Peripatetics by Sheldon Richman

JUNE 2003

Competition
Is Cooperation
M
uch animosity toward capitalism products. What could be more cooperative?
among academic critics can be Pre-industrial societies were less cooperative
accounted for by a distaste for com- in the sense that the circles of trust were
petition. The critics just don’t like it. small. With modern capitalism, they extend
It seems so rough, so uncaring, so vulgar. to distant and perfect strangers. Indeed,
And laboring under the misapprehension cooperation is global—something that many
that its opposite is cooperation, they endorse critics of capitalism, oddly, do not like.
the latter in righteous tones while condemn- What is the relationship between competi-
ing competition as the “law of the jungle.” tion and cooperation? Competition is what
On first sight, this is plausible. As most arises when people are free to choose with
people think of it, competition has winners whom to cooperate. Sam wants shoes.
and losers; cooperation has only winners. Manny, Moe, and Jack sell shoes. Each
Competition sounds cold and antagonis- wants to cooperate with Sam. So each strives
tic. Cooperation sounds warm and nice. to win his patronage by offering higher qual-
Children are exhorted to cooperate, not to ity, lower prices, a better selection, or some
compete. combination of these. That the sellers expect
But this way of thinking is full of fallacies. to gain from the cooperation is no valid
For human beings competition is not the objection. Parties to cooperative efforts
negation of cooperation but a form of it. We always expect to gain somehow.
know this because when competition is Manny, Moe, and Jack could cooperate to
forcibly suppressed, cooperation breaks sell shoes together, and under some circum-
down and something like the real law of the stances they may do so. But capitalism’s crit-
jungle takes its place. ics would object to that also. Apparently
The idea that capitalist society lacks coop- only cooperation thought up by academics
eration is ludicrous. “Society is concerted and forcibly imposed by politicians is appro-
action, cooperation,” wrote Ludwig von priate.
Mises in Human Action. “[S]ociety is noth- Thus freedom plus cooperation equals
ing but the combination of individuals for competition. Those who would banish com-
cooperative effort.” To imagine a society petition would also have to banish free
without widespread cooperation is to imag- cooperation. All that would be left would be
ine a square circle. It can’t be done. forced cooperation, with the state dictating
The marketplace, with its specialization the terms. Compulsory cooperation is what
and division of labor, is the epitome of co- went on in the gulag and concentration
operation. One person makes shoes; another camp. In fact, there’s nothing cooperative
makes clothes. Then they exchange their about it at all. It’s just compulsion.
This is not to say that there is no down-
Sheldon Richman is editor of Ideas on Liberty. side to competition. If enough shoe buyers
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Ideas on Liberty • June 2003

patronize Manny and Moe, Jack may go get there before all the milk is gone. We are
out of business. His dream of owning a confident that there will be milk and other
shoe store may be dashed, and he might goods on the shelves all the time. (This was
have to go to work for someone else or find not true in the Soviet economy.)
some other occupation. We can sympathize In other words, the competition that goes
with him, while realizing that to prevent on in the marketplace is not, for the most
such sad events the state would have to part, competition in consumption, but rather
restrict the freedom of shoe buyers. Of competition in production. Or, to be more
course, the restrictions would go well precise, we compete to consume by compet-
beyond that. If the government is to pro- ing to produce. Instead of vying for a piece
hibit competition throughout the economy, of meat before someone else gets it, we vie to
it must ultimately own and control all produce better food or clothing or DVD
resources. But we know from writings of players for others before someone else does.
Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek that Success enables us then to purchase the
this is the path to disaster. Without private goods we want. In contrast, when the state
ownership and trade in the means of pro- prohibits competition in production, com-
duction—that is, competition—there can be petition in consumption is inevitable. Anti-
no true money prices for resources. And capitalism ushers in the law of the jungle.
without prices there can be no way to cal- As Mises wrote and contrary to intuition,
culate the best strategies for satisfying con- the cooperation of the marketplace abolishes
sumers at the lowest cost. the law of the jungle. If many animals need
Economic competition is often erro- the same food, a bloody competition results.
neously compared to what goes on among But the demand by all people for clothing,
wild animals. The terms “dog eat dog” and food, and shelter brings those products
“survival of the fittest” are thrown around within easier reach of everyone, as special-
with little consideration of what they mean. ization and the division of labor lower the
In the wilderness animals compete in con- cost of production and expand supply. The
sumption. Since they do not engage in pro- competition and cooperation in the market-
duction, they have to make do with what the place are truly humane.
environment grants. With demand usually Mises takes this argument a step further.
exceeding supply, competition in consump- It has been suggested that fellow feeling
tion brings about the unpleasantness we among people led to economic cooperation
associate with wild animals. and rising living standards. Mises says it
worked the other way around. The realiza-
tion that trade makes us better off encour-
People Are Different aged economic cooperation. This in turn
What goes on among people is far differ- permitted the emergence of “feelings of sym-
ent. Human beings produce as well as con- pathy and friendship.” Cause and effect
sume. What’s more, we discovered early on could not have been reversed. If we were
that specialization, the division of labor, and competitors in consumption, “Each man
trade make each individual far better off would have been forced to view all other
than he would be in isolation. While men as his enemies; his craving for the satis-
resources are always scarce at any moment, faction of his own appetites would have
the productive process progressively reduces brought him into an implacable conflict with
scarcity. Billions of people are wealthier his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly
today than one billion were around 1800. develop under such a state of affairs.”
In a modern market economy we don’t Thus in more ways than one, capitalism
normally rush to the supermarket hoping to makes us all richer. 

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