Socialism grows directly out of capitalism.Communism is a further development or "hi

http://www.marxmail.org/faq/socialism_and_communism.htm

Found this interesting what are your thoughts on this?

 

We need socialism in this country.

 

I remember one lazy summer when I was 13 or so, I came across a book which postulated that communism is only an evolved form of humanitarian or reasonable capitalism, and that in the same way in which democracy had a short first run in Periclean Athens but came back to reign, so too would communism.

While this was what seems a lifetime ago, and the authors name is long lost to my memory, I dare say that the concepts introduced to me at that time shaped my way of thinking for all days to come.

Thank you for sharing this article TS, this is indeed one of my pet subjects.

 

My wife who is Chinese, told me that communism is an ultimate goal. Governments have tried to reach it, but it remains elusive. There has never been a truly communist government in history. At any rate, I agree that capitalism is the lowest on the evolutionary ladder.

 

Of course, its in every government's nature to (try) grow.

 

Seems to me that the trend has been pretty obviously in the other direction. How do you define "grow"?

 

Power over people, people dependence on the government, governments presence in every day life.

 

What "forces of reaction" do you speak of?

 

So, yeah, the trend is definitely not toward growth.

 

depends of what country we are talking about

 

the facts seem to not agree with your point as growth of governments world wide, especially in the developed world has been prodigious over the last century.

 

If communism is an evolution of capitalism why is it that the founding countries of it were not areas that ever HAD capitalism to begin with? If anything, both socialism and capitalism had their roots and are resultant evolutions of the feudalism that pervaded most of europe prior to the industrial revolution. That communism was often co-opted to a statist position rather than a collectivist stance is more a reflection of the cultural effects in the countries that initially laid the ground work for how it was applied physically (looking at you Russia and China)

 

Previously, you said that it's "every gov't's nature to grow." That is clearly not the case. If you're changing it to "it's some gov'ts' nature to grow," I'd agree.

The facts absolutely agree with my point, as growth of gov'ts worldwide, including in the developed world, has been negative over the last century (and even more negative if you go back further). It wasn't that long ago, for example, that you could get arrested in the U.S. for playing baseball on Sunday. As late as 1945, Southern gov'ts were still enslaving people (and renting them to private businesses).

 

It's the ultimate goal of the ruling class because it represents totalitarian power which is really what they want.

It's just a matter of selling utopia to the masses with no real plans on delivering. Who knows, maybe in the West they will get a revolution of the proletariat going at some point so they can have their police state.

 

Well that tiny list of anecdotal examples totally nails the case. Fact is though, in terms of the amount of resources used by the institution of govt it has still grown, just in ways you apparently like.

Even if govt spending remained a fixed percentage of GDP, the fact that the GDP per capita increases due to people becoming more productive means the govt is growing larger since more productive output per capita is now required to support it.

 

the biggest flaw in this historical determinism is that ability of market economies to redirect some of the newly created wealth to the creation of social goods. Capitalism both created more wealth and social goods than communists regimes could while central planning led to economic stagnation.

 

I still think the chief problem with socialism is economic. Even if everyone on earth agreed that socialism/commuism is the end goal, how are they suppose to arrive there and sustain such a society without the price system? Here Austrians I think made the best arguments for why such a society, even if agreed upon by everyone, couldn't be sustained.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_socialism#Distorted_or_absent_price_signals

 

I think the existence and then disappearance of state-enforced slavery is sufficient to make the case, and not just some little anecdote.

The amount of resources used by everything has grown. That definition makes the whole point meaningless (the richer the society, the "bigger" the gov't is). We were specifically talking about gov't's power over people and presence in everyday lives.

Which is the reason that your definition is not informative. Looking at spending or taxation is generally irrelevant to the size of gov't (measured by control and presence) because they're arbitrary. Gov'ts can choose not to tax or spend and just accomplish what they want through tax credits or force.