The Death of Capitalism

It can be argued that there isn’t a workable, one-size fits all, political system. There will always be people that want more and when Thatcher came on the scene claiming we had “the right to be above average” it was what many people wanted to hear. Thirty years later and the country has been run in to the ground by “monetarism”. A small percentage of individuals got very rich. The big businesses have acted without any sense of morality; they think nothing of effectively spying on us by collecting information, usually without our full knowledge or consent. They then use this information to “persuade” us to buy their products, they prey upon vulnerable people who struggle to put their foot down and say no. The rest of us haven’t benefited, not in the long run.

Under socialist principles, problems such as homelessness were rare. The so called “underclass” (people who remain state dependent from the cradle to the grave) only truly emerged under Thatcher. Socialist writer James Taylor wrote that an “obsession with the inessential” was the biggest problem in society. He claimed that an unsuccessful pursuit of material luxuries invariably leads to depression, despondency and withdrawal from mainstream society. He said that people need to make a positive contribution to society in order to feel fulfilment. Taylor wrote his most significant work in the late seventies and in many ways it was a prophecy. Capitalism, in its current form, has alienated a generation. It has left us vulnerable and too many have been left behind.