Capitalism - Good or bad ?

[rug]

8. That argument is made many times. It turns on what human nature is.

Usually it's described as competitive as well as selfish.

Yet for each example of selfish or competitive behavior, there are dozens of altruistic or cooperative acts. I suggest that, even on a biological or sociological scale, human beings are the product of, and thrive in, cooperative settings.

Even the most rabid conservative praises the notion of family and country and solemnly affirms each is worthy of the ultimate sacrifice. There is no selfishness or competition in that assertion. The problem is that cooperation, that selflessness, is limited to that family, that group, that nation. And woe be to any outside group.

Politically, the task is to extend that - human - nature of cooperation beyond barriers of nations, races, gender and the rest of the carefully calculated and nurtured divisions among human beings. Capitalism thrives on maintaining those distinctions and it reaps the benefit of those divisions.

So, the goal of public policy (in my Marxist view) should be to replace the chimerical incentives of capitalism and to inculcate the values of cooperation, by whatever ideological terms one chooses. And to do it as quickly as possible, the sooner the better.