In celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 100 years, Obama only criticised the shortcomings of capitalism and capitalists.
He did not condemn capitalism as a social system – something he needed not do. Obama objectively and constructively criticised some aspects of it just as all honest and objective thinkers do to any social system needing some correction.
That Obama is a past president of the US, the number one capitalist country, does not compel him to be intellectually dishonest about the weaknesses and vices of the capitalist system, or any social system for that matter.
Many intelligent and undogmatic capitalists intellectually acknowledge the vices of capitalism.
That is perhaps, why Julius Nyerere while president of Tanzania contended in his African socialism thesis, Ujamaa, that “even a millionaire can be a socialist”.
Honest people do not deny the weaknesses of systems they operate simply because they cannot or could not, at the time, correct them.
One of the political giants of the 20th century, JF Kennedy was US president for 1,000 days before a maniac assassinated him, criticised some amoral tendencies of capitalists – the class for which he, as a president of that country, was a high priest.
For instance, he heartily criticised the tendency by some of the captains of the capitalist system when an accident would occur on a production line – they would worry more about how much the machine had been damaged than about the injuries suffered by the operators.
Being a product of the prestigious London School of Economics and a former student of one of the 20th century’s illustrious political scientists and teachers, Harold Laski, he had no qualms about telling the then Soviet Union prime minister, the affable and boisterous Nikita Khrushchev, that he knew that communism would, through evolution ultimately come about – something that, he said, needed no pushing.
Kennedy was an honest and knowledgeable political actor, not an obscurantist capitalist zealot.
The failure of socialism in the USSR is far from being a sign of the cessation or death of history. After all, what in the Soviet Union failed, in the context of history, was a socialist experiment which was not the first socialist experiment to fail in the world.
There were many such experiments in the US before its industrialisation through chattel slavery, a barbaric and abominable wealth creation system.
Strictly speaking what failed in the Soviet Union was not even a socialist experiment but its distortion by a powerful maniac in the guise of Stalin. When Lenin’s socialist experiment, after his demise, encountered hurdles – due to Stalin’s pig-headedness and sadism – Stalin resorted to implementing state capitalism in the stead of socialism.
The evolving historical process of human social development which eternally unfolds, guarantees the ultimate demise of capitalism as did the stages of slavery and feudalism before it. The certain demise of capitalism will usher in a society of social justice established on the negation of all the exploitative principles that constitute capitalism.
It will be the society that all the great prophets and moral teachers of humanity have been pursuing starting from Moses to Jesus and from Jesus to Mohamed.
Omar is peddling political myths with which conservative capitalists deluded him. He should know that no better salaries can bridge the wealth gap.
The historical reality is that the poor are deliberately kept poor in the service of profit accumulation, the condition for capitalism to exist. Economic and social inequality needs no reduction but abolition that is what the logic of history stubbornly indicates.
Industrial revolution capitalists in their own countries brutally and immorally exploited and dehumanised the citizens before finding colonies to mercilessly exploit. Peasants, women and young children painfully suffered due to rising industrial interests, especially in Great Britain.
In Peter’s second epistle, chapter 3 verse 13, St Peter, a true Christian socialist opines, “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (Thina ke ngokwedinga lakhe silinde elitsha izulu, nomhlaba omtsha, apho kumi ubu lungisa.)
Malcolm MZ Dyani is a former Robben Islander and was an MP for 10 years. He lives in Duncan Village
OPINION | Undogmatic capitalists admit its pitfalls
Columnist
Image: Netivist
In celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 100 years, Obama only criticised the shortcomings of capitalism and capitalists.
He did not condemn capitalism as a social system – something he needed not do. Obama objectively and constructively criticised some aspects of it just as all honest and objective thinkers do to any social system needing some correction.
That Obama is a past president of the US, the number one capitalist country, does not compel him to be intellectually dishonest about the weaknesses and vices of the capitalist system, or any social system for that matter.
Many intelligent and undogmatic capitalists intellectually acknowledge the vices of capitalism.
That is perhaps, why Julius Nyerere while president of Tanzania contended in his African socialism thesis, Ujamaa, that “even a millionaire can be a socialist”.
Honest people do not deny the weaknesses of systems they operate simply because they cannot or could not, at the time, correct them.
One of the political giants of the 20th century, JF Kennedy was US president for 1,000 days before a maniac assassinated him, criticised some amoral tendencies of capitalists – the class for which he, as a president of that country, was a high priest.
For instance, he heartily criticised the tendency by some of the captains of the capitalist system when an accident would occur on a production line – they would worry more about how much the machine had been damaged than about the injuries suffered by the operators.
Being a product of the prestigious London School of Economics and a former student of one of the 20th century’s illustrious political scientists and teachers, Harold Laski, he had no qualms about telling the then Soviet Union prime minister, the affable and boisterous Nikita Khrushchev, that he knew that communism would, through evolution ultimately come about – something that, he said, needed no pushing.
Kennedy was an honest and knowledgeable political actor, not an obscurantist capitalist zealot.
The failure of socialism in the USSR is far from being a sign of the cessation or death of history. After all, what in the Soviet Union failed, in the context of history, was a socialist experiment which was not the first socialist experiment to fail in the world.
There were many such experiments in the US before its industrialisation through chattel slavery, a barbaric and abominable wealth creation system.
Strictly speaking what failed in the Soviet Union was not even a socialist experiment but its distortion by a powerful maniac in the guise of Stalin. When Lenin’s socialist experiment, after his demise, encountered hurdles – due to Stalin’s pig-headedness and sadism – Stalin resorted to implementing state capitalism in the stead of socialism.
The evolving historical process of human social development which eternally unfolds, guarantees the ultimate demise of capitalism as did the stages of slavery and feudalism before it. The certain demise of capitalism will usher in a society of social justice established on the negation of all the exploitative principles that constitute capitalism.
It will be the society that all the great prophets and moral teachers of humanity have been pursuing starting from Moses to Jesus and from Jesus to Mohamed.
Omar is peddling political myths with which conservative capitalists deluded him. He should know that no better salaries can bridge the wealth gap.
The historical reality is that the poor are deliberately kept poor in the service of profit accumulation, the condition for capitalism to exist. Economic and social inequality needs no reduction but abolition that is what the logic of history stubbornly indicates.
Industrial revolution capitalists in their own countries brutally and immorally exploited and dehumanised the citizens before finding colonies to mercilessly exploit. Peasants, women and young children painfully suffered due to rising industrial interests, especially in Great Britain.
In Peter’s second epistle, chapter 3 verse 13, St Peter, a true Christian socialist opines, “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (Thina ke ngokwedinga lakhe silinde elitsha izulu, nomhlaba omtsha, apho kumi ubu lungisa.)
Malcolm MZ Dyani is a former Robben Islander and was an MP for 10 years. He lives in Duncan Village
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