Capitalism is a financial system that is meant to be an opposite to Socialism, or more like the other way around. Now, it is indeed a bit confusing to say so, since the former is a financial theory, whereas the latter is a political system. Of course, in practice, these two are completely entangled and they can't really exist independently from one another. The financial and the political systems in general, that is.
Socialism is thought to have its roots in the 19th Century and the socio-political theories of the German philosopher Karl Marx. Actually, Marx's philosophy is established as Marxism and is also recognized to be a foundation to Communism. Ever since the Bolshevik revolution and especially the Cold War, Communism is regarded as a totalitarian evil and the very word of it brings about feelings of resentment.
History is a complex topic and certainly not a straighforward one, not to mention that it is shrouded in a lot of myst and propaganda, also historic events too often are distorted through the subjective interpretations of the different view points. So, when one reads history, he or she should always keep in mind that this is the subjective interpretation of a source and that there are other layers and viewpoints to it as well.
Karl Marx and his close like-minded friend Friedrich Engels aspired to a better world, where class-based society with its inequalities would become a thing of the past. They also revolted against the exploitation of the working class by the capitalists and saw religion and religious authorities as equally abusive towards the ignorant believers, in large parts because religion had a long tradition of supporing class-based societies and protecting the "divine rights" of kings and emperors. Their communist philosophy envisioned a society where there will be freedom and equality, higher consciousness, responsibility and solidarity among people. In some part, their philosophy is quite sound, in theory. In practice, however, things turned out to be very different. Just as any other beautiful theory regarding economic and political workings of a society.
In practice, what the Bolsheviks and subsequently the USSR created was a totalitarian rule, which they all labeled as "communism" and also "socialism". I don't quite agree with the interchangeability of these two terms, because of their etymology. Communism comes from community, to commune. This term expresses the core concept of a classless society that Marxism envisioned. While Socialism roots itself from Society, social, with an "ism" attached, meaning "power to the people", as opposed to "power to the kings and rulers". From here on things get complicated and volumous.
On the one hand, humanity simply isn't advanced enough so that we may completely eradicate feudal elements, as in ruling class over a majority of people mass. Such a social form isn't impossible, but it involves a society consisted of individuals of a wholly different level of intellect, culture, behavior and so on. Such a society cannot be created with a social mass of ignorant, selfish, narrow-mined, basic, low cultured and so on and so on "average" people, even less so average peasants (as with the case of the Bolshevik revolution). On the other hand, having the above prerequisite in mind, the Bolshevik's and subsequently all communists never intended to create any such "utopian" society, they simply used people's ignorance, naivete and the "spirit of the era", which was buzzing with worker's being fed up with the old capitalist-feudal order. They exploited the masses to overthrow the monarchy and set up a new monarchy of their own. As George Orwell's satire "Animal Farm" eloquently portrays. Watch an animated adaptation of his book here.
Since the striking contrast between what "Communism" was thought to be like and what it was became obvious, the whole philosophy was condemned as no good. When in reality, there was Leninism, Stalinism and Totalitarianism. What I see as more disturbing is that the term "Socialism", as well as its root Social, went along in the category of highly undesirable things to have. And many people today perceive the term Socialism as somehow related to Dictatorship. A perception readily exploited by other forms of government today, who, more or less, are back to feudal-capitalism-like forms of social order.
In conclusion, communism turned barbaric and totalitarian because The Human Element bares these qualities and infuses them in everything the human element gets involved with, thus distorting beautiful theories into ugly practices. Just like the so called "Democracy" and, of course, "Capitalism" in all of their various forms.
Modern capitalism, promotes private ownership, ideally with no government ownership at all, encourages deregulated trade and production (free market) and is generally against social policies of any kind, like benefits, free (or cheap) health care, pension funds and so on. Democracy is some highly unclear term, that incorporates in itself various "schools of thought", economic and political practices. The average person thinks that Democracy means the right to vote, which is a highly simplistic and ignorant perception, not to mention naïve.
Democracy indeed is based on people's right to choose their government, from the choices they are given, of course. Democracy also means that the government or ruling party must take into account the opinion of the majority of people in the form of referendums and local ballots on different issues, laws and decisions to be made. And, the most important and central element in true Democracy is a predominant Middle Class of educated people who have reasonable income and actively participate with reason, knowledge and sense in those referendums and public debates.
