When the Founding fathers approved the U.S. Constitution they left in place the institution of slavery and with it, a national divide so deep that it took five years of war and immense loss of life and property to begin to correct the problem of slavery. The American Civil War was about problems left unsettled when the Constitution was adopted.
The standard historical view of the situation is that opponents of slavery had no choice but to accept slavery in the south because the problems inherit in the weakly confederated colonies were too grave for the colonies to survive without a stronger federal government. The issue of slavery had to be put aside until later for the better of the foundering nation. This was a wise decision, unless you were among the enslaved.
We may be approaching a similar point of conflict over the future of the nation’s economic structure. The coming together of the economic crash, the drive for government health care, and the push to fight global warming are coalescing with demands to redistribute the nation’s wealth.
I write this following a week of what was billed as mostly good economic news; the economic collapse appears to be slowing, except for job losses. That is, of course, both a matter of how you interpret the numbers and what numbers you use. Former Secretary of Labor and now professor of Economics, Robert Reich, gave as succinct a statement as I have heard on yesterday’s This Week, “The best that can be said is we’re getting worse more slowly.”
Our nation still has to manage the trillion dollar plus debt disguised as stimulus that the President claims is miraculously curing the economy, though very little of that stimulus has been spent. And for that matter, the President continues to ignore the reality that economies are cyclical, meaning they go up after they bottom out, even without help and often despite intervention. Further, the nation approached this economic crisis with staggering debts that still exist, a weak financial system that has not been fixed, and an ever worsening competitive position relative to the emerging Asian economies.
There is a lot in our economy to be nervous about.
Have you ever heard the expression, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence?” The meaning is that people often fail to value what they have; all the while believing that what someone else has is preferable. Many Americans believe that the economic grass in Europe is greener, or more precisely, more secure. A lot of Americans yearn for that illusion of security and will happily trade away the opportunities for prosperity to achieve that security.
Whether you term this wealth redistribution, Democratic Socialism, or creating a greater safety net, restructuring the U.S. economy is what the health care debate, cap & trade, and a variety of other of our current issues are really about. Large segments of the U.S. electorate are demanding major economic changes, all while capitalists sit on their, um…wallets.
If the proponents of this Democratic Socialism don’t succeed with heath care reform they will try again. Capitalism has created many victims; people guilty of nothing more than wanting a steady job. There are a lot of angry people in this country. I often advance the argument that these people need to prepare themselves better for economic hard times, and take responsibility on themselves, because I believe that capitalism, despite the hard times, is the best economic system possible. But many Americans disagree with capitalism, and as a result, efforts to redistribute wealth, including Socialism and Communism, have deep roots in the U.S. The demands to replace capitalism have been simmering at least since the Industrial Revolution reached America.
Defeating health care reform won’t be enough for capitalists. There is too much of a demand for an economic system without losers, regardless of how much that system will reduce prosperity. In fact, defeating health care may work a lot like accepting slavery worked for the Founding Fathers. It will bury the problems deeper while the simmer turns to a boil and from a boil into an explosion. If we want to save capitalism in the United States, in fact, if we want to save the United States’ freedoms as we know them today, we are going to need to create a better form of capitalism. As Lincoln qouted the Bible on the danger of disunion, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
If you know what that better form of capitalism is, please let me know.
By Robert S. Siegel
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The solution is “Proprietary Capitalism” in place of today’s “Monopoly Capitalism”. Every individual proprietor has to become a capitalist. This way every citizen who is equal in nature’s law shares the wealth of the nation/world. This has been theorized and substantiated by economic laws. Today’s most of the problems (economic inequality, poverty, economic exploitation by rich, inflation, stagflation, interest as a category in economics, unemployment, any many others) are well taken care of by this new economic order. This is a new economic theory as an alternative to capitalism and Marxian Socialism. This has been presented to the world by an Indian economist, Dr. M G Bokare, in 1993 through a book titled “Hindu Economics”. This meets J.K.Galbraith’s expectations of “Third Way”. Many in the West are still struggling to find the third economic option. This should satisfy them now provided they are true independent economists and not ‘kept men’.
There is no option but to accept this new economic theory some time in near future. Once the present economic chaos in capitalism gets over and the people distanced themselves from the today’s monopoly exploitative economic model of Capitalism, the new model has to be the right solution to meet every one’s aspirations and results of hard work. The Marxian model of scientific (sic) socialism failed due to many internal contradictions in Marx’s theory. Marxist economists are now investigating these unknown contradictions Internal contradictions in capitalism are well know to all the economists of the West for over hundred years. Collapse of capitalism was not therefore unexpected by them. Karl Marx says, “Laws should be to bring people together and not to divide them. Laws dividing people are against the nature, as such they immoral. Immoral laws are not immortal”. Today we have laws like patents, copyrights, trademarks etc to divide the people. As such they can not be immortal.
Money powers of a few rich and privileged people were being used during all the last two centuries to keep their exclusive powers in tact. Politicians are the agents of capitalists who support the rich by legislating to favor the rich and elite people. Rather both of them are on the same side of a coin. There is a ‘give and take’ between them. Economists who are on the pay rolls of the capitalists ensure this grip of capitalist without any gap. Their thesis works are also mostly supported by the capitalists. How can they go against the capitalists? Paul Samuelson has rightly called these economists and academicians as ‘kept men’,
The new economic theory is presently being studied across the globe for its validity. It serves many purposes like, best ecological balance, removal of poverty, full employment (in capitalism full employment is limited to wage-employees only and those who are having their own activities are ignored.), ‘true’ free market economy (present day “free market” is nothing but a disinformation to fool the educated people. This is nothing but monopoly market economy), eternal economic order, abolition of all direct taxes over time, warfare-free world, less materialistic and more spiritual development of the human beings, totally decentralized economy as against the present most centralized and exploitative economy, narrowing rich and economic poor gap, etc. etc. Additionally, the new economic order gives highest priority to human development and create humane society (it is human-centric and not material-centric) and gives less importance to materialistic development and greedy minds of human beings.
This has a close link with Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy about non-exploitative and peaceful human society. He strongly believes that nature has brought us in this world with equal status, but the selfish persons take advantage to amass their wealth at the cost of unprivileged people of this planet. They cannot avoid warfares since these are a must for keeping capitalism alive. This pholosophical thoughts can save this planet and all of us from all kinds of serious and killing problems like pollution, global warming, abject poverty of over two billion people of this world.There is a threat to mankind’s survival itself due to capitalistic economic model. Let us therefore think of an alternative economic system for us to live happily in this beautiful world.
Posted on August 31st, 2009 at 8:17 am
Second edition of Hindu-economics is just out from http://www.pothi.com Those who are searching for an alternative economic system should read this book for illumination.
Posted on October 12th, 2009 at 11:45 am
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