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Originally Posted by Samurai I dislike labels while discussing complex ideas. That is because it often conveys the wrong impression and dumbs down the idea to a stereotype.
Take socialism, I rather not use that terminology because it used to mean something else because of the way communist countries implemented it.
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Originally Posted by V.Narayan Thanks. Unfortunately this thread too often gets pulled down by rigid compartmentalization. Shades of grey. All aspects of life and economics are shades of grey.Agree 1000%Thank you. |
Plus one to that. While on the subject here are my 2 cents (or going by the length of the post, 2 dollars or 2 roubles, whichever you may prefer)
Actually the problem with all the ‘-isms’ is that they are merely models to help us broadly understand economic systems, whereas overzealous leaders have attempted literal adaptations of these models in the real world, amply aided by ambitious academics and intellectuals.
To say that these systems are theoretical would be an understatement. Any system that completely ignores human and technological progress, inter-linkages between nations and societies is not worth fighting wars over. All the -isms are static and theoretical. I have always treated them as an exercise in academic pursuit and nothing more.
There seems to be some belief that communist and socialist states came into being as reaction to excesses of capitalism. This happens because of cursory reading of history. A common thread that ran across revolutions in Europe was presence of unpopular monarchies which were getting to be a drain on the exchequer. Monarchs needed wars to keep themselves relevant and reasons were plenty - religion, race, historical grudges and of course territory and resources. To finance their wars the monarchs taxed their populations heavily and far from being a capitalist’s best friend, they were actually quite unpopular with the mercantile and industrial class who resented the taxes, repeated instability and famines caused due to war. Wars also cut off supply chains and made resources costlier. Monarchies were not synonymous with capitalism. However, since the monarchs were obviously wealthy and centralized power within their families, their antidote was naturally seen to be a system where wealth and power was distributed among the people.
The communist movement ushered in by Lenin and his comrades was one such reaction. In France the revolution did not bring about change in the economic system but more of social reform. Had Karl Marx been born before 1789, who knows the French would have flirted with communism too. In India since we had history of business families being close to politicians, we adopted a ‘mixed model’, which although allowed private enterprise to exist, also kept a leash on it in the form of license-quota-permit raj.
The confrontation between between capitalist and communist/socialist ideals also served as a proxy power struggle between the two ascendant countries post WW-2 - Soviet Union and US. This is not to say that these are not contrasting ideologies but the demarcations became very rigid as each of the blocs started getting more countries within its fold. “If you are not with us, then you are against us” may have been coined by George Bush junior after the September 11 attacks, but this is pretty much how the world behaved during the cold war era too.
The casualties of this straight jacketing were the systems themselves. Communism as a system failed because it failed to treat humans as creatures who have needs beyond the basic roti-kapda-makaan. It also failed because it always needed the bogey of capitalism for its own survival, whereas it was born out of a very different struggle. After a point people could see that merely a different economic system is not a solution to all their problems and capitalist countries are not exactly the decadent monarchies that their own pre-revolution countries were. It was not all black and white as you said.
The capitalist bloc on the other hand was not as ruthlessly profit seeking as it was made out to be and had higher tolerance for diverse opinion, which ultimately shaped some of the welfare states that we see today. I doubt today that any country would officially call itself a capitalist country.
Lastly, refugees thronging to the US in tiny boats is not a victory for capitalism or a defeat of socialism. That would be putting it too simplistically. Refugees are fleeing lack of opportunities, corrupt regimes and crime in their native countries. These adverse conditions have been created out of a complex mix of post colonial power vacuums, plundering of natural resources by crony capitalists, entrenched feudal structures and sheer administrative incompetence of so called popular leaders.