Hi all,
I’m seeing a lot of hate for capitalism here, and I’m wondering why that is and what the rationale behind it is. I’m pretty pro-capitalism myself, so I want to see the logic on the other side of the fence.
If this isn’t the right forum for a political/economic discussion-- I’m happy to take this somewhere else.
Cheers!
May sound good on paper, but everywhere where it was tried, nothing good happened. There is something in human nature that makes it inefficient and have tendency to become dictatorial state. Socialism (in classical sense) is just worse system in practice, as many countries in 20th century demonstrated.
If I try to grow some tomatoes, and by the time they’re sprouting out of the ground, my neighbor tramples them and lights them on fire, does that mean that I can’t ever grow tomatoes and they’re doomed to fail?
Yes, until you do something about your neighbors.
In case of (classical) socialism, since it is tried in many countries, I will argue it will fail again, unless something is changed. And I am arguing that that something is human nature. So, while we are the same humans, this will not work as effective as capitalism.
Ironically, I think Karl Marx understood this. This is why he was arguing for world-wide revolution. But Lenin changed this into “building communism in a single country”. Since half of the developed world continued to be capitalistic, it become quite obvious that people in capitalist countries live better (on average), and the soviet empire disintegrated.
Marx definitely did not believe capitalism would produce more surplus than scientific socialism. However, I doubt he believed it was a switch you could throw and suddenly have a more productive economy. His point was that you could approach the problem scientifically. Through hypothesis testing and experimentation you could develop something more rational than the anarchy of the market.
That said, communist governments haven’t ever found themselves in a position where they can safely experiment with a planned economy. The USSR was struggling for decades to defend itself from foreign adversaries. That’s why it developed a tightly controlled and powerful bureaucracy which eventually led to it’s downfall. It’s also why China and Vietnam decided it was safer to experiment with market reforms given that they are at an economic disadvantage to capitalist countries. Other attempts at building a socialist economy have been thwarted by either US backed coups or sanctions, as was the case with Chile and Cuba.
Who trampled on the Russian tomatoes? (Don’t say the Nazis, they trampled on everyone’s tomatoes including their own) For Russia, there was some small scale support for the whites during their civil war, but otherwise trade between the Soviets and the west increased year by year during the NEP period until Stalin purposely contracted it (if someone knows more about this period, feel free to correct me. I’m working off of information I learned in classes years ago and this article that matches with what I remember). I’d propose that the Soviet issues were internal due to blindly ideological governance that crippled their economy and society. They didn’t have to make such an insane number of nukes, create the culture that caused Chernobyl, nor invade Afghanistan.
Otherwise, who trampled the Mainland Chinese tomatoes? They basically won their civil war, their only issue was blind allegiance to chairman Mao that resulted in disaster after disaster. The West didn’t force them to try the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Down to the Countryside ‘Movement,’ nor the One Child Policy. The CCP did those to themselves, and they only found success once Mao died and they made their economy more capitalistic.
And then once more, who trampled on the North Korean tomatoes? At the beginning of their war, they tried to crush the South’s tomatoes until a UN authorized force pushed them to the Chinese border and then a Chinese force counterbalanced to the current borders, but otherwise the North was economically better off once the stalemate began (the Japanese centered their industrial developments in the north). North Korea failed because of dramatic mismanagement and a ideology of constant militarism while the South, with ups and downs, prospered.
Sure, there were military actions, police actions, and garden trampling that harmed both sides during the Cold War, but you can’t just blame your enemy for beating you, you have to recognize why you lost.
In regards to the USSR, it’s probably the most complex example, but if you don’t think there was plenty of pressure on Russia from the West that wasn’t direct warfare (cold war as an incredibly basic example). Here’s a fun video on reasons why it fell that isn’t through a US centric lens
China is also complicated an I’m not going to speak to it.
But North Korea? You mean the country we absolutely turned to rubble through bombing campaigns to destroy ~85% of it’s buildings, and then on top of it cutting them off from most of the rest of the world from trade? That’s probably the most prime example of how we’ve trampled a country. Blowback has a deep dive into the history there and it’s great.
And here’s a holistic video in case you care to hear the exact argument broken down