Signal to the left but turn right!

I had occasion to discuss the ongoing Wall Street crisis with two of my friends. One of them lives in Singapore and the other works for a nationalised bank in Chennai.

My Singapore friend remarked that with capitalism having capitulated his executive friends are reading Karl Marx with great respect!

My Chennai friend who dreaded the looming possibility of her bank being denationalised said “Thanks to the US, nobody in India will talk of privatisation for at least 20 years.”

Sure enough I read an article by Sitaram Yechury having a good laugh at America’s (and the capitalist world’s) moment of crisis.

I am afraid these sentiments are premature. It is true that a combination of greed, poor regulations, excessive risk taking, unbridled financial innovation, and throwing elementary banking norms to the wind were responsible for this crisis. But to say that socialism is the way out is incorrect.

Let us look around the world to see that capitalism has led to the prosperity of many nations whereas socialism has kept down many nations. India itself is an example of a nation that in our lifetime has seen poverty under the socialist ideology and then relative prosperity after liberalization. I do not deny that vast masses of our people live in depravity but I believe that this is due to inadequate or faulty liberalization.

One has to see how West Bengal has done under a socialist dispensation of which Yechury has been a torchbearer.

Capitalism is like democracy. It is not perfect but is the best we know at this point in history.

No matter what system we have. Human greed, perverse ingenuity and mismanagement will combine to bring down the best of systems.

Karl Marx himself will scarcely recognize the kind of communism that prevails in say Russia which is now run by a corrupt mafia in league with an oligarchy.

Yechury himself is a chastened man after the Nano car fiasco, He now blames Mamta for obstructing industrialization. To my knowledge Mamta has done nothing more than give the CPM a taste of their own medicine. It is the public of West Bengal who are at the receiving end of such shenanigans.

I recall an anecdote about Den Xiao Ping the father of reforms in China being driven along a highway in China. When the car reached an intersection the driver asked Ping which turning he ought to take, “Sir, the left turn takes us to socialism and the right turn takes us to capitalism. Which should I take?” asked the driver.

Replied Ping, “Signal to the left but turn right!”

I rest my case.