‘This House Believes That Capitalism Has Failed’

The opposers of the motion are two well-known capitalist apologists:

We know these people and their views since we've debated against both the Adam Smith Institute and the Freedom Association. The other proposer is a member of Momentum and the Labour Party.

Seems like the wrong question though. The purpose of capitalism is to reproduce and enlarge capital, and it seems to be doing that quite well. Stil I wonder if anyone did change their mind either way due to the debate, probably not I think these kind of changes happen much more slowly.

Hi AdamA very interesting night was had. Visitors were restricted, so only two attendees were there who were not part of the Durham University Union, myself and a friend. There were supposed to be three speakers from each side of the motion, the motion being that capitalism has failed. The three speakers who were to independently put forward their case that Capitalism had failed were supposed to be Harry Cross (labout Momentum) Yunus Bakhsh (from the SWP), and Clifford Slapper, representing the SPGB. Unfortunately Yunus, the erstwhile leader of the vanguard of the revolutionary working class got lost and couldn't find the building, good job it wasn't him that was sent out to find Winter Palace in 1917 As a result Clifford had the opportunity to speak twice.Opposing the motion there was a Madsen Pirie from the Adam Smith Institute, Rory Broomfield from the Freedom Association and a student member of the Liberal Society, whose name I forget.There were about 200 attendees.The speaker from the Labour Party put forward a fairly sound analysis of some of the failures of capitalism, followed by a predictible recipe of Bennite solutions to the issues, state control of industry, price control, higher regulation etc. The speakers against the motion (pro capitalism), trotted out the usual descriptions of what their fantasy of capitalism is, including a quite bizarre contribution from Madsen Pirie about the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, which he somehow imagined had some bearing on the progressiveness of capitailsm, along with a decription of how capitaism was an improvement on feudalism, therefore we should all be gratetful that we weren't living in medieval hovels. He put forward the idea that in capitailism inequality took the form of the rich having Rolls Royces and the poor having Fords, The rich having Caviar, the poor having Cod roe. He somehow had overlooked the 1 million people in the UK who have the choice between food from a food bank or starvation. There was an extraordinary claim from Rory Broomfield that because all of us own some form of private property therefore we all are capitalists (I didn't know that having a pair of trousers and an Auf Wiedersen Box set somehow put me on a par with Bill Gates) and that in capitalism we all have choices about what whisky we drink and where we drink it and that therefore capitalism was a good thing.Clifford Slapper spoke twice, summing up the case against capitaism very adroitly, putting forward the party case and contrasting it with the approaches of both the pro capitalist and the pro state capitalist arguments. His contributions drew solid applause from sections of what appeared to be a rather affluent group of post graduates.There was a brief question and answer session and then a vote was taken by filling through either of the exit doors to signify the voting choice. There was a rather comical moment toward the end of this process where Madsen Pirie had to be redirected as he was about to walk through the door for those those voting that Capitalism had failed, for someone who has supposedly had as much influence on government, I've got to say, he didn't strike me as the sharpest cookie I've ever encountered.The final vote was 105-93 for the motion, which I gather came as a bit of a surprise all round.  There was a chance to have a drink afterwards and several students were interested in the Party case, one or two knew of us and one in particular seemed to have a fairly strong understanding of our history and background.I managed to speak to Harry Cross and he seemed very keen to have further debate with the Party. I have provisionally arranged to set up a debate with him on the topic, "should Sociailists Support the Labour Party", sometime in March.

My use of the work unfortunately was meant to be ironic. I agree that Yunus' absence was a boon for us, I was however looking forward to Yunus and Clifford crossing swords again, it must be close on 28 years since they were last going hammer and tongs at each other at the Monument in Newcastle duing our weekly paper sales.