Is It Socialism or Just Failure?

Harris&Ewing House-Capitol tunnel, Washington, DC Feb 3 1939

It’s all still about Greece, and that makes sense, if nothing else Syriza is a breath if not a tornado of fresh air. But those too pass. The question at the end remains: did anything really change? It’s quite possible, don’t get me wrong, but Tsipras and Vanoufakis are busy looking out for the people who voted for them, not the rest of the Europe, or the world for that matter. And neither should they.

They’ve already gotten good response from Obama, from France and Britain, and if only for that reason they will get more. But you have to understand what they are trying to do: getting a better life for their own people, and that’s hard enough all by itself. The best they can do for now, hopefully, is that. But Greece is merely a symptom of something bigger and deeper that is going wrong.

There’s an ideological battle happening between money and wellbeing, between people and banks. Western leaders have so far chosen to protect money and banks, instead of people and their wellbeing, and that’s why we find ourselves where we do. Choosing money before people can only end in the demise of the system that makes such a choice. That, however, is apparently terribly hard to comprehend.

And that got Greece where it is. That’s why Europe set up a ‘union’ that shares a currency but that has no provisions to transfer funds from – even temporarily – weak regions from stronger ones. Even the US has that, or it would have imploded long ago. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder if maybe the EU wasn’t set up from the start so Germany could exploit the Mediterranean.

But even that is not the core issue. It’s money over people that is. And Brussels should not just be ashamed for what they’ve done to Greece, they should be driven out of town with tar and feathers. That’s not how they see it, though. Brussels, in the voice of Eurogroup head Dijsselbloem, when he met with new Greek FinMin Varoufakis, had the audacity – and stupidity, his job is up for grabs – to point out that much progress had been made. As the troika demands have turned Greece into a third world nation. That’s known as progress.

If you think about it, it’s not much different from how US policies have turned Detroit, and many other places, into semi-hellholes. It’s fine if there’s a difference between West Virginia and the Hamptons, it’s just about how big that difference gets.

It all comes down to a system that is failing spectacularly. Failing, that is, even if it’s intentional: there are plenty Darwinists and neo-liberals who would swear the poor only get what they deserve. Just as Brussels apparently saw the Greeks: let ’em bleed, let ’em suffer, let ’em die, it’s only because they borrowed too much.

I can’t seem to figure out the logic there: if they borrowed so much, why are they unemployed and miserable and without health care? The answer to that of course is that they didn’t, it’s 90%+ money that flowed into western banks to make up for their gambling losses. It should by now be a non-issue, because it’s so glaringly obvious, but the narrative is strong.

This is not about Greece, this is about ideology, about economics as a belief system, a system so blind it sacrifices real people and proclaims that is a good thing: ‘much progress had been made’. Some people are saying: you need to help these people who end up on the wrong side of the economic tracks, while others invoke Darwin.

But you need to ask how they got where they are, or you’ll never solve the issue, you’ll just need up murdering people. And whether they deserve it or not, murder is not legal, Mr. Dijsselbloem. And neither is using your job to put people into misery, not even if your economic beliefs say that’s alright.

In the US, a lot of people complain about how the country has turned into a socialist bastion. And even taking into account that the word has a very different connotation stateside than it does in Europe and other parts of the world, it’s simply not correct, it doesn’t fit.

The US, like western Europe, is in the midst of a massive failure of its brand of capitalism. There are no free markets, no price discovery, there are asset bubbles being blown with money that belongs to our grandchildren as people are thrown into despair, while others attain unparalleled riches, and the whole grossly distorted movie is fed to everyone by a well-oiled spin machine.

Yes, 40 million Americans are on food stamps, 100 million are not even officially in the labor force, and perhaps as much as most Americans are receiving some sort of government assistance, but that doesn’t make it socialism. It makes it a failed capitalist system. Socialism is supposed to be about a society that cares, and that’s not what those US government handouts are about. They’re about keeping people quiet in a failed system.

Europe understands the ‘caring society’ definition of socialism much better. Or it used to. Now it has to face the ‘New Greeks’, elected to stand up against a Europe that does not care one bit. That only wants Greece to obey its budget and bailout rules, over the bodies of its own people. The Greeks have democratically voted not to take that anymore.

Can you imagine what would happen in the US if the government pay-outs were halted? If there were no more foodstamps? The epic failure of the economic system would come to light in too many ways to mention. But one thing’s for sure, it would create one big mess of chaos and unrest that would sweep across the streets of the country like a tidal wave.

Nothing to do with socialism, that’s a political ideology, like capitalism is. There’s not much between them, once you put people first in either.

Still, for now, we all live in a failed economic system, and we refuse to admit it, edged on by our self-serving leaders and media. But how is it not obvious? It is in Greece, after all.