Bringing About Change

This interview by Martin Wolf (from the Financial Times) got me thinking. He was talking about how, though capitalism has its problems, we can’t seem to find alternatives. And the irritation with capitalism isn’t a recent phenomenon:

“The wild enthusiasm for the idea, ‘if only we get rid of capitalism, everything will be fine’—which was a dominant idea of progressives in the 19th century—has, in my view, been tried and tested to destruction in the 20th. So we can’t go there.”

(If you didn’t get it, he is referring to communism).

 

Of course, that doesn’t mean one just has to live with capitalism the way it is. One can (and should), he says, tweak and improve it. But make changes slowly, he warns. Why slowly?

“We have had a lot of experience with truly revolutionary changes in the last couple of centuries, and they have all, without exception, ended in disaster.”

Note that Wolf’s point is on the speed of the change in case of revolutions, not the violence. But is it necessary that rapid change will always be disastrous? Almost certainly, yes, is Wolf’s opinion. And why does he feel that way?

“First, people are really, really attached to the familiar ways of living and doing. Second, because of that, if you want to change everything, you have to kill a lot of people because they won’t go along with your plans.”

 

Therefore, he says, if you want change in a society, in a nation, remember this:

“Changes have to be incremental, on top of what you have. Human efforts to transform society from top to bottom overnight are impossible and destructive.”

 

He’s almost certainly right, I feel, but who has the patience for that?