See through the capitalist system in Europe and U.S. from financial crisis ①
In the beginning of the 1990s, with the fall of Berlin Wall and drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the socialist camp in Eastern Europe crumbled into pieces overnight.
Free market economy had conquered the central planned system. Some western scholars even asserted that it marked the end of history, that is, human society had been at its best and capitalism had become irreplaceable.
Soon after the beginning of the 21st century, global financial crisis erupted and major capitalist countries have been bogged down in stagnation successively. Structural imbalance and institutional weakness of the capitalist system had been exposed. More and more westerners began to throw doubt upon the “perfection” of capitalism. A soaring anti-capitalist emotion was aroused in the world.
Jurgen Habermas, a German who is considered the most influential contemporary philosopher in the world, had criticized the western capitalist system early in the 1970s. He believed that after capitalism entered the later stage, free competition as well as the ideology of equal exchange of labor and capital had been on the brink of collapse. However, capitalism failed to found a reliable ideological weapon for the new development, thus causing ideological crisis and bringing profound challenge to the validity of capitalism.
In 2005, there was a round of discussion on capitalism. Franz Muentefering, chairman of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) at that time, criticized the capitalist system for its only focusing on profit, ignoring the moral values that put people first at a forum on party platform.
“Our criticism is against those international capital powers and those unsustainable practices absorbed in windfall profit. Some financial investors neither take human value into account, nor realize that they are destroying human work. ” Franz Muentefering said.
After the European debt crisis broke out, Germany is facing growing criticism on its economic systems, development patterns and political systems. German media also published some articles of self-critical reflection. As an article on Die Zeit said, behind U.S. and European debt crisis was the crisis of the state welfare system.
High inflation and high unemployment brought about by European financial crisis are causing unrest and riots.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has swept Germany. Protesters, marching with posters and slogans, target their anger not only at greedy bankers, but also at the social inequality under western capitalism. They believe that what the politicians had done had merely brought Europe countries into deep crisis one by one, and low-income disadvantaged groups were the final victims.
Besides the demonstration in Frankfurt, Thousands Of People demonstrated in front of the Chancellery in Berlin. More than 50 cities have reportedly seen parades ranging from different scales throughout Germany.
For a long time, capitalism has been regarded as the most superior system since the beginning of human history. However, a financial and economic crisis sweeping the globe has shaken people’s confidence in capitalism, and has aroused deep reflections on the capitalist politics and systems of the western world.
