Las bases de datos que analizan los sueños del mundo ecuavisa.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ecuavisa.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Friday, Jan 22, 2021 When I first considered myself a socialist revolutionary in 1970, I was hounded by free marketers’ challenge: “name me one country where socialism works”. These market fundamentalists would then hold up the most strident expectations for socialism: Everyone is exactly equal with no classes. There is an abundance of goods which are conveniently circulated. Political rule is not dictatorial. All competition is banished. People are working together, collectively and creatively. The state has withered away. Anything less than this was proof that it didn’t work. Without really understanding how difficult it is to create any of these conditions when surrounded by a sea of capitalist sharks, I was at first intimidated. I was driven away from examining Russia, China and Cuba because they were “authoritarian”. Without realizing it, I had accepted that more than one political candidate was the ultimate measuring rod.
Nautilus is a different kind of science magazine. We deliver big-picture science by reporting on a single monthly topic from multiple perspectives. Read a new chapter in the story every Thursday.
The Shock Doctrine.
Capitalism has always existed
One of the first things you will be told about capitalism is that it has always existed. This is claimed by Adam Smith as well as the neoclassical economists. This is hardly the case for the entire school of Marxists and economic institutionalists who will tell you that capitalism is roughly 500 years old. In addition, no anthropologist will agree that tribal societies or even agricultural civilizations like Egypt, Mesopotamia, China or India had purely capitalist economic exchanges within their societies. Even external trade cannot be characterized as capitalist. The merchants in these civilizations were given lists of goods to buy by temple administrators. They did not “truck, barter and exchange” independently of the ruling elite.
ORIENTATION
Name me one country where socialism works
When I first considered myself a socialist revolutionary in 1970, I was hounded by free marketers’ challenge: “name me one country where socialism works”. These market fundamentalists would then hold up the most strident expectations for socialism:
Everyone is exactly equal with no classes.
There is an abundance of goods which are conveniently circulated.
Political rule is not dictatorial.
All competition is banished.
People are working together, collectively and creatively.
The state has withered away.
Anything less than this was proof that it didn’t work.
Without really understanding how difficult it is to create any of these conditions when surrounded by a sea of capitalist sharks, I was at first intimidated. I was driven away from examining Russia, China and Cuba because they were “authoritarian”. Without realizing it, I had accepted that more than one political candidate was the ultimate measuring rod. I