Richard Wolff: System Change, or There and Back Again: Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism

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System Change, or There and Back Again: Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism

Monday, 17 November 2014 09:52
By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | News Analysis


Societies today where capitalist economic systems prevail confront government gridlock. Facing serious and deepening economic problems, even when their leaders can sometimes agree on particular policies, the policies are frequently inadequate to solve the problems. Therefore, questions challenging capitalism occur now more often and more influentially than they have for many decades. Renewed interest in systemic changes, both socialist and fascist, agitates many societies.

Historically, capitalism's problems often led its leaders (economic and political) to make adjustments and changes in income and wealth distributions, government regulations affecting enterprises and markets, international relations, and so on. For example, progressive income taxes and minimum wages were legislated, anti-monopoly rules were enacted, and tariffs and foreign wars were imposed. Sometimes, capitalism's leaders lacked the capacity to execute such solutions or else those solutions proved insufficient. Then, more systemic changes arrived on social agendas. The two most important of such systemic changes were traditional socialism and fascism. These were achieved by peaceful or violent means, by parliamentary reforms or by revolutions, depending on the circumstances of time and place.

By traditional socialism, we mean here the sorts of systemic changes associated with the Soviet Union and China, but also with European social democracy. By fascism, we mean the sorts of systems exemplified by Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany.

Capitalism's deepest problems sooner or later drove political and economic groups within its national boundaries to pursue what they saw as systemic solutions. By that, they meant first and foremost changing the state and integrating it much more closely with enterprises (factories, offices and stores). Transitions to traditional socialism and fascism have historically been the major different, alternative forms of such systemic solutions. Neither has yet proved a durable solution. Modern societies have returned from fascist or traditional socialist periods to forms of capitalism that re-established a greater distance between enterprises and the state. Yet those forms of capitalism keep generating business cycles and inequalities that eventually become the serious problems that bring yet another turn toward traditional socialism or fascism. The deepening problems of the early 21st century raise the distinct possibility of another cycle of fascist and traditional socialist experiments or, as we shall show, perhaps a genuinely new solution. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27270-system-change-or-there-and-back-again-capitalism-socialism-fascism