Find out about our flag, SARA
SARA flag flying in Melbourne, Australia, on International Capitalism Day
Why I've gotten involved
Let me share with you my understanding and personal perspective on Capitalism and on the worldwide Celebrate Capitalism™ campaign.
This is a personal viewpoint which I believe is consistent with the global campaign's Position Statement, the Bernstein Declaration. However, please do read the official position statement of the campaign in English or in Russian.
What is Capitalism?
Capitalism is a social system based on one of the fundamental legal principles - respect for individual rights.
Historic Development
The social system of capitalism was conceived in the depths of feudalism in the XIV century.
Capitalism owes its rise to the free cities that emerged between XIV-XVI centuries along the Mediterranean and Baltic Sea coasts following burghal (communal) revolutions. A stratum of burghers later to be dubbed bourgeoisie was the bearer of the new capitalist principles.
Bourgeoisie was made up of the best of what the old feudalism's three estates could offer and became the mainstay of the progress's new principles. Bourgeoisie aimed at establishing a civil society in the shape of a bourgeois state founded on the rights of ownership, private property, parliamentary form of governance, as well as on rearing a private person, free individual, citizen as a bourgeois society member. According to Geugel, a citizen is a bourgeois, a civil society member.
The first bourgeois revolution in the Netherlands of the late XVI century, the 1640-1649 revolution in England, the 1789-1794 revolution in France legally secured bourgeois power in society.
The spread of Capitalism
Capitalism in the United States, especially in its northern and western regions, started to develop in the XVIII century on a soil free of feudalism.
Capitalist development picked up pace in the USA in the wake of the 1775-1783 Independence War. In such European countries as Austria-Hungary, Russia and Japan bourgeois revolutions took place in the mid-XIX-XX centuries. Bourgeois revolutions were funded by all manner of property redistribution (nationalization of aristocracy-owned production means, property confiscation, etc.), sale of nationalized production means and confiscated property, direct and indirect taxes, domestic and foreign loans and their interest rates, donations from various strata of the population, new money printing, and high emission yields.
At the same time, classical studies on the philosophy of history and philosophy of law offer no research concerning which form of land ownership is the most productive and creates the greatest wealth. Wealth is never a production target. The question: what form of ownership provides the best citizens for the state, is most often researched. Therefore, all bourgeois revolutions resulted in dividing the populace into active citizens - property owners - and passive non-citizens, property-less and fighting parliament. As an aftermath of revolutions, suffrage always saw the introduction of a high property qualification.
Economic Principles
Later on, new economic principles that opened the doors wide for capitalization of bourgeois states and accumulation of property within a separate family came to be known as a free market economy. Free economy principles also include respect for private property, free competition, free trade, monetary circulation, economic freedom, profitable economic activity, limited governmental intervention in the economy, development of new technology, respect of individual rights, material and intellectual prosperity, free use of an individual's creative potential.
Modern Capitalism
The modern industrial world has developed three imperatives to ensure capitalist progress:
First, free capital flow (economic freedom).
Second, individual freedom. Protection of private ownership and private entrepreneurship. Opportunities to work rationally and productively.
Third, desire to use individual freedom as a means of personal development.
International Capitalism Day
Many people worldwide realize that by joining the Celebrate Capitalism™ Campaign they defend major capitalist principles, they defend their own human dignity, their happiness in the fold of their family that through succession reproduces their family capital.
International Capitalism Day should be celebrated the world over under slogans such as "Freedom to Trade". It spells tearing down artificial barriers to trade, including tariffs, quotas, subsidies and protectionist regulations.
Free trade frees people
It is fundamental to eliminating poverty, promoting development and achieving political and economic freedom.
Celebrate Capitalism™ Moscow advocates:
Elimination of all tariffs and quotas.
Elimination of production and export subsidies.
Elimination of protectionist, trade-linked environmental regulations.
Removal of other bureaucratic restrictions to trade.
Allowing entrepreneurs, traders and innovators the freedom to protect and exchange their property.
Planet Earth needs you as a participant!
Please support our principles!
These include:
- Freedom and abundance.
- Free trade and profit.
- Free competition and freedom of expression.
- New technology and man's creative potential.
- Respect of private ownership.
- Respect of individual rights.
- Rule of law.
- Human dignity and personal happiness!
Celebrate International Capitalism Day!
Write to our Moscow address about yourself, and the way you will celebrate Internatinal Capitalism Day in Moscow - or wherever you may be! We would enjoy your communication.
Worldwide rallies, concerts, debates, street parties, workshops, fun and festivities!
CLICK HERE NOW AND JOIN
Celebrate Capitalism™
ATLAS ECONOMIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION
The PRODOS Institute Inc. PO Box 2165, Richmond South VIC 3121, Australia.
Phone/Fax: + 613 9428 1234. Email: prodos@CapitalismWorldwide.ORG
Capitalism XXI Magazine™
Copyright © 2002-2004 The Hayek Foundation (Moscow). All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
http://www.hayek.ru
http://www.capitalismXX1.ru
http://www.CelebrateCapitalism.ORG/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CelebrateCapitalismMoscow/
E-mail: petuchov@rambler.ru
E-mail: hayek@hayek.ru
E-mail: capitalismXX1@capitalismXX1.ru
E-mail: Moscow@CapitalismWorldwide.ORG