Either/Or: Capitalism vs Socialism

Whilst we watch the political game unfold, there is an underlying current of contest, and that contest is Capitalism vs Socialism. What's the difference?

Let us start with Capitalism. It's desire is growth: more being produced, more being provided and more being purchased and used. It's requirements is borrowing and debt.

It intrinsically encourages technology, production, effectiveness and cold-hearted freedom. It harnesses mans desire to have more for himself and his family; uses it as a carrot, pulling him onward and upward - using his ideas to employ people and give them livelihoods.

The overall production of wealth is beneficial for all, everybody's life improves by the actions of the elite. The elite get more, but the majority still have more than they would have if rules were set up that meant: he who creates the wealth, comes up with idea, runs the company - get nothing more than the mathematical average.

Where would the desire be to improve yourself if their is no scope for improvement? No way of giving your offspring the advantage? When mothers and fathers watch their children run the 100m on sports day, they want them to win, not for all children to cross the winning line together - even if it makes the other children cry.

The beauty and opulence that the magnificently rich have lived in and do live in, can only be commissioned, can only ever be needed, if certain individuals have the capacity to become wealthy enough to require them. To even envisage them.

It creates a material world where one can measure their importance, their capacity, their scale. To remain exclusive, the rich must be set out from the poor, otherwise it is no longer exclusive - capitalism will never give equality.

Capitalism will, however, provide the initiative to create the wealth that the worse off will benefit from. They may not realise that the tax that provides for them when they cannot get a job, or get sick, or need the police, is essentially reliant on the capitalist mentality - but it is, and if it were replaced by socialism, their conditions would suffer too. It would be the best scenario brought down by envy - it would be the ultimate nose, cut, spite, face.

This trickle down effect of classical capitalism rewards not only the creator of wealth but also generates wealth for the less "able". If human beings hadn't, or weren't, given the chance to have more than others, their would be no stimulus for the ideas that have improved life for all; created civilisation.

Socialism

Capitalism may have once enabled a more primitive man to form society and create wealth, but with this growth in civilisation, we have learned more superior ways of running society than harnessing mans greed.

Not only has the insular nucleus of dominance within Neo-Classical Capitalism become so bloated that it no longer relies on talent to maintain its exclusivity, it just milks the power structures, rigging the markets, bribing politicians with the offerings of obscene wealth - it also stops benefiting the lower classes.

Once a few people have so much money, power and dominance, they begin defy the very principle of the trickle down effect and instead manipulate financial, political and even military procedures, to concentrate the nation's, the world's wealth, into a smaller number of hands. The combined wealth of the poorest half of the worlds population, 3.5 billion people, 3'500'000'000 people is equal to somewhere between 60-70 individuals.

A society based on fairness, equality and humanity - where everyone gets an equal share of everything - must be impossible? But aiming for it might be the best example of harnessing the light in man - sharing rather than indulging. We are no longer vicious animals struggling for food - we can transcend the dog eat dog. No longer feast while our comrades starve.

Those with genuine talent do not govern in capitalist systems - the rich govern. Those with talent leave their wealth to those without any - and in the end talent is not needed to be in the elite - the money itself can be used manipulate the system with investments and interest on deposits - monopolising the capital industry and always reaping the cream from the brew of honest men's efforts.

Socialism seeks to establish an economic system that harbours equality of opportunity as well equality of outcome. The capitalist monster chains the populace, the majority of whom receive manifestly less than they produce, with the extra going to the controller of production and distribution. Men create 100% and hope to be given 40% of that to live on, whilst all the 60%'s are divided up amongst the privileged few.

Happiness, fairness and benefits for all is the currency of socialism - it aims for a higher ideal. Material, money and greed are the currency of capitalism, keeping us animalistic and combative and, as the inequality that this produces takes a firmer hold, none of the mutual fruitfulness the capitalism my have originally stimulated. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, leading to the detriment of all.

Analysis

Capitalism is more reflective of our animal nature; a desire to have more and provide more for our offspring, even to the deprivation of competitors. Socialism argues that humans can transcend this nature, framing society in its altruistic capacity as opposed to its survival of the fittest predisposition.

Socialism would necessities a system whereby the wealth creation of an individual would be shared amongst his fellow man as opposed to being concentrated in his pocket. Capitalism argues that the stimulus for ideas, beauty, ingenuity - wealth creation per se, would be extinguished by the lack of incentive. However hard you work, however much talent you express, all your efforts are subsumed by society. No identity. No standing out.

The problem with capitalism is that, like a star that becomes too dense, it collapses in on itself, omitting nothing, benefitting nobody except those who unfairly and immorally monopolise production and administration. It becomes a black hole, no longer allowing the light to leave and benefit others, even those who might contribute great ideas and skills - at least not in comparison to those who inherit great wealth.

The problem with socialism is that equality does not occur naturally - it has to be encouraged if not enforced. Those whom are charged with the right to enforce equality are manifestly unequal. To claim that this inequality only for the greater good and necessary to establish an socialist state is a contradiction in terms.

The problem with capitalism is that prizes the aggression of man rather than his love - a business that doesn't aim to dominate and crush its opposition will, especially in the Neo-Classical capitalism rife in the West today, inevitably die out, therefore rewarding the less impressive elements of human nature.

The problem with socialism is that it is unrealistic. Humans do want more for themselves and their children - denying this with socialism neuters the human will to strive forward. Those who establish the socialist state become inherently corrupted by their moral and political superiority, pandering to a different kind of inequality: philosophical instead of material. Or, like in communist state (the extreme of socialism), material inequality as well. When state controlled corruption concentrates power and wealth, it makes uprisings less likely, less possible, and become no different to a fascist state.

The problem with capitalism, on a global scale, is that millions remain in poverty so that larger profit margins can be achieved. Human rights and fair wages in Africa and China, for example, does not contribute to larger profits, they detract from them, and shareholders agreements are to "maximise profits".

The problem with socialism is that there are so few genuinely, puritanical socialists, that it is always commandeered by the envious who use socialism to obtain the same advantage over their competitors that Capitalism aims for. They are simply want to enjoy the same exclusivity that the the aristocracy do, and use socialism as a vessel: hence the expression champagne Socialist.

The problem with capitalism is that's we can't keep growing and can't pay back the debt that is automatically created when money is typed in to existence by centralised banking institutions.

The problem with socialism is that it is Utopian and possibly impossible.

Which is better?  I dunno?

It's A Roffey