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One of the Stalinist’s greatest propaganda achievement has been the idea that state-capitalism is Socialism.
Having grown up in USSR, I’ll take state capitalism over actual capitalism any day. The fundamental difference between state owned enterprise and privately owned enterprise is the purpose of work. Under actual capitalism, the sole purpose of a business is to create profit for the owners of that business. On the other hand, the purpose of state enterprise is to create useful things for the people living in the country. Nobody is accumulating wealth and becoming rich of other people’s labour when the means of production are publicly owned. It might not be perfect, but it’s certainly a huge step forward from capitalist relations seen in the west.
Reminds me of my city, when the internet provider was a government company. The internet was down 30% of the day, latency of 1s, nobody answered the support lines, whole portions of the city could be out for days… It was extremely expensive and the speeds were so low I remember it could take 2h to download a 5m song.
Then private companies (with wealth accumulation) were allowed to provide internet for users. Everyone started jumping on the private networks as soon as their area had coverage. It was like 1/3 of the cost of the public company and like 20 times the speed. Latencies were like 100ms.
The public company saw its reign over people crumbling and did something INSANE, totally unexpected. They actually became competitive and started giving a good service.
That’s a lesson for y’all. If there’s no wealth large enough to compete against the state, the state becomes an inefficient monopoly.
I have no idea what country you’re in, but it’s literally the opposite situation in Canada where publicly owned SaskTel provides the best service in the country while private sector managed to create some of the most expensive and slowest infrastructure out of any G7 countries.
A common pattern that’s observed is that initially there is a stage after privatization where there is competition between companies. However, eventually a few companies end up dominating the market and at that point you have all the same problems that the parent comment moans about being present under public ownership while having no actual control over the situation because the infrastructure is privately owned.
That’s the real lesson for y’all.
Your scenario isn’t against my point, public and private sectors should compete. It just sounds like there’s a lack of competition in your area, which is something that the government should fix, not private companies. So you want to give more power to an entity that can’t even fix a competition issue in the market? This is literally the responsibility of the government. As far as I know, Canada isn’t like the US, private companies don’t own the government, so what’s happening there?
I’m just saying, wealth accumulation isn’t necessarily an evil thing. As I showed, it can also be positive. It’s just a matter of balance. I’m much more inclined to the left than the right, but I don’t see everything that happens in the right as evil.
My scenario is actually against your point because you’re not considering the full capitalist lifecycle in your argument. Capitalist competition necessarily leads to capital consolidation and monopolies by its very nature. Meanwhile, capital owning class is very much in charge in every capitalist state. Capitalists own the media, pay for political campaigns, lobbying, and so on. Working class has no real representation in politics, and no holds no actual power. All people get to do is to once every few years decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
I think that just because capitalism can go wrong it doesn’t mean that capitalism is a failure. Sure, right now we’re living in a pretty dystopian capitalism, but this can happen to any system, no system is invulnerable to exploitation. This is just the same argument the far-right uses to say socialism and communism are failure because “look at North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and the Soviet Union”.
Unfortunately, they figured out how to exploit capitalism by buying politicians. This is bad because they get to do whatever the fuck they want with no consequences, but it doesn’t mean that wealth accumulation is bad.
Imagine a company that didn’t exploit workers, didn’t buy politicians, cared about the environment and payed fair taxes. These companies do exist. They exist under capitalism. The same way you imagine a government that takes care of everyone, gives free education, free healthcare, takes care of workers… I could imagine a government that has too much power, destroys private companies and ignores the needs of the working class, as it has happened under socialism/communism.
It isn’t a matter of abolishing the systems we have but finding a balance between them. Plus, politicians should be subjected to extremely harsh audits to make sure they aren’t corrupt. Lobbying shouldn’t be legal, that’s insane, but it isn’t an inherente part of capitalism.
Idk, I think capitalism isn’t evil, humans are. Any system can go south with us.
I mean it’s been tried for over a century, and it always goes wrong the same way everywhere it’s tried because of how the system inherently functions. Meanwhile, if the problem genuinely was with the human nature that’s an argument for designing systems that inhibit negative qualities while promoting positive ones. Capitalism does the exact opposite.
Western capitalism is responsible for horrors far worse than anything that USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, or DPRK have ever done. It has enslaved majority of the human population through pure brutality and exploits it to this day to subsidize the lifestyle of the golden billion. Yet, even with this level of exploitation, the conditions in the west are now deteriorating for the majority of the people.
Imagining a company that didn’t exploit workers, didn’t buy politicians, cared about the environment and payed fair taxes is like imagining unicorns. Such companies if they ever get created will simply be outcompeted by companies that are willing to do all those things, because making profit is the sole fitness function for a capitalist business.
I could imagine a government that has too much power, destroys private companies and ignores the needs of the working class, as it has happened under socialism/communism.
Except, communists managed to achieve things such as ensuring everyone has their basic needs met, which still eludes capitalist societies to this day despite far more wealth being available.
It isn’t a matter of abolishing the systems we have but finding a balance between them. Plus, politicians should be subjected to extremely harsh audits to make sure they aren’t corrupt. Lobbying shouldn’t be legal, that’s insane, but it isn’t an inherente part of capitalism.
It’s not possible to have a neutral government in a society where there is mass wealth inequality. People who have wealth will always use it for political purposes. They buy media, pay bribes, groom politicians, and so on. This happens every single time capitalism is tried in a society. The only way to avoid the problem is to eliminate the ability for people to accumulate capital.
