Critique on Capitalism, and Why We Should Support Socialist Movement
I'm surprised by the fact that this blog has been up for more than 5 years and not once I've talked about my economic view. I guess it is because I didn't have much interesting conversation about this topic. People are always interested in my critique of religion and that leads to interesting -- or rather, in some occasion, furious -- discussion, but as with economy I feel like people are too ignorant of the matter to even start a balanced conversation. Now with the current economic condition I think it is about time that we shed some light into this matter.Let's start with talking about the most worshiped economic religion, Capitalism. Why do I call it economic religion? Well, it only benefits the top elite; enslaves the worshiper; against equality; and when you try to convince people that it is bad, they think you're crazy. Where have I seen this pattern before?
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| Pyramid of Capitalist System (source: wikipedia) |
Capitalism, by definition, is a social system in which the goods essential for human well-being are owned by minority of people -- the capitalists, who will use their ownership to gain as much profit as they can get; and they pay the majority of people --the working class, to work for them. You don't have to have a degree in economy to tell that in this system the capitalists would benefit largely compared to the working class, and it would create financial inequality in the society. And that exactly what happens. One of the most disgusting fact I found is, in the US, the top 0.1% owns as much as the wealth of the bottom 90%. If that didn't shock you, I want you to stop for a moment and think about how severe that is. During the late 70's, those top 0.1% only had one-third of what they have now. Putting it in one sentence: the rich's getting richer, the poor's getting poorer, and that's bad, and it will only get worse. Given the current income inequality condition, the trend will continue unless there are some government interference to actually slow, or even turn back the current trend.
Capitalism prefers ignorance. Coca-Cola's million dollars effort to misguide research to link sugar to obesity and diseases, Exxon's funding on denying climate change, Philip Morris' political lobbying on tobacco control, those are just a few of giant corporations' effort on keeping the public misinformed. Capitalism prefers ignorance, they need it to sell their products. They need it to keep the hamsters on the wheel.
Here's the capitalistic slogan you must have heard: "If you work hard enough, you can be as rich as I am." That's bullshit. They are only saying that so you will run faster on the wheel that makes them richer. The system does not allow that to be even a possibility.
Do we have an alternative? Yes, we do. We actually have designed an economic system where everybody is equal in rights and would preserve everybody's well-being as best as the economy allows, and it's called Socialism. Now first thing's first, Socialism is not the same as Communism. I can't believe how many of my friends confuse the two terms. Communism is a system where all ownership are handled by a single authoritarian party, which puts everyone into slaves to the said party. By definition, it is anti-democratic and focuses its economic effort to satisfy the party in-charge (or in practice, the dictator in-charge), while Socialism focuses its effort on how to meet the people needs and demands. Now that I hope we've cleared that, let's move on.
Socialism has proved to work well in countries that embrace it. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, to name a few, has health care system for everyone, free college tuition, and decent retirement funds. In my country Indonesia, the government has started socialist program like the new health care system -- BPJS, which has helped millions of people to acquire health treatment they couldn't afford before. And the people seem to love it, but ironically, still afraid of the word socialist.
The goal of socialism is to closen the gap between the poor and the rich. And how do we achieve that? By progressive taxing, by simple logic that if you have more, you should pay more. If we can get those top 1% to pay their fair share of tax, we could use that money to pay for the health care and education fee for everyone (of course this will only be effective in a free-corruption government, but that's another challenge and a topic we'll discuss another day). This is the reason why the rich hates socialist movement, they do not want to share their wealth to help millions of the poorer half of the population despite the fact that people's lives depend on it; and that is exactly why we have to challenge the status quo. Socialism is the way for the people to free themselves from the tyranny of the capitalists elite, and progress humanity as one.
This is desperate time in our global economy. The rate increase in inequality is alarming and it will continue to be so unless we start acknowledging the problem and challenge it. I encourage you to educate yourself on the matter, build your opinion, and more importantly, practice your democratic rights.
I implore you to check on this material:
* Bill Maher interviews Bernie Sanders on the word socialist, link here
* Stephen Hawking on the future of Capitalism and inequality, link here
* Karl Marx's prediction on economic evolution, link here
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