Money talks

I RAN into a “nouveau riche” BEE liberal sometime back who equated capitalism with democracy.

I explained to him that the very notion of capitalist democracy is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism concentrates the ownership and control of the industrial, commercial, financial and agricultural means of producing wealth in the hands of a very small minority of the population, who profit there from at a disproportionate rate to the majority of the population employed by them to produce that wealth.

In addition, “economic progress” is measured by that state, not first in terms of the aggregate rate of improvement of the material and social welfare of the majority, but in terms of the productive output of the means of producing wealth and the rate of profit derived there from for its owners on export markets.

Can something as unstable and vacillating as a spectral “market” and “business cycles” really be a viable determinant of the availability of essential goods and services to society?

If so, why and with what moral or other justification?

“But,” retorted the nouveau liberal, “we can vote! We have political equality and an independent justice system… The majority have a voice!

“And this means what exactly in a society where everything is for sale as commodities, and money ultimately determines your access to, and quality of basic services and justice disproportionately on the basis of your income, or lack thereof ?” I asked. Jeremy Vearey Mowbray