Ian McDonald
WHEN I was at university a long time ago, I remember my tutor, who was a great authority on the history of Tudor times in England but who was inclined to digress with equal passion in a hundred other directions, saying to me that whenever he met a Capitalist he steadfastly advocated the need to equalise incomes and the absolute necessity for State intervention to resist greed and give balance to the economy - and that whenever he met a Socialist he adamantly insisted on the right of all men to earn a reasonable personal profit and the great need to limit State control before it stifled all initiative.
These days, I recall this highly intelligent and shrewd man. Communism collapsed under the weight of its gross unsuitability to the real needs of man. Now global capitalism, seemingly triumphant in the aftermath of communism's fall, is showing every sign of collapsing under exactly the same burden.
SOLUTION TO NEEDS
It never seemed to me likely that the foolishness of "unfettered free trade", and "the supremacy of market forces" could ever offer a solution to the real needs of men, women and children anywhere apart from those already over-privileged and super-advantaged. I hope this foolishness will be exposed sooner rather than later.
Both ideologies in their extremes have been found so sadly wanting that by now a great many independently thinking men surely must have come to the conclusion that neither socialism nor capitalism passes the test of what is best for ordinary men and women in the world.
As men grow intellectually exasperated by the monolithic bureaucracy which state control inflicts on a nation, and are, therefore, tempted by the competing attractions of private enterprise let loose, they become aware of the awful evidence of the misery brought around the world by capitalism practised in the raw. But as one gets fed up to the teeth with the dunderheaded over-emphasis by free-enterprisers on the need to leave greed and selfishness unfettered, and are, therefore, tempted by the arguments for wholesale state intervention, one cannot help remembering with disgust the countless examples of heavy-handed subjugation of the human spirit by one or other socialist "paradises". Sometimes it seems the truest word of all is contained in the old Polish joke which used to describe capitalism as showing "man's inhumanity to man" and socialism as showing it the other way round.
MEASURING SUCCESS
One of the problems in all this is how should you measure and deal with "success" in any society? The trouble with capitalism is that its "success" is too often rotten - shining, not solid, success. Impressive growth rates of 10 per cent per annum do not mean much if they consist of a 50 per cent increase in prosperity for 20 per cent of the people and minus 20 per cent for the rest. A brazenly prosperous elite can make a place look awfully good on the surface with skyscrapers and shiny cars and country clubs and full supermarkets - but is that the best way to judge success? On the other hand, socialism is far too suspicious of individual success and, as a result, hidden beneath some wonderful mass achievements is the incalculable misery endured when the human spirit is herded, manipulated, and submerged within a supposedly greater whole.
QUESTION TO ANSWER
The supreme question capitalism has to answer is how the greed in man - which provides the system's motive power - can very well be harnessed so that the poor, the weak, the old, the disadvantaged are not trampled in the rush towards selfish, individual wealth.
The supreme question socialism has to answer is how to leave untouched the essential core of freedom in all men while still harnessing for the good of all the energy and the individual spirit that flow from that same core of freedom.
The battle for man's heart and mind goes on. Sometimes it seems one side's answer is the best, sometimes the other. More often still, as one grows more cynical, both sides seem much too lumbered with gross contradictions and imperfections ever to convince the ordinarily thoughtful man. It is the task of men and women of goodwill and good sense everywhere to seek another way between the abject failures of these two simplistic faiths.
Ian McDonald is an occasional contributor who lives and works in Georgetown, Guyana.
