Some folks are starting to figure it out

posted by The Vidiot @ 7:16 PM Permalink

Though, it's not quite in the way that I would like. It seems a recent poll shows that fewer people than before are thinking that capitalism is OK.

Bad news for those fearful of "creeping socialism" in the United States -- only 53 percent of Americans now believe capitalism is the better system, according to a new poll Thursday.

Fully 20 percent in the Rasmussen Reports survey said that socialism was their preferred economic system -- a startling number that suggests growing disaffection as the "land of the free" fights its worst recession in decades.

While I like that less people are approving of capitalism, the fact that they prefer socialism is a problem, mostly because most don't know what socialism really is. I don't have a problem with real socialism. It's just that actual socialism -- where the workers control the means of production as well as decide on the distribution of the benefits of that production -- has never happened except for a few factories in Argentina that have been taken over by the workers and a few communes here and there. But socialism, as most understand it, is little more than democratic or reformed socialism which is basically state-subsidized capitalism. It's kind of like capitalism with public health care.

Right now, governments are taking over banks and businesses and by doing so, theoretically, the people are now co-owners and are supposed to garner some benefits from that ownership... but that’s not what’s happening, is it? The people don’t have any say and they have no power. Additionally, the people are paying for it, but the corporations are the only ones that are benefiting. So, therefore, it is NOT socialism. (It’s more like fascism actually.) What it should be called is “state-subsidized capitalism” because it is neither full-blown traditional capitalism where the corporations stand on their own legs with the State merely facilitating for them in their quest for profits and nor is it post-capitalism because we’d have an economy that is entirely different.

No, the government is now maintaining the corporations, not in the interest of the people, but in the interest of capitalism because capitalism is failing. It is a logical progression of our economic system that has been foreseen by many an economic theorist. Capitalism is in its death throws and the people who are embedded in it are putting it on life support and are terrified of pulling the plug. What the government is doing with AIG and all of the banks is not socialism as I understand it, and it’s certainly not socialism in the way that the right or the left mean it and it’s definitely not socialism in the way the media, both left-leaning and right-leaning, are using it.

It is really state-subsidized capitalism. Perhaps even neo capitalism with state subsidization, if you want to get fancy about it. But it is definitely not socialism.

So the next time someone starts saying "socialism" this or "socialism" that, you have my permission to correct them.

Labels: bailouts, capitalism, socialism