Matisyahu's Blog

I woke up this morning, had a coffee then jumped into the shower, got dressed then walked down to the local cafe for an eggs bene with smoked salmon and spinach along with a bowl of mocaccino. After the meal I then grabbed a couple of items from the display cabinet of slices then headed back home. Something I must do a lot more often on my day off is going from a nice walk around the block during the day – the feeling of the sun and the fresh air certainly wakes one up.

Regarding the political take I had either yesteryday or the day before regarding moving further to the left. For me I started off being a social libertarian but economically centre left – the basic idea that negative externalities of capitalism could be dealt with government policy that focused on protecting workers, the environment, ensuring that the products being provide meet safety regulations, a progressive tax system to ensure that those at the top end of town pay a larger portion of their income to fund universal public services that everyone can access. Basically I was a bog standard social democrat but what I have found is that as I’ve read more history I realise that we’ve been going through this cycle of trying to reign in the excesses of capitalism only to find that is undone which is then followed by an economic crisis which then necessitates the state to intervene, rescue the economy then reinstate new regulations (with those regulations being limited in scope due to political capture by the capitalist class).

The problem is that the we cannot keep going through these cycles resulting in the capitalist class having more power after the very economic crisis they caused resulting in a consolidation of power. As a a study reminded me not too long ago, the average person has little or no influence over policy when compared to the donors who bankroll campaigns and lobby for special treatment. If we define fascism being the marriage of state power with capitalism – the capitalist class seizes control of the state then use the state’s monopoly on violence to protect its class interest, what we see a slow moving fascist transformation of the state. Then add on top of a system that is predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet thus making dealing with climate change an impossibility without system change, an economy productive enough to meet all of humanities needs but relies on the illusion of scarcity to ensure profit maximisation and that doesn’t touch on the larger issue of the fact that we have solutions to deal with climate change but because we fixate over profits the end result is that these solutions never get built because they’re either unprofitable or not profitable enough.

What is the solution? we need to push beyond capitalism. As Michael Moore, the American documentarian, has noted in the past regarding how as humans we can land people on the moon, find cures to diseases, create marvels of technology but some how we cannot come up with a better solution than capitalism? what is that alternative? socialism but the million dollar question is what kind of socialism – if you define socialism as in ‘workers owning and controlling the means of production’ then what is governance structure? cooperatives? worker councils based around a particular industrial sector? should the market be the mediator when it comes to the delivery of goods and services or what other model could be used in lieu of a market based model? should there be currency? labour vouchers? public housing, private housing or a combination?

What does amaze me are the number of liberals who keep chortling about how ‘socialism has never worked’ which demonstrates the fact that capitalism didn’t get it right the first time and even today it continuously needs the bailed out. If capitalism was this fabulously perfect system then it wouldn’t need to be continuously baile dout, it wouldn’t need to use clandestine operations to undermine countries that wish to nationalise their natural resources so that the benefits of those resources are used to benefit their people (see Iran and numerous South American countries just recently). I have to wonder whether liberals are so wedded to the ideology that they’re blind to alternatives to whether they have a vested interested in the status quo.