MODERN ECONOMICS IN A PROGRESSIVE WORLD – lessons in reality – or is it a rich man’s world?
Neither of my late parents was interested in politics. My father was a member of the Malta Labour Party in the very early 1950s and for a while was Secretary of the Gzira MLP Club. However, when Mintoff ousted Pawlu Boffa he withdrew his interest totally and was henceforth neutral. My late mother voted PN because her father had given her a PN badge when she was a young girl and as far as she was concerned, that was that!
I adopted Socialism at an early age in England and for a while was close to the Young Communist Party and always a British Labour Party sympathiser.
This was a time when I believed that everything should fall under State control as the only means of equality, socially and economically. However, that belief began to wane with the realisation that life in the Soviet Union was less than ideal for the vast majority because it was an inverted form of absolute Capitalism under the guise of being Communism.
Over the years, my views modified and modified as sane realisation replaced philosophical fanaticism and the realities of life replaced idealism. In a College Report (which I still have) when I was aged 16, my form master wrote that my idealism had soured to be replaced by sarcasm!
As I stand today I class myself as a Social Democrat both socially and economically.
Is this what is politically called “a U-Turn”? I believe not so. Yesteryear the world changed gradually. Yesterday it changed monthly, weekly and then daily; today it changes hourly – if not fractions of an hour. The changes bring about new situations, new ideas, new concepts, and without analysing them one remains a dinosaur because “that should be how it always was”.
It is NOT the principles that change but the methods. My principle of social and economic equality still exists strongly – the method of how to achieve it has changed.
Yesterday, my brother Edward sent me the following five points of how Socialism cannot be achieved in its previously imagined role. These are:
You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.
What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!
When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.
These were cited by an American academician and I firmly believe they are the concepts to which this Government under the Leadership of Joseph Muscat is adhering to.
Resistance to change there will always be. Some of the objections may have sound basis; however, I see that many are more concerned with populist sentiment and trying to gain political points by appearing to be challenging “right” over “wrong”.
Overall, these points and perceptions seem to have been understood by the majority of the electorate of Malta and Gozo – and may they continue on that path.
ALBERT JEROME FENECH
