Socialism was never given a fighting chance

IN your editorial (October 16) you plead for a new way to bring more justice and equality in the world. You state that various economic models have failed, including socialism, but I would argue socialism hasn’t been allowed to succeed.

Where it was attempted in isolation, for example in Allende’s Chile, among others, there were significant improvements in literacy, lowering of poverty levels and an increase in the participation in social governance.

However, these were anathema to the guardians of capitalism and so these progressive governments were all in turn replaced by US-sponsored dictatorships with generals trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia and economists trained by Milton Friedman at the Chicago School of Economics. The results were years of oppression with large-scale privatisation followed by mass unemployment and social breakdown.

The recent news of record profits at Goldman Sachs on the back of a bailout by US taxpayers encapulates the problem with the current economic system. Our politicians tell us we can’t let banks fail as the economy would collapse, but the truth is that what would really happen is that their gravytrain would derail.

Barry Walsh

Church Road

Blackrock

Cork