OPINION: Capitalism is dead.... Long live... Ummm...

Why, when capitalism fails every few years in bigger and more dramatic ways, do governments not look for a better system?

Capitalism has been failing, regularly, for years. Today, it seems, there is hardly a nation in the world not in some sort of serious debt. Banks have failed their investors, the public and governments across the world. Inequality gets more and more entrenched.

Surely, it's time for a different approach? Surely, it's time for governments to take action beyond bigger and bigger band aids?

When the dyke has a hole, the hole can be stopped for a while but there is a weakness there. Eventually, another hole opens or the first hole bursts again. At some point, the dyke is unable to hold the water back, the dyke collapses and everything is washed away.

It's not a case of replacing capitalism and free-markets with a different version of capitalism, adding safety nets or extra regulation to "protect" society, eventually a completely different approach, a different system needs to be put in place.

I've long argued that all current international/national debts should be written off. It's all just numbers, huge numbers, that are meaningless. They're notional debts, not real ones. Capitalism thrives on debt, borrowing and, consequently, inequality and poverty.

In the UK, we've never genuinely had a non-capitalist government. Even Harold Wilson and James Callaghan's left-wing governments, some 30-40 years ago, were capitalist with a social conscience. At elections we don't have a realistic choice of different systems, just variations on the type of capitalism we want. This is wrong.

Labour has failed the working class in the same way that the Conservatives have failed the wealthy. Labour's abandonment of socialist principles mean that it is, as has been for some time now, Tory-lite. The Lib Dems, well, they let everyone down by going into partnership with the Tories!

It is time that either Labour returned to its core socialist principles and offered a genuinely socialist, if not communist, system as an alternative to the capitalist, consumerist system that has dominated politics since the Industrial Revolution, or that people finally turn from the big two (maybe three) parties and promote one of the lesser, untried parties that can offer an alternative approach. I'd suggest, though not Peet, the Green Party are most likely to be able to offer a genuinely alternate system.

I don't mean a Stalinist communism (in reality, that was closer to Fasism than communism), I mean a new, 21stcentury approach in which government take back control of the budgets, in which a more equality-based approach is key to the way in which governments organise the economy and, of course, an environmentally-friendly angle is included.

There is nothing wrong with success, making-money or even profit but it is how the success is managed, and what the profits are used for that need to be addressed.

Sadly, it won't happen. The British are a fundamentally selfish and greedy society; they continue to vote for the status quo because, ultimately, they all think they might be the fat cats themselves (why else do so many play the National Lottery against the odds?!) and, in the end, they don't care about society, they care about themselves and their families. The British are their own worst enemies.

But, of course, this needs to be done globally, not just in the UK. This requires international co-operation that goes beyond anything the jack-booted Little Englanders who read The Sun or Daily Mail would ever allow. This needs brains not bigotry and xenophobia

How many times does capitalism have to fail before it gets replaced? Too many.

Next time there is an election I do hope more people vote for change, because, clearly, the current system has failed, but I won't hold my breath.