socialism

Yes, BeenBeta, I think the low fines and low number of prosecutions for violations send the unfortunate message that our politicians empathise and sympathise far too much with the City and its forms of bad behaviour (quite a few of them having come from the banking community or other City jobs), but lack real empathy for almost anyone else.

jackstarb - I agree. Otherwise socialists would want to ban money altogether.

rabitstew - from what I have seen we do not need more laws or regulations. We need less regulations but much better enforced ones.

There really has been shockingly few criminal prosecutions and shockingly low fines against banks and financial institutions as a result of flagarant violations that lead up to the financial crisis.

At the very least, I feel the senior managers of many more banks and financial institutions should have been banned from holding any official capacity in in banking ever again. It's NOT because I think they commited crimes but because they failed in their fiduciary duty. Instead, they are largely still there collecting bonuses. That is wrong and I understand why so many people feel that socialism might appear to be the answer.

It strikes me that capatilism and socialism are not directly comparable.

Socialism is a political philosophy and capitalism isn't (unless you are extremely right wing).

Capitalism (the free market) is an economic system whilst socialism alone isn't really (even workers co-ops need to buy and sell stuff).

Of course, state conrtrolled central planning and distribution is an economic system of sorts (as used by communist sates). But is this what people mean when they talk about proper socialism?

Hi, BeenBeta - so do you just think that whilst there are enough laws, these were not applied because no-one was checking up properly (ie there was deliberate and flagrant breaking of the rules by our reputable, big banks and corporations)? Or do you also mean that there weren't enough rules and regulations in the first place? And should there be more swingeing penalties on individuals heading organisations and on the organisations themselves, when any breaking or bending of the rules is found to have taken place - eg attach blame and punishment to those at the top regardless of whether they were aware of what was going on under their noses?

rabbitstew - all organised societies have rules and laws. Indeed capitalism itself cannot exist without a framework of laws (eg contract law, patent law, bankruptcy law, competition law).

My arguement is that the reason why capitalism appears to have failed is that the framework of laws we have that were designed to allow capitalism to work have not been enforced.

In essence, banks and big business have taken adantage of the lax applictaion of these laws to the disadantage of society at large. Whatever bankers and big business say, they do not operate in a vacuum. They operate within a society and that society has a right and a need to ensure that banks and businesses operate in a way that is to the good of society not just maximise the personal gain of the senior managers/owners. That form of unbridled lawless capitalism is called 'robber capitalism' such as we see in Russia and is to the detriment of the wider society.

BeenBeta - is it capitalism to think that everything can be made to work nicely for everyone if only people would follow a series of rules and guidelines (ie regulations) designed to protect the less well off and less savvy? Surely that is socialised capitalism? Or an admission that pure capitalism is not very nice?

Good Bonsoir, sorry it looked like you were poor bashing! I agree some rich people have terrible taste.

I didn't make any such reference, QueenBathsheba, and I certainly don't think that poor consumer choices are the preserve of the poor. Poor consumer choices are more likely to be made by people with more money than education.

Stubborn, I for one would rather que than live with it on my conscience that other people are starving.

Anyway what would you que for, new tv, new car, new clothes you don't need.

Bonsoir makes reference to the less savvy wasting their money on chavtastic tracksuits. Pitty anyone who asked for your compassion. Surely you don't think poor people have all these choices of which you speak.

If you don't believe me when I say that capitalism is creating hunger and poverty, please please just give a few minutes to watch this film.

Bare with it, it's slow to load but it is very interesting and it highlights how just a few major corps control almost all the food resources on the planet. Those resources not contolled by these giant busineses are being speculated upon by the likes of goldmansachs

www.pinnaclefarms.ca/Food_Inc/Food_Inc.html

QueenBathsheba/rabbitstew - my strong feeling is that the vast majority of citizens in the UK have indeed been very badly served indeed by the financial services industry. Scandal after scandal has erupted in which ordinary investors and pensioners have lost hard earned savings and even where they haven't they are charged excessive fees for very poor investment returns. That is due to gross failures of regulation.

Politicians have and continue to be far too close to The City and big business. It is not a failure of capitalism or our market economy but political and regulatory failure that allows this.

whereas under socialism they buy all sorts of crap because that's the only thing available in the shops.
....once they reach the front of the queue.

One of the problems with capitalism is that consumers need to be very savvy to deal with the massive choices available to them, all of which have short and long term implications. Most of them are pretty dim and buy all sorts of crap just because it is dangled in front of their noses...

If you want to look at farming and wealth you need look no further than America, the capitalist mother. Large corperations running farming, producing the food, packaging it and selling it on at huge profit.

A few years ago there was a programme about this. It showed how these giants controlled food production and prices. The people these corps employed were so poor the only way they could afford to eat the product of their labour was through food stamps. Surplus profit taken out of the real economy and invested by the few to generate greater wealth and as a result greater suffering for their own work force.

It seems they're struggling though, poor buggers, having to take EU farming subsidies to scrape by. Bless 'em.

Bonsoir I agree, I was being ironic. As if banning fox hunting would in some way diminish their wealth.

All it actually served to do was put some working class people out of work.

QueenBathsheba - no, we haven't had an English Revolution in the French 1792 style (yet). Aristocracy is alive and well and rich, albeit with ever-reducing powers.

Dukes?

Do we still have an aristocracy. I thought that was the only effictive thing Blair did, bash the aristos.

Well said Glasnost 11.38

Queen, I like that idea. Perhaps a few of our Dukes could donate a few acres to the cause?

That is the crux of 'redistributive' socialism. You really need the wealth creating types to consent to sharing their wealth. And not just the very wealthy. The tax base needs to be very wide Jackstarb

Yes I agree, it's actually non socialist to say tax the rich to pay the poor. It's not moral and I would agree with you. Which is why taxation works on a sliding scale.

However Robin Hood taxes will not create equality. I have no desire to use my talents for the greater good of all, if a significant few are helpless through years of inequality of resources and opportunity.

I don't however subscribe to the idea that these vulnerables should be systematically punished which is what cameron and co will do.

They only way of making socialism work to create wealth for all is to follow a staged return to a time of pre-industrialisation of people, note people not produce!

Blair can't be a real socialist for the simple reason he hates socialism and his main objective was to neuter the Labour party and divest it of any tiny remnants of socialism that had survived since Bevin, Atlee, Foot et al. He has done more to harm English socialism than a thousand Thatchers. Only right wingers in bad faith or victims of propaganda can assert Blair was a socialist.

"Common ownership of the means of production." The clause Blair gleefully ditched was the last remaining link between Labour and socialism.

Good post at 10:35, Rabbitstew, very well put.

Orwel realised that industry and socialism didn't work unless people had access to the spoils of their labour. That's what screwed communism under Stalin.

Stalin came out with what he called the five year plan, every few years. First they closed all private shops and that led to a black market. Then under pressure he relented and allowed private shops and businesses but this was strictly regulated, however it didn't produce the equality of access to goods that he hoped for. So more pressure and more people on a one way trip to the gulag!

Orwel (unlike Marx) believed that socialsm could sit beside other economies.

I also believe this is possible, there is a move towards local micro economies now, with food, if we just look beyound that it is possible to do away with large companies and corps.

One way of achieving equality and full employment is self sufficiency (I'm a hippy veg grower as well as a feminist!) so we need to become an isolationist country and actually get young non accademic people back to where they are often happiest, manual labour and self suffiency, working in small companies where surplus profit is more equally shared.