If we look around the "advanced" modern societies it would be difficult to say if the Democratic model is truly the prevailent one. Yes, people have equal rights today, but these rights can be infringed quite often, with or without people's consent. Propaganda and projection of false perceptions are still widely in use by any government today, as well as social engineering and manufacturing consent. Which are political instruments attributed to dictatorships and totalitarian forms of rule, not democracies. In theory, of course. There are barely any referendums on important legislations, laws and decisions that the so called "Democratic" governments make. And, finally, the all-important-middle class is slowly disappearing.
So, in practice, it doesn't really seem like there is true Democracy anywhere. There is capitalism, that promotes a social structure based on a small percentage of super rich and a large portion of poor, a social structure, quite similar to the way feudal societies were. Maybe with the subtle difference that today the peasants are allowed to take bank loans and have the illusion of wealth, for a while. There is still a lot of exploitation in the working place, propaganda and wide-spread ignorance, which is encouraged by the popular culture, because dumb people are simply easier to manipulate.
In the last century, financial crises are the norm, today, the theory, even describes them as "economic cycles", a natural thing, you see. Just as there is life and death in the Universe. And just as natural as it was for communism to turn into a totalitarianism. In case the reader is missing the point, the natural element is the human element.
Financial recessions are created by speculation on the stock exchange and the bank credits. By means of CDSs, Derivatives and other financial instruments in use. In other words, financial recessions are created by human greed, selfishness and irrational desire for more money, much, much more than one can ever spend. But there is more to it all. Central Banks had positioned themselves, well, as central in the economy of all "advanced", and not so advanced societies. Nearly every country today has a privately owned central bank. Central banks issue the printing of money, bank notes, and also regulate economic cycles by manipulating interest rates, currency rates and the quantity of money there are in a given economy.
For instance, when there is inflation (that is too much money units are in use in the economy, so that the worth of the individual note goes down, which in turn raises prices and lowers profits for big corporations) the central banks responds by increasing interest rates. Which supposedly would make people spend less, presuming that they will buy on credit. Or, after a financial recession, the central banks lower interest rates, to lure people into purchasing more (they call it "stimulating the economy"), presuming that the people are stupid enough not to suspect that the low interest rates will not stay low forever. Another "economic stimulus" that the almighty and all-knowing Central Banks utilize is Quantative Easing, that is they print a bunch of cash, usually in the billions, and inject it into the economy, so that it may help ease the tight economic situation.
Here comes a funny thing. There is this "economic phenomenon" called Stagflation. (stagnation + inflation). That is, prices rise a.k.a there is inflation and in the same time there is high unemployment, which presumably means that people aren't spending so much so to create inflation. Wow, what could be causing this *phenomenon* ? Could it be that the central bank is pumping empty cash (not covered by any real value, like commodity, resource, gold, silver, human lives) into the economy, thus diluting the money mass and consequently lowering the value of the individual bank note unit.. ? So that, when the value of a bank note unit goes down, prices go up in order to make up for the lost value.
By the way, the central banks are tricky institutions and they can manipulate the currency values as well. So another phenomenon occurs this way – a national currency that has a higher value than it actually should have. Or a lower one in that matter, depending on the goal of this strategy. So that is how the Federal Reserve, for instance, pumps 600 billion dollars (as in QE) into the dollar notes mass and yet the rate of the US dollar currency had steadily risen in the past few months. Isn't this magic! It is amazing how irrational modern economy can be. Just as the human element behind it.
Watch this highly provocative short documentary. The title is
- The American Dream By The Provocateur Network
So, here is the basic scheme of the Debt-based Economy.
The Federal Reserve, which is a private bank, lends to the US government whatever sum of money (with interest) they need for their political deeds, campaigns, propaganda, ads and so on, government expenditures. The FED calls this "Bond Buying", another deceptive term. If it isn't a deception to say that you are buying something that doesn't exist (yet) with empty papers (printed by the Fractional Reserve System scheme). By now, it is highly doubtful what really is the fraction of this reserve at all – is it 1:9, is 1:90, is it 1:900…?! The most outrageous thing of it all is that if I decide to print some money for myself, the Central Bank will condemn this criminal act as "Counterfeiting". Shocking.
