A CRITICAL OPINION: FREE MARKET CAPITALISM OR AUTHORITARIAN DRIFT WITHIN A SOCIALIST AGENDA

Abstract

Free Market Capitalism, it is argued must fulfill and be driven by four defining features, private ownership, competition, the profit motive and capital employing labour. Without the first condition, we could not distinguish between capitalist businesses and commercially structured state owned companies and a similar argument applies to the condition of profit, which includes consumer co – operatives and mutual corporations and farmer co – operatives. Even if the state intervenes in any economy, ownership and control is vested in capital rather than labour. To demonstrate this, we need only to look no further than South Africa, in respect of its state controlled, financed, and loss making public corporations such as Eskom, Denel, SAA and a host of others. Only recently the former Minister of State and Public Enterprtises, Barbra Hogan suggested that loss making South African public corporations, be privatized. The minister was seriously criticized and sanctioned by the Secretary General of the political party that appointed her to this powerful position (ANC). This interference by her political party, in democratic South Africa alludes to whether the political party in power overtly controls the state in order to consolidate its power, influence, and intervention strategies in consolidating its socialist agenda for South Africa. Contrary to the above scenario, in the United
Kingdom, this is illustrated by the recently privatized gas, wa