Socialist Undertones in the Harry Potter series

[BeardofPants]

You should probably format that so it has paragraphs, otherwise nobody's going to bother reading it.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

You should probably format that so it has paragraphs, otherwise nobody's going to bother reading it.

Agreed- though I did read it.

While JK Rowling is certainly a leftist- after all she did give a million pounds to the Labour Party last election- i'm not so sure that many of the examples you cited are specifically capitalism vs socialism.

Take the Mallefoys for example- with their insistence on blood purity and noble inheritance they would seem to be more feudalist i.e. pre-capitalist.

After all the capitalist ideal is not someone who owes their privilege to their forefathers but the 'self-made man'- someone who creates something new and makes a fortune off of it.

Again with the house-elves. While some capitalist societies have thrived on slave labor- notably the pre-Civil War South- most capitalist theories insist on a free market in labor as well as capital.

As for racism and pure-blood doctrines, again this is inimical to most capitalists- in fact the earliest theorists like Adam Smith celebrated capitalism for its internationalism and the fact that it took no notice of anyone's race, creed or nationality.

A lot of the stuff you mention is broadly correct on general "left vs right" scale, but could be just as acceptable to liberal supporters of capitalism or mixed economies as socialists- and indeed to many libertarian inclined conservatives as well.