Is Capitalism the new Pharaoh/Egypt of Exodus?

[peregrinus_WA]

I debated on whether to post this here from my blog, but here it goes:

Is Capitalism the new Pharaoh/Egypt of Exodus?

Yes, it is a weird analogy, but here is why I am saying this. I am currently reading The Church and the Land by Fr. Vincent McNabb. In there he equates employees in the Capitalist System (especially the industrial complex) to the conditions of the Israelites in Ancient Egypt around the time of Exodus. Mind you, he is writing this in the 1920’s

While I can see living and working conditions at the time he is writing this book to be very similar allegorically, I also see where it can be applied today. With the recent economic downturn, it seem the employers (Pharaoh) are making employees (Israelites) do more with less resources (working more hours to make up for less manpower).

Yes, living conditions have improved, but at what cost. We are (wage) slaves to companies who know we need them for our livelihood.

Global Capitalism has only made this worse since more and more power is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. I can hear it now “but we can own stock in those companies”. Yes, we can, however the real power is resides with the few top shareholders, many of which are the executives of the company in question. This is not real ownership. Pope Leo XIII wrote in Rerum Novarum:The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.
Does this mean abandoning the current global capitalistic system. Yes it does, but not for Socialism which is the main competing economic model these days ((and makes the State equivalent to Pharaoh). Distributism (of which Fr. McNabb was one) provides a solution and that is the breakup up of the Global Capitalist Economic model and return ownership and means of production back to local (i.e. family) level.

This should be our Exodus, but who will be our Moses?

I was also debating putting a poll up, but I think I will not this time.

 

[mpi]

I debated on whether to post this here from my blog, but here it goes:
I was also debating putting a poll up, but I think I will not this time.

I feel anti-capitalism is perverse. Some people have irrational fantasies about controlling others. This is distributism. The rhetoric around distributism is the same double-talk that we would see from a Communist propaganda minister.

 

[rsesar]

I feel that America is based on Capitalism more than God even. What has made America great is its wealth and much of peoples lives are based more on making a comfortable living than on devotions. I think in this way Capitalism might be the new Pharaoh in that it leads us to forget the priorities of our soul and focus on creature comforts. When it does this it can control us and make us slaves of money rather than soldiers for God.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

I feel anti-capitalism is perverse. Some people have irrational fantasies about controlling others. This is distributism. The rhetoric around distributism is the same double-talk that we would see from a Communist propaganda minister.

Typical.

If that were true, Chesterton, Belloc, and McNabb were all communists.

Distributism is not based on socialism(of which Communism, Fascism, and Nazism are all different flavors of) but based on Catholic Social Teachings (especially Rerum Novarum). Both the hard core Capitalists and Socialist have sought to discredit it because it is a competing economic model.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Further along in The Church and the Land, Fr. McNabb has an interesting quote about Rerum Novarum:“Such strong denunciations and such revolutionary suggestions find their way onto the Report that some men who might be called higher critics would find in the Rerum Novarum, a nidus of Socialism!” pg 143.
“Nidus” is a term I was not familiar with so I looked it up:

1. 
   *] a nest or breeding place ; especially : a place or substance in an animal or plant where bacteria or other organisms lodge and multiply
   *] a place where something originates, develops, or is located
   
   Capitalist, especially the Global Capitalist today, and their adherents seem to follow that observation. I even have seen it on this thread in one of the posts.
   
   One should be reminded that the Church has condemned Socialism in its various forms.

 

[rpp]

While I will never submit to socialism or communism, I am no longer a capitalist.

Do I have a solution? No. I only know that none of these work. And all have other people deciding what is best for me or forcing the honest people to support the lazy.

 

[MJR81]

It’s as if a market-capitalist system allows private interests to exploit the population, and a socialist-communist system instead allows the government to do the exploiting…

You know, maybe this is a topic for another forum, but do you folks agree that the ideologies espoused by the philosophers who promote “laissez-faire” capitalism (Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Milton Friedman, etc…) to be contrary to Christian philosophy?

