To a Supporter of Capitalism
Of course the things we need to live will have to be produced by someone in socialism. The difference being that, in socialism, the means for producing and distributing these things will belong to us all. They will not be the possessions of a tiny minority of the world’s population. Moreover, our relationship to the means and instruments to this production and distribution will not be an alienated one. As we share in the productive and distributive efforts equally, we will share in the access to the same. As free and equal members of the human species.Anything wrong with that? Not from where I stand.
Capitalism, this society you seem so enamoured with, as in a Faustian otherworld, does not work for us, the majority.
Ever heard of the wealthy worrying about the price of energy, foodstuffs, housing, their kids’ futures, paying the bills, etc, etc, etc ad-nauseum? No.
Getting employment, keeping it? No.
Paying the mortgage, or possible mortgage rate rises. Or being penalised for under-occupancy of their homes if they happen to be recipients of what is laughingly called “the benefits” system? No, didn’t think you had.
Moreover, what gives a minority of individuals the right of ownership, of the things that are necessary for us all to live? Things, such as oil, gas, coal, land that existed long before the ancestors of modern man, crawled from the primordial slime?
A minority of people today, claim ownership of these things and more and a whole structure of laws and law-enforcement, has grown, to protect the rights of this minority of social parasites. 95 percent or more of laws, are to protect private property, not the person, why?
It is so that this minority can retain their minority ownership, at the expense of the majority of other people.
You and others, support a system – capitalism – that is antithetical to the interests of yourselves, your families and indeed to the majority of mankind, without even knowing how this system works and in whose interests. Indeed, workers go as far as laying down their lives to perpetuate this insanity.
And you to try to preach about how good this system is?
Tell that to the 30 to 40,000 kids under five, who die every day, of starvation or directly attributable disease.
The two billion of our fellow human beings who go to bed hungry every night.
The hundreds of millions who have no access to sanitation or clean water.
The hundreds of thousands of people, homeless, even in the so-called ‘civilised’ West, in sight of empty houses.
A society, where it is more profitable to let fields lie fallow, rather than produce crops for the starving.
A society that destroys food, to keep prices high, rather than feed people.
You want this insanity? You’ve got it, it’s called capitalism.
STEVE COLBORN