Time for Marx

The inauguration of Barrack Obama was Time magazine's choice for cover story for their Feb. 2 issue around the world - everywhere that is except in Europe. Who replaced Obama in Europe? Why, none other than 19th century political and economic theorist Karl Marx.

Ol’ Karl was the subject of Time Europe’s cover story, “Is it time to rethink Marxism?”

It’s frankly another sign that American-style Capitalism is in real trouble around the world. Our cable news channels - Fox and CNBC primarily, but the others to a lesser degree as well - have reported on comments slamming the Capitalist system made by national leaders like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Vladimir Putin of Russia, painting them as a sort of sour grapes over the dominance of the American economic model in world affairs (and also ignoring the fact that Russia left socialism behind years ago, but we'll let that pass for now).

What they haven't reported on though have been the similar comments coming from our allies. Britain's Gordon Brown became the latest to speak of the need for a new “moral Capitalism” last week, joining the leaders of France and Germany in calling for a fundamental restructuring of the world's economic system. (You can read about Sarkozy and Merkel's earlier call, here).

Basically their idea of moral Capitalism is a system heavy on international regulation that takes into consideration the needs of the developing world in policy decisions - a vast departure from the laissez-faire, bare knuckles style of Capitalism promoted by the United States these past few decades.

Sarkozy and Merkel (and now apparently Brown as well) have argued that the version of the Capitalist system championed by the United States has let the world down, because it put earning a quick profit, by any means necessary, for a select minority over steady, sustainable growth that benefited a large swath of society. The tipping point has been the meltdown of the subprime loan market, which has led to economic crises across Europe, and has brought some countries, like Iceland, to bankruptcy. The subprime market, they argue, never would have developed to the gargantuan size that it did if there had been effective oversight of the system.

The $50-billion ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff and the obscenely large compensation packages paid out to executives in the banking industry, while their financial empires collapsed around them, haven’t helped endear Wall Street-style Capitalism to the rest of the world either. In recent speeches, Brown also took aim at the epic compensation packages offered to top executives, saying they were another aspect of the system that needed to be changed.

The upcoming meeting of the G20 industrial and developing nations in early April will likely be the coming out party for Europe's idea of moral Capitalism, it will also be a real test of Pres. Obama's ability to justify why America should continue to be considered the leader of the world economy.