4 June—You’ve got to love capitalism. Its sine qua non and motivating factor is the profit motive. The profit motive is a euphemism for greed. Greed is a trait peculiar to human beings. No other animals, including bugs and unfairly maligned rats, are greedy. Quite the contrary, in fact: other animals live in cooperative societies where all the members work together selflessly—even to the death—for the benefit of the whole societal organism.

That’s socialism to us. Utopian socialism, in fact, which is achieved by voluntary and peaceful surrender of virtually everything to the common good. And it’s never succeeded thanks to good old-fashioned human greed. Okay, the profit motive.

Communism, on the other hand—what Karl Marx called scientific socialism—depends on repressive and usually violent means to achieve its professed goals. And, given human nature, it’s really greed (as well as narcissism) that motivates the dictators in communist and other repressive societies. And lots and lots of life is underground.

Utopian societies don’t have underground economies or underground anything because, as d’Artagnan proclaimed in The Three Musketeers (in French, of course), “All for one, one for all, united we stand, divided we fall.” The quotation and sentiment go back far, far before Alexandre Dumas used it in 1844. In all events, it’s a truism, a fact in economics, politics, life, just about everything. Even capitalism.

There are quite a few non-communist self-proclaimed socialist states around the world today. Algeria, Portugal, India, and Nicaragua, for instance. But they’re not really socialist. Cuba, Red China, Laos, and Vietnam, however, are blatantly, repressively communist. But very capitalistic economically.

On the other hand, there are a few dozen formerly socialist states of the communist and non-communist variety. They tried it, failed, and saw the light of capitalist day. As for Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is only the second largest party after United Russia. But, what with multi-billionaire dictator Vladimir Putrid longing for the good old days of the USSR, Russia is still the Big Red. But as capitalist as they come.

We tend to think of capitalist and socialist in terms of economies. But they’re really societies, because greed and self-interest rule the day in human culture. And undergrounds thrive even in the most capitalist societies.

So what’s not to love about capitalism?