Mind you, I have a lot more studying up to do on these individuals–but there seems to be a recurring theme. That theme is that an economy should be based on arbitrary individual selfishness and hedonism, and NOT on Christ-like agape and the common good.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

It’s as if a market-capitalist system allows private interests to exploit the population, and a socialist-communist system instead allows the government to do the exploiting…

You know, maybe this is a topic for another forum, but do you folks agree that the ideologies espoused by the philosophers who promote “laissez-faire” capitalism (Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, Milton Friedman, etc…) to be contrary to Christian philosophy?

Mind you, I have a lot more studying up to do on these individuals–but there seems to be a recurring theme. That theme is that an economy should be based on arbitrary individual selfishness and hedonism, and NOT on Christ-like agape and the common good.

Many of these people (except for Rand) and/or their ideas are discussed by the likes of Belloc, Chesterton, McNabb, and Penty (the only one who is not Catholic).

 

[MJR81]

Many of these people (except for Rand) and/or their ideas are discussed by the likes of Belloc, Chesterton, McNabb, and Penty (the only one who is not Catholic).

Oh yeah? That’s interesting. What do they have to say?

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Oh yeah? That’s interesting. What do they have to say?

Let men clarify that. Friedman was after The authors mentioned above. Lets just say that they do not like the results, especially McNabb, of their economic philosophies.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Just found an interesting quote while reading Outline of Insanity by GK Chesterton:

Socialism is just the completion of the capitalist concentration

Kind of falls into my notion that Capitalism today is actually Socialistic Capitalism or Capitalistic Socialism.

 

[rpp]

Just found an interesting quote while reading Outline of Insanity by GK Chesterton:

Socialism is just the completion of the capitalist concentration

Hence my earlier statement…

While I will never submit to socialism or communism, I am no longer a capitalist.

Do I have a solution? No. I only know that none of these work. And all have other people deciding what is best for me or forcing the honest people to support the lazy.

 

[Sair]

I can see the sense in all the criticisms applied so far on this thread, and whilst my personal opinion is that socialism wins over capitalism simply on the basis that its core value is to provide for everyone’s basic needs, I would say that every economic/political system has its inherent flaws - to use analogy, I think of them as gaps in the fence where exploitation can sneak through. I would certainly agree with the original analogy about the present capitalistic system being akin to the Egypt of Exodus, especially when (in Australia, at least) we have chief executives creaming off large bonus payments from the flagging profits of their collapsing companies - usually at the expense of employees and shareholders.

I find what you say about distributism most interesting. It’s not a system with which I am familiar, but I’d like to find out more. It sounds very similar, in fact, to the socio-economic model proposed by anarchism (by which I mean not chaos, but social organisation free from government), where the means of production and the income therefrom are owned by small collectives.

To be honest, the thing that bothers me the most about current forms of government - especially the one in Australia - is the pervasiveness of the ‘nanny-state’ mentality, or the increasing introduction of laws designed to protect people from themselves, which essentially end up treating everyone like a criminal. It seems to me that this form of governance - and this could well be one of socialism’s inherent flaws - wants to reduce everyone to the same level. What I see as the primary benefit of anarchism is that it invites everyone to rise to the same level.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

I can see the sense in all the criticisms applied so far on this thread, and whilst my personal opinion is that socialism wins over capitalism simply on the basis that its core value is to provide for everyone’s basic needs, I would say that every economic/political system has its inherent flaws - to use analogy, I think of them as gaps in the fence where exploitation can sneak through. I would certainly agree with the original analogy about the present capitalistic system being akin to the Egypt of Exodus, especially when (in Australia, at least) we have chief executives creaming off large bonus payments from the flagging profits of their collapsing companies - usually at the expense of employees and shareholders.

I find what you say about distributism most interesting. It’s not a system with which I am familiar, but I’d like to find out more. It sounds very similar, in fact, to the socio-economic model proposed by anarchism (by which I mean not chaos, but social organisation free from government), where the means of production and the income therefrom are owned by small collectives.

If you mean by the small collectives, the family, you would be correct. Distributism is interested in ownership, for the most part, at the family level. As for anarchy, Distributism is not against governance, it is against overgovernance which we have now.

Furthermore, as I quoted earlier from Chesterton:

                          Socialism is just the completion of the capitalist concentration

So, you see, Socialism and Capitalism are really in an incestuous relationship.

