Quote:
Originally Posted by Xurtio
I mean, it's still better than the monarch it fell out of. But the motivation was largely monetary on the ruling class's part: If you let people own their own property, and especially means of production in the state, they are more productive and while your slice of pie gets smaller, the whole pie gets larger.
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Capitalism isn't the same as letting people own their own property, though. It's letting a handful of capitalists control the means of production in order to get rich on the value created by the labor of their employees. And it's arguable how productive it is. Many of the things that are produced under capitalism, aren't really needed - and many of the things that are needed, aren't produced.
I'm not sure if that "whole pie" part is true either. Planned economies, where they have been implemented, have been incredibly efficient. The Soviet Union went from a backward country with a mainly agricultural economy to a major industrial power, eventually becoming the first country to send a person into outer space. I'm not going to defend the undemocratic regime of the Soviet Union - I don't think much good would come out of that - but I want to point out that this happened while the US and the rest of Europe were feeling the effects of the Great Depression.
The alternative to capitalism, is collective ownership of the means of production. This means that the workers democratically control their workplaces (there's another thread in this subforum about workplace democracy), and that the country's economy is managed according to a common plan. This can be done top-down, as a command economy, or bottom-up, as a participatory economy. I think the last solution is the best one. This way, we avoid crises related to overproduction, while ensuring that everyone gets what they need, and that consumers and producers get to have a say in what is produced and how it is distributed.