Capitalism: Socialism Under a New Name?

The father of peoples, the U.S. Ambassador in Bucharest, has spoken for the last time in front of the Romanians. Before he left, Mr. O Tanenbaum gave us some free advice, although no one had asked him for it: “Corruption is the antithesis of democracy and rule of law. (Anna has apples) Corruption unpunished corrodes belief and credibility in a democracy and stifles economic growth and investment. (Anna doesn’t have apples)”. All I can say is: Dah! And drewl. Because, whilst his Excellency was preparing his farewell speech, several powerful banks were silently going for the lion’s throat in the U.S. If our uncle Isarescu didn’t have the scars from other attacks of this kind, tried by the “harvards” and “oxfords”about which our President Basescu used to talk, and hadn’t learned to defend himself we would now be in the same pot as Hungary.

When we were eating in the dark “chicken spoons” and “pork shoes” under Ceausescu, it seemed to us that the rich and well lit Occident is at the same time more righteous and honest towards its people than communism. No one asked the socialist town folk whether they wanted a People’s house built on their back or if they were eager to starve and freeze in order to pay an external debt.

However, I now sit and wonder: did anyone ask the ordinary American John Doe, compatriot of our very own teacher Nicky Tambalau*, if he wanted his money to be used to pay for the yachts, private jets, personal islands and beer bellies of those high up in prestigious firms on Wall Street? No one did, but now John Doe is paying, only because that’s what the president, government and U.S. Congress want, arguing that otherwise “there goes the neighborhood.” Fine with that, but who is responsible for the huge networking and complicity that made this megafraude possible? How many people have been arrested and investigated, how many administrations fired, how many banks, funds, insurance agencies, rating brokers where questioned for the monstrous dent given to the world under the mask of the capitalist “dynamism” of America? Just as many as high rolling corrupted statesmen have been sent to trial in Romania.

And just like that, as in communism, this triumphant capitalism reproduces the essence of the dictatorial mechanism: distributing resources according to one’s own discretion, through national and worldwide robbery from the common property. In the old times, when you ran to the Occident you would say you “chose freedom.” Now we are finding out that out there you are free to have your life savings confiscated by private owners via the state’s hand. 413.000 euros was the cost of the AIG Life super-staff party in Los Angeles, organized to celebrate the state pumping 80 billion dollars into their black holes. The British Northern Rock executives, saved from bankruptcy with tax-payers’ money, now refuses to give up the thousands of Euros in bonuses. And they’re not the only ones. Like Mr. Gigi Becali** said: “We rich, people don’t care about the crisis.”

Now I’m not going to question the material superiority of capitalism – despite the pesticides that are being pumped into the fruit and vegetables that we import from the West to make them bigger by 50 percent and despite the killer health insurance system in the Mr. Tabman’s U.S. – but, if anyone talks to me one more time about their moral superiority, I would tell them to go to the same place I would tell E.S Nicholas Taubman, to go on his next mission.

Translator’s notes:

* Tambalau – Romanian for Bluster

** Romanian billionaire