Capitalist Triumphalism

[Tommy4ever]

I'm sure pretty much all of you will have experienced this.

You are talking about politics and you bring up socialism or communism and it is immediately dismissed as something that ''can't work'' in many countries we are taught in school that the experiences of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc prove that socialism ''doesn't work'' and that therefore the only system that is justifiable is capitalism and liberal democracy. You may try to argue with them but as far as they are concerned you are either an idealist or a fool to believe socialism has any hope of success. You are a fool if you think it can lead to anything but the likes of Stalin or Brezhnev, you should simply accept that liberal, capitalist, democracy is the only way forward.

This trend of capitalist triumphalism of course grew out of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc at the end of the 1980s. Then capitalists had a right to be triumphant, for sure. They enemy they had been fighting against for 40 years had been defeated without a shot being fired. Yet it has persisted on for two decades and doesn't seem to be subsiding in any way.

My question is do you think that capitalist triumphalism will ever begin to subside away? For if it does not then there is no realistic hope of socialism ever becoming a mainstream ideology again as it shall simply be dismissed by the great majority of people.

[BIG BROTHER]

The global recession basically put an end to that capitalist triumphanism.

It does not mean people were all of the sudden won over to socialism, but people became friendlier to the idea.

[PhoenixAsh]

I agree with BIG BROTHER.

The importance of this crisis is is that it has shown that capitalism including the monetary system can not work and that a free market system will be detrimental to society and indeed the economy. I.e. It is a selfdestructing system...

However...this is nothing when we don not have strong parties and movements with clearly defined alternatives...to pick up on it and keep this realisation going and letting it grow into revolutionary sentiment...

And...unfortunately...we do seem to lack these at this point in time.

[Tommy4ever]

The global recession basically put an end to that capitalist triumphanism.

It does not mean people were all of the sudden won over to socialism, but people became friendlier to the idea.

I'm not sure if your living in the realms of fantasy here. Triumphalism is very much alive and the vast majority of people still see capitalism as the only option.

[PhoenixAsh]

I'm not sure if your living in the realms of fantasy here. Triumphalism is very much alive and the vast majority of people still see capitalism as the only option.

True...but this is the first time it has so spectacularly failed for everybody to see and with nobody else to blame. This may not make the building crumble...but it does make it crack.

Now...when there are clearly devined alternatives to a capitalist system and well organised groups who exploit the current economic depression to spearhead their campaign the memory can be kept alive and we can get some foothold within these cracks.

Next time something happens the cracks will become gaps...

[piet11111]

I always reply with "and how long did it take to overthrow feudalism ?"

[yobbos1]

Despite media claims to the contrary, the US economy is teetering on the brink of collapse. Nothing like a bit of hunger to warm people up to leftist ideas.

[Crimson Commissar]

It's mostly cold-war era propaganda that is preventing socialism from becoming popular at the moment. The only remaining socialists in the west are the few who didn't believe the bullshit forced down their throats in school and even in their adult lives.

[BIG BROTHER]

I'm not sure if your living in the realms of fantasy here. Triumphalism is very much alive and the vast majority of people still see capitalism as the only option.

damm what did I do to deserve such harsh reply lol


Yea I didn't say people all of the sudden turned communists, but if you look, there was a poll not so long ago were a it shows that people under 30 in the US are having a more favorable view towards socialism

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/04/09/2009-04-09_many_americans_prefer_socialism_to_capitalism_a _new_poll_finds.html

Also if you looked at the headlines of many publications during the recession, they had pretty gloomy titles talking about the failure of capitalism.

Of course what most of them argued was for a Keynesian capitalism, but nevertheless the recession kinda shut up that capitalist triumphanism.

It did not destroy capitalism and people still support it, but is looked on a bit more critically now.

[indya]

I dont think that the majority of people are seeing the source of the financial crisis as capitalism. They are seeing it as a complex economic affair that has something to do with house prices or something. The average person isn't seeing the picture. capitalist triumphalism is here to stay for a while.

[William Howe]

Remember that the main reason the USSR's economy collapsed was because it went into maximum overdrive on weapons production, producing a massive excess of weaponry that no nation could afford, capitalist or communist. The economy did not collapse because of redistribution.

Capitalist nations eventually collapse from overspending, gluttony, and waste. Look what's happening right now to the US, for example.

[Rooster]

What we have to do as communist, is to provide a much more coherent and forceful explanation/narrative to the economic crisis of 2008. Right now the politicians are all wallowing in their neo-liberal quagmires, kicking their heels and trying to dismiss this whole affair as a lack of regulation in the banking system instead of a fault in the whole system. Even with the people acknowledging it, they still won't admit that there's a better way of doing things. They're using the same arguments that the old communists used to use when talking about the fall of the USSR and applying them to capitalism. It's a failure on our part if we don't promote our narrative and just allow the prevailing hegemony to continue in a slightly different form.