Great Title, Disappointing Book.

• Author: Lemieux, Pierre
• Position: Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class

Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class

By Mark T. Mitchell

180 pp.; Front Porch

Republic Books, 2022

Mark T. Mitchell is a professor of government at Patrick Henry College, a religious college in Virginia. In his recent book Plutocratic Socialism, he argues:

* Certain virtues are necessary for the maintenance of a free society.

* Those virtues are typical of the middle class and are much more likely to flourish in a society based on widespread ownership of property.

* In societies like the United States where there has been a decline in the widespread ownership of property, a growth of economic inequality, and the rise of a powerful welfare state, a plutocracy will ally itself with a socialist and woke state to control society.

I will argue that most of Mitchell's claims are doubtful or, at least, in need of better specifications and demonstrations.

Which virtues?/ To what extent does a free society and its maintenance require certain virtues of its members? Many economists believe that, on the market model, self-interest is sufficient because each individual can only pursue his own interest by serving other people's interests. One dissenter of this view was Nobel economist James Buchanan, the main founder of the public choice school of economics. Buchanan argued that a widely shared ethics of natural equality between individuals is required. (See "An Enlightenment Thinker," Spring 2022.)

Mitchell's long list of virtues is very different from Buchanan's parsimony. To less controversial virtues such as independence and personal responsibility, Mitchell adds self-control, "a willingness to defer physical pleasure rooted in appetitive desire," thrift, frugality, concern for others and for the future, neighborliness, a sense of duty, an ethics of stewardship, and even "belonging." He believes that the "ownership of property" fosters these virtues.

Mitchell criticizes what he takes to be the hedonism of economic theory. He apparently is unaware that modern economics assumes that the individual seeks utility, which means nothing more than improving one's situation given one's preferences (and the constraints one faces). Those preferences may include traditional virtues.

Mitchell seems to play on two meanings of "self-government": the moral government of an individual by himself, and government by 50 percent plus 1, which is to say democracy. As long of individuals are not identical, these two meanings are contradictory: democracy conceived as "the rule by the people" means that some people rule over others. (See "Populist Choices Are Meaningless," Spring 2021.)

Which middle class?/ Mitchell's concepts of "middle class" and "property" seem arbitrary and not useful to analyze what is and has been happening in society. He characterizes the middle class as comprised of those who have the virtues that he believes are necessary to a free society and are roughly those of the yeoman farmer, which Thomas Jefferson saw as the representation of American society. This middle class disappeared following the great improvements in agricultural productivity and the shift of consumer demand toward other goods and especially services such as education and health.

As a matter of historical fact and analytical usefulness, it is preferable to view the middle class as economist Deirdre McCloskey sees it: the commercial bourgeoisie--that is, the merchants, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and specialized workers who were at the...