
As alternatives to capitalism go, there are interesting, if not compelling, arguments for anarchy. Otherwise, the most popular alternatives are socialism and communism.
Communism isn’t actually on offer anywhere, except in particular groups or sub-systems—such as the Society of Jesus (‘Jesuits’). Jesuits don’t own anything—they are dependent on the community to provide for all their material needs. While many Jesuit priests have personal use of material goods, such as clothes, cars, or electronics, it all belongs to the community.
So: socialism.
State socialism is no longer an attractive option, although it may once have seemed able to deliver the goods, as it did for Germans under National Socialism.
Incidentally, the anti-semitism which was a critically important part of the Nazi movement between the wars, already flourished in Austria—and, to a more limited extent, Germany—in the second half of the nineteenth century. It had nothing to do with National Socialism as such.
Leaving this aside, the problem with state socialism as it has so far been practised is that, as I have emphasised in another contribution to this website, power corrupts. Consider the nomenklatura in Soviet Russia. Look at the recent history of Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba …
The same may apply to some of the hybrid systems which have evolved during my lifetime: market economies which use taxes to fund ‘socialist’ goals like universal health care and education, and to reduce flagrant inequalities (as in Sweden and other Nordic countries). But even where there is no corruption, there are still divided and opposed classes.
If I look at Yugoslavia immediately after the second world war, or modern day China and Vietnam, I see once again the opportunities for corruption, and a continuing division between workers and managers. What continues to infuriate working people about these would-be socialist systems is their not being part of the system, their feeling that the system is still in other hands. When the railways of the UK were privately owned, railway workers went on strike. When they were nationalised, railway workers went on strike. Employers complained about workers, workers complained about employers. In both cases. Where there should (and could) have been a single ‘Us’, there was the age-old ‘Us and Them.’
The most telling case for the failure of socialist ideals is of course Israel. The first kibbutzim were developed by Jews in Palestine some years before the state of Israel came formally into being. These collective farms were fully owned by the people who worked on them. Everything which could be shared was shared. There was no wage labour.
These farms (an idyllic glimpse of one is pictured) were encouraged and supported by the first governments of the new state—and even attracted young people from all over the world to work on them (including my wife-to-be). So why didn’t their principles spread throughout the new state, especially under its early socialist governments? If ever socialism stood a chance, it should have been here.
I accept that the kibbutzim had powerful enemies, who used their money to discredit them and appeal to that demon driver, “the dream of individual prosperity.” We need to take into account this detailed story
, which identifies both what the enemies of socialism did, and what their motives were. All the same, if socialism wasn’t able to win through in a relatively cohesive country like Israel, how likely is it that it will win through anywhere?
It seems obvious to me that we have to start with capitalism itself, not with its alternatives. And then to grasp the critical point, that our unregulated capitalism, with all its gamblers’ excrescences is not what capitalism could and should be. The accumulation of wealth in a single economic class is itself incompatible with an efficient capitalist system.