> Hey, think of a capitalist blueprint: leave all the essential aspects
> of social life to be regulated and provided for by self-interest.
> Minimize long-range social planning, maximize short-range individual
> effort. Couldn't work for long, could it?
>
Well, it depends. Capitalism's many flaws follow from its theory. "Hawk" (always and only act out of self-interest) is not an evolutionary stable strategy. Or as Hobbes put it life would be "solitary, nasty, brutish and short", which it is for a great many of the world's people.
However, the state is able to guarantee safety of the rich and their property rights and stabilize the economy enough to enable the system to reproduce itself. Capitalism in its purest forms wouldn't last long. Indeed it is hard to imagine a purer form of capitalism coming into being other than through the force of the state. In addition to state imposition of capitalist social relations,there are social norms and pecking orders the purpose of which is to ensure stability. Behaviour is regulated through these norms and offenders are penalized through various means e.g. ostracism, making it difficult for a more purer form of capitalism (or socialism for that matter) to evolve or making impossible for everyone to be a "hawk" or a "dove", even if the majority wanted to.
Sam Pawlett