Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

Elect Another People

March 8, 2007

Andrew Murray at (where else?) the Guardian’s CiF reminisces about the good old days of the Soviet Union and suggests that communism (sorry, socialism) can still make a comeback. I’d like to think this comment is tongue-in-cheek, but somehow I doubt it:

Andrew, I spent many years with you (idealogically at least) but life on the front line of socialism, both campaigning and administrating at local authority level, taught me one overarching truth. The people are simply not up to Socialism. It’s too difficult, it’s too hard and it’s too ‘intellectual’ for the people. The people have shown themselves, the world over, to be fundamentally lazy, greedy, selfish and myopic.

Did you watch the wall come down? The glee with which the people pulled down those bricks and threw themselves and their families headlong into unemployment, shabby education, poor health and CocaCola showed more clearly than anything else that the people are just too dumb for Socialism.

Socialism is indeed a better way to run things than capitalism, but first we have to find ourselves another ‘people’.

Move on mate. You’ll only cause yourself heartache.

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6 responses to “Elect Another People”

Bob-B

March 8, 2007

I wonder if the guy who is nostalgic for the wall is familiar with the film ‘Goodbye Lenin’, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye_Lenin!

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timmyhawk

March 8, 2007

“themselves and their families headlong into unemployment, shabby education, poor health and CocaCola”
Which means they go Coca Cola. All the others already applied, though few people seem to acknowledge this. Never spoken to someone from the former GDR? Might help.

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IanCroydon

March 9, 2007

“The people have shown themselves, the world over, to be fundamentally lazy, greedy, selfish and myopic.”
Whether tongue in cheek or not, this statement demonstrates what is wrong with Socialism.
Socialism, at its heart, depends on generosity, which it why it is so appealing, especially to those of a western liberal Christian nature.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is dependent on greed, which is why it is so easy to remonstrate with it, appealing again to those of a western liberal Christian nature.
However, as any fool knows, people cannot be relied on to be generous, but they can always be relied upon to be greedy. That’s why a system based on generosity will always fail, and one based on greed will always be successful, because the core principle of any political system is that it must work, however badly.
Socialists know that people cannot be generous, that’s why they often turn a blind eye to dictators who coerce and force people to act “generous” in the name of Socialism, that’s why ultimately, Socialism leads to Totalitarianism, it is the only way it would work.
The snobby ivory tower attitude is a virtual prerequisite for such Socalists, they wouldn’t be able to think like that if they didn’t doubt other peoples intelligence. Whilst the article is assumed to be sarcastic, it is sadly because there are those who do think that way.
The real dumb ones are Socialists who can’t see that Capitalism, with all its nasty greedy commercial traits, is a system that brings greater freedoms and liberty regardless, something that their own philosophy has singularly failed to do for over 150 years now.
I always recall George Monbiot’s view on this, and he’s not exactly an admirer of Capitalism:
“It seems to me that the questions we urgently need to ask ourselves are these: is totalitarianism the only means of eliminating capitalism? If so, and if, as almost all of us profess to do, we abhor totalitarianism, can we continue to call ourselves anti-capitalists? If there is no humane and democratic answer to the question of what a world without capitalism would look like, then should we not abandon the pursuit of unicorns, and concentrate on capturing and taming the beast whose den we already inhabit?”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1087488,00.html

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Dom

March 9, 2007

Socialism does not really depend on generosity. It depends on people paying their taxes, and that can’t be called generous. It also depends on the lie that socialized services are somehow free.
Does capitalism depend on greed? I can choose to become a doctor or a librarian. I see that there are lots of libraries around me, but few doctors, so I become a doctor. You can say I did that to maximize my profits (greedy), or I did it to best serve the people around me (generous). It depends on how you look at it.
Socialism works best when the government allocates taxes exactly how the tax-payers would have allocated their own money in a free-market. When it deviates from this, it is illiberal, turning people into serfs.

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lupin

March 9, 2007

It strikes me as strange that the CoiF commentor hasn’t yet battled their way to Cuba or North Korea to escape the slings and arrows of untrammeled capitalism.
(And am I the only one who has allowed the phrase “administrating at local authority level” to drag up all kinds of unjustifiable stereotypes about slackjawed Council jobsworths whining about actually having to do some work.)

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DaninVan

March 10, 2007

Dom; your comment had me thinking. Exactly what IS greed? Surely an individual’s efforts at achievement aren’t the target. If we accept EXCESSIVE desire for wealth/food/sex or whatever, as being the criteria, then is that mitigated by generosity on the part of the same person?
We use the expression (greed)freely, mostly as a pejorative, but exactly how much desire is healthy competition and when is the line crossed into excessiveness? Who decides?
The individual’s ethicalness would be my standard for judging, as success doesn’t neccessarily follow.

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