Capitalism has built the most powerful economy that the world has ever seen. But socialism has been its traveling companion. We need socialism because profit is the last surviving principle of capitalism. Completely unprincipled capitalism is the most frightening prospect I can think of.
[,,,]
What has made American capitalism strong is the social safety nets that we’ve put under displaced people. When America was headed toward real socialism in the 1940’s, our government was frightened by that powerful trend and asked the big corporations to fill the gap. That was the beginning of corporate provided socially oriented benefits like health insurance. I won’t argue whether they went too far but the resultant expansion of benefits rivaled the European socialist democracies. But in America they were provided by corporations. The tax payers still paid for these benefits in the prices we were charged for corporate products and services.
That game is over. American companies can no longer compete with companies in foreign countries, especially when in those countries the government supplies the benefits. Every successful industrialized nation on the planet is part capitalistic and part socialistic in varying degrees.
[,,,]
We’ve been lulled into an anti-intellectualism’s that being held together by special interest political agendas. Too many Americans don’t know a socialist from a dog’s ear but depend on irresponsible media personalities to tell them what to believe.
Socialism is with us and has been for a long time. It is not the enemy of capitalism but is its most powerful enabler. Socialism reminds capitalism that the end goal of all capital and labor is human flourishing – not just for a privileged few, but for anyone willing to work at it.
OMG, Socialism! | The Big Slice
No comments:
Post a Comment