For the people who want capitalism to be replaced by some form of socialism, why?
(Yes, I know "socialism" and "capitalism" are vague terms, hence why you should probably very much clarify what type of "socialist" system you want, since "socialism" can be anything from market socialism, Marxism-Leninism, Syndicalism, democratic socialism, Trotskyism, anarcho-socialism, anarcho-communism, Luxemburgism, etc. Also, I'm a far cry from informed in this, so please correct me when needed.)
So anyway, if you call yourself a socialist or at least want to abolish capitalism, why?
So for the best reasons I have seen are:
- Capitalism is inherently hierarchical and incompatible with democracy, which is egalitarian.
Obviously not all types of socialism (I.E, most types of socialism that have been tried for more than a few years because they weren't overthrown or voted out) are egalitarian however and many of these systems are completely centralized.
- Big companies will naturally use the state to their own advantage, as capitalism is driven by self interest instead of any vague marker of "competition".
The main argument against this is that you definitely regulate capitalism to be more competitive with stuff like antitrust without abolishing the whole thing.
I don't think Capitalism should be replaced by Socialism, but I do think it should be tempered by it. I believe that any system, any "ism" is bad at the extreme end of it. Freedom of speech is a fantastic example. It's one of the most important freedoms we have, but it has limits (yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater as the classic example), as well it should. Capitalism is the same way. So is Socialism. A middle ground must be found.
Capitalism is an economic system specifically characterized by the unlimited accumulation of capital resources, wage labor, free enterprise, the existence of markets, and the widespread private ownership of the means of production. Socialism on the other hand isn't really an economic system at all, but a characteristic feature of a variety of different economic systems that are at specifically at odds with only the "private ownership of the means of production" part of capitalism (although plenty of self described "socialists" have other problems with capitalism too, this is the only thing that all socialisms have in common). In other words, a "socialist economy" (as opposed to a capitalist one) is simply any economy where the vast majority of firms are owned by the producers or consumers of whatever each firm provides. Additionally, there are already existing socialist institutions in the capitalist economy right now. For example, credit unions, nonprofit organizations, many farmers markets, mutual insurance companies, cooperative grocery stores, employee owned businesses, government enterprise, etc. Basically, if the institution exists for the express benefit of the people it serves and/or employs (as opposed to a private owner who may or may not have anything to do with what the firm does beyond being the primary beneficiary of the profit produced by the firm), then it's a socialist institution, and a socialist is simply any person who believes that an economy primarily composed of such institutions would lead to fewer problems than an economy primarily composed of privately owned firms where people have the power to completely alienate themselves from the consequences of their actions (think of questions like, "Why is it that almost everything we consume comes from sweatshops?", "Why do we need consumer safety regulations?", "Why do unions exist?")
The middle ground seems obvious to me. Accept that some things are too important or necessary to leave to the base profit motive, and be as selective as you can creating those institutions because they cost tax dollars to operate.
Capitalism needs at least a fucking floor. That's what's missing. This is as far down as you fall, no further. That means at a minimum universal health, education, housing, and income. These don't have to be herculean projects, either. When you go to the hospital, you get treated. When you want to learn something, you can learn it - and online learning counts here big time, we don't necessarily need universities and a million schools for this stuff. Every friday, you get enough cash money in your pocket to live like a broke ass college student. Maybe more if you want to stave off a depression - we really don't know how this UBI tool is going to work until we use it.
I'd go a lot further. Tax reform, tort reform, copyright reform, election reform, fund a few things like NASA and the USPS and PBS. I'd like to obliterate every subsidy that's more than five years old, they last long past their freshness date. I'd give out a few bailouts, too - malls, libraries, museums. I'd also like to see a law that no bailout ever goes to anyone but a taxpayer again. But we can't do it all at once and we've got to start somewhere.
You want more socialism that might actually work? Then incorporate a business, or a union, or other capitalist organizations using socialism as the basis for the corporate structure. You'll get your worker collective and it'll also get what it needs most - a swift kick in the ass from market competition. I'll remind you that in America these orgs already exist in some forms. Our non-profits also provide another option. We can have all of this and anything else crazy people dream up in our system and it still works.
That's a pretty good start, and I'm done listening to the 'we can't afford it' crowd. Their arguments don't pass muster. We can't afford not to do it at this point. We can reclaim plenty of bad government spending in the process, less waste. It's not as expensive as it looks. Recover all the taxes from the corporate looters and we've got quite a war chest to work with.
It's all doable. Getting everyone to disengage from playing tribes long enough to pull it all together is the tricky bit. The bread and circus distractions are over for at least the next year, maybe two. There's never going to be a better time.
And what have we got? Trump and Biden staring down a depression amidst a pandemic. Trump's going to yell at it and Joe is going to sleep through it. Jesus wept. I hope the democrats throw a riot at the DNC convention this year and give us better choices. Bylaws be damned, get a quorum and get busy.
Socialism is worker ownership of the means of production. Capitalism permits private ownership of the means of production. They are polar opposites on the question of wage labor, one may not be tempered by the other.
Yes, exactly. Capitalist state can never be fully democratic.
This is largely because of
Socialist states may not necessarily always be democratic, but at least they can be.
Capital-controlled centralization is worse than democracy-controlled centralization.
Practically speaking capitalism-socialism is an axis, and socialism represents democracy on that axis. Because I value democracy, I believe all states should move towards socialism.
Ultimately however I don't believe in centralization, so socialist command economy is not what I want either. In the perfect world, world should be built out of federated anarchist municipal communes, with cooperative decentralized economy. People should be able to directly have a voice in every decision that affects them.
