They’re Anti-Capitalists. The protestors, I mean… they’re protesting because they’re against Capitalism. They look at the world around them, and they see the G20 doing all they can to put politicians firmly in control of economies around the world, and they think the problem is Capitalism?
Well, of course they do. It’s implicit in the message being sent out by Brown – Capitalism is something that is suffered as a means of raising cash only, end of story. If Capitalism gets out of hand though, the leash is to be tightened.
The protesters cry, Tightened? Why not simply abolish it altogether? Capitalism’s bad, isn’t it? Why suffer it at all? Look at all the poverty and inequality! Look at all the dirty, evil profit people make! Absolish profit, have everyone making just what is absolutely necessary for the common good, and greed, selfishness and all these other things that make human life so miserable will magically disappear and paradise will be achieved. And we’ll all have what we need and it’ll be grand. And there’ll be peace, everyone will be looked after and we’ll have moved to a whole other level of human existence.
So it’s an old dream. A dream that refuses to die, because it’s so simple and easy. Just make people do things ‘morally’. All the Government has to do is say the word, and it’s done.. what’s the problem?
The problem is that their perfect society represents desperate poverty for absolutely everyone, with brutal totalitarian policing tactics required to cope with all the people who’ll try to break the rules or would literally rather die than remain trapped in such a country. For an ideological system that begins by taking everything away from individuals, it leaves a lot of individuals with nothing to lose.
See, as I understand it, the G20 are agreeing to major intervention in economies, new regulations on hedge funds (nothing to do with the crisis), “tax havens” (nothing to do with the crisis and explicitly doing nothing wrong), banker bonuses and so on and so forth.
Anyone who has even the slightest concept of Capitalism and Free Markets understand that the anti-Capitalists are, in fact, getting exactly what they want.
Those of us who believe in economic liberalism as a force for good see that the measures being taken are going to make things a lot worse. Yet people are having massive protests because Brown and other Global leaders aren’t going far enough. How far is far enough?
To make matters worse, listening to coverage today, it seemed clear that most people on the ‘anti-capitalism’ side had very little concept of what it was they were against, if any concept at all. Meaningless verbiage, crass, one dimensional soundbites and drunken, demented slurring summed up my impression of the protestors vox pops.
The idea that there’s groups and organisations out there that believe Brown represents the interests of Capitalism is absurd. People are clearly disgusted at the bags full of cash thrown at the banks with nothing to show for it, but to assume this is Capitalism in action rather demonstrates the disconnect between these anti-capitalist protesters and what I like to call, “reality.”
It seems they don’t have the first clue what it is they’re against – they just want eco-socialism, they want it now – or, failing that, can they at least have a massive increase in spending in the public sector, please? That’s what it always boils down to.
So the hard left flexed their muscles (if not their brains) today and somehow they’ve made Brown look like a moderate centrist rather than the instinctive central planner he’s become. And the ‘debate’ in the media looks like it’s between Anti-Capitalists and hardcore Socialists.
Some choice. April Fool’s day indeed.
Update: Normal people also attended this protest. Even Pro-Capitalists, defending Free Markets.
