Humanity: Too Big to Bust

Any capitalist will tell you that a business can only exist if it is profitable. This seems fair considering that the nature of business is 'survival of the fittest'. To deny it this quality undermines its essence and economic purpose.

A problem arises however, when we try to implement these rules and impose these instincts onto social welfare. To justify human existence in these terms is immoral because humanity, unlike business IS NECESSARILY too big to fail.

When a business fails, it is forgotten and its failures are measured up and explained through detailed analysis of its activities. When society fails, we cannot send in the administrators, 'write off' the collateral. Why? Because the collateral damage is human beings. It is obscene to consider that a 'survival of the fittest' model be an appropriate system with which to organise peoples' quality of life. Business ventures live and die by profitability. Do we really want to promote a society where real people must survive according to the same standard? When we do, we force people to fend for themselves, which is what the state calls crime.

When we abandon people according to the terms and conditions of business, we forget that a government's commitment to its people is constant and unconditional. Business has no moral obligation to protect vulnerable projects. In fact, as we see with the recent bank bailouts, if it does, it undermines its own code of conduct and calls into question the worthiness of capitalism as a socioeconomic model. So I do not make these statements out of sentiment. I merely point out the importance of differentiating between what is 1) the state's eternal duty to protect its people, and 2) the state's decision to let its economy work according to capitalism.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women's Own magazine, October 31 1987:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

When Margaret Thatcher talked about 'no such thing as society' she fundamentally misunderstood this difference, and made us all realise that she saw her citizens as business rivals rather than her cherished responsibility. There is no room for humanity in this model. I am not talking purely about compassion. There is no room for human difference, human brilliance and human intelligence. There is no room for the exceptional or the emotional, and no room for belief. Furthermore, does she really want to promote 'the family' as the bedrock of social welfare? Do we want to be run by feuding mafias? This only encourages us to be corrupt and fascist. Society is what needs to exist in order that families respect each other.

This is why it matters from a societal point of view. It matters because by denying vulnerable individuals social security, we criminalise them. When we feel that "there is no such thing as society," we feel no sense of loyalty or obligation. We have, quite understandably, lost respect for the government that has disowned us. We become anarchic and lawlessness prevails, (E.g. The miners' strikes and recently the London riots) all because the state has walked away from its people and forgotten its humanity. Most shockingly of all, the state does this, not in the name of a greater good, but in the name of frenzied capitalist greed.

This may sound very Marxist. And it is. It is the fundamental downfall of capitalism that Marx acutely realised. As a social system capitalism will never succeed because it depends upon its people being obedient to a set of rules that are intolerably humiliating. Fortunately human beings are not so willing to surrender their basic humanity to such a machine. For we see both intuitively and reasonably, that when a government condemns its people to poverty, depravity and humiliation, it destroys any potential for these people to be creative, to be happy, to be secure and therefore peaceful. So from a purely practical point of view, it is a foolish leader who attempts to keep order with such antagonistic methods.

"The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."  (Karl Marx. The Communist Manifesto.)