A Period of Study and Reflection

The regular visitors to this blog might have noticed a break in my posting. This was mainly due to two factors: first, I have an insurance exam coming up quite soon and studying eats up an amazing amount of time! Second, I have also been thinking a great deal about various social problems and about the extent to which most of the current social democratic parties are equipped to deal with them successfully. Unfortunately, the more I read about the agendas of numerous parties of this kind (including the Malta Labour Party), the more disillusioned I felt.

Nowadays, many individuals are still saying that socialism is dead. For all those who dedicate themselves to a rigorous study of this ideology, it will become extremely clear that socialism could still be a very relevant set of principles for our times. I believe that it is the social democratic parties that are dying a slow death since by embracing numerous aspects of capitalism, they are not really distinguishing themselves from other capitalist political parties.

With reference to Malta, as pointed out by one of the regular visitors to my blog, when Dr Alfred Sant was Prime Minister, he implemented a number of measures which could not be called "socialist". The cutting down of the university stipends was an example. The fact that Dr Sant's policies do not always appear to be leftist should not come as a big surprise; the man studied Business Administration at Harvard University and one could, therefore, expect him to apply various capitalist principles that he learned there to the Maltese society.

Malta and every other country needs to understand that as long as capitalism reigns, the world will never witness a lasting peace. The capitalist ideology has become so deep-seated in the minds of millions of people that few individuals seem to be capable of realising how it is affecting their everyday behaviours. In virtually all the countries that have embraced capitalism, it is quite easy to notice an obsession with individualism. In such places, one could really talk about an individualist cult; the underlying notion seems to be that every person is a god who ought to live as he/she pleases, regardless of the plight of the other members of the community. If one wants to play loud music all night long, nobody should dare to tell that individual that he/she is disturbing other people in the neighbourhood. If someone attempts to regulate another's annoying behaviour, there is often a huge fuss made about trampling on one's rights. This state of affairs is likely to lead to more social unrest and to more exploitation as one capitalist government after another sit by and adopt a laissez-faire attitude.

As capitalist political parties continue to hold sway in various parts of the world, the obsession with individualism has profound implications for the way in which countless private businesses operate. As the owners of such organisations brandish their freedom to act as individuals and the capitalist governments remove more and more regulations so that they can benefit from the generous donations that are handed out during election times, the private sector is clearly becoming more powerful than the government in affecting the lives of countless individuals.

After much reading and reflection, I have drawn the conclusion that Malta needs another political party. The country requires a party that clearly understands the perils of capitalism and is willing to struggle against it.