A BBC poll shows widespread disaffection with capitalism

By Julie Hyland
WSWS

An international survey conducted by the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) World Service reveals widespread disaffection with the capitalist free market, including significant opposition to capitalism itself.

Directed by the firm GlobeScan / PIPA, The survey questioned more than 29.000 people 27 country between 19 June and 13 October 2009. These are the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brasil, the Panama, The Costa Rica, Chili, Australia, Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, l'Inde, le Pakistan, China, Russia, l’Ukraine, Turkey, Poland, the Czech Republic, l & rsquo; Germany, France, the Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya.

According to the survey, more than three in five were opposed to the capitalist free market. Some 89 percent believe that capitalism does not work. The majority of respondents in the 22 countries that have expressed strong support for government intervention in greater regulation of business and market are in favor of a division of wealth more socially equitable.

Nearly a quarter of respondents believe that capitalism should be replaced by a "different system".

"If there is a survey question that seems to be consensus around the world that's it : almost everywhere majorities of people want governments to regulate the market more », BBC reported.

Only in two countries, the US and Pakistan, that more than one in five believes that the current economic system works. A majority in 22 of the 27 country was in favor of greater redistribution of wealth : 67 percent or two out of three. In 17 of these countries, a majority said it wanted greater regulation of big business. In 15 of these countries, and particularly in Russia, en Ukraine, in Brazil, Indonesia and France, a majority was in favor of the ownership or increased control of major industries by the government.

Twenty-three percent of people surveyed believe that capitalism is "fatally flawed". An almost equal number of respondents in France believe that capitalism has failed (43 percent) and that its shortcomings could be resolved by more regulation and reform (47 percent). After France, the more support the replacement of capitalism is in Mexico (38 percent) and Brazil (35 percent). On the 12 countries highlighted on the BBC website, more than 10 percent of the population of each nation supported this position. Those defending the current system were in the minority in all cases.

The survey produced some statistical anomalies. The German respondents showed less support for the position that capitalism has failed and the United States, for example. However, majority in each instance - almost 70 percent in the US and more 80 pour cent in Germany - women know désapprobation in status quo.

Answers about the fact that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a "good thing" was less surprising, with the US, Canada, Western and Central Europe and Australia showing a majority in favor (between 73 and 81 percent). In countries that have suffered most directly the impact of the dissolution of the USSR in terms of standard of living, loss of economic and political support, or where it was widely seen as an alternative to capitalism, the trend was reversed. Some 61 percent of Russians 54 percent of Ukrainians feel that it has had a negative impact, like the majority of respondents in Pakistan and Egypt. According to the BBC, "Nearly seven in ten Egyptians say the end of the Soviet Union is a" bad thing "and positions are deeply divided in India, Kenya and Indonesia. »

In all, a small majority (54 percent) of the 15 countries surveyed said that the collapse of the USSR was a positive thing, while 24 percent said he did not know the.

The survey was to coincide with the celebrations surrounding the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which saw property relations reversals nationalized across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union - led by the Stalinist bureaucracy, which has now become the nascent capitalist class, under Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.

The BBC commented that 1989, it seemed that market capitalism came out as the big winner of the Cold War. Now, however, President of GlobeScan , Doug Miller, asserted : "It seems that the fall of the Berlin Wall 1989 has perhaps been the overwhelming victory of free-market capitalism that it seemed at the time - especially after the events of 12 last months. »

This is in reference to the economic crisis that has ruined entire economies and destroyed the living standards around the world.

It was under these circumstances that the leaders of the major powers gathered in Berlin 9 November for a "Freedom Festival" to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. More, efforts to revive popular enthusiasm for the reversals of the Stalinist regimes were marred by the fact that, worldwide, the supposed capitalist winner is itself in deep crisis.

In the center of the global collapse of capitalism, there is the United States itself. Having self-proclaimed victory after the end of the Stalinist regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the US are economically bankrupt today.

In reality, as Trotsky had said, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its satellite states was the tragic and inevitable consequence of the reactionary role played by the Stalinist bureaucracy and its policy of building "socialism in one country".

As we have read on the World Socialist Web Site 9 November, "The contradictions between world economy and the nation state, between the global character of production that united millions of workers around the globe in a process of production and unified social division of the world into rival nation states, have broken the back of the Stalinist regimes ago 20 years. these contradictions, however, are also the source of the growing conflict between the imperialist powers, wars are expanding in Iraq and Afghanistan, continuing attacks against the social gains of the working class and the arrogance and greed of the financial elite. »

Only last month, UN aid agencies have reported that more than one billion people are undernourished, which means 100 million people have joined the ranks of the undernourished at the end of this year. One in six people on Earth will be malnourished, a direct result of the economic recession. The majority of these 100 Millions of people come from the poorest regions in the world, like Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Also in October, World Bank wrote about the devastating decline in living standards in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Predicting a decrease 5,6 percent of economic activity in the "emerging countries of Europe and Central Asia" this year, the World Bank reported that unemployment now affects 11,4 million people in the region. A third of the population of the region lives in poverty.

In Western Europe, the fabric of the bottom capitalist triumphalism, the situation is not better. The European Union has given warning that the deficit of the governments of its member states could reach 100 percent of the gross domestic product 2014 because of the global crisis. Asking "fiscal discipline", She said that five countries faced the possibility of bankruptcy. Among these, found Britain, the sixth largest economy in the world and third in Europe. Last week, the British government announced the biggest rescue of a bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, what brought the sum of public money given to banks in aid and stimulus plan about 1 trillion pounds.

In the United States itself, Barack Obama's election has not meant slowing right policy favoring big business of his predecessor Bush. About 700 Billions of dollars have been granted to banks and 23,7 trillion available in loans, grants and other guarantees for the financial parasites on Wall Street. The money from this grant to the super-rich will of the American working class, as was seen in the forced bankruptcy and wage cuts in the auto industry and the incessant wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and increasingly Pakistan.

The BBC survey points out that the reality of daily life faced by workers across the globe has an impact on their social conscience. Despite the simplistic statements of current powers, capitalism is discredited himself by his own actions.

At the same time, feeling left as found in the BBC poll finds no way to express themselves within the framework of official politics. It is significant that the survey was very little coverage in the mass media.

It should be noted that the survey results indicate the beginning of a process that announcement political shocks and even greater upheavals. In the coming period, the shift to an alternative to the capitalist system, the socialist reorganization of society on the basis of the satisfaction of human needs, not private profit, become a conscious political direction for the masses of the population.