The Western Wall Falls Too: The Day Capitalism Failed

To modern western conservatives the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the failure of communism. The Soviet Union had failed to make communism work as a system of government. (communism for those of you who don't know is different from socialism - look it up.) Although it actually began under Ronald Reagan in 1980 this marked the true dawn of the conservative era. The neo-cons (as they are now known) marshaled in a new era of deregulation, laissez-fair economics, social Darwinism (poor Darwin - this had nothing to do with his theory), and an Adam Smith like belief in the power of the markets to make everything good.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) believed that if every person acted in their own self interest under a system of competition and free markets that everyone would prosper. This, along with a conservative Christian morality adopted to secure more votes, has been the driving philosophy of Western Conservatives and the one that they matched up against the communism of the soviets. The problem we are now left with is that both have failed.

In order to save off another great depression the U.S. Bush administration (the home seat of modern neo-con philosophy) has been forced to use a socialist solution - a 700 billion dollar bailout of the banking industry. Again, this is from a government and an ideological philosophy that preached non-intervention and small government but is already (before the bailout) more than 9.5 trillion dollars in debt, even before the bailout and while accumulation all of this debt the standard of living of US citizens has actually declined. This is, as the saying goes, socialism for the rich and capitalism for everyone else. The people who lost their homes as a result of this fiasco will get nothing. It must be remembered though that it was socialist and semi-socialist solutions (combined with a World War) that pulled the west out of the first Great Depression.

So am I espousing socialism? No, not really. What I am saying is that unless someone comes up with another, entirely new, economic philosophy that we are left with a hybrid. The markets and competition obviously have a place. Most Canadians don't want to live in a world with one kind of iced cream, one kind of shirt, one kind of coffee. In Canada Bell and Rogers, for example, have shown us that large companies without competition become complacent and charge ever higher prices while service declines. On the other hand, socialist solutions along with industry regulation, government intervention and taxes also have their place. Adam Smith was wrong. Everyone acting in their own self interest will eventually lead to catastrophe. People's self interest is all too often short sighted, what is in your personal self interest today is frequently not good for you, your country, or the environment (and the planet that sustains our lives) over the long haul. Now we must struggle to find that balance knowing that the economic schools of thought that have guided the last 200+ years do not, in a pure form, work.

I bring this up at this time for two reasons. First to mark the occasion of the fall of the West's Berlin Wall. Second because we are in an election and Stephen Harper is running on a belief that deregulation, laissez-fair economics, social Darwinism, and an Adam Smith like belief in the power of the markets to make everything good. All we have to do is look south to see where that road ends.