lasting damage. The students however, extolled the error for years to come.

As I hope you can tell, I don't have this essay completed as of yet. Like my other posts that are in the same condition, I intend to expand on what is here in a kind of serial form; when and as I finish enough for my meanderings to be posted, I will do so. With this one, I should be able to do so every week or so.

As I also hope you can tell, initially, I was greatly impressed by Ayn Rand, but for well-grounded reasons my fascination didn't last. Although I have not completely rejected her philosophy, I began changing my mind about fifteen years ago. I know this is a rather tired metaphor, but I believe Rand's capitalism to be a one way street; whereas my conceptualism of capitalism began as deeply entrenched as hers, but now, in a way Rand would thoroughly reject, includes a definite need for reciprocity, without which we will suffer not only the tragedy of the commons but also a more devastating tragedy of globalization. In other words, both tragedys could be avoided with reciprocal capitalism as opposed to the vagaries of pure Friedmanism, Randian, free market capitalism.

Oh, and by the way, much of this site may not seem to have anything to do with capitalism, and especially Reciprocal Capitalism; however, I agree with you. Sometimes I will directly discuss ecomomics as applied to our current misfortunes - especially considering I spent about a dozen years in the residential mortgage business -  and other times descend into the more philosophical and historical regions of capitalism, socialism, gender, epistemology, evolution, gender, religion, politics, more gender, abortion, aesthetics, even more gender, and probably several others along my way. Therein, I hope, I have at least , and sort of, explained the variety of subjects falling under my banner of Reciprocal Capitalism. Some of you may have already noticed how much 'Reciprocal Capitalism' sounds like 'Reciprocal Altruism', I assure you, that's intentional, and will be a large focus of this site.