This is not the end of capitalism. It is not even the end of American capitalism.
For the benefit of those who do not understand what they read but are quick to fire off supercilious rebuttals to nothing, let me restate what I wrote the other day, namely that American capitalism has imploded and has to be redefined in the coming weeks and months. Make that ‘years.’
American capitalism, especially as zealously protected by the Republican Party, is anchored on the hitherto unshakeable belief in what is reverentially referred to by its priests and acolytes as “The Market.” Meaning, that the Free Market, the Unseen Hand of Adam Smith, is the best, and even the only, arbiter of economic decisions in the allocation of resources.
Hence, according to this secular religion, the best government is the one that interferes the least in the workings of The Market. But that has now been stood on its head.
The lame-duck Republican administration of George W. Bush is pushing for a $700 billion bail-out, to be financed by American taxpayers over the next few generations, ostensibly to buy the bad debts of homeowners who can no longer afford to pay the monthlies, but effectively to save the banking and finance corporations – and their scandalously overpaid executives – from drowning in their own vomit.
There seems to be bi-partisan agreement that something drastic has to be done, but the Democrats and the independents are concerned that there seems to be no provision in the proposed bill for an oversight committee to make sure that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (and their successors) perform their functions more diligently than the Wall Street regulators have done theirs.
With this heavy intrusion of government into The Market, I wrote the other day that “American capitalism, with or without Jewish speculators, will never be the same.” But American capitalism is not dead. It just needs a blood transfusion and, possibly, a heart transplant and a lobotomy…
One Republican fuddy-duddy senator complained on CNN that “this is socialism and un-American.” Someone should tell the pompous ignoramus that the minimum wage law is socialism, unemployment insurance is socialism, universal health care (admittedly still unknown in the US) is socialism, socialized housing is socialism, subsidized education is socialism, sick and vacation leaves are socialism, maternity leaves are socialism, even trade unions are socialism.
American capitalism is not and never was the model for the rest of the world.
Western European capitalism, which unapologetically accepts heavy government presence in the economy and generous social benefits for stakeholders, is substantially different from American capitalism. So is Anglo-Saxon capitalism under ruling Labour parties, especially in the matter of health care. So are the highly paternalistic Japanese and German capitalism. So are Chinese and Vietnamese capitalism under monopoly of political power for the ruling Communist parties, So is Middle Eastern capitalism, totally dependent on one abundant commodity that is theirs purely by geological accident.. So is Russian capitalism, heavily dominated by cronies and gangsters close to the Kremlin center of gravity. So is Philippine and Latin American capitalism, with one foot still stuck in feudalism..
To each his own. Chacun a son gout. Americans should disabuse themselves of the conceit – often articulated by George W. Bush in his limited vocabulary, - that everyone else, aside from the Filipinos, wants to be like them.
The socialism that was directly inspired by Karl Marx and his followers was a reaction to the abuses and excesses of capitalism in the 19th century, when appalling social and economic conditions underlined the fact that social legislation had not yet caught up with the dislocations brought about by the Industrial Revolution.
When Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848, they were convinced that “the specter of Communism” which they saw hovering over Europe was about to descend soon.
In 1869, they organized a series of meetings, beginning in London, which became known as the First International Conference of the socialist movement, attended by socialists of different stripes from all over the world.
In 1889, another series of meetings, including one in Philadelphia, became known as the Second International Conference of the socialist movement, but attended only by reformist socialists who believed that they could operate in capitalist societies and reform capitalism from within.
The Third International Conference – also known as the Communist International or Comintern - was held in Moscow in 1919 and was attended only by revolutionary socialists who believed that capitalism cannot be reformed and must be overthrown by bloody revolution, according to the allegedly scientific historical laws of dialectical materialism.
Needless to say, revolutionary socialism became the operating ideology of the Soviet Union and, later, the People’s Republic of China (also known as Maoist China).It became the inspirational model for revolutionary socialist movements in the rest of Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Not so well known to Americans (and, by extension, to Americanized Filipinos) is the reformist socialist movement derived from the Second International Conference, which provided the ideological foundations for the social democratic and socialist parties in Western Europe, the Labour parties in the Anglo-Saxon countries and, to a much lesser extent, the Democratic Party in the US. (Which is the reason why American rednecks, including senators, have a knee-jerk aversion to the word ’socialism.’)
In the Philippines, revolutionary socialists organized the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in the 1940s. The late Renato Constantino Sr.. and Francisco Nemenzo became members of its politburo in the 1950s. But the PKP folded its revolutionary tent in the 1970s and made peace with dictator Ferdinand Marcos..
Following the schism between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in the early 1960s over ideological grounds – the Soviets insisted on revolution through the urban industrial proletariat, while Mao Zedong chose revolution through a politicized peasantry – Jose Ma. Sison formed the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) with a Maoist orientation. This is the socialism that is supported by the likes of Satur Ocampo, Teddy Casino, Liza Masa, the late Crispin Beltran and their allies in Philippine media…as well as the last Communists left in Europe: Joma Sison and the aging NDF cumbancheros in Utrecht, Holland.
In 1964, I was invited by Joma’s people to become a charter member of Sison’s Kabataang Makabayan, which invitation I accepted, even though I knew that it was a Communist front organization. Of the 30 or so original members, I was the only one from an “elite” school (Ateneo); everyone else was from either UP or Lyceum. But I never joined the CPP. .
Even as early as the 1960s, I was aware of the distinctions between Soviet and Maoist socialism on the one hand, and Western European socialism on the other. Knowing as I did of the success of the latter, especially Scandinavian socialism, I could not accept the notion that the Soviet Union or Maoist China – with their built-in intolerance and absolutism - represented the best that human beings are capable of.
In 1989, millions of ordinary people in Eastern Europe literally walked out on their Communist governments. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed from the accumulated weight of its own failures. In the period from 1979 to the 1990s, China transformed itself into a capitalist economy, albeit with the Communist Party still in total political control.
In a way, I predicted this in my 1985 booklet A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Communism. History has vindicated my choice. *****
Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in acabaya.blogspot,com. Tony on YouTube in www.tapatt.org.
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