What Is This Thing Called Capitalism?

This is just a quikie I wrote while comtemplating the universe, or something just as profound.


Capitalism And Why

A simple look At the Beast


Capitalism--whay is it? Is it an economic system? Or possibly a historic stage of civilazation? Well, those are excellent questions with no good answer. It depends on which side of the economic spectrum.

Please step into the "way back" machine once again. Push the backward button and --Zoom! Zap! Pop! and here you are--modern capitalism originated in the land of the English workers in the Industrial Revolution. The magnates of industry who operated the mills extracted their profit from the exploitation of children, women and later adult males. They were parasites that lived off the labor of someone else; they created nothing, other than the pursuit of more profits, in other words GREED! These people owned the factories, the land, the at one point even owned the workers.

Then came the trade unions, rising wages and social reform, that was good right? Depends on who you were. Income and wealth still was unequally distributed. The owners still owned the factories and the workers still had to sell their labor and were still exploited.

Capitalism has always been a chaotic and unstable and disorderly mode of organization of the economic scene. There are always disruptions in the cycles that effect the worker, the farmer and the small businessperson, leading to unemployment, bankruptcies and homelessness.

Believe it or not, even the cheerleaders of capitalism have seen it to be deficient. There are few competitive markets, nothing like the great Adam Smith had originally envisoned. The modern capitalist system is increasingly conntrolled ny monopolists, multinational giants, a by a market that is dominated by fewer and fewer suppliers.

And lastly, all this activity among the players is causing irreversible damage to the environment and deflating the public good. The materials and advancements of worldwide capitalism is a beast that will eventually consume the civilization that it now controls. More and more, capitalism is loom large and menacing the public health and well being of the worker, the citizen and the world.

In closing allow me to say this--Not many analysts of capitalism have ever thought it would be a permanent system, but yet the leaders of the system find ways to keep the beast alive and continually feed it with the sacrifices of the world's workers.


CHUQ
04/02/07