Hat tip to Rick Lowe, for linking to this blog.
Since our brief moment of harmony, though, I think we’re going to part ways again. Here’s why hell couldn’t have stayed frozen for long.
I’m a great big fan of The Wire — the TV show about the Baltimore streets that’s set up to be the classic story of cops and robbers, but which is a whole lot more.
You watch The Wire, you get an appreciation of how our government works, and doesn’t. I’ve long thought that our country runs rather like the municipal government of a major American city. So fine, the Mayor has more direct and absolute power perhaps than the Prime Minister does — he doesn’t appear to have a cabinet that he has to work with or around (or which he has to put to work for him); but the very same deals and development schemes and favours and lobbying take place. Well, maybe not the lobbying; we’re not so good at that round here. But pretty well most of the rest. Not sure whether the violence that occurs on the streets of Baltimore is matched by our crime, but for that we can only be thankful (and hey, I might be wrong — we don’t have any TV show to reveal to us our underside).
The show is created by David Simon and Edward Burns. David Simon was known to me because I was a fan of Homicide before I was a fan of The Wire. He’s got grittier. In fact, he claims to have become a cynic. And he’s got a view of the world, and of the USA, that rings true — for the most part — for me. (The remainder of this address can be seen on YouTube).
Enough woffle from me. Watch the clip(s), and see what you think.
What struck me most about Simon’s take on the world — the postindustrial world — is his claim that human beings are being valued less and less. I don’t know whether I agree with that position in its entirety, but I certainly see where he’s coming from — and I’m not sure he’s wrong (though I would like him to be).
What also struck me, and what I can accept more readily (though not wholeheartedly), is his claim that whenever the USA has had to choose between human beings and profit, it has chosen profit. Anyway.
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I posted the above last night, through the thickness of imminent sleep, and didn’t take the time to explain why I think Rick and I would fall on different sides of this issue. I’ve been hard pressed to articulate just what my overall objection to unrestrained capitalism has been for much of my life. Simply stating I have socialist leanings isn’t enough. Simon’s claim that capitalism makes people worth less than things rings true to me. I’d like to be shown I’m wrong, but I don’t know that I am.
It’s not coincidental that the rise of capitalism parallelled the development of the slave trade, or that the abolition of the slave trade in Britain occurred at roughly the same time as the rise of factory work. Profit over people from the beginning; why spend time on housing, feeding and preserving the lives of forced labourers when it can be cheaper to pay small wages to factory workers who then have to go fend for themselves?
I’d love to be wrong about this. It would make living in this society — a society that can only survive on entrepreneurship and the selling of things and ideas — a whole lot easier, but the brand of capitalism I see practised again and again, both here at home and abroad, does not make me hopeful.
{ 4 comments }
Hi Nico:
Glad to see you might be up and running now.
Nothing wrong with having doubts and raising questions.
It is undeniable though that Capitalism has brought more people from the depths of poverty than Socialism has put there.
I do wonder why families are not as concerned about one another as in years gone by, but, and it’s a huge but, I don’t expect government to take from you and yours to give it to me.
There is no perfect system, but give me Capitalism with all its bumps over Socialism.
Another curious thing, is so many people that have made it as a result of Capitalism are its biggest critics.
Rick.
Hey, Rick. Good to hear from you again. It’s just GREAT to have comments working as they should.
But on another note. I had a conversation with someone else about this very subject, and observed that it’s difficult to talk about capitalism in any pure sense, as the twentieth century was fundamentally a socialist century. Marx and Engels were not wrong in their theory about industrial society. Labour does have far more power than it was led to believe, and it is the foundation on which industry was built. What failed was the totalitarian spin put on that theory by megalomaniacs like Stalin (not to mention the world revolution idea put forward by Trotsky), and the fact that it was easier to follow the Stalinist model than to challenge it with other forms of socialism. I would argue that there is no modern state that has not been impacted by, or implemented elements of, the socialist revolution. It was socialism, not capitalism, that made work comfortable for the worker — in capitalist societies the trade unions did that job (and some still do).
I am not against entrepreneurship, which is different from what I understand to be capitalism. Capitalism in my mind is as much the enemy of entrepreneurship as socialism is; WalMart, which puts mom and pop drugstores out of business wherever it arrives, or even Starbucks, to which I am partial, are capitalism unleashed in my understanding — and the principles of capitalism that govern them do not make room for the individual or the person (except so far as it’s necessary in the interests of good public relations). Capitalism has not yet proven to be the solution to poverty. Global corporations are as committed to creating poverty in the USA (see former industrial towns whose companies have outsourced their production) as socialism ever was.
Regretfully it is the tax systems in most instances that force people to look elsewhere for their investments and yes business opportunities.
Unions served their purpose and the laws have caught up and surpassed the reasonableness test in many instances in my view. You admit that in your recent blog about your holiday benefit, did you not?
And yes, we can single industries out where there are fewer people employed today, yet unemployment is lower in most countries now than in history. Including the introduction of WalMart and Starbucks.
It is so easy to blame failure of one business on another, but that is what Schumpeter referred to as ‘Creative Destruction’ – Bad for some people, but better for most.
Peoples taste change and technology changes.
Should we ban the internet because Bahamian can buy cars on it, or learn more over it?
I guess what I’m trying to point out is that I’m sceptical of the idea that capitalism is the solution for the world’s problems. I’m particularly sceptical of the concept of “free” trade, which seems to me to be free for the people in charge, but not for the rest of us. In other words, if you are a manager or a business owner or a boss, it’s great. But how great is it for the employee?
Statistics about unemployment are not enough to sway me, I’m afraid — slavery was a system in which there was full employment, but it wasn’t all that great for those employed. What impressed me about Simon’s analysis of the economic state of the US was that he talked about people, not about numbers — profits or statistics or so on.
And I’m also sceptical about the idea that capitalism is the answer to the world’s problems, simply because we do not practice pure capitalism; the socialism of the twentieth century changed the economic landscape in which we function fundamentally. I am also very sceptical about economic theories that assume that the world is a level playing field; it isn’t. A Bahamian can’t invest in the major industry of our country the same way a multinational resort developer can, and the result is that while a place like Atlantis may provide employment for many people, it also disenfranchises those people as well. They become servants/quasi-slaves in their own land. This is what the “market” allows, because the richest and the most powerful in a global sense have the ability to set prices, control the markets, and reap the profits.
I’m not saying we should ban anything — only that I am sceptical of any philosophy that suggests that something invented — like the “market” will level playing fields. It’s not true; behind the “market” are people, and each one is as greedy as the last.
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