Below is an extract from a letter posted in the Guardian today. Pretty much as a good point about what we were discussing earlier on...

Socialism as a broad progressive ideal was the main intellectual and moral force behind most of the worldwide progressive legislation and social change we now take for granted, including, of course, our own welfare state. And could anyone examine Cuban history and not conclude that Castro's socialism has been better for its inhabitants than anything which has gone before?

The fact is that it is capitalism which does not work, except as the most wondrous conjuring trick in history. Its function is to create winners and losers in riotous confusion but always far more of the latter - they are sustained by the vision of a heaven on earth always just in the future. Therefore capitalism must always promise more tomorrow and even more the day after. And so capitalism is only sustained by an economic model of continuous and ever more frenetic growth, regardless of the end products and regardless of its effect on the planet. So to turn Kettle's thesis on its head - if we are to survive, we have to make some sustainable form of ecological fairness and greater equality work. Call it socialism or social justice as you will but we have to ditch consumer capitalism because, like a burning torch, it will always go out eventually.