Socialism and its ideas are growing in popularity, particularly among young people. Unfortunately, the generations prior typically take issue with this. These are the group of people who in an attempt to assuage the crippling weight capitalism has subjected them to, will look at you dead in the eye with a straight face and tell you how your workload is in no way comparable to the slave-like hours they are forced to work in order to afford their basic need. So as a result you should reframe from complaining about anything particularly the current state of our economic system. By God’s grace, we actually free the working class from the shackles of capitalism which has surreptitiously managed to convince us that it is the only conceivable system compatible with “human nature”.
There are plenty of arguments used by the defenders of capitalism(often the biggest victim in the system) on why it’s the only viable economic system and today we are going tackle an incredibly popular one.
There would be no innovation without capitalism.
The argument loosely goes like this. Innovation is rewarded in a capitalist system. Profit-driven companies exist in competition with each other