Dominic Willott suggests that a comparison of "socialist practice with capitalist theory" is more informative of the relative merits of both systems than contrasting capitalist practice against socialist theory. But such a comparison isn't flattering to capitalism, the theory and practice of which involves ruthless competition among corporations and businesses for the greatest share of the market. That means that costs, including and especially labour costs, must be cut to the bone, even if wages and salaries aren't enough to buy the goods produced or provide a decent standard of living for workers.
In "practice," it involves the movement of industry and business to third-world countries whose labour force is desperate and where standard of living low, and displaces smaller, indigenous businesses in the process. That was what off-shoring was all about. And while the policy impoverished peasants and eliminated the market gardens they were used to and forced them into cities and crowded industry-provided complexes, it had the effect also of lowering wages in the US. When they were deemed sufficiently low, some industry returned to make even more profit by eliminating the costs of transporting machinery and infrastructure long distances overseas.
Capitalism is about profit for elites whose costs don't include externals like carbon pollution as well as chemical toxins that are simply dumped into rivers and lakes, even in Canada. Hundreds of thousands of orphan gas and oil wells have been left to the state – which enlarges, not narrows, its mandate. Canada's mining industry is notorious for its methods of coercion over unwilling indigenous people: rape has been used as a weapon in Latin American countries and protesters killed, and Canada's courts have ruled against well-founded cases of cancer and other maladies from industry pollution. Pipeline protesters in North Dakota who fear oil pollution of aquifers have been beaten, held back with water-cannon and jailed. Jason Kenney wants to override indigenous peoples' right to a thorough investigation of pipelines risks in BC. Capitalism often means force supplied by the state against individuals. Costly and inhuman wars have been and are fought in the name of capitalism: Is that not state interference and "regulation of behaviour"? Right now, Venezuela is being menaced by US-backed greedy corporations and elitists elements who resent programs for the poor. This is a strange kind of freedom, and millions of struggling Americans would also dispute the identification of freedom and capitalism, or even capitalism with democracy with respect to the crazy concentration of wealth at the expense of average people.
The Spider's Web on YouTube documents the offshoring of capitalist profit for tax evasion purposes, an estimated $50 trillion in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and many other locations. The tax burden, much of which is used in wars for profit and control of monetary systems, is transferred to the lower economic echelons.
It is small wonder that many people believe capitalism is now beyond remediation.
It is small wonder that exaggerated evils are ascribed to socialist systems which have always operated under duress. They are blamed even for food shortages caused by drought.
Marx's theories were inspired by the lack of freedom for the masses who in fact had no individuality or choice under capitalism: they were simply ciphers to be manipulated or ignored. De Tocqueville, Dickens, Victor Hugo and others documented the seedy, inhuman side of capitalism that Marx could not just look away from. Is all of that just an unfortunate but acceptable side effect?
Doris Wrench Eisler, St. Albert
