China is an example of how you can have a growing capitalist economy along with dictatorial (or oligarchic) form of government. Real life is often confusing. For example, you can have communism as an economic system and democracy as a form of government -- in fact, communism would work better that way; let the people decide how and where to allocate economic resources as central planning rather than haphazardly by .
Capitalism has one thing going for it. It recognizes that humans are primarily motivated by greed and selfishness. Pretending otherwise has led to a lot of grief. At the same time, we can't live with pure capitalism; it is intolerably manipulative and ignores considerations of the welfare of workers, consumers and of the nation as a whole. And so there are piles of laws and regulations, antitrust laws and unions to control the ravenous cannibalistic carnivore that we call capitalism.
Capitalism is like a nuclear furnace. Given all the fuel it wants, it will inevitably go into china syndrome and destroy all of us. We can live with it only if there are control rods and coolant and a graphite moderator and firm hands in charge.
So, I think you are mixing apples and oranges, when you imply that socialism or even communism mean dictatorship. The form of government is to an extent independent of the economic system. Capitalism and democracy do not always go together. (Marx himself was totally confused about this and did not distinguish between type of economy and form of government; in fact, Marx seemed to think that when the communist system was attained, government would drop away like a butterfly's coccoon; little did he know.)
No comments:
Post a Comment