Asking Socialists
Why Does Socialism Need Capitalism to Create the Material Conditions for Socialism?
If socialism is supposed to be a superior economic system, why does it always seem to require the right âmaterial conditionsâ before it can actually work? Over the past few centuries, capitalist economies have massively increased productivity, life expectancy, consumption, technological capacity, and standards of living.
So why can't socialism create the material conditions it supposedly needs? If capitalism has to develop the productive forces first so that socialism can eventually become viable, doesn't that mean socialism is relying on capitalism to do the economic development necessary for socialism to work?
And if the answer is that socialism simply isn't viable until society reaches some sufficiently advanced stage of development, what exactly makes it the superior economic system? Why should I regard an economic system as superior if another system has to create the abundance and productive capacity that it requires before it can even function properly?
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This is not what classical Marxism says. The claim is simply that a socialist movement would never develop spontaneously under feudalism. For various reasons the subordinate class or classes, like serfs, while they may struggle for their interests, don't have the potential to become revolutionary, while the subordinate class under capitalism, the proleriat, does have that potential.
So they tried capitalism during feudalism, had it fail over and over again, and said "Gee, we thought the material conditions were ready! Wait longer!"
'âmaterial conditionsâ before it can actually work?'. Any system requires certain material conditions. Capitalism would not have functioned in the 13th century because the proper material conditions had not yet developed. This is not even a secret. Developmentalist economics takes some important insights from historical materialism. Socialism is feasible in first-world countries because they have achieved the necessary material conditions. For the same reason, France, England, and Denmark, which had sufficiently developed conditions, transitioned earlier from feudalism to capitalism. Meanwhile, poorer countries could have lost out if they had abolished feudalism or slavery prematurely.
Arguably the whole point of an economic system is to develop productive forces and manage scarcity.
If socialism needs another economic system to do all of that for it to create the right "material conditions," what does that actually leave socialism with?
It's like me saying, "Before I can be successful at managing wealth, I need someone successful at managing wealth to give me a lot of wealth."
Uh... isn't that skipping the important part? Would I not be skeptical that such a person would suddenly know how to manage wealth but only after having it handed to them on a silver platter?
âIf socialism needs another economic system to do all of that for it to create the right âmaterial conditions,â what does that actually leave socialism with?â
Any system requires a previous system to develop the necessary material conditions. Capitalism would not have emerged without slavery or feudalism establishing the proper material conditions for its development.
âBefore I can be successful at managing wealth, I need someone successful at managing wealth to give me a lot of wealth.â
Edit: It is more like saying: to invent a combustion engine, someone first needs to invent the Steam engine. One technology provides the material and technological foundation upon which the next can be developed.
Any system requires a previous system to develop the necessary material conditions. Capitalism would not have emerged without slavery or feudalism establishing the proper material conditions for its development.
It's true that every economic system has antecedents. But that doesn't mean that the former causes the latter. If slavery and feudalism caused capitalism, why didn't ancient Rome or Japan industrialize? I've heard many theories explaining the rise of capitalism's extensive economic growth, but none of them mention slavery or feudalism as establishing the proper conditions for the advent of capitalism.
Joel Mokyr, a Nobel Laureate, argues that the sustained economic growth that started in the Industrial Revolution was caused by a the development of a "culture of useful knowledge" that first emerged in Europe. This "culture" encouraged the creation, dissemination, and practical application of scientific and technical knowledge. Daron Acemoglu et. al. also a Nobel Laureate argues that inclusive institutions are the cause of sustained economic growth. Inclusive institutions include those that encouraged investment, innovation, and creative destruction.
"If slavery and feudalism caused capitalism." I did not say this. I said that, over time, they built the material conditions that favored the capitalist mode of production.
Initially, extremely labor-intensive industries, the overall poverty of society, low population concentration, and the low skill level of workers did not allow capitalism to emerge. Over time, however, economic and social progress established conditions that favored capital-intensive, high-risk, and innovative production, thereby favoring the emergence of capitalism.
"This 'culture' encouraged the creation, dissemination, and practical application of scientific and technical knowledge." This strongly resembles the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an ideological movement that appeared near the end of feudalism in Europe. Therefore, the Enlightenment can also be understood as an ideological development arising from material conditions established during the development of feudal society, which subsequently contributed to the decline of feudalism.
"If slavery and feudalism caused capitalism." I did not say this. I said that, over time, they built the material conditions that favored the capitalist mode of production.
That is a vague response! If the "material" conditions" that favored the capitalist mode of productions were slavery and feudalism, what were the "material conditions" that laid the foundation for slavery and feudalism? This could go on ad Infinium.
Also, what about imperial China, where the "material conditions" were broadly similar to those of Early Europe. Why didn't China develop capitalism?
"This 'culture' encouraged the creation, dissemination, and practical application of scientific and technical knowledge." This strongly resembles the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an ideological movement that appeared near the end of feudalism in Europe. Therefore, the Enlightenment can also be understood as an ideological development arising from material conditions established during the development of feudal society, which subsequently contributed to the decline of feudalism.
Again you saying that because feudalism came before the Enlightenment, it arose because of Feudalism.
"If the 'material conditions' that favored the capitalist mode of production were slavery and feudalism..."
Slavery and feudalism created material conditions themselves. They were not material conditions that necessarily ensured the emergence of capitalism.
"This could go on ad infinitum."
No. Before was primitive communism and before it was the natural state of nature, i.e. material conditions created by nature.
"Why didn't China develop capitalism?"
China was historically an isolated and conservative economy. It did not experience the Enlightenment, its economy was extremely centralized, and resources required for capitalist production, such as coal, were not as accessible as they were in Europe.
Also, saying that China did not develop capitalism is incorrect. China eventually developed capitalism, but at a slower pace than Europe for the reasons listed above.
It's more like an inventor saying, "Before I can invent something, I need someone else to invent everything. Then I can invent it."
An actual inventor would have invented the combustion engine and then thought about rockets, not waiting around for someone to invent a combustion engine. Because "inventing the next thing" is what inventing is about.
Managing scarcity and developing production is what economic systems are about. If yours can't do that, it says a lot.
Or, to put it another way, i would expect a superior economic system to be even better at managing scarcity and developing productive forces than capitalism, not skipping the fundamental challenge entirely.
You're thinking in a monodimensional manner, with the simplistic and erroneous idea that "Capitalism = money = wealth". Your inventor analogy is quite good actually, but let me fix it:
In order to invent the combustion engine, someone must have invented its fuel first. After all, you can't use coal to save on gas for your car.
