When describing economic systems, we are actually describing “political-economy”. It is impossible to divorce the two, since the economic system is comprised of human beings. The presence of human beings automatically implies the presence of a political system of some sort (but not necessarily “government”).
Capitalism actually means anarcho-capitalism. Once we inject a government (coercive force, no matter how “slight”), into the economic system, free market exchange is destroyed and we are no longer describing capitalism.
Are the above statements true? I am trying to reconcile the idea of “economic” systems with “political-economic” systems. My concept is the two are fused for the above reasons, and cannot be separated.
1.) It isn’t that the economy is intertwined with the government. The government acts as a coercive System of Action, while free-market companies that Austrians praise are voluntary Systems of Action. The government is just one part of the economy, not the other way around.
2.) Government intervention can exist and it would not eliminate Capitalism. That would be a Statist-Capitalist system, where certain parts of the economy are controlled and regulated by the monopolistic company known as government.
I don’t believe, as Leviathan says, that government intervention destroys capitalism but merely cripples its potential. Just because a state decrees an action or good illegal, it doesn’t mean the action or good cannot be made or used.
exactly. that’s how i see this. An action or good can be made or used. Even in the Soviet Union of old or North Korea today, the extreme examples of the free market being crippled, not only are or were there black markets as many like to point out, but also the only market is the free market. It simply was hampered in these particular regions of the world to the point in which it did disappear, ie mass starvations. I see it as people still went to their jobs, even though it was for the “Party”, and performed their work. They made choices and acted upon those choices. People produced what they could. The coercive element of the gov’t was so heavy handed, it destroyed the market at times, ie. nothing was produced at all in sectors. All of the logical fallacies of gov’t intervention, in other words, coercive intervention into the market is what makes the outcomes illogical, ie. stifles what is potential in human action. Where there is allowed to be more peaceful economic exchanges, which include ideas, and less of a threat, the market prospers and is full of lively activity. People can come out of their hiding places, so to speak, and not too much unnecessary fears injected into their activities in the light of day or the dark of night. There’s a difference between having to watch ones own innocent back while talking to somebody and being able to share laughs without being afraid that some arbitrary bully is going to come along.
Well said. Since the USSR wanted control over the entire economy, they required the most force of aggression to gain that control. And it’s not like their job of aggression was over after they took power; to maintain their dominance took an extreme amount of resources and energy, which was funded by their citizens (whether they wanted to or not). But in that seizure of power, the USSR became a giant company that was not only bigger and more abusive than any capitalist company, but also asserted the right to regulate the human actions of everyone within their transcontinental borders.
Every single economic system throughout history has been “capitalistic,” but there are and have been varying degrees of state interference. This is true for the USSR after 1921, for America before the age of “progressive” corporatism, and in 16th century Lyon. Absolute actual communism is the end of the economic system, and not an alternative. No society can survive without some private property and without some kind of market activity. Think of the state as a tapeworm.
