I’m not sure about all of this “told-you-so-ism” in the left today. The arguments seem to be along the lines of “the crisis has shown that socialism (or at least nationalisation) is better at running a capitalist economy than capitalism is, so the socialists were right.”
No. If we should switch to socialism, it shouldn’t be because capitalism isn’t very good at being capitalist, but because capitalism isn’t very good at being socialist. (But then, people keep telling me that socialism isn’t very good at being socialist, so I’m not too sure where that leaves us.)
April 9, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Capitalism is good at being capitalist, what it is not good at is being concerned with the wellbeing of society as a whole. It is rather concerned with the wellbeing of the rich and self-centered. Socialism on the other hand is by design more concerned with the wellbeing of society as a whole, and it furthermore removes differences in economic class; generating a more homogenous society that has little to no divergences in its standards of living. Moreover socialism removes many of the evils found inherently in capitalism such as, poverty, under education, lack of opportunity in lower classes, joblessness, starvation, and the ability to buy one’s way out of anything no matter how horde the crime to society. It also removes the ability for large corporations to express their opinions in such mass scale and persuasive ways as to control and affect the opinions of society.
Most people overlook the fact that socialism is not communism, and that socialism can exist in a democracy. It is a general miss conception that socialism is adherent to communism, additionally, this is so for capitalism and democracy. These miss conceptions are in most part the fault of propaganda produced by the government in the early 1900’s, and the ideals currently being displayed by rich interests in the media. These capitalist interests have and will continue with the use of misinformation and fear tactics, aimed at making people believe that they will lose their right to government if a socialist system was put into place, to control society into buying into their power games. For, everyone should know that there is more to socialism then the theories found in Marx’s doctrines.
Remember that money is just a physical representation of a person’s ability to psychologically control another person. It creates a playground for greed, and it harbors the ability to make people careless of their fellow beings. So should it be left up to the few self-interested capitalists from a world scale to dictate who starves or goes homeless? Is this destabilizing force that gives power to the “rich” over the poor truly American? Is not America a country that promotes equality for all? So why is it we as people have allowed money to become more powerful than government?
April 14, 2009 at 6:45 am
I was unaware of you being an Englishmen at the time I wrote this post sorry for the American assumed language. (Unless of corse your an American studying in Great Britain [doubt it])