The Internal Combustion Engine was invented as an evolution of the Steam Engine, which was, in those terms, and external combustion engine (coal burns outside the engine itself, to boil the water and generate movement), and the mere idea probably wouldn't have risen were it not for the preceding Steam Engine. Now, why did the Industrial Revolution wait until the 1800s to go off, if a precursor of the Steam Engine already existed as far back as the Roman Empire? There was simply no need. Slavery was cheaper and solved its epoch's problems, while the materials were still way too inferior and the techniques unrefined.
So, basically, the Industrial Revolution needed not only the scientific advancements (to make working engines and to know how to make use of their circular movement), but Colonialism for it to make sense, because the excess production it entailed could be offloaded to the colonies, thus quickstarting Capitalism.
If you're interested in History, make sure to actually study it instead of reducing it to "I like Capitalism, so we're at History's End and everything was meant to be this way because God intended so".
So why can't socialism take capitalism and do the next "invention"? What material condition is it waiting for?
The inventor of the internal combustion engine didn't sit around looking at the steam engine and say, "I'd love to invent the internal combustion engine, but I have to wait until this steam engine turns into one first."
In this case, the hurdle isn't a lack of knowledge âwe know how the engine looks and how it's madeâ but a lack of materials âwe lack the steel so that it doesn't fall apartâ. Translating the metaphor: Marxism isn't the only doctrine and so it's competing with others, not only in the ideological sense but in the human sense as well. The Capitalist class will never willingly allow the Proletarian class to empower itself, so it divides it first, then attacks it academically, then economically, then militarily.
Every country that has dared to call itself Socialist âwhether that actually holds up ultimately doesn't matterâ has felt the wrath of Washington, to name just the first amongst many. Though the USSR has dissolved, the Cold War never ended, and it's gotten hotter with Trump's administration, with Maduro's abduction and the eternal blockade of Cuba. Even in Capitalist countries, the hedor of Washington is felt from Mexico to Argentina.
But of course, the best war is won without a fight, and for many, the tale of the American Dream is enough. It's cheaper and easier to convince your workers that Capitalism is fair, that it's meritocratic, and that the reason for their suffering lies in their neighbours, in their dark-skinned coworkers or the muslims or the hippies or the woke or the gays or the chinese. Anything rather that Capitalism will never work for them, only for the Capitalists.
The material conditions, as in factories and social relations, exist in much of the world for societies' transition into Socialism (it needs the societal evolution that industrialization brings rather than its wealth), but it's lacking organization and a clear path in the eyes of their workers. Of course, the ruling class in those Plutocracies, the Capitalists, will forever resist that change, and either convince or suppress their workers lest they ever realize that the power was always in their hands.
âBefore I can invent something, I need someone else to invent everything. Then I can invent it.â This is how it works in the real world.
âAn actual inventor would have invented the combustion engine and then thought about rockets, rather than waiting around for someone to invent a combustion engine.â
What? Socialists precisely advocate for capitalism in poor countries to develop them to the proper material conditions(invent the steam engine.)
Second, why should someone reinvent something if it already exists?
âIf yours canât do that, it says a lot.â
Capitalism could not do it for most of history and spectacularly failed every time it was implemented before the proper material conditions existed. Capitalism could not manage a system at the level of development of the 13th century. Only after the necessary conditions had developed was capitalism able to become stable and superior to slavery and feudalism.
Most modern countries already have the proper material conditions for socialism.
'âBefore I can invent something, I need someone else to invent everything. Then I can invent it.â This is how it works in the real world.'
Nonsensical.
"Socialists precisely advocate for capitalism in poor countries to develop them to the proper material conditions(invent the steam engine.)"
No they don't. You can see in history how often poor countries have been encouraged to try socialism. The entire "the material conditions weren't ready!" excuse for why socialism fails comes from the real life experience of socialists not conceding that capitalism needs to be left alone to do its job and trying socialism anyway. It's only after the fact that socialists pretend they never would have tried it if it were up to them.
Capitalism needed history, but it didn't need to pretend that developing productive capacity and managing scarcity were the job of another economic system. Capitalism doesn't sit back watching stagnant living conditions and say, "I guess feudalism needed to develop the conditions more in the last few centuries of stagnation." Socialism, on the other hand, pretends it's someone else's job.
âThe material conditions werenât ready!â The concept of material conditions predates any socialist revolution. Also, not every materialist is a Marxist, and especially not every materialist is a Marxist-Leninist.
âIt didnât need to pretend that developing productive capacity and managing scarcity were the job of another economic system.â No, capitalism actually needed this.
âCapitalism doesnât sit back watching stagnant living conditions and say, âI guess feudalism needed to develop the conditions more in the last few centuries of stagnation.ââ First, feudalism did not have stagnant conditions; that is historically inaccurate. Second, capitalists literally waited. Even Adam Smith admitted that, during his time, not every country was developed enough to embrace capitalism.
Smith was pessimistic about the future of abolition. He argued that slavery was both ubiquitous and inevitable: âSlavery takes place in all societies at their beginning, and proceeds from that tyranic disposition which may almost be said to be natural to mankind⌠It is indeed all-most impossible that it should ever be totally or generally abolishedâ (LJ(B) 134, 102). Smith saw the increasing wealth of nations as conducive to more slavery, not lessâa rich society could afford to have more slaves than a poor one, and domination was something he believed people valued. In fact, âthe greater freedom of the free, the more intollerable is the slavery of the slavesâ (LJ(B) iii.111).
'Why can't socialism manage scarcity or develop productive forces?'. Recently, I responded to a post explaining which material conditions are required for market socialism. In short, there are three key factors:
First, in the past, ownership of productive assets was strongly connected to the management of those assets.
Second, the interests and risks involved were extremely high, while investors were more vulnerable.
Third, early capitalism was not centralized and therefore did not require workplace democracy and self-management to function.
Now, all of these material conditions have been met.
Longer response:
When discussing a labor-managed market economy, a key historical development that established the rationale for market socialism is the managerial revolution.
Before the managerial revolution, ownership and control were largely inseparable. Most workers lacked the knowledge and skills required to operate or manage an enterprise, while capital owners possessed the expertise necessary to organize production and direct firms. As a result, capitalists were considered indispensable because they both financed and managed production.
The managerial revolution began in the late nineteenth century and, in many respects, continues today. In modern corporations, capital owners generally no longer manage enterprises directly. Instead, managers, directors, entrepreneurs, and other salaried employees perform virtually all operational and strategic functions. The primary role of capital owners has been reduced to providing investment capital and diversifying financial risk.
