I’M GOING TO PROVIDE AN INTERESTING AND POSSIBLY NOVEL ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION. Neither Capitalism (the voluntary organization of production, and distributed control of property) nor Socialism (the involuntary organization of production, and the centralized control of property) is possible. Both systems result in totalitarian oligarchies. Economic operation under socialism is impossible. Economic concentration under capitalism is undesirable (by the masses). The general argument is that capitalist oligarchies destroy each other in a constant process of creative destruction, and that socialist oligarchies do not. This appears to be fairly obvious from both the logic and the evidence.
Given the impossibility of either, the open question is the following:
- HOW DO WE MAINTAIN SYMMETRY OF COSTS OF THE SOCIAL ORDER NECESSARY FOR THE VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION GIVEN THE ASYMMETRY OF ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY OF INDIVIDUALS
Under agrarianism, when we developed political universalism, we were equally able to contribute to the economy, because human physical effort and human mental discipline were the only determinants of relative productivity. However, increasingly, the ability to work with abstract ideas has evolved to become competitively advantageous, while labor and learning by observation and imitation have lost all value in the economy. As such, some individuals are highly productive and others are not. And there is no evidence of this difference in productivity.
Capitalism is the name we use for the distribution of property to individuals where they may voluntarily organize and participate in production, and where they possess the incentive to participate in production, even if their only property is their body, time, and effort.
When we respect property: private, shareholder and commons, and when we respect norms : manners, ethics, morals, myths, traditions and rituals, we pay for access to society and the market, and the system of production. Unfortunately,
Conversely, respect for law, order, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and norms – all of which ask us to forego opportunities for gratification, fall increasingly on the unproductive classes. So if the lower classes must both observe laws, order, property, manners, ethics, morals, traditions and rituals, while at the same time they are unable to participate in the economy, then it is no longer logical for them to continue to forgo all these opportunities and pay the high cost of deprivation, when they obtain only access to the market for good and services, but not the ability to participate in the voluntary organization of production that forgoing opportunities for gratification makes possible.
- WHY MONOPOLY FORM OF GOVERNMENT?
Then second question is whether a society, under an homogenous government, practicing homogenous manners, ethics, morals, rituals, and myths, really needs to exist as it has in the past. Why for example, cannot the upper classes make use of a libertarian government, while the lower classes make use of a socialist government? There is no reason really. Most of western history relied upon state (nobility) and church (laity), or aristocracy (farmers) and labor (slaves – in the old world not new world sense). The idea that we must possess a single economic and political system for people with different needs was an artifice of the enlightenment and most of our wars, and in fact, the war that nearly ended western civilization (ww1+ww2) was largely caused by the attempt to create an ideology justifying a monopoly form of government over people with dissimilar economic and political interests.
For economic cooperation to be possible one must possess uniform individual property rights, or economic cooperation and calculation is not possible.
However, individuals can choose to collectivize their property, and others to atomize it, as suits their interests, and then the lower classes can negotiate with the upper classes for access to the lower classes as a market, the way states with different economies conduct trade policy with states with higher or lower standards of living and therefore costs.
The reason we are in conflict is artificial. We do not need to choose between socialism and capitalism. We do not need to blend the two. We can make use of both as we desire. Monopoly is just another word for tyranny, if our interests are sufficiently dissimilar, because our abilities to engage in productivity are sufficiently dissimilar.