Is another "ism", like Communism and socialism, facing the axe?

A rabbi once said that all "isms" were false. But the English suffix "ism" can be attached anywhere, as in the word "Judaism".

What is wrong is an adherence to anything which impedes one's moral perspective and capitalism is perfectly capable of doing that.

In these Days of Awe, when on a personal level we all take stock of our actions, the world needs to stop and ask itself whether capitalism and its inherent self-serving greed is all it's cracked up to be.

And politicians from all shades of the political spectrum across the world are suddenly being woken up into bringing morality rather than mere expediency into the economic equation.

In fact, in the run-up to the American election "greed" is the new buzz of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama as they outdo each other in blaming the "culture of greed" for the present economic ills.

But once upon a time, citizens in the goldena medina considered "greed" a virtue and not a vice, as Gordon Gekko says in Wall Street, the film about the idolisation of an unscrupulous stock market trader: "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."

And didn't we Brits buy into the "greed culture" when we fell for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's notorious quote: "There is no such thing as society"?

Since then the Labour Party, which once was motivated mainly by ethical ideals, has had to dress itself in more selfish clothes in order to get back into power.

Now, at this week's Tory Conference in Birmingham, we have seen Conservative leader David Cameron trying to preach the morals of responsibility to a Labour government.

And last week, right-wing French president Nicolas Sarkozy, on receiving the Elie Wiesel Foundation's Humanitarian Award, urged instilling morals into capitalism.

Are these latter-day politicians merely posturing and mouthing moral soundbites in order to gain votes and popularity?

Is it too little too late or do they have what it takes to make real moral headway?

I must admit that my first thoughts on seeing America's twin towers come tumbling down in 2001 were that we were witnessing the demise of capitalism.

Then I realised that there were people inside those mighty office blocks and my anger turned against those dastardly terrorists who had dared to commit such an outrageous deed.

My sympathy then went totally to the American victims and my anger fumed at all those around the world who hate the United States in her fight for freedom and democracy. But as with we individuals on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, no one is totally lily-white and no nation is free from faults. And so, too, with all the concepts which seem sacred to us in our modern world.

Freedom is obviously preferable to slavery. But it, too, has its problems as in our own country where it can often be translated into absolute licence for kids to waste their lives on booze, drugs and violence.

And look what happened to democracy in Gaza whose people voted in the murderous Hamas. And now to capitalism. Just because its now defunct enemy Communism proved, outside kibbutzim, to be corrupt and violent does not make capitalism saintly.

There is something inherently immoral in the selfish pursuit of money purely for its own sake, with little regard for those less successful and fortunate than oneself.

The golden calf of the 21st century is just as much a false god as it was immediately after the giving of the Ten Commandments thousands of years ago.

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