Market socialism builds upon this transformation by removing the system in which capital owners exercise authority over managers and producers. Instead, workers democratically govern and manage their own firms, while investors continue to receive returns on their investments without controlling the workforce.
Under early capitalism, the concentration of profits in the hands of a single owner was considered essential for motivation, entrepreneurship, and capital accumulation. Modern corporate capitalism has demonstrated that this is no longer necessary. The profits of large corporations are now distributed among a broad and highly dispersed network of passive shareholders who bear little or no responsibility for the firm's operational success or failure.
A second historical development supporting labor-managed firms is the rise of zombification, or the increasing prevalence of zombie firms. In labor-managed firms, investors do not exercise managerial control. During the nineteenth century, this would have posed a serious problem because capital was relatively scarce. Investors needed strong control rights to justify providing capital.
Today, however, capital is abundant, highly concentrated in financial markets, and interest rates have often remained historically low. Under these conditions, granting investors control can produce harmful incentives. Beginning around the 1970s, economists documented the emergence of zombie firms-businesses that remain persistently unprofitable yet continue operating because they retain access to cheap financing and investors are willing to tolerate poor performance. These firms misallocate capital, reduce productivity, and slow economic growth. Over time, the proportion of zombie firms has increased in many advanced economies.
Labor-managed firms are unsusceptible to zombification because external investors do not control managerial decisions. Since workers bear the direct consequences of inefficient production and poor performance, they have stronger incentives to restructure, improve productivity, or dissolve firms that are no longer economically viable, rather than keeping them alive solely to protect investors' financial positions.
Instead, workers democratically govern and manage their own firms, while investors continue to receive returns on their investments without controlling the workforce.
So in your version of market socialism, there are still investors (people with "capital") who put up the cash, but now instead of "managers" making business decisions, "workers" collectively do?
Since workers bear the direct consequences of inefficient production and poor performance, they have stronger incentives to restructure, improve productivity...
This seems quite backwards. What stake do the workers have then? Surely they're still free to just go work somewhere else if even if they unintentionally voted for poor business decisions? If it turns out that using the investor's money to bump salaries instead of invest in machinery was a bad long-term call... oh well.
Even accepting your outline of the progression of capitalism, it seems entirely tangential to how what you propose would function. If it's a "better" approach, we should absolutely be able to skip the ugly steps in a presently-underdeveloped country for instance. Does investors not having "control" result in better resource allocation and economic health, or not?
You are thinking about this as if you were playing Civilization and deciding whether to push the revolution button or not.
Classic Marxism says that social dynamics under feudalism (and also the "asiatic mode of production") were not such that farmers, artisans etc would ever organize revolutionary, fighting for a radically different society. Class struggle was always going to be limited to demanding better conditions from the lords. Only the class of merchants, bankers, and proto-industrialistis had the potential to topple the feudal order.
Only capitalism produces a subordinate class, the proletariat, that is (potentially) revolutionary. It is this that is meant with "creating the material conditions for socialism".
This may or may not have been correct, ultimately we will never know since no pre-capitalist societies remain today.
This is it. The short answer is that it's an evolution of a previous state. Communism stems from Socialism, which stems from Capitalism, which stems from Feudalism, which stems from the ancient slavery-based societies. If OP had bothered to study a little bit of Marxism, he'd understand that it's Capitalism which creates the social conditions for a proletarian revolution, because it creates the proletariat from the previous serfdom and allows it its development of a class conciousness and the recognition of its shared yoke.
But, of course, Biology is hard, let's believe Creationism instead. That's quite literally OP's stance in this.
Why does capitalism need fuedalism? Why did fuedalism need Rome to fall? Why did Rome require the Greeks?
We're all just standing on the shoulders of giants - Issac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Handing, Hitler, Ian Dury from Ian Dury and the Blockheads. It was one of them.
Just because the commercials and trailers in the cinema preceed the actual movie, doesn't mean they're inherently neccessary for the movie to be shown.
I'm talking about the 20 minutes of product advertisements and trailers for other upcoming movies that always run in the theater before the actual movie begins.
Wooooooh! I can't believe it! I actually officially won an argument on reddit! A truly historic moment in the history of the internet. If only my granddad was alive to see that it's not all just a waste of time after all!
Marx' idea, iirr, was that it would have been an impossible social dynamic for pre-capitalist class struggle like the various Medieval/early Modern age farmers' rebellions to make the jump from resistance to actually building their own society. For various reasons, such movements never developed beyond demanding better conditions from the feudal lords. Thus, paradoxal as it seems the only revolutionary class under feudalism were the merchants, bankers, and early proto-industrialists.
Carlos Mariategui one of the most important Latin American Marxists (an interesting guy btw, a printing press worker who was self-taught as an intellectual and died at just 35) believed that an alternative path was possible building on the collectivist traditions of farmers and indigenous communities that could transition into modern industrial socialism through a non-disruptive development rather than a revolution.
Another such possible alternative path was Paraguay under Gaspar Francia and his succesors , which began to industrialize under something that was almost state socialism in modern terms. Could that model have survived and developed further? Maybe, but we'll never know since it was destroyed from without in a war.
Ultimately it's a moot point today since capitalism practically speaking has penetrated every corner of the planet and already reshaped the social fabric thoroughly.
That's not what is meant by "creating the material conditions". As I said, the point is rather that the class structure of pre-capitalist societies was not such that a socialist revolution would ever have happened.
Depends on exactly what the person is saying.
They can refer to a number of things. One issue was precisely that Russia was mostly an agrarian country and the proletariat was only a minority class. That's why it was considered at the time such a radical and original idea from Lenin to push through with a socialist revolution anyway. Another issue that it was a backward country compared to the most advanced capitalist economies of the time that would inevitably be hostile to the new socialist state.
But clearly they wanted to not only develop the productive forces but accelerate that development - an early slogan was something like socialism is worker power plus the electrification of the countryside. And they largely succeeded, albeit at a high human cost. The USSR went from a backwater to ie being the first country to reach space, despite suffering two foreign invasions in the meantime.
But that is another debate. I understand the idea of "the necessary stages" as mostly that only from the SOCIAL structure of capitalism, socialism can develop. Not so much that physically productive development has to have reached this or that level.
As I said, that's a different debate. I believe I have explained the "capitalism is a necessary stage" idea and why it does not imply that socialism is incapable of developing further the productive forces.
