Madam, - Paul Sweeney, in an article entitled "Failure of the free market an opportunity for a new approach" (October 31st), makes the following observation: "It is not the end of capitalism but of the Anglo-American model. It may be the end of Western economic domination. It is the end of the myth of 'Private sector good. Public bad'. It is the beginning of a new world economic order."
Mr Sweeney may well be correct in arguing that the current crisis in capitalism may not herald its end as a social and political phenomenon or indeed as a distinct mode of production whether in its neo-liberal or neo-Keynesian form.
However, the problem with his analysis is that, like President Sarkozy of France, he seems to be suggesting that we return to Keynes or what the French President recently called "democratic capitalism", whatever that means.
While such a model would be much preferable for working people to the anarchy of neo-liberalism, its central theoretical problem is that it has been tried before in the post-war period up to the 1970s when it ran into difficulties and led to the re-emergence of neo-liberalism. The truth is that the Keynesian variety has had its day.
The simple reality is that capitalism as a mode of production is terminally ill. We are passive bystanders around its death bed. As Keynes himself said, "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the good of everybody".
Mr Sweeney should heed Keynes's words and as a servant of the trade union movement he should be arguing for a more enlightened economic order that values people before profit rather than attempting to revive a discredited and redundant economic and political ideology. - Yours, etc
SEAN and ROISIN WHELAN,
Ormond Keep,
Nenagh,
Co Tipperary.