I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.
I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.
Okay, well, I’ve studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you’re either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?
I apologize if this is too blunt.
So I understand total capitalism as an entirely market driven economy with no government influence
And total communism as an entirely planned and government prescribed economy
And socialism as some of the economy is market driven and some government planned.
Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.
The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.
The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.
The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.
Okay, so extremely abridged, here is what seperates capitalism from socialism.
Under capitalism, private individuals own the means of production, distribution, and sustenance. Workers are forced to go to one of these private individuals and exchange their labor power for a wage. Capitalist profit is generated by paying the worker less than their labor power is worth but enough to sustain workers as a class. The workers are prevented from using the means of production without entering into the wage labor model through the threat of physical violence.
Under socialism, the means of production are managed in common, somewhere along a sliding scale of the people working in a workplace and democracy having control of how the workplace operates depending on the system
You’ll note that these both can operate within markets, and both require at least some planning.
Video: we need a mixture of capitalism and communism is bullshit
Book: Explaining why markets are bad
Edit: this is ignoring the way the state plays a role in these economic formations but Im trying to keep it simple.
Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.
Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.
They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.
That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we’ve seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We’ve seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It’s not sexy, though.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
Consider for 3 seconds that what you “learned” about the world is a product of the system that produced it
Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it
Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual
Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties
Communism is where everything is owned by the state
This is not correct, I encourage you to do some more reading about how coats are made if you’d like to understand this better.
You are impressingly wrong
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta stuff it’s communism <- This is you, but unironically. Educate yourself on the subject of which you claim knowledge.
There is a difference between being a hard opposite and being mutually exclusive. They are not hard opposites, but they are mutually exclusive, like being a plant, fungus, or animal. None of those categories are the opposite of any other, and they share many interesting commonalities, but one cannot be both.
