When the ideology of the ‘free market’ first appeared on the political scene in early 19th century Britain, the main objection made to it there was that it was immoral. If everything was left to the ‘market’, then it drove God, and the morality that supposedly derived from Him, out of the picture. The ‘Invisible Hand’ was supposed to replace this; but even if it were posited that that hand was in fact God’s, Tories – and later socialists – weren’t happy with it. The worship of money and of material success belittled the men and women who ascribed to it; and also Jews, incidentally, whose close historical association with money-lending was supposed to demean them too. (Hence some of the supposed ‘anti-Semitism’ of the Left.) Too much flaunting of wealth was regarded as ‘vulgar’, especially if it had a ‘commercial’ source. It was also considered fundamentally amoral, at the very least, even if had been accumulated legitimately.

I imagine that it was this sort of feeling that inhibited – to an extent – the growth of capitalism in Britain in the later 19^th century. (See Martin J Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980.) But not in the United States of America; which was much less crippled by the survival of a traditional aristocratic or ‘gentry’ class. It’s there that capitalism in the 20^th century developed most strongly and characteristically, moulding not only economic but also social and political institutions to serve its needs.

Hence the present-day association of capitalism, in America and elsewhere, with extreme corruption; and with the ‘marketization’ of just about area of social life – healthcare being the prime example. The USA’s election (twice) of a real estate capitalist as its President, whose values and ethics were dominated and also confined by considerations of monetary profit and loss, and whose judgments were based on whether people or societies were by these criteria ‘winners’ or ‘losers’ – two of his favourite words – confirmed this. Leaving aside what to most of us must appear Trump’s obvious personal flaws – malevolent narcissism, stupidity, cruelty, bullying, ignorance, lying and philistinism (see my last post) – it remains true (in my view) that pure unadulterated late-stage capitalism is at the root of it all. That will surely define Trump’s place in the broader history of America, and of the world.