Anyway. In return to the Central Bank's Bond-Buying, the Government signs a contract to repay the loan ( because practically the central bank loans money to the Gvrnmnt ) in time. The way governments repay these loans are, basically, by taxing the populace. The more the government loans money form its central bank, the more it increases the various taxes that the population is obliged to pay. Crazy, isn't it? Very much. And you thought that all these money from taxes went for the collective benefit of building infrastructure, social benefits and so on. Not quite.
Here is another educational documentary that covers the issues in the above short, but in more detail and retrospective. The title is
- The Money Masters (1995)
"Isn't it bewildering how many people just live through their lives, completely oblivious? Worrying about their trivial troubles of love, salary, relationship issues and gossip from around the entertainment industry." (comment in youtube)
I think we should majorly rethink our knowledge of history. Which makes me think again on just how much propaganda and crap is studied in schools and universities. All those young and pumped up with eagerness individuals coming out with their degrees, thinking they understand it all. When they have been simply manipulated, programmed even, to seamlessly pour into the predetermined channels of the social and economic systems. When we need change, change of paradigms. New ways of thinking and new ways of doing. We need revolution, mostly in our minds. People with revolutionary thinking, not social units content with their degrees and knowledge who will continue the old ways over and over again. We need to question the paradigms and make it a cultural norm. Only then true cultural progress and advancement will be achieved.
A true Age of Reason, of harmony, responsibility and collective prosperity in knowledge, science, medicine.. without wars and primitive retardedness. Higher education as common as primary education is today in the world. Higher awareness and deeper consciousness, wisdom and understanding a common acheivement. And no, the world will not end when everything is prosperous and people are advancing intellectually at an increasing pace, we will merely step into an entirely new era of our evolution, that we can't even imagine today.
How long will all this insanity continue in this world, over and over again? How long will people remain stupified, ignorant, narrow minded, short sighted, unaware, blinded and so basic ? What debt?
Since all these money are fictional, then we have a fictional debt to return and we may as well not return it at all! FED what? IMF what? World Bank what?! What are these institutions without people's consent? Nothing.
Two useful links for US citizens:
"A revolution is easy to start... just pull your money out of the banks, walk away from your debts, buy silver and gold, stop shopping at corporations... buy local. They are dependent on our consent." (comment in youtube)
Financial centralization is bad for this world, as well as meta governments. There is still too much primitive motivation in humans for such institutions to be healthy for social prosperity.
We need a sustainable and stable economy, reusable energy and a politically participatory society with war out of the scene. Oh, and a stable population, very important as well. No outrageous population booms, conscious reproduction, well guided with responsibility towards life and nature. Is it impossible?! Will humanity ever brake the chain of primitivity and truly move forward!? Do we need so much money in order for civilization to prosper? Are old dogmas and paradigms disrupting our cultural advancement? How long will humanity exist? Is the Universe infinite? Where is the quantum boundary between your mind and reality itself?! Is there telepathy?! Does anything exist at all?? What is your mind made of? No, really, what is it made of, beyond the atomic? Huh, what? Quarks?!
Think outside the box. Open your eyes. (R)EVOLUTION
There is no haram, everything is halal. Discipline precedes freedom. Darkness precedes the light. Death precedes life. Ignorance precedes knowledge. Forget everything you know and learn it a new.
"This is not a doctrine, but an observation of the world. To say that Nothing is True, means that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that Everything is Permitted means that we are the architects of our own actions and we must bear responsibility for them."
Ezio
"This is not a doctrine, but an observation of the world. To say that Nothing is True, means that we must be the shepherds of our own civilization. To say that Everything is Permitted means that we are the architects of our own actions and we must bear responsibility for them."
Ezio
Alexander the Great didn't spend much time in thinking sophisticated ways of solving the Gordian Knot. He just drew his sword and slashed it. I don't know what that means.
Do read this related article in the blog as well:
I also recommend that you watch these documentaries, related to the topics discussed above:
