“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money” Margaret Thatcher famously said as she and our President Ronald Reagan began their revolution against anything that was socialist and embraced all things that were capitalist.
I do not accept the false dichotomy of socialism or capitalism. In fact, I reject both as sole economic policies. As Phillip Blond said, “Socialism dispossesses the ordinary worker for the sake of the general good while capitalism dispossesses the ordinary worker for the same of the monopolizing capitalist. So in effect, these are two economic models of dispossession.”
I am not here to embrace either one. I am not here to condemn either one. I am here to try to level the playing field, as they say, because socialism is still getting too much bad press while capitalism is still being touted as the perfect panacea.
Let’s examine the words of Thatcher once more. “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”
To keep capitalism afloat in the USA, the government took “other people’s money” in the amount of $700 Billion Dollars to bail out the failed banks.
Wal-Mart, our nation’s largest retailer and private capitalist employer receives $7.8 Billion Dollars of other people’s money per year to stay profitable and keep the Walton family members in the top ten wealthiest people in the USA.
Companies like Cargill and ADM benefit from corn subsidies of $5 Billion Dollars of other people’s money per year
The fossil fuel corporation, owned in large part by America’s wealthiest families, receives $37.5 Billion Dollars of other people’s money per year.
It seems clear that conservatives and Republicans and even, sadly, some Democrats are quite content with taking other people’s money to save capitalism as they denounce socialism for its failure to stand on its own two feet.
While we have not yet run out of other people’s money to support capitalism, the failure of our government to provide health care or even safe drinking water to its citizens while bestowing other people’s money to the wealthy capitalist owners will reach an end some day. What kind of end is up to us.
from the New York Call, the Socialist daily, of November 1, 1918 –
“Art Young’s Political Primer: What is Socialism? It is business operated for public benefit instead of private profit.”
That sounds like a Benefit Corporation or B Corp to me, a business form that can be chartered in 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Your comment reminds of an aspect of the “revolution” that Mr. Sanders advocates that I think is worth revisiting.
He proudly derides corporations for “choosing” to relocate jobs overseas, or to move money to offshore havens, and so on. I’m sympathetic to that and it resonates with most of us who feel that wealth and income concentration is our single biggest challenge.
Here’s the rub. The behavior that he (and we) deride is COMPULSORY. It is REQUIRED BY LAW of every publicly-traded corporation.
This is because the law DEMANDS that the executives and directors of a public-traded corporation maximize shareholder value, first and foremost. If a publicly traded corporation can maximize shareholder value by killing good US jobs and replacing them with bad overseas jobs, then that corporation is required to do that. If a corporation can show that the profits illegal behavior outweigh the consequences (fines, reparations, and so on if caught), the corporation is required to break the law.
This is absurd, and ought to be changed — and it exemplifies that kind of change that I think Mr. Sanders is utterly unqualified to accomplish. This requires undoing generations of corporate law and at least a century of legal precedent. It will be vigorously opposed by virtually the entire business community (look for ads with images of nice blue-haired grandmothers that need to be protected from stock scams). Many of the relevant laws were put in place to correct very real frauds that hurt large numbers of people during the 1920s, before those laws were in place.
If we want to change this behavior, we need to make pervasive changes throughout the business, legal, political, economic system. Such an effort requires a leader who is able to listen, hear, understand, empathize with, and then persuade, cajole, and truly influence a large number of initially-reluctant people. Such a leader will attract a firestorm of attack and insults, and must be able to calmly stay focused as he or she steers the ship of state through the storm.
I think there is only one such leader in the race today — Hillary Clinton.