Socialism is not a Four Lettered Word

Socialism is not a Four Lettered Word

Karl Marx

The Koch Brothers

Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Socialism is an economic system in which the production and distribution of goods are controlled substantially by the government rather than by private enterprise, and in which cooperation rather than competition guides economic activity. There are many varieties of socialism.

Communism is a political and economic system that seeks to create a classless society in which the major means of production, such as mines and factories, are owned and controlled by the public.

There is nothing inherently evil in either socialism or communism, but one can easily see why it scares capitalists to death.

In communism what gives a product its value is the worker, so it is the worker who should receive the profits. For example, IN THE United States we have Major League Baseball where the players enjoy the profits (after the reserve clause was found to be a monopolistic practice that violated anti-trust laws.). Nobody’s going to pay a nickel to come watch the owners play.

In capitalism it is the owners of the factories, the assembly lines, the mines who are said to give a product its value and thus the owners should reap the profits. However, as Marx pointed out capital does nothing is useless without the worker, therefore it is a fact that the worker gives the product its value.

In unfettered capitalism owners are free to produce products that kill and/or mime that common law used to be let the buyer beware. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, changed this when he started the Food and Drug Administration to keep greedy capitalists from producing useless and/or harmful patent medicines: snake oil” that killed people.  Unfettered capitalism still exists.  The Ford Motor Company knew that the Pinto would explode into a fireball killing all inside, but their economists deduced that even after paying the wrongful death suits it would be profitable to build the car, so they did.  That is unfettered or unregulated capitalism.

Regulated capitalism falls under none of the definitions above.  Regulated capitalism is capitalism that is controlled or regulated by the democratic process, leading to the phrase Democratic socialist.  A Democratic socialist is really a capitalist who believes in regulating capitalism and also in the fact that there are failed markets, markets in which capitalism fails to perform, for example, food production, medical care, and education.  Markets do not work for these services the leave people to starve, to die from disease and thy keep capable people with little or no money from attaining an an education, while, what is often overlooked, providing an Education or the trappings of education to wealthy people who really are not deserving of a university education because, frankly they are too stupid. Some markets fail.

Democratic socialists have been around for decades in Europe with no ill effects. They seek to level the playing field by keeping capitalists from producing products that kill and mime and instituting business practices that do the same. They also seek to fix regulate or control failed markets so that all human beings have sufficient food, shelter, medical care and an opportunity at an education based on their intelligence not their pocketbook.

In the end unfettered capitalism will destroy itself we saw this in 2008 and we saw it in 1929 the great depression.  For the main characteristic of capitalism its driving force is greed, and despite what Adam smith would have us believe most human beings are not driven by greed. The end game of capitalism is for a few or even one person to own all the capital, “he who dies with the most toys wins.”  Unfortunately, this is the self-destructive aspect, if only a few have everything, then who is there left to buy what their capital produces.

The church takes a middle ground on the issue adhering to personal ownership of property and humans having the free will to do what they will with their property, however with this ownership comes responsibility to treat workers with dignity and respect and to pay them according to the tenants of Christianity, ie, fairly and with dignity and respect. There is nothing in unfettered or un-regulated capitalism there is no mechanism in un-regulated capitalism that causes the capitalist to treat the worker with fairness dignity and respect.

Socialism is not a four lettered word.

And there is nothing terrifying about Democratic Socialism.