Non-sense

Mythbusters

Warning: This post may disturb sensitive readers. We’re going to talk about the S-word today…That’s right, boys and girls. Socialism. Dirty, nasty, oh-no-she-di’int  SOCIALISM.

I’ve already mentioned it twice now, so by this time you’re picturing Lenin knocking on your front door to confiscate your property, ordering you around. Right?

It’s a provocative word that’s generally very unpopular, mainly because so many people have a misconception of what it is. Current Economics 101 courses aren’t doing much to provide balanced information on what socialism is either, so I’m going to attempt to dispel a few myths.

Some of the most common critique you’ve heard runs along these lines: Socialism as a system fails because people want to improve themselves and be free to be rewarded for their effort, as well as have a free choice in what they do with their lives. Furthermore, socialism inevitably ends up in brutish dictatorships, since it’s only human nature to exploit others when we have the chance to.

Now, for the facts:

Socialism DOES reward you for the work you do – it aims to empower the owners of the means of production (i.e. labourers), therefore if you’re an honest, hard worker, you will be rewarded for it. It’s the capitalists who don’t get rewarded – people who don’t really contribute anything at all, but grow rich by speculating with money and exploiting labour. Socialism won’t rob you of your choices in life. It’s NOT a system whereby government seizes control of everything, simply one in which we acknowledge that market failures do occur, and government has a role to play in providing what the market fails to do. Especially when it comes to services such as education and health which are basic human rights and should not be run for profit. As for human nature – you may be surprised to find out that most of what you think comes naturally to you, is actually just conditioned by society. Greed, opportunism, self-interest, violence – these are not things we’re necessarily born with the instinct to do. Much of it is what we’re programmed to do, ironically mostly by the capitalist system which most suppose is an antidote to this behavior. If you’re taught from a young age that only the fittest survive, competition will eliminate you so you’d better be competitive, and hey, it’s not personal, it’s just business…How else do you expect people will behave? Evolutionary biology has proven that, if anything, humans, as social animals, are biologically programmed to be cooperative and empathetic (You can look up studies by Jack Nitschke, Joshua Greene & Jonathan Cohen, and James Rilling & Gregory Berns on the biology of compassion.)

We need to be critically evaluating the alternatives that are available to capitalism. Alternatives which are, by the way, so much more numerous than just either/or between socialism, capitalism and communism. Question and investigate…so we might find solutions to the imbalances of our current system.