Sunday, October 16, 2011

Is Wall Street Protest mark end of Capitalism ?

Last few days has marked with some unprecedented movement across the globe against Wall Street greed. The epicenter of the protest is none other than the place which powerful symbol of successful capitalism for whole world just few years back, the United State of America. A natural question arise whether invisible hand of Capitalism has failed and this going to mark end of Capitalism? Whether we will see a new form of economy which is more human and driven by value rather than greed or we will go back to sixties or seventies form of protective and socialistic economy, reversing of Globalizations. At this movement it is very difficult to tell ball will roll on which direction. But we can try to understand chain of event which has brought us to this situation. First leg of the event was falling of Berlin Wall which mark the fall of Communism and Capitalism as winner. It marked Capitalism and Open economy has a sole winner and way to go for a globe. There was a merit that Capitalism was better than Communism as seen in drastic different in standard of life of west and east Europe. But Capitalism itself has its own drawback. But all its deficiency was ignored and as said Winner takes all, the whole world start embracing open economy and Capitalism without thinking on its negative side which has grown like a monster is recent years. The second leg come when Finance sector which become too strong ask absolute free hand on its running without any control especially in US and Europe. This results in all sort of Financial Product and the whole Capitalism became just a paper money with no real link to productivity and efficiency, the basic essence of real Capitalism. The third leg came when this dream crashed and people come out of there dream. The common people, who believe on those dreams shown by so called financial guru in the market, don’t know what hit them. And the last phase we are seeing presently came when the common man like us sees that their hard earned money has been spent on saving those investment guru who were really responsible for their situation are back to their old business of greed but there situation is still no better. This clearly marks the failure of government across the globe and also misinterpretation of real Capitalism. To understand the real Capitalism we have to go back to time when Capitalism as we know in present form was laying it foundation. It was during the Industrialization Revolution that lay foundation for both Capitalism and Communism. Well Capitalism embrace free market and risk taking ability of individual where as Communism work on collective conscious of a society as whole. Capitalism favors to reward the individual hence drive the greed. But the basic assumption of this theory is that each individual will be driven by his own self interest and collective self interest will do more good to society. The term called invisible hand coined by Adam Smith the father of present Capitalism to define this collective good to society. Probably this theory has some element of truth, but the underlining assumption of unbiased and competitive society really not holds good most of the time in real world. Also during Smith time Finance market was not as strong as we have today. Hence Capitalism meaning during Adam Smith time means industrialization, real investment in resources and real transaction of goods and service. But present day capitalism means stock market, various fiancĂ© schemes and so on which really has no connection to real product or service. This pseudo capitalism has become so powerful that we forget the real Capitalism. Let’s hope this protest will not lead to completely abandon Capitalism but result in removing its deficiency which developed in it. We should not forgot that the technology which is fuelling this movement has also has its origin in Capitalism.

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