Labour camps in Alaska

A message from fervent and loyal blog reader Gary:

“This Alexander Solsjeneetsin of yesterday.
The one who called capitalism ethically bankrupt.
That guy probably a Commie, right?”

Actually, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was opposed to the Communists running the Soviet Union.
So much so that he was arrested for voicing heretical thoughts.
He was interrogated in the prisons of the Soviet secret police and eventually sentenced to hard labour in Siberia.
After he finished his sentence he was condemned to eternal exile in Kazakhstan.
Once Nikita Khrushchev came to power, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, after 12 years of exile, was pardoned and could come back to Moscow.
But even then he continued to have grave conflicts with the Soviet authorities.

Hence, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was not a Communist at all and that makes his criticism of Capitalism more interesting.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was in favour of what is called “moral socialism”:

“Present the world with a society in which all relationships, principles and laws would be based on morality and on nothing else.
All calculations like,
-how should children be raised?,
-What should they be trained for?,
-Toward what ends should adult labour be directed?
-How should man spend his leisure?
all this should be decided only on the basis of morality.
Scientific research?
Only research that does not inflict harm on morality, and on the morality of the researchers themselves first of all.
Foreign policy too: so that the question of any frontier would be not how much the action enriches us or strengthens us or raise our prestige, but only: how moral would it be?
Also the economy must be build on morality.

Moral socialism will not motivate people to seek happiness.
For that is an idol of the marketplace.
Moral socialism will direct the people toward loving one another.
The wild animal gnawing at his prey is happy, but only humans can love, and this is the highest thing man can achieve”.

There are several aspects of moral socialism in the plans and ideas of Barack Obama.
But he has to fight a society where people are used to the most extreme version of capitalism.
Where it is me, me, me and to hell with the others.

A salesperson selling a mortgage knowing very well the customer will loose the house in a few years, but who gives nevertheless utmost priority to the bonus he will earn, is a capitalist and the opposite of a moral socialist.

In a more ideal society the salesperson will be aware of the tragedy and misery he is about to inflict on the other person if he sells the mortgage and will refrain of it.
However, there are not many salespersons in a capitalist society who consider the well being of the customer much of an issue.
The rule is to make money no matter what.
The rule is to eat or to be eaten.
The rule is to screw or to be screwed.

Obviously, the thing to do is to change the rules.
People are not going to change their attitudes by themselves.
Hence, the Government must present the society with new rules as a transition measure.
Until people have developed properly their morality and stop acting as animals.
Meanwhile, immoral ways of doing business should be very severely punished.
Labour camps for the CEO’s, like there were in Siberia, but now in Alaska.

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To learn more about Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, click on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn






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