Totalitarian communism and fascist free market capitalism have both failed as extremes tend to do. Democratic socialism is the middle ground that opposes both and is rising due to its successful examples that generate true happiness and opportunity. None of the nations that have found the happy middle will ever be economic dominates in world trade or generate massive profits, but they do welcome reasonable levels of free trade, only on top of social guarantees that assure all citizens the basic necessities of sustaining life and dignity.
Those guarantees buttress the basis of consumer-based capitalism with a populace that has disposable income. Without that support of capitalism and the injection of state-created money, their systems would follow the death spiral we see playing out in the US. As the capitalists invent new ways to multiply their fortunes without depending upon the labor force they make themselves more vulnerable to their own system, crashing and burning in ever shorter cycles. Their fortunes are no longer tied to the markets that created them, but now depend upon a friendly government willing to restock the money supply according to their demands and allow them to ravage vital resources and the environment at will (not to mention the support of the world’s largest market, American military imperialism).
America’s weakness can be easily seen in the very well funded and organized mass opposition to a relative moderate (by world standards) political figure such as Bernie Sanders, Senator of Vermont. It seems that America’s brand of free market capitalism is so fragile that simply asking the government to make good the guarantees of its own Constitution and not destroy the natural world we all depend upon is a threat to the entire system that is seen as reaching too far into the pockets of the elite ruling class. The rest of the world would be wise to look beyond the American media’s portrayal of life here and realize that our system has failed for the vast majority of citizens who now struggle considerably more than most ever did under the much vilified pre-’80s communism.
