3 - The blind men and the elephant: an essay on isms

Summary

A certain Prince commanded several blind men to examine an elephant and to describe to him what the elephant was like. Each blind man examined one part of the elephant's body and reported accordingly. And the blind men fell into quarreling among themselves, each insisting that only he was right.

– an old Indian tale

The comparison between capitalism and socialism presented in this essay was made by one blind man.

Introduction

According to an old custom, sanctified by Marx, an essay on isms should deal with the struggles between two classes: in our time, between the capitalists who own the means of production and the workers who do not. I intend to violate this custom for two reasons: first, I do not regard the question of ownership, by itself, to be so critical; second, it has been discussed and debated to the point of boredom. Instead, I propose to divide the populace into producers and consumers and to inquire how each group fares under capitalism of the American type and under socialism of the Soviet variety, at least as it still existed in the middle 1980s. This does not imply that the people suffer from split personalities, but only that each person performs several roles and has different interests.