William Blum: Some Thoughts About Socialism

[laststeamtrain]

Some Thoughts About Socialism

By William Blum

"History is littered with post-crisis regulations. If there are undue restrictions on the operations of businesses, they may view it to be their job to get around them, and you sow the seeds of the next crisis."
– Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment analyst, CharlesSchwab & Co., a leading US provider of investment services.

April, 07 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- And so it goes. Corporations, whether financial or not, strive to maximize profit as inevitably as water seeks its own level. We've been trying to "regulate" them since the 19th century. Or is it the 18th? Nothing helps for long. You close one loophole and the slime oozes out of another hole. Wall Street has not only an army of lawyers and accountants, but a horde of mathematicians with advanced degrees searching for the perfect equations to separate people from their money. After all the stimulus money has come and gone, after all the speeches by our leaders condemning greed and swearing to reforms, after the last congressional hearing deploring the corporate executives to their faces, the boys of Wall Street, shrugging off a few bruises, will resume churning out their assortment of financial entities, documents, and packages that go by names like hedge funds, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and many other pieces of paper with exotic names, for which, it must be kept in mind, there had been no public need or strident demand. Speculation, bonuses, and scotch will flow again, and the boys will be all the wiser, perhaps shaken a bit that they're so reviled, but knowing better now what to flaunt and what to disguise.

<snip>

In the West, one of the most unfortunate results of the Cold War was that 70 years of anti-communist education and media stamped in people's minds a lasting association between socialism and what the Soviet Union called communism. Socialism meant a dictatorship, it meant Stalinist repression, a suffocating "command economy", no freedom of enterprise, no freedom to change jobs, few avenues for personal expression, and other similar truths and untruths. This is a set of beliefs clung to even amongst many Americans opposed to US foreign policy. No matter how bad the economy is, Americans think, the only alternative available is something called "communism", and they know how awful that is.

<snip>

The overwhelming majority of people in the United States work for a salary. They don't need to be motivated by the quest for profit. It's not in our genes. Virtually everybody, if given the choice, would prefer to work at jobs where the main motivations are to produce goods and services that improve the quality of life of the society, to help others, and to provide themselves with meaningful and satisfying work. It's not natural to be primarily motivated by trying to win or steal "customers" from other people, no holds barred, survival of the fittest or the most ruthless.

<snip>

I cannot describe in detail what every nut and bolt of my socialist system would look like. That might appear rather pretentious on my part; most of it would evolve through trial and error anyway; the important thing is that the foundation — the crucial factors in making the important decisions — would rest on people's welfare and the common good coming before profit. Humankind's desperate need to halt environmental degradation regularly runs smack into the profit motive, as does the American health-care system. It's more than a matter of ideology; it's a matter of the quality of life, sustainability, and survival.

<more>

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22368.htm

[bemildred]

1. Well, first you have to have a system where the government is elected.

And then it depends on what gets leaders elected. Is it votes or is it money?

[tama]

3. All representative systems

("democratic centralism") are inherently corrupt.

[bemildred]

4. But some are better than others. nt

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Agree with his assessment of Cold War education

though I will also add that at my high school the difference between Soviet-style communism and the socialism of, say, Sweden, was emphasized. I also agree with his assessment that most people would rather work than lie around--ask anyone who has been unemployed or who is disabled. The key to revamping our system is, imho, to get rid of the greed factor through strict government regulation. Of course, the lawmakers have to agree that this is what is needed for socialism to work. The way to get those kind of lawmakers elected to office is through election reform with real teeth--no one can opt out, all must take public funding.