Is Ethical Capitalism Possible?

[marmar]

via CommonDreams:



Published on Monday, March 15, 2010 by Share the World's Resources (STWR)
Is Ethical Capitalism Possible?


In response to the current ecological and financial crises, the call for a more sustainable and fairer globalization is gaining momentum. Building this alternative must begin with a spiritual, moral and ethical understanding of our society and economy

by Kamran Mofid


We live in a time of transition, a time when all is changing and being challenged - weather systems, ecosystems, our interaction with nature, our understanding of other beings. We now understand that we are all interconnected and interdependent. Somewhere along the line, our actions as human beings have created enormous instability to the planet and the millions of species who reside here.

Much of which is familiar to us and deemed the ‘norm' is no longer working and is being challenged. Sometimes change brings with it destruction. Sometimes destruction is beneficial. It can alert us to practices that do not work. With destruction also comes new birth, and new avenues open wide to be explored. There are many choices as to which route to take; the issue is which route is the one that will provide life for all. The golden opportunity presented by the current ongoing crises is to make the right choices that will affect the long term future for us, our descendants and our planet.

There is no denying the fact that we are in a serious state of crises, a crises of our own making, all of us and not the bankers alone. They responded to what we wanted: cheap, available, unregulated money and loads of it.

They in turn were responding to the neo-liberal agenda of the so-called Washington Consensus: Privatisation, deregulation, market forces, liberalisation, low taxation, free trade, and one glove fits all policies and more. No regards, no respect for different cultures, civilisations, religions and history. What is good for America and the West, then, must also be good for everybody else, regardless of all other factors, we were told again and again.

The tragedy is that we have now discovered that what we were pushing on others, which we thought was good for us - the so-called market-forces driven Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism - was nothing but a huge cancerous cell which at the end brought the house of cards down. The emperor has no clothes, so to say. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/15-7

[ixion]

1. Yes. All it requires are ethical humans

to practice it. :)

[yurbud]

6. it requires a cooperative rather than corporate structure--one person one vote instead of one dollar

one vote with workers having a vote equal to investors.

That way, they'd be less likely to screw workers or the community.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

2. Yes,

it's called universal health care for example.........

[marmar]

4. That sounds more like that other -ism.

nt

[yurbud]

7. christianityism?

[h9socialist]

16. Universal Healthcare . . .

. . . is a socialist idea! Go back and watch "Sicko" where Tony Benn reads the 1948 flyer meant to help explain the British National Health Service. That is a beautiful description of "universal healthcare." It is also a socialist description of universal healthcare. Socialism is not to be feared -- it is a human response to human needs presented in such a way as to make common humanity each individual's claim to humanity's social institutions. Whereas capitalism mediates such claims by ownership of private property and control of money.

In other words, socialism is the alternative to capitalism because it value functional human relationship above relations built upon money and capital.

[cpamomfromtexas]

3. I'd start by repealing Railway Labor Act

It does nothing for labor and tilts everything in favor of corporations.

[HeresyLives]

5. Yes, but it requires a helluva lot of oversight.

And the people doing the oversight have to be changed on a regular basis, so they don't become part of the problem.

[Blue Owl]

8. Couldn't there be a Socialist/Capitalist hybrid model

Combining the most useful parts of each?

I think most people are not opposed to the idea of individual creativity in business and entrepreneurship, but there's gotta be a better way to regulate and prevent the full-on immersion into corrupt corporate capitalism that is disconnected from humanity and soley based on profits.

Putting an end to cheap exported labor would be a good first step.

Things might cost a little more -- but is saving a few pennies worth the downfall of our democracy? A little sacrifice would be necessary.

[h9socialist]

18. I hope you don't think this is a new idea!

The European Social Democracies have been proceeding on this notion for a century now. And they have had some success. But all of the political parties that have built the European social democracy are member parties of the Socialist International. As a member of Democratic Socialists of America, I am a member of the Socialist International. The idea of "mixed economy" is a bow to realism: the world is not about to go from its current capitalist paradigm to democratic socialism overnight. There must be a period of transition. And we are living through that transition.

Do not be afraid to abandon capitalism and embrace socialism. Just make sure you embrace the right kind of socialism: that is, in its purest democratic, humanist and humanitarian form!

[damntexdem]

9. Sure it is. Just read the chapter: that's Chapter Eleven, by the way.

;-)

[h9socialist]

19. Better yet . . .

Read "Das Kapital" past Page 1.

[IndianaGreen]

10. W,E.B. DuBois said about capitalism that nothing good can come out of...

a system based on greed.

[tama]

11. Capitalism is insane

Capitalism imagines that material world is limitless (unlimited growth on limited Earth).
Capitalism imagines that immaterial world - knowledge which is produced collectively and grows by sharing - should be limited (patent rights, copyright, intellectual property).

Let us heal.

[h9socialist]

15. Hear! Hear!

You are definitely on the right track!

[pundaint]

12. Not until we rethink our Ferengi value system. The Rules of Acquisition are not

Human values. Lawyers and MBA's are no way to run a human endeavor.

[Mopar151]

13. We could start with overhauling of accounting rules

A lot of the chicanery that now goes on in about short-term profit numbers vs. building shareholder equity over the long term - it literally perverts the definition and function of fiduciary duty.
Taking steps to reform our banking and financial system will help a great deal too,
We must return to a system where creation of real wealth is best done by adding value to goods and services, not by financial manipulation and arbitrage.

[h9socialist]

17. Superficial

We need to start by emphasizing the proposition that functional relationships between human beings are to be valued far more than relations of money and property. All else will flow from that one change of values. The problem is that capitalism cannot make that change without contradicting its own existence! That is why a truly ethical capitalism is impossible.

[h9socialist]

14. No! Ethical Capitalism is not possible . . .

Karl Marx understood that in the 1840s. If you can overlook the essential paradigm of capitalism, which is monopolization of the world in pursuit of individual aggrandizement, and a social hierarchy built upon that concept, then I'm sure you can rationalize ethical standards for the marketplace. The problem is that that whole underlying paradigm is in and of itself an ethical debacle. This is why I constantly say that "there are no market solutions for our problems. The problem IS the market." (Markets, by the way, are nothing but staging grounds for th clash of various capitals to pursue accumulation -- they are economic battlegrounds. The legalism surrounding them seems fair as can be . . . except that sooner or later you realize that markets are battlefields in which victory can only be determined by a capitalist calculus, and by the relative success or failure of accumulation).

The real challenge of this century is to leave both capitalism and economics behind! The morality of a system that can survive this century cannot be limited by a morality and ethics bound to capital. It must put functional relationships between human beings, their institutions and the natural environment as far higher priorities than "getting rich," "markets," or servicing an economic hierarchy.

Yes, this means SOCIALISM . . . but, I contend, a SOCIALISM of the 21st Century, one that leaves behind Crosland as well as Stalin. Such a SOCIALISM will have to be constructed by the practical history that unfolds in the century in front of us.

[tom_paine]

20. I used to think so, now I am not so sure. Was New Deal Capitalism a mere aberration?

Can the bottom 80% ever keep hard-won gains without having to be taught the same brutal lessons over and over again by their Aristocratic Overlords?

More to the point: do modern advertising, PR, marketing, and other mechanisms of social control shatter the paradigms of the past and bring Orwell's nightmare to life when he said the human future was "a boot stamping on a face...forever"?

I don't know anymore, but right now Orwell's nightmare seems to be the most likely outcome, but instead of from LW Authoritarians as Orwell suspected, it comes from RW Authoritarians, who are simply the best salespeople EVER.