Musings on capitalism

Tom Eaton’s perceptive, accurate and this time not humorous analysis of the ANC was conflated with musings on capitalism (“Yes, the ANC is a dud but show us the money, opposition parties”, August 10). The latter deserves more space. Perhaps next week?

People are, with few exceptions, essentially concerned first for their own welfare (greed), then for immediate family as the projections of their future. This is as true for union members, politicians, religious leaders and others as for capitalists. As capitalists have for many centuries controlled more wealth and mostly used that wealth productively for the benefit of the rest of society, they have been able to first establish and now maintain the systems that support capitalism around the world.

However, modern societies in the West have based their political structures on democratic principles that give power to large parts of their populace who are not owners and controllers of capital, but its beneficiaries. Yet in the modern-era democratically elected governments have failed to modify the excesses of capitalism in most Western countries.

One does not ask turkeys to vote for Christmas. The ANC reflects the problems that arise when politicians who are ignorant or corrupt — mostly both — are put into power by the democratic system without understanding those fundamental principles of honesty and integrity that gave rise to the democratic concept in Western Europe and the Americas, and later exported it.

Robert Stone Linden