Reply #122: Capitalism has always failed - all capitalist economies are also... [View All]

[JackRiddler]

state-run.

The free market has always been a myth, conveniently trumpeted most whenever it gave advantage to those doing the trumpeting.

Capitalism comes about thanks to state action on behalf of primitive accumulation and state protectionism. Britain industrialized thanks to protectionist measures, and it has been so with every case of industrialization ever since.

Capitalism has always run into massive failures. This is in the nature of its growth imperative, which always hits limits and crisis.

The solution has always involved massive state interventions: wars, pump-priming, industrial subsidies.

The United States disguises a massive publicly subsidized command sector as a "defense department." It's an unaffordable disaster, but the system has run on it and certain dominant interests have prospered on it for many years. The booms since the 1980s especially have very much been thanks to military Keynesianism. The Internet, too: developed by military and public subsidy to the point where profitable businesses could take off. At that point, privatization of the profits began and a bunch of moguls pretended they had invented the whole thing.

Capitalism has produced profits for the private sector only through public sector intervention. Technological development, infrastructure, maintaining the force of law (and protecting property rights), wars for resources and markets -- these costs are borne by the public sector. Health and pollution costs are conveniently externalized or exported. Only by externalizing costs and accepting a variety of subsidies does the "private sector" (increasingly concentrated corporate capital) maintain profitability and its claims of productivity.