Saturday, August 29, 2015

True Capitalist Society - ii

Anyone who has spent time in the US will recognise the type: strong, decent, honest, unfailingly polite and with a sense of right and wrong so highly developed as to take a terrorist threat as a personal affront. Combine that with the US tradition of can-do pragmatism and it was a safe bet that of all the passengers aboard, Spencer and his crew were the least likely to take this lying down. The key thing is the absence of any tendency to complain that “they” (the council, the state) have or have not done something. The downside of this commendable outlook is that it is used to underwrite the ideology of the free market whereby everyone, however powerless or disadvantaged, is left to fend for themselves.

When I read the above paragraph from this article, the immediate thought that came to my mind was Nikolai Chernyshevsky's "What is to Be Done?". Because I could recognize that ideal US male type in his Russian novel. However, what didn't match was that such a outlook results in mindless free market.

According to Chernyshevsky, in such a society the market is far more egalitarian and makes everyone owner of their produce. Or not just the brave men, the sense of justice exists among entrepreneurs too.

It has been speculated that Lenin was deeply inspired by Chernyshevsky's novel as his manifesto takes its name from that novel.However, when I went through the Wikipedia article, I didn't find much connection.

I suppose those Americans would have still fought the terrorist even if they had found themselves out of harm's way but others in powerless situation. If fighters have that kind of outlook, shouldn't the affluents in the society have that kind outlook towards their disadvantaged?

Let's say there were no 'saviours' on that train, wouldn't we expect the government to take proper security measures? If the US is so confident about its brave men, we wouldn't have heard about so many over the top security measures in the American state. If that's the case with security, shouldn't there be some considerations from the state towards the struggling population?

Just like brave men, there could be generous businessmen spending their money on the welfare of the poor. However, just as in the case of security measures even when a state have such brave men, it requires that the state to take care of its struggling population.

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