People find fault with capitalism. Many think they’d prefer socialism.
Why? Because they believe absurd myths about it.
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
John Stossel: The Complete Guide to Socialism vs Capitalism (Myths Explained)
Labels: capitalism, John Stossel, SocialismPeople find fault with capitalism. Many think they’d prefer socialism.
Why? Because they believe absurd myths about it.
7 comments:
If you vote your way into Socialism, you'll have to shoot your way out.
>"People find fault with capitalism. Many think they’d prefer socialism."
As though the two were flipsides of the same coin!
Putting it somewhat simply, socialism is a way of running a country while capitalism is a way of running an economy.
Where things become a bit confusing is when we consider that there is such a thing as a 'socialist economy', but there is no such thing as a 'capitalist government'.
What Yanks call socialism is often what someone who speaks refined English would call 'welfarism'. In Europe we acknowledge the duty of care of the State towards its citizens. Hence we believe that the State should provide universal health care, provide equality of opportunity through top-quality public education, ensure that people who fall ill still have an income, and so on.
The countries with the best welfare systems are those such as Sweden, Netherlands and Denmark that rely on strong capitalist economies to finance those systems.
'Capitalism vs socialism' is a false choice unless one redefines socialism. It is also another instance of how Americans mangle the English language.
Capitalism is inherently connected to individualism.
Socialism/Communism is inherently connected to collectivism.
Which appeals more freedom or servitude?
I no my preference.
Putting aside the substantive issues in this Capitalism v Socialism debate, the most interesting thing is that it is happening at all. For decades apologists for capitalism like Mr. Stossel didn’t feel the need engage in debate. Now they are going at it almost frantically. This is totally linked the deepening social and economic crisis of late capitalism, of course.
Terry, looking at the last half century I would say that the "deepening social and economic crisis" refers to socialism as a governmental paradigm. The USSR ditched socialism after 70-odd years of economic mismanagement, while the People's Republic of China would be better described as feudal than as socialist. Anyway it's not a 'debate' as that requires two entities at opposite ends of a dipole and we don't have that, what we have instead is a way of managing an economy and a way of running a country.
The problem we have in the West isn't classical socialism (Marxism-Leninism) but the 'neo' variety which has become an instrument of oppression by a smug ideological elite of the masses who don't agree with them and don't want to get involved in their social engineering. When a trendy-tits pseudo-intellectual on a high salary for some make-believe job associated with that social engineering tries to tell me my business, the saying that comes to my mind as an apt descriptor is, "Do as I say, not as I do".
Neither are great, Catholic economic and social theories which are better for everyone.
To Barend at 9:43 A.M. I agree with you almost entirely - except for your rabid anti-"Americanism" (USA).
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