To be honest, the thing that bothers me the most about current forms of government - especially the one in Australia - is the pervasiveness of the ‘nanny-state’ mentality, or the increasing introduction of laws designed to protect people from themselves, which essentially end up treating everyone like a criminal. It seems to me that this form of governance - and this could well be one of socialism’s inherent flaws - wants to reduce everyone to the same level. What I see as the primary benefit of anarchism is that it invites everyone to rise to the same level.

But you said:

whilst my personal opinion is that socialism wins over capitalism simply on the basis that its core value is to provide for everyone’s basic needs

That is, in essence, the “nanny state”. In addition, Socialism has been responsible for almost all the genocides of the 20th Century. This includes the mass murders by Hitler (Nazism is Socialism with a nationalistic bent), Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and in Mexico.

 

[Squishy]

But you said:That is, in essence, the “nanny state”. In addition, Socialism has been responsible for almost all the genocides of the 20th Century. This includes the mass murders by Hitler (Nazism is Socialism with a nationalistic bent), Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and in Mexico.

Socialism is not responsable for any genocides or mass murders. People are responsible for them. The socialism model works, it works rather well. Its a fair and honost system that would benifit all those involved. The only problem with the system is when you introduce and uncontolable variable (people) then things start to go wrong the system starts to become corrupted. It then gives them the power to persue their own agendas.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

Socialism is not responsable for any genocides or mass murders. People are responsible for them. The socialism model works, it works rather well. Its a fair and honost system that would benifit all those involved. The only problem with the system is when you introduce and uncontolable variable (people) then things start to go wrong the system starts to become corrupted. It then gives them the power to persue their own agendas.

I will stick with what I said.

 

[rpp]

Socialism is not responsable for any genocides or mass murders. People are responsible for them. The socialism model works, it works rather well. Its a fair and honost system that would benifit all those involved. The only problem with the system is when you introduce and uncontolable variable (people) then things start to go wrong the system starts to become corrupted. It then gives them the power to persue their own agendas.

I will stick with what I said.

 

[peregrinus_WA]

I even left out the first one which was the socialist revolution in Mexico of the early 20th Century which killed over 2 million.

 

[Sair]

If you mean by the small collectives, the family, you would be correct. Distributism is interested in ownership, for the most part, at the family level. As for anarchy, Distributism is not against governance, it is against overgovernance which we have now.

What would be the role of government in such a system?

So, you see, Socialism and Capitalism are really in an incestuous relationship.

Actually, I think they just achieve the same ultimate end through different means - power and wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. The only difference is, you have to corrupt socialist principles to achieve the excesses of Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. Exploitation seems to be part and parcel of capitalism. In any case, I prefer to think of the political continuum as a circle rather than a line. If you go far enough to the right, you’ll find yourself back on the left…

But you said:That is, in essence, the “nanny state”. In addition, Socialism has been responsible for almost all the genocides of the 20th Century. This includes the mass murders by Hitler (Nazism is Socialism with a nationalistic bent), Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and in Mexico.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that socialism automatically implies a nanny state. What it means to me is the same as what its one guiding principle states: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Each person contributes what they can, and receives what they need. Anarchy, in fact, is more correctly referred to as libertarian socialism, but I’m certainly not holding my breath that this ideal will be achieved in my lifetime. Where socialism fails in practice when it is imposed by governments is that it starts from the lowest common denominator and tries to keep everyone but the governing elite at this reduced level. If socialist policies are adopted by governments of capitalist states, the only difference is that the governing elite stretches to include the wealthy magnates.

 

[agbasinger]

The socialism model works, it works rather well. Its a fair and honost system that would benifit all those involved. The only problem with the system is when you introduce and uncontolable variable (people) then things start to go wrong the system starts to become corrupted. It then gives them the power to persue their own agendas.

---

Please find a socialist nation that is doing well. You are right about the problem with socialism- people corrupt and so the system rots. The secondary problem with socialism is that it doesn’t want to be dismantled and always leans towards communism.

“Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion.”
-Richard John Neuhaus

and my personal favorite…

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually,
run out of other people’s money.”

• Margaret Thatcher