The Election Issue That Dare Not Speak It's Name
What election am I referring to – whatever one is next in whatever jurisdiction you are in.
Yes I am talking about that which we dare not speak – the need to change our economic system before its ultimate collapse.
Karl Marx predicted the collapse of capitalism, and it was happening, only to be rescued by of all things socialism – the pooling of the masses resources to rescue their exploiters.
However unless we act to change the system we can only put off the ultimate demise of capitalism as we know it.
It is not so much private ownership or even profit that I am speaking of, although they contribute to the problem. I am speaking of something much more fundamental – the need to redefine what we consider to be a successful economy. The problem is we currently measure economic success as continuous and increasing unsustainable economic growth based on the continuous unsustainable exploitation of finite resources.
Capitalism also only values wage employment discounting all activities not done for a paid wage as economically meaningless, including the caring for children by parents and volunteer work or other unpaid creative work. How capitalism values work is also subjective and very fucked up, someone playing playing a game earning a million dollars a year contributes 10 time as much to the economy as someone earning 100 thousand dollars a year finding a cure for cancer. The actual value of work to society has no relation to the economic value capitalism gives it.
We also have to rethink our historic attitudes to what we call civilized and primitive. I was brought up within a society that taught that our industrialized societies built on dominating and exploiting nature were far superior to those “primitive” societies where people lived simpler lives in harmony with nature. Unfortunately our civilization is bringing our society and planet to the edge of collapse.
Capitalism has it’s religious tenets as well, the most revered being the belief (very much in a religious sense, being based on faith rather than evidence) that competition is superior to co-operation and promotes innovation.
The belief is if you have a problem and tell ten people to solve it, it will be solved faster if each person works separately inspired by the fact they will make a fortune if they succeed or become a bankrupt failure if they don't. Indeed under capitalist dogma money is the only possible motivator.
The rational understanding that ten smart people working together, and off of each others ideas, striving for the common good, will be more successful sooner than ten individuals working separately is simply capitalistic heresy. The idea that people might be motivated by something other than money is anathema to our greed based economic system.
According to theory competition is supposed to result in multiple campaniles competing for customers business resulting in the ones that provide the best value for money thriving. In reality we see that what happens is the most powerful (most ruthless) driving out the weakest in an increasing move to a more monopolistic economy, with a few dominant corporations that are deemed to big too fail and must be saved by the socialism of taxpayer funded corporate bailouts.
Whether it was the aim or expectations of it’s creators, the most important and evil result of capitalism has been the rapid increase of inequality to the point of immorality.
We have moved along way from the original promise of capitalism, if it ever existed, where entrepreneurs formed businesses to make products or supply services to customers at decent quality for a decent price paying workers an honest days pay for an honest days work, in return for a fair profit. Today’s corporations (with a few exception) are only in one business, maximizing shareholder profits.
And that is not serving the needs of society or the people.
The only real election issue (except perhaps where democracy itself is the election issue) should be what do we replace capitalism with.
