Eric Hobsbawm: Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankru...
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Saved by 16 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-04-10
- Anton15 on 2009-10-08 - Tags no_tag
- Juliusbeezer on 2009-07-15 - Tags financial , crisis
- Abo46n2 on 2009-04-16 - Tags socialism , capitalism , Economics
- Cjlise on 2009-04-15 - Tags socialism , capitalism , Economics
- Inoue0406 on 2009-04-15 - Tags economics
Public Sticky notes
Whatever ideological logo we adopt, the shift from free market to public action needs to be bigger than politicians grasp
Highlighted by herrfurl
We have lived through two practical attempts to realise these in their pure form: the centrally state-planned economies of the Soviet type and the totally unrestricted and uncontrolled free-market capitalist economy. The first broke down in the 1980s, and the European communist political systems with it. The second is breaking down before our eyes in the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s. In some ways it is a greater crisis than in the 1930s, because the globalisation of the economy was not then as far advanced as it is today, and the crisis did not affect the planned economy of the Soviet Union. We don't yet know how grave and lasting the consequences of the present world crisis will be, but they certainly mark the end of the sort of free-market capitalism that captured the world and its governments in the years since Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan.
Highlighted by anton15
The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another.
Highlighted by anton15
The basic Labour idea since the 1950s was that socialism was unnecessary, because a capitalist system could be relied on to flourish and to generate more wealth than any other. All socialists had to do was to ensure its equitable distribution.
Highlighted by anton15
But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners.
Highlighted by anton15
That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis.
Highlighted by inoue0406
Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes.
Highlighted by anton15
Public Comment