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Jan 27, 2003 What is the difference between socialism and capitalism? A true capitalist will say that socialism is about giving money to people that don’t want to work for their money. A true socialist will say that capitalism is about making money, and not caring about the less fortunate in our society. Who is right? Taking things into extremes can show what the result is if you go with one choice only. Just capitalism means; A completely free market, without any social laws. No laws that protect the well being of the people. I guess it is obvious why that does not work. This situation already has existed just before unions were born. Just socialism means: The government will take care of you no matter what. Sounds great, but has one problem. People will loose the feeling of responsibility. With that the will to work will also reduce. And with this the cost of social security will rise so much that the rich will have to pay much more. Then we end up with communism, which is not the same as socialism (Communism denies personal wealth). In reality socialism and capitalism can not work by them selves. Only together socialism and capitalism have a chance of success. Socialism protects the people who buy the products. Capitalism pays for the costs that social security costs. Take one of them out and you will always end up with a system that fails on its own success. The socialist system on its own will fail because you can’t spend money if you don’t make it first. The capitalist system on its own will fail because eventually you end up with too few people that will buy the products. And in both cases the result is war. Why? Because as with everything in nature, balance is required to make a system continue. Balance gone, is the start of the end. In history you can find many examples of this. The Roman Empire is a good example. Capitalism ruled here, the expansion of the empire was the driving force. Expansion stopped, empire collapsed. The USSR had an extreme form of socialism (communism), everybody to be equal, no personal wealth, no poverty. It could only be maintained by force and people lost interest in their own country, since what ever you did, you didn’t gain anything with it. Luckily nature supplies us with a need for balance, even though this does not show on a personal level. On a group level this is visible. When capitalism begins to get stronger, people have more money and naturally the group of idealist gets bigger too. Then more people will vote for a Democrat government. So the balance is restored. The opposite happens just the same. Not all over the world this happens and there is no insurance that the balance will always be right in our society. If you look (again) at history we should be worried. No system has lasted for ever. At the moment in the USA capitalism is definitely stronger, and this poses a threat to the world. Europe generally is more a socialist continent which gives some balance.(at present, I am not talking about the past) The upcoming forces from terrorism are a threat to the whole world, but can be seen as a natural occurrence. The western system is becoming too successful (overflows other cultures) and nature automatically supplies us with a force to regain balance. I am there for sure that we will end up with more respect for each others cultures. This process of rising respect has already started with the WTO, to name something. And even the 9-11 attacks on the USA have resulted in much more knowledge in the western world about the Muslim world. Of course I do not want to say that the 9-11 attacks were right. I merely want to say it is not so very strange that it happened. Not because of the USA, but because this is the way nature works. And we all know that nature can be very mean to us, but also very good. A tornado creates devastation, but the week before we were enjoying the sunshine on the beach. Maybe one day we can overcome our natural (group) behavior. But I doubt it. We may be human, but we are, whether we want/believe it or not, part of nature and behave in natural ways. ------------ Peter Faber is Dutch and has recently moved to Brazil. Visit Peter's website. Email Peter: getting_there@uol.com.br Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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