PHM-Exch> "How Poor is Poor? (4)

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Theodore Macdonald theo at macdonaldbn17.fsnet.co.uk      excerpts

 Alison Katz' comment is absolutely spot-on. To be fully human, involves
much more than even comfortable survival. This is evident even when dealing
with non-human animals, as is clear to most people who "own" a cat or a dog.
And this phenomenon extends quite far down the evolutionary scale.
Capitalism seems only able to meet very basic human needs, and it requires a
fairly high failure rate for the competitive element to be sustained or even
to be regarded as necessary.

Capitalism (by whatever name) can only be effective (and, by definition, not
for all because, for there to be winners, there have to losers) at the very
basic level of needs. Other as important levels are not best achieved
by competition,
but by an active cooperation strongly influenced by emulation - in which the
more obviously and constructively "able" are imitated by the others.

For health-giving attitudes to flourish, though, an emphasis on individual
domination (characteristic of captalism) must be replaced by some kind of
non-doctrinaire socialism. I would argue that capitalism was no doubt an
important stage in our economic development, but in today's situation of
environmental degradation and the heightened emphasis on war and violence as
"solutions", capitalism/neoliberalism become less and less useful.
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