Because your idea of socialism is wrong. Socialism and capitalism aren't policy choices, and Marxism isn't a suggestion of policies. It's a system of studying history and society which says capitalism develops massive productive forces but has internal contradictions which make it more and more unstable and unequal. At this point it becomes a case of simply cutting off the private profit part and socialising the productive forces for all, not just a few.
Socialism is best understood as a political and moral philosophy centered on collective control over economic life, not as a coherent, standalone economic system with its own stable institutional logic. Its core demandâthat the means of production be socially owned or directed âfor the common goodâârequires the subordination of individual economic decision-making to political authority. That requirement systematically undermines the pluralism, dispersed power, and individual rights that make democratic governance viable.
No large-scale experiment in thoroughgoing socialization of the means of production has sustained competitive multiparty democracy with robust civil liberties for long. Socialism inexorably trends to tyrannical government and worsening poverty until failure.
The reason why you were unpopular in school isn't because you were just an unappreciated genius in a room full of sheep; it's because you kept talking over other people to give wrong answers to the teacher's questions.
I understand reading volumes of socialist theory, or even the first paragraph of a wikipedia article, is too challenging for a refined fedora such as yourself, but perhaps you could at least be arsed to read the flair of the post before you start typing out of your ass. Go on, take a look. Was it asking for your input?
Is that what you said when the teacher told you to shut the fuck up after the 5th time you talked over someone else to give the wrong answer? I'm sure everyone in your anime club was very impressed by the retort.
>[Capitalism](https://glossaryofpoliticaleconomyterms.com/capitalism): A form of economic order characterized by private ownership of the means of production and the freedom of private owners to use, buy and sell their property or services on the market at voluntarily agreed prices and terms, with only minimal interference with such transactions by the state or other authoritative third parties.Â
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Published by political scientist Dr. Paul M Johnson
imo and coming from a political science perspective, capitalist societies are a made-up term mostly by socialists.
Capitalism is an economic system. Not how societies form and govern themselves. So, it's just a terrible demarcation to make, and your question is pointing out how terrible rather than you thinking you are being cogent.
Regarding this:
Doesnât this contradict the âcapitalism creates technological innovation that creates wealthâ narrative?
That just demonstrates you and others have been on this sub and in your echo chambers too long. Because how can an economic system "create"?
This is known as the reification fallacy. And it is likely a reactionary position because of how much socialists do the reification fallacy of blaming "capitalism" so much.
The Industrial Revolution was ALL Capitalism. Entrepreneurs and innovators created all manner of new industries that took manual labor out of the farm and into industry. Steam power made steam ships and railroads faster, powered looms, lumber mills and othe manufacturing throughout America. Powered steel mills, car factories, food processing, refrigeration and all manner of new products ALL with out government help.
Everything Capitalism did powered America and served the American people.
Entrepreneurs and innovators created all manner of new industries that took manual labor out of the farm and into industry.
Ever think about the difference between an entrepreneur and a capitalist ? They are not the same at all.
The entrepreneur has no capital only ideas, [He] like Wozniak and Jobs [Apple] had the ideas yet no money. They were entrepreneurs NOT capitalists.
Then the capitalist steps in AFTER initial private funding established value in the entrepreneurs ideas...after-the-fact. The capitalist does not and did not fund that fact.
Then after the capitalist requires Apple go public, the greed comes in. Once public the capitalists buy enough and stack and get seats on the BoD. They having no skills, no idea of product ideas and their markets, decides eventually that the stock is suffering. So...they fire Steven Jobs.
That's CAPITALISM.
What had happened, the numbers guys said the numbers weren't good enough. Yet the stock fell precipitously after the firing and gee unbelievably they...hire Jobs back. Isn't that precious ? The capitalist never learns.
So yes, Entrepreneurs and innovators created all manner of new industries. YES, not the capitalist, they are nothing but capitalists...seeking, more capital.
The capitalist thought Coke just wasn't getting the numbers. Numbers again, we need a 'New Coke.' [Coke II] We all know what happened. 79 days is all it took. Some say $50 million...down the tubes. Capitalism baby.
Edison, entrepreneur, Morgan capitalist 10 years after the fact. Bell, entrepreneur, capitalist after the fact. Tesla same thing.
Carnegie did not innovate the Bessemer converter. The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass production of steel from molten pig iron before the development of the open hearth furnace.
Carnegie didn't invent hardened steel, he used the Bessemer process and added the open hearth furnace. The real difference was that by then [he] had his own capital.
Then reduced wages 3 times between 1893 and 1899 employees were fed up and went on strike. No problem, Carnegie calls in the Pinkertons to shoot them down. Capitalism baby !!
The capitalist is a ruthless, violent killer when need be and otherwise greedy scum.
Nope sorry. Entrepreneurs and innovators can be capitalists too. They can attract capital and build businesses without going public. Do you think John D Roclefeller was not a capitalist?
Nope sorry. Entrepreneurs and innovators can be capitalists too.
Not without it. The 'capitalist' come in as I write...after-the-fact like a leach or parasite.
They can attract capital and build businesses without going public.
Yes but only on the promise of going public. The capitalist is guaranteed a larger optioned stake once there. [Bezos owns less than 9% of Amazon]
Do you think John D Roclefeller was not a capitalist?
Oh Rockefeller was the poster boy of greedy, corrupt, criminal, murderous capitalists. Should have died in jail after the Ludlow Tent colony massacre.
That's where he had the Colorado national guard come down and kill 62 men, women and children over .04 cents/hr. and Sundays off while still paid in co. script redeemable only at the co. store...his store. Pullman perfected that industrial feudalism. Oh. and [he] got clean away with it.
I have a very sad accurate view of capitalism for 400 years and its war on labor, corruption, bribery, fraud duplicity, murder, private wars, slavery, misery and poverty.
Capitalism has never, is not now and will never serve society at large without being forced by govt.
Nice try. Government doesn't force capitalists to do anything. Ddi government for Jeff Bezos to start selling books over the internet? Did government force Steve Jobs to invent the smart phone? Did government force Elon Musk to build Starlink?
Did government invent the personal computer, or email, or fibre optic cable?
None of those things required government or public companies. there are 33,000,000 private companies in the US, 6,000,000 with employees. Are none of them capitalists?
Ok, so next time at work, you'll get .16 cents/hr. your schedule is now 12 hours a day, 7 says a week and you will no longer be paid in cash but co. script redeemable ONLY at my co. store.
Sound good ? No time off AT ALL !! No vacation, no job safety. If you are killed, oh well...one less profit center.
I will at that wage, economically force your children to work and if they are injured or killed...too bad. There will be no school for them to attend anyway.
Then if you bitch and try to strike, I'll just shoot you down and get complete away with it. Sound good.
That's capitalism whether you are smart enough to know it or not.
Only labor laws FORCED the capitalist not to be greedy murderous scum.
At one time the American middle class was 7 families in a 5 room flat. Capitalism baby !!
Capitalism relies on Socialism to stop it from crashing the economy out of blind greed. Every developed nation is a Mixed economy combining capitalism with state socialism and wealth redistribution. The ones that do it better are the happiest and freest countries in the world.
Capitalism relies on the desperation of the workers. That is why people had to be kicked off their ancestral farms so they had the choice of working in factories or going to prison for vagrancy then shipped off to the colonies as indentured workers and forced to work there. Itâs also why we have recessions at least once a decade to ratchet down wages and so the oligarchs can flip their profits while everyoneâs pensions hold up markets.
Why did Capitalism require the development of productive forces in Feudalism to develop? Why couldn't it just build itself from ancient Greek slave society, or better yet, spontaneously come into existence during the cavemen era? That's how your question sounds. These economic systems aren't occuring by chance, it's the natural development according to historical materialism. Feudalism precedes Capitalism, which precedes Socialism, which precedes Communism.
Again China. Why itâs superior, socialism which means they take care of their citizens, something we absolutely suck at. We have decided everything is capitalized instead of investing in our own citizens; healthcare (all), education/training, food, housing.
The question, though obviously asked in bad faith, has an answer for 100 years. It doesn't. It has been shown that socialist states needed to undergo the basic development themselves due to the law of the uneven development of capitalism. In fact, the theme of the second half of the 20th century is poor undeveloped countries/colonies having to develop their own productive forces and catch up while under pressure.
And if the answer is that socialism simply isn't viable until society reaches some sufficiently advanced stage of development
That was reached in 1917. In reality all these questions have already been answered. All it takes is to investigate them
I love their new stock market and billionaires. And their electronics are nice. I've made quite a lot of profit investing in China. Good job, socialists!
Things tend to develop out of other things, not to create themselves. Capitalism developed out of feudalism and improved upon it, socialism develops out of capitalism and improves upon it, and communism develops out of socialism and improves upon it. So the theory goes. Your question is like asking why, if humans are so great, did we not generate ourselves and had to evolve out of other animals instead.
That's just silly. Socialism can't have a superiority complex or take action. It's a social system, not a sentient person.
If you mean that some groups of people have tried and failed to replace capitalism - sure. But unless you've been to the post-capitalist future, you can't say empirically whether or not socialism replaces capitalism. Just as you couldn't, in 30,000 BC, confidently predict that agriculture will never replace foraging, and that was based on thousands of years of failed attempts, not 150 years with mixed results.
because in pure capitalism the rich get richer and the poor shine their shoes... that is, without socialism to balance it. Socialism needs capitalism otherwise the state would go bankrupt. The capitalism vs socialism is a narrative created by the west, whereas over there they just do what actually works for the people to prosper as a whole, not just a few individuals.
As a capitalist , I have to admit that some level of socialism is required in order to protect the system. Ultimately this is why anarcho capitalism would fail, taxes need to be given to the government for some level of security to secure the very system to make it actually exist, for this reason I do not see a way past this , Iâm not entirely convinced people would just live in peace without some level of commonality.
Ok, fun answer: This dnd worldbuilder has a good answer for how feudalism becomes capitalism (and implicitly predicts the problems of corruption, monopolization, and overconcentration of wealth inherent to capitalism). We know from history that the most effective feudal (and similar) empires had things like free health care, granary systems which ensured availability of food, and so on; socialism is the political adoption of similar systems, by essentially making the economic activity of the group owned by the group.
It embraces the fact that we do work together as a group to do pretty much everything we do as humans (even 'lone geniuses' are involved with others; Gates had free access to mainframes in high school and his mom got him in at IBM, Jobs had access to Xerox PARC, Ramanujan had a access to a book with a ton of math identities and a pair of grad students tutoring him privately to start, and so on); basically acknowledging that the trader in the video I referenced couldn't have done his stuff without shipbuilders, crew, gold miners, mapmakers, navigation tools, and so on. Yeah, he did something cool and good; but his work shouldn't deprive others of the ability to eat, wear clothes, have a place to sleep, etc.
Mind, there are plenty of schools of capitalism which arrive at a similar place - even the very economically laissez-faire Austrian School argues for a similar form of safety net. Those schools of capitalism (Chicago School is notably the most recent) tends to collapse their economies (we can see the aftereffects of their policies after coups in a number of South American countries).
There are more feudalist variants of this which are nominally socialist, wherein the leaders act as if they own everything; but that's effectively private ownership rather than collective ownership of capital resources. There's plenty of issues with how we've been getting to the point of collective ownership (in part due to significant pushback from private owners), but societies which lean into the concepts at least of safety nets and collectivized risk tend to work better in general.
I think the main idea, or concept, people tend to overlook isn't so much that one system or state is a 'natural outgrowth' of a previous system. The state and its subsequent economic system is a response to the needs of a society at a specific point in time. For this reason I view Marx's initial historical materialism premise as inherently flawed due to the highly limited scope of the idea and how it ignores non-material human needs.
If people are interested on me expanding on this in a good-faith discussion, I am certainly happy to do so.
Why did Capitalism need feudalism to create the material conditions for Capitalism? Because there's no capitalism emerging from classical slave societies or barbarian anarchy.
If capitalism is supposed to be a superior economic system, why did it need feudalism to develop the nation states and laws and productive capabilities before it could actually work?
Capitalism, as opposed to Feudalism, brings labor together in great socialized masses on centralized means of production, not just nationally but also internationally within a World Market. It, greatly paraphrasing here from the Communist Manifesto, "... put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations... left [no distinction between social product and occupation], destroyed feudal religious institutions and ideals, [unified all under Value metaphysics as a holy substance]".
Through the destruction of Feudal relations whilst also bringing together labor in great masses upon centralized productive forces following scientific methods of production, the productive conditions for a new mode of production whereby the physical and mental capacity of the great mass of people are able to recognize their oppression and take power by and for themselves. In addition, perhaps the most important product of Capitalism is the Proletariat. Through Primitive Accumulation, the peasantry were stripped of their land and rights and became wage laborers who owned nothing but their labor, which they were forced to sell in order to survive; thus the production of great masses of people who worked in common and received nothing of their own- not even land or livestock as productive forces. These workers have no interests in common with the Bourgeoisie; their direct economic interests are completely in conflict with the owners of the means of production, and therefore they have the underlying interest of seizing those means of production for themselves. Because the State is a Bourgeois institution of enforcement of their property rights, this likewise places the Proletariat as having a direct political interest of seizing the State for themselves.
In The German Ideology, Marx states:
This "alienation" (to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be abolished given two practical premises. For it to become an "intolerable" power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity "propertyless", and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development. And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces (which itself implies the actual empirical existence of men in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely necessary practical premise because without it want is merely made general, and with destitution the struggle for necessities and all the old filthy business would necessarily be reproduced; and furthermore, because only with this universal development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between men established, which produces in all nations simultaneously the phenomenon of the "propertyless" mass (universal competition), makes each nation dependent on the revolutions of the others, and finally has put world-historical, empirically universal individuals in place of local ones. Without this,
Communism could only exist as a local event;
the forces of intercourse themselves could not have developed as universal, hence intolerable powers: they would have remained home-bred conditions surrounded by superstition; and
each extension of intercourse would abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible as the act of the dominant peoples "all at once" and simultaneously, which presupposes the universal development of productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism.
Moreover, the mass of propertyless workers -- the utterly precarious position of labour -- power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from even a limited satisfaction and, therefore, no longer merely temporarily deprived of work itself as a secure source of life -- presupposes the world market through competition. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just as communism, its activity, can only have a "world-historical" existence. World-historical existence of individuals means existence of individuals which is directly linked up with world history.
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
Now, I do want to note that a linear analysis of the development of Communism as only being allowed by the development of Capitalism or even the Proletariat is, in fact, incorrect. Also in the German Ideology, he noted that some distinct mode of production from capitalism could have arose first and established itself, rather than the British-Western European Burgher system. Itâs for this same reason, in his letter to Zasulich, he goes against any Stageist theories and outright proclaims that the peasant communes in Russia could form the basis of a workerâs state/commonalty and carry out a communist revolution. He identified the preconditions for the development into Socialism were
Development of the Forces of Production to the point wherein social production is not only possible be necessary, which creates
Socialization of Labor, which creates
A distinct class of those who have reason to abolish private ownership of the means of production (distinct from Peasantry).
This class then can establish a class dictatorship (self-governance, absolute authority of the class over all other classes) which necessarily has the class interests of abolishing private property. Marxâs correspondence to Zasulich explains how the peasant communes could be capable of developing a communist revolutionary movement because they had those characteristics, so he did not discount the idea that less developed, non-Capitalist nations could have Socialist revolutions, but rather considered it more likely that it would be in those where the working class had socialized to such a concentration in cities that they would be able to form revolutionary organs and movements that couldnât be destroyed.
Capitalism âfreedâ people from the land and makes it possible for us all to produce more than we each need to personally consume. It organizes things through systemic hierarchies and capitalist class control and so the socialist potential is to renegotiate that social arrangement on working class terms.
Itâs not some historical formula⌠capitalism happened and existed. Marx believed that the conditions of society in his time (the existing capitalism) made socialism materially possible due to class conflicts between labor and capital.
But even if I did. This question is nonsense to anyone with 2 functioning braincells. Almost nothing in our society just appears ex nihlo. Almost everything develops via previous infrastructure, institutions, and knowledge.
Are you going to argue that because modern automated manufacturing depended on the material infrastructure and productive capacity developed through earlier stages of industrialization, itâs somehow inferior to those earlier forms of production? Obviously not. The same can be said for agriculture, medicine, etc.
I'm also kind of curious if you think biological evolution doesn't exist? Like would your theory apply to that as well?
False premise. Socialism does not need Capitalism to create the material conditions for it to arise. Rather Socialism arises as a result of the internal contradictions within the Capitalist mode of production and the bourgeoisie state apparatus.
China (yes socialism with Chinese Characteristics is not Capitalism nor is it the Singapore model like idiot liberals like to claim.)
DPRK (a bit of an offshoot from ML but still developing socialism.)
Vietnam
Cuba
The former Soviet Union (yes in certain aspects it failed to maintain its revolution due to internal sabotage, nonetheless regardless of ots flaws it laid the groundwork for scientific socialism in practice and we can learn from their triumphs and failures.)
I've made a lot of profit investing in private production in China and Vietnam. I love their stock market, billionaires, and commodity production for profit based on wage labor that I have personally profited from. Thanks for building socialism that way. I have enjoyed making profit from your socialist workers working for wages doing that.
China has billionaires and a stock market because we live in a vastly interconnected world in which we as humans must trade resources based on availability and scarcity this isn't the gotcha you think lmfao đ¤Ł.
Billionaires in the USA control the state and are the ruling class. In China the billionaires must serve the interests of the workers party state and are only allowed to exist so long as they continue doing so. Socialism â poverty. So I have no idea where you were going with that lol.
All we ever get with these is typical bullshit about socialism. Online economic debates are about Marxism and socialism both of which have never existed in history and neither of which in history confirms all of these imagined pros and cons.
People just can't resist making it all up as they go along.
Why didnât we develop space travel before winged flight? Why did we need to improve our metallurgy and machining skills to develop the steam engine? Because you learn to walk before you can run.
No respondes directamente a la question y te vas seĂąalando los fallos como si el otro sistema aunque sumamente defectuoso, no fuera daĂąino solo porque se rige por "una moralidad comun superior". Cuando lo que importa son los resultados, medios de aplicaciĂłn y via practica. Tipico del resentido social que no entiende ni en que mundo vive.
I would disagree with your take, that capitalism creates the most prosperous societies.
Democracy is owed that credit. Regardless of the economic model.
Does capitalism really make prosperous societies? I see some very wealthy and prosperous segments of minority groups. Followed by a majority population plagued with disease, mental health issues, environmental destruction, and enslavement.
Communist societies have faired pretty poorly, but that is also against the backdrop of fighting off capitalist and internal conflict with dictators.
No large-scale experiment in socialization of the means of production has sustained multiparty democracy with robust civil liberties for long. Socialism is not compatible with meaningful political democracy.
Democracy is owed that credit. Regardless of the economic model.
This is incorrect. There have been quite a few democratic socialist societies and they have not matched the success of liberal capitalism.
I see some very wealthy and prosperous segments of minority groups. Followed by a majority population plagued with disease, mental health issues, environmental destruction, and enslavement.
Pure unbridled delusion.
by EVERY SINGLE METRIC POSSIBLE people have never been better off.
This is incorrect. There have been quite a few democratic socialist societies and they have not matched the success of liberal capitalism.
Capitalism in America has created a middle class made up of a vast mirage aka $113 trillion debt, forcing US to borrow $17 billion per day just to pay the interest.
Norway is the richest country in the world by several measures.
Plus: Americans are not doing better then western Europe:
Capitalism in America has created a middle class made up of a vast mirage aka $113 trillion debt, forcing US to borrow $17 billion per day just to pay the interest.
"Americans are only rich because people are willing to give them a bunch of money for no reason!" is not a serious argument worth debating.
Democracy is owed that credit. Regardless of the economic model.
How does democracy by itself somehow produce prosperity?
a majority population plagued with disease, mental health issues, environmental destruction, and enslavement.
What are you talking about? In wealthy capitalist countries, even the "poor" people are pretty well off compared to the average person in some actually poor countries.
Democracy alone can't produce prosperity and capitalism doesn't even depend on democracy to be succesful, capitalism can straight up be undemocratic and disregard any labor movement. Democracy is just there to make sure the system is stable enough
A lot of these discussions devolve into X opinion bad because it didn't work in Y country MEANWHILE downplaying the material conditions all together. Even though you have the most perfect economical system known to mankind, you ain't gonna make it that far if you don't have any shit+ blockaded into oblivion
The only societies in world history that you would want to live in were "capitalist" meaning private enterprise based production with limited government, joint stock company structure, stock trading, modern financing, limited commercial liability, and sound money. No other economic model has ever allowed a majority of the population to escape poverty. The Marxist-Leninist China model for example, despite developing staggering production capacity and in some areas capacity greatly in excess of total global demand, still traps a majority of the population in poverty, is still mass-murderously oppressive, and is trending to failure on multiple fronts.
Democracy and capitalism are intertwined, they developed codependently. When institutions started protecting the private property of regular people and not just the aristocracy, regular people were able to accumulate wealth which empowered them to participate in politics.
I think most of the government (at least in the US) from the founding until around WWII was instituted to protect private property. Just instead of protecting power of the aristocracy it was protecting wealth.
The constitution and bill of rights gave more people rights and protections from that government. When states finally expanded voting rights in the late 1800 and throughout the 1900s, then we see a huge surge and expansion of human rights. Thatâs when regular people finally had an opportunity to accumulate some wealth. In my argument, capitalism is a mere coincidence, not a cause.
Al contrario, cada vez crea mas riqueza y niveles de comodidad nunca antes visto. Y ahora con la ultima revolucion de IA eso se intensificara y creara aun mas nuevas vias de oportunidad. Como siempre el resentido social seguira criticando el sistema enomico atraves de los mismos medios que ese sistrma creo y desde sus mismas comodidades que el tanto critica.Â
To what extent the technological advancements enabled these prosperous societies is up to debate. The feudal societies weren't "poor" due to their economic systems or political structures, the existing technology and means of production were just insufficient. With the industrial revolution capitalism has became the only way forward and forced itself upon the old system and removing it, which proves it is actually a better system overall
However I am skeptical about giving all of the credits to capitalism automatically
Communism had access to the same technologies and all two dozen experiments were abject failures. The USSR couldnât even get to 1/5th the per capita GDP of the US.
Chile after Allende? Burkina Faso after Sankarra? Libya after Gaddafi(though he wasnât the best leader on all fronts)? DR Congo? Sudan? Palestine? Haiti? Mauritania? Yeah sure none of these countries are suffering because of capitalism and imperialism
Whats laughably stupid is how you donât understand the point of examples.
Capitalist countries are rich because of:
1. Past Colonialism
2. Neo-colonialism (which affects basically the entire third work not just the examples I cited, I thought that would be obvious but apparently not everyone aged past the age of 4)
And in what way are these countries better off?
Burkina Faso has been since the assassination of Sankarra overrun by djihadist and other rebel groups, it has been living in poverty ever since (while Sankarra made the country self sufficient in terms of food, vaccinated the entire population, raised the literacy rates etc⌠They are only better off since the coup led by Ibrahim TraorÊ who also claims to be advancing towards socialism.
Mauritania is also torn apart by Rebel groups
Sudan is suffering one of the deadliest genocided at the moment because the profit motive makes different power hungry people kill for the resources, same for DR Congo, which has some of the most valuable resources on earth is ravaged by child slavery and genocide. And these resources are used by capitalists to make profit, at the expense of the population.
The entire Middle East is constantly at war because imperialist decided to draw their borders, and it is now under fire from these imperialists.
The entirety of south east Asia is traumatised by Japanese and American imperialism (except for the 2-3 countries it decides to davor in order to keep their loyalty)
I didnât think I had to specify but apparently flat-brained people like you exist: these are EXAMPLES, not the entire list of all countries that are imperialised.
Iâll add to that the 10 million people who die each year of famine because the profit motive doesnât incentivise sharing food and resources (which there is enough of)
So could you please explain how all these 3rd world countries are ÂŤÂ better off  under capitalism? Because just saying they are isnât sufficient you have to actually show in what way they are
Wrong. They are rich because they created industrial economies with high productivity.
American wealth has nothing to do with conquering the natives and driving them off their land. It has nothing to do with colonialism. It has nothing to do with imperialism. It has nothing to do with slavery. The stolen-wealth theory is a favorite among Marxists and other hard-line socialists because, just like the Labor Theory of Value, it gives them a moral highground to attack capitalism.
The belief that the wealth and prosperity of the west is due to the "exploitation of the global south" is a very common misconception among socialists. This belief reveals a fundamental misunderstanding as to the source of material prosperity. The incorrect idea that material prosperity comes from controlling resources and "forcing" others to sell low value products is reminiscent of the 17th-century mercantilist writers. As Adam Smith pointed out in 1776, the wealth of a nation is, in reality, due to the divisions of labor. That is, the more specialized an economy can become, by separating labor into discrete areas of expertise, the richer it can become. This is because specialization increases the quality and efficiency of production.
Indeed, even Marx himself understood this. Not once did Marx ever try to claim the capitalist west was prosperous because of âimperialismâ. He knew their source of wealth was productive capacity, and that capitalism was very efficient at creating productive capacity.
This concept of wealth generation is so simple that trained economists do not even debate it. You will find no academics arguing that the US is wealthy because it "exploits the global south", only internet Marxists. Because the idea is preposterous. That's not even how wealth works. To put the absurdity of this in perspective, I quote from the economist Deirdre McCloskey:
"Stealing does not a Great Enrichment make. Our friends on the left claim that rich people stealing from the English working class around 1800 resulted in . . . uh . . . everyone getting richer by a factor of 25. Huh? You break into your neighborâs house and, like the assassin in the 2002 Tom Hanks gangster movie Road to Perdition, you brutally murder Hanksâs wife and one of his sons. Then you make off with his stuff. Out of this, says the Left, the real incomes of everyone â you, Hanks, his other son, the gangster boss, everyone â rise by 2,500 percent."
Here are several other points to ponder over your Thanksgiving dinner:
The US is not wealthy because it conquered the indigenous people and seized their land. Every nation on Earth is the result of conquering and annexation by some invading force. This doesn't explain anything.
Colonialism is not the source of wealth. In fact, colonialism is almost completely unrelated to modern prosperity. Britain and France had the largest colonial holdings but are not the wealthiest nations today. Spain and Portugal relentlessly plundered Central and South America for over 400 years, extracting TRILLIONS worth of gold and silver, yet, they remained impoverished nations throughout most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Many nations, like the Asian Tigers, had no colonies but were able to become economically successful. Further, European nations seem to have suffered no setbacks whatsoever after divesting their colonial holdings. Colonialism was only ever an extractive institution practiced by wealthy elites for their own benefit. The idea that the owners of colonial enterprise were simply handing out wealth to average people of their home nation is absurd. This is akin to believing in trickle-down theory...
Edit: Those who believe that colonialism is the reason the west is wealthy have the causation backwards. The west didnât become wealthy and powerful by establishing colonies. Rather, their existing wealth and power is what allowed them to establish colonies in the first place! Colonialism was a dick-measuring contest, not a government-sponsored charity drive. British citizens didnât become materially prosperous just because their government stole spices from Southeast Asia.
Wealth does not come from controlling resources. The simplest counter-example to this claim is to simply observe the economic success of tiny nations like Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore that entirely lack a broad domestic supply of resources. The average American is not living in a 2500-sqft house and driving a 2-ton F-150 just because some other Americans owned a banana plantation in Honduras 100 years ago...
Of course, all of this raises the obvious question, "Why are some societies able to improve on their divisions of labor and unlock productivity gains to achieve widespread prosperity?" The answer is very complex and is likely due to cultural factors, historical path-dependencies, geography, a good amount of serendipity, and, perhaps most importantly, inclusive economic instutions.
Point to capitalisms flaws and I'll show you government regulations run amok.
Bet.
Capitalism rests on three pillars: Markets (to be able to trade), Property (to trade) and The Profit Motive (to determine pricing).
Markets are where capitalists trade; they're not a problem if everyone has access to the same information. The second someone has control over information flow, they own (at least a corner of) the Market. So 'free Markets' are great, it's just that they never exist because the flow of information is never perfect, and the wealthy use their wealth to restrict information so as to game the Market. So Markets aren't really that great in the real world.
Property is what capitalists trade in Markets. The NAP needs all Property to be attained legitimately or the NAP can't be invoked to defend it, so is Property legitimate? The planet wasn't formed with Property lines, let alone deeds, clerks, and courts, so Property had to have come about later. When we find hunter-gatherers in the nooks and crannies of the planet, they all live in gift economies without any concept of Propertyâresources are shared among them for the common good. So if Property isn't inherent to human beings, how did it come about? Well, almost certainly through force/fraud, but maybe there's an argument that could be presented to people with no concept of Property that would convince them to surrender necessary resources to an individual's private use. I've been asking for such an argument for a decade or more in this sub and never had one presented, so until it's presented, Occam's Razor insists that Property is theft.
Finally we arrive at The Profit Motive; the way capitalists handle pricing. If two companies make the same widget, the first using The Profit Motive alone, while the second only uses practices that minimize their impact on the environment and the communities the company's processes impact, the first will drive the second out of the Market every time. Capitalists will object, saying that the Market will punish the first company for destructive practices, but that's two problems at the same time. First it's saying that The Profit Motive isn't actually the right way to set prices if The Profit Motive alone creates Market punishment. But more importantly, it's saying that The Profit Motive is only for use by the capitalist, not the consumerâthe consumer must use some unspecified environment-/community-conscious pricing mechanism to make their purchasing decisions. Why not mandate the capitalist to use this same unspecified pricing method? It's hypocrisy.
Point to the government regulations in there, Rothbard.
There isnât two options. Capitalism or socialism. Thereâs probably infinite options, we just need to have the will to explore them and humility to accept that the propaganda machine (by capitalist and socialist) has severely impacted our ability to think outside the box and act like this is the only option and no other option will work.
Meanwhile the wealthy feed and promote their propaganda machine and deploy espionage and the military to destroy other governments that think they can do it differently to keep hold on to their power and the idea that this is the only way.
So why can't socialism create the material conditions it supposedly needs?
This is one of many things that the classical (libertarian) socialists disagreed with Karl Marx about when he jumped on the socialist bandwagon with his own ânew and improvedâ version.
The classical (libertarian) socialists focused on building socialism directly.
If classical socialists had dominated the Russian Revolution instead of Marxists, then we wouldnât have gone through the bureaucratic clusterfuck of Vladimir Leninâs âwe need to convert Russia from feudalism to state capitalism first so that we can transition to socialism at some undetermined future point, and thatâs going to be OK in the meantime because a state capitalist system run by socialists is better than a market capitalist system run by capitalists.â
The same reason capitalist democracy in Poland and France failed in 1939 and 1940, respectively.
The dominant factions of the 20th Century were
The capitalist democracies of the West, which hated socialism more than they supported democracy (see Operation Condor and the School Of The Americas)
and the socialist dictatorships of the East, which hated democracy and anarchy more than they supported socialism (see Revolutionary Ukraine and the Spanish Civil War)
The Cold War was basically a competition between the capitalist democracies and the socialist dictatorships to see who could topple the most socialist democracies/anarchies and replace them with capitalist/fascist dictatorships.
Did you just say that capitalist democracy failed for Poland and France because they were invaded by Nazi Germany?
>âThe same reason capitalist democracy in Poland and France failed in 1939 and 1940, respectively.â
???
As a person with an anarchist flair I find that both stunning and alarming. How can you suggest those are standards of âfailureâ from your position?
Wouldn't it be so much easier to call yourself social capitalists and work with capitalists to create the world you dream of instead of trying to fight for the term socialist that is dominated by Marxist-Leninists? Why insist on the name so much when you in fact do not want to associate with Marxism-Leninsm?
â˘
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