PLUTOCRACY III

"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim:
The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."
- Bertrand Russell


he apologists of the American-style laissez-faire capitalism point gloatingly to the collapse of the Soviet Union to "prove" there is no workable alternative to their so-called "free-market." In the words of The Financial Times (Apr.20, 1990): "For millions around the world, the American flag is a symbol of an economic and social system that works."

They claim that American savage capitalism is both the highest form of civilization and a reflection of the natural human order. Their main idea is that capitalism is eternal and that it is the best possible system money can buy... Such arguments take as a starting point that American kind of capitalism is the only possible economic system and that there is no alternative.

These ardent supporters of American capitalism point out that America has the most prosperous economy in the world, which they attribute to its dynamic capitalist system, less fettered by government than any of the other leading economies. To most of such mouthpieces, the U.S. economy is doing so well that it's difficult to imagine how to improve it. "It doesn't get any better than this," as gloats Robert Dederick, an economist at Northern Trust Co.

When these ideologists and propagandists of the American extreme capitalism describe their system, it sounds so idyllic: The economy keeps growing and more and more good things are turned out all the time. So why is there also more and more endemic poverty and unemployment in America? Why is there permanent homelessness and all the other social ills that come from not having a secure job with decent pay?

I think the most basic question that everyone should ask is: If the American kind of unbridled capitalism is the best and greatest of all possible systems, how is it that they have so much human suffering here in the midst of their "paradise"? My answer would be that this system itself is the cause of all the unspeakable misery and inequality which I have observed here.

The exponents of the American system claim that free market automatically can generate the most efficient and productive economic result. But the truth is that the capitalist market is not simply an impersonal mechanism here. It represents the subordination of all the economic life to the interests of a single social class. The American capitalist market is about few rich individuals selfishly pursuing their own private self-interest.

The profit system places control of the wealth produced by the millions of hard-working people in the hands of a very small group of exploiters. This thin layer of rich parasites, no more than one percent of the country's population, owns the bulk of the wealth in America. They put all the resources to use for the sole purpose of producing more and more profit for themselves -- that is, increasing the wealth of those who are already obscenely rich. It brings misery for the many and prosperity only for very few.

This fundamentally unjust system produces great wealth, power and luxury for a tiny minority of Americans, and a rat race to stay alive for the great majority. It reveals how the obscene wealth of the few comes as a result of the life-long hard work of the millions. This shows that American extreme capitalism is by definition a system of ruthless exploitation, which proudly asserts itself as a production mode based on pain and scarcity for those without capital.

This brutal system leaves millions of poor people in America with no place to call home while much luxury housing stands empty; it puts millions of children to bed cold and hungry each night while a small elite lives in filthy luxury. This is a system that forces human beings to eat out of garbage cans! Such system is not only immoral; it is rotten to the core; it is doomed to extinction. I'm of the opinion that if ever there was a satanic system, the American extreme capitalism is it.