I understand how Socialism would be a necessary interim step from Capitalism to Communism. The only way to move from Capitalism to Communism without social and economic collapse would be to first replace the bourgeois with the proletariat and stabilize the Socialist structure before moving to Communism. While I don’t think Communism is a maintainable ideal in the post industrial world, I can see why the Socialist step would be a necessary one. What I can’t understand is why people claim that Socialism is impossible to maintain, and will inevitably slide into Communism or back to Capitalism. Can someone explain why this must necessarily be the case?
Socialism is very ok, I think it's the ideal balanced system. And it's in place in Scandinavia. Capitalism and communism are extremes, middle way is the best. USSR would have been great in socio-economic aspect, if it weren't for the goal to build communism.
Why do people insist that it is not stable and will only backslide into Capitalism or Communism? I have heard quite a few people on both sides make this claim.
Hi, OR, From what I've read in several places, it eventually reaches the point where it becomes unsustainable. The population becomes ever-more dependent on the system until the system finally cannot meet the demand. Take that for what it's worth and ponder on it for a while. It has a certain ring of truth to me, anyway.
Capitalism also doesn't meet many demands, also does communism. You can't meet all demands, because they're always there, so the key is to increase happiness with what is, and, imo, it is best done in socialism.
You're missing the main point. Neither capitalism nor communism really attempt to try and meet the demands. But socialism DOES try - and therefore, according to most comments I've read, will eventually fail and the system WILL get changed.
Under capitalism, you can have whatever you want so long as you're willing and able to work for it. But socialism and communism sever the link between work and reward. A little socialism doesn't hurt too much because most of society is still operating under the capitalist system under which the your rewards are proportional to your output. But the more a society moves into a socialist system, the less motivation there is for people to work and produce the things we need. Communism deals with this problem via authoritarianism. Basically, DO WHAT THE GOVERNMENT SAYS AND WORK, OR DIE! To put it simply, capitalism works by carrots, communism works by sticks. Socialism works by whatever carrots remain but ultimately it runs out of carrots and must either turn back towards capitalism (for more carrots) or move further leftward into communism and start using sticks.
True enough, or should I just mention software patents, copyright law, etc. in capitalism against "art belongs to the people" in USSR? And then there's also government policy how much arts to support and sponsor, how much to tax companies and what part of that tax to allocate to health care, arts, state paid studies, etc? I stand by what I said.
It relates to post #8 in which there were only two variables - carrots and sticks. I'm telling that there is more to capitalism, socialism and communism than that.
They say socialist systems eventually fail, and become corporatist or communist. But you can get a good eighty, ninety years out of them. There's no sense setting up in failure mode, or engineering a failure any sooner than it has to be.
