Ideas. It's all about ideas. Ideas are the raw stuff of culture. Combine an idea with a feeling and you have meaning. Find a way to communicate meaning and you have art.
If culture is built on ideas, ideas are built on language. Different languages serve different purposes. Spoken language is the granddaddy of them all and is the most utilitarian and general. But there are many others: art, music, poetry, mathematics, religion. Each of these can describe our culture, but some are better than others at describing certain things.
Money is a language. It describes things in terms of scarcity. It is a useful shorthand that has allowed us to grow huge economies and generate unprecedented wealth. But as good as it is at describing economic things, it's very poor at describing the things that make us human. Free marketers would have you believe that it can be all things to all people and solve all problems; but it doesn't. In fact, we're witnessing the failure of free-market capitalism right now. And it has happened because the meanings which make up the body of free-market economics are insufficient to one important task : describing what it is to be human.
In our lifetime, we've witnessed the fall of Communism. Somehow, no matter where it was tried, Communism always evolved into something else ... usually Stalinism. Communism failed because it was extreme. It insisted on dominating all aspects of culture. It was good at taking care of people. It was poor at providing incentive.
Capitalism is failing for a similar, albeit opposite reason. Having been taken to the extreme, it loses the ability to describe compassion well. It relies on crutches like charity and the so-called 'invisible hand' to take care of people, but in this, it fails.
Furthermore, like Communism, it cannot survive in it's utopian form. It always seems to evolve into cronyism, or corporatism. The love of, the lust for power always creeps in and corrupts utopias. Always.
Hold your arm out and flex it in front of you -- that's capitalism. It's like a muscle. It's strong, it creates work and growth. Now place your hand on your heart. That's socialism. It provides compassion. Capitalism provides the American dream for those fortunate enough to achieve it. For the laborer, it provides a way to make a living. But there must be a governor there. Society must mandate that those who achieve large wealth give back a portion of that wealth. The laborer needs to be able to make a comfortable living for her family which still allows her the time to provide the kind of parenting that turns kids into stable adults.
Socialism is not a dirty word. That's the free-market trying to dominate the language. Socialism is the way that society takes a portion of the wealth generated within it's matrix and uses it to benefit all, especially those whose lives have not been so fortunate.
Socialism provides services to business : free highways that allow small business to move goods at the same cost as big corporations, public education that provides business with an educated work force, child labor laws that prevent unscrupulous businessmen from exploiting the poor and allow honest businessmen to compete honestly.
Socialism provides services to the betterment of society: Holidays so workers can have time to spend with their families. Help for the needy : unemployment, welfare, food stamps. Help for the elderly : social security, medicare.
The innate rage that our country is feeling right now is not just because some folks remember when we had a more equitable society, but because young folks can see the results of the free-market monster and they know that this is not the kind of world that they want to live in.
Ultimately, this conflict will play itself out. Like an earthquake, the longer the pressure builds, the greater will be the damage when it releases. Release is just a matter of time. Be warned.
