The gap between rich and poor is becoming bigger all the time and did you know that the richest 1% of people in the world have as much as 82% of the worlds wealth!
How can that be fair, why does anyone need that amount of money!
Surely no-one does and maybe it would be nice if they were to redistribute their wealth to help the poorest in society.
But if they do not want to, what can we do about it?
Is capitalism to blame and if so what is the answer.
Should we heavily tax the mega rich and 'hopefully' create a fairer society and what is the best means to achieve this.
Classical Marxism
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a highly infulential political thinker and he viewed capitalism as cruel and exploitative. Industrialists made huge profits by using cheap labour in often dangerous and unhealthy working conditions.
In essence the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) used the working class (the proletariat) to make vast profits for themselves by underpaying them and generally oppressing them.
He also believed that history follows a natural and inevitable process and that this system was bound to collapse eventually.
Marx believed that the oppressed working classes would only stand for so much and that eventually capitalism would collapse. He believed that the resentment of the oppresed working classes would boil over and lead to a proletariat revolution which would overthrow the bourgeoisie and bring about a classless society.
Marx also believed that the only way to achieve this goal was by force and indeed this is what happened in many countries around the world for example Russia, China, Cambodia, East Germany and Venezuela.
The results have been catasrophic and resulted in millions of deaths, horrific suffering, poverty and starvation.
Rather than resulting in a perfect, utopian society the results have been quite the opposite!
Capitalism may not be the perfect system but I think it is true that the poorest people in the richest countries are better off than those living under communist rule.
It may be said that Capitalism is the unequal sharing of wealth and that Communisim is the equal sharing of misery.
The fact that these violent uprisings have failed to bring about a perfect, harmonious society has not stopped the Communists still seeking to blame Capitalism for all societys wrongs.
A new form of Marxism has emerged which is known as 'Cultural Marxism'.
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian communist philosepher who believed the reasons that Marx's predictions had not worked out was that capitalism was deeply entrenched in civil society, for example the family, trade unions, the church and the education system. He believed that this culture was stopping the proletariat uprising from succeding.
He argued that in order to change the economic stucture they would need to infiltrate these institutions and replace the peoples culture with a new set of values based on a communist ideology.
This would be done by stealth over time and people would be trained to accept these new moral values, without even realising that they were being indoctrinated by a communist agenda which has been incorporated into the mainstream media and education system.
Cultural Marxism seeks to destroy the 'Christian' values which are the basis for a stable society. Christianity is seen as an obstacle to the ideology of the marxists.
Cultural marxism is a war of ideologies rather than a war of manoeuvre.
It seeks to sustain pressure by subversion rather than a forceful revolution.
The goal however is the same, to destroy western culture and the Christan church and replace it with the communist state.
I wish that people would wake up to what is happening. Though not enough people seem to care enough to do anything about this insidious brainwashing that is happening in the west.
We can only have a narrow set of views and those views are the politically correct ones that we are told to have.
Freedom of speech is dissapearing fast and soon after that will be freedom of thought.
Cultural marxism will not bring about a perfect utopia as its proponents like to think, only more oppression and suffering.
Everyone is equal, though some people may be more equal than others.
Capitalism may not be perfect, but if people have aspriration and incentive to succeed then they have the freedom to innovate, create jobs and raise living standards for everyone.
The perfect society, what is the answer I wonder, one day will we achieve it?
I live in hope, but I expect not.
I hope you enjoyed this article, if you wish to read my others you can do so here.
https://read.cash/@onlymythoughts
Article is my own
Pictures courtesy of pixabay
I've studied the economic systems in some depth. Not entirely but I understand most concepts and the charts for production, private investment, government investment, etc. It is all great in theory and systems that both could work, but they fail, beacuse people make them fail. Every financial system works until it doesn't. There is only hope that one day economics will be automated and autonomous, but not run by people as there are always some that just gain enough power to ruin everything that works.