This means that if there's practical issue in the real world where the options are between decentralized free market solution and centralized state solution, it might be worth it to accept the market solution. We need to be careful that it doesn't give too much power to capital however, as is often the case. I'd prefer if these kinds of solutions involved giving the priority to co-ops.
Ultimately the point is to democratize economy, and that doesn't require a state.
Marx's central argument was that capitalist economies create certain patterns and trends that will necessarily cause the entire system to fall apart. It's not so much that Marxist thinkers believe that capitalism should be dismantled, it's that they see socialism as a necessary and inevitable evolution of capitalism. You don't have a socialist society without a capitalist society as a starting point.
The Wikipedia page "Criticisms of Capitalism" has a really basic overview of this idea. If you want to start down a really deep dive of trying to understand Marxist theory, I would recommend checking out David Harvey's live read through of Marx's "Capital"
I'm going to use you as a jumping off point.
I think this is crazy Leftist^tm ideology. I'm mostly trying to be funny here, but one does not exclude the other. Capitalism certainly has huge problems, but it can be done with democratic checks and balances, and you could have a capitalist economy built around syndicalist communes. This would be an idea that could be implemented in coops. The issue is, the person in charge of the company needs to yield power to the people working for them, which doesn't typically happen. This retaining of one's power is then usually defended with typical capitalist speeches, see your next point.
And the person who started the company "deserves" the lion's share of the profits the company generates. This is the idea of the "self made man" who built his company by planning it, and doing a lot of hard work at the beginning, and hiring workers to work for him for less than he would eventually make. This is one of the major issues of capitalism in its current form, and again is an issue of ideology, rather than a math issue.
I think Marx and Engels are on the money when they talk about the value of labor. I think the people who power the company should get a significant portion of the company's revenue (not profits, you can "reinvest" the money, and not make a profit), and vote for the direction the company heads in. A completely democratic company would be a "coop" if way more syndicalist than current coops actually are. You could, certainly, have a free market (a capitalist) market that consists entirely of these syndicalist coops, and this would be the perfect marriage of the best of capitalism and democracy.
That won't work, though. You'll run into the same end game, just with a series of democratic firms instead of dictated or board-driven companies. Capitalism requires one thing, and they drill this in economics classes: Maximizing profits. But, we exist in an economy where scarcity (the difference between available supply, and demand) exists, certainly we'll reach a limit? Does it change when the goals are democratically derived? I think the general failings of human nature will arise in any extreme situation.
I'm in the market socialist camp. I could write an essay about why I think communism is as bad as libertarianism, but I'll simplify my point: We can't have a completely unchecked society or economy, and we can't have a society that forces the economy into a specific position. We can parasitize our economy effectively, however, and manage it in a way that minimizes worker exploitation, and maximizes worker value. I think the major two things we need to do is keep the carrot dangling in front of a company, and siphon the money off with taxes and minimum wage. The taxes would be enough for UBI, which would be paid for with corporate and capital gains taxes. The end game, in any outcome, should be fair distribution of income. Not everybody should be able to buy a Ferrari, but everybody should be able to own a home and maintain it, go on vacations, eat good food, get sick without going bankrupt, and be treated justly in their society.
A free market economy is a necessary component of capitalism, but capitalism is a lot more than just a free market economy. A free market economy composed of workers cooperatives or “syndicalist communes” would literally be a form of socialism, and absolutely not an example of capitalism.
Sure. But I would also like to stress the point that syndicalists running their company in a capitalist manner would also be a problem, if their only aim is to maximize profits and keep expanding, you just have a much larger board calling the shots. Politics and economics are often intertwined, but they're not required to strictly follow each other. The goal would be to have a larger democratic entity, the government, to regulate the worker-owned firms, as it also does.
Capitalism also doesn't have exclusive rights to free markets. You can have a planned economy with a free market...just that nobody has tried it yet because everyone shouts about how the Soviet Union fell, thus planned economies are impossible.
Capitalism has exploitation built into it at a very fundamental level. Exploitation is bad and hurts people, so we should structure our society to not exploit other people or our environment. However, there's plenty of ways that you can exploit people and resources even within a socialist system (usually related to hierarchy). I think any replacement of capitalism that is trying to be better than capitalism must account for this.
Because businesses are not people and people are not assets.
Because wealth and the lust for it are no indicators for good leadership, yet it takes wealth to weigh in effectively on a capitalist system.
Because a system that judges people only on the outcome of their actions (the accumulation of wealth) and not on their integrity favors psychopaths and narcissists.
Because a system that is based on the strife for year-to-year growth will consume everything.
Because it favors the deepest pockets, not the best service or highest quality. It takes money to make money.
The short answer is: it sucks. There's plenty of formal literature if you want details, but capitalism involves enormous humanitarian and environmental cost. Endless growth is thermodynamically unsustainable. It destroys diversity, fuels sexism and racism. It's destroying us, and it doesn't have to be like this.
We can temper it, we most Western liberal democracies do, but I don't think that's enough.
Note that most governments are hierarchical and unequal, sometimes extremely so. The US only has one president for hundreds of millions of people, for example. What's more unequal than that?
Democracy is entirely compatible with inequality. Elections justify inequality. They justify governments where the few make decisions for the many.
To be clear, I don't think this is bad. Having leaders can be useful. Also, an important function of elections is to allow whoever loses to accept the results for a while, until there is another election and they can try again.
I don't think elections are the only way to legitimize leadership, though.
I’m gonna make a wild prediction here: I don’t think you’re gonna find lots of people like that.
@vord said this and @spctrvl said this so maybe not entirely.
I’d make a provocation: capitalism emerged in the 16th century. Socialism emerged in the 19th century. A lot has changed. Is it still productive to think in terms of this opposition as a proposal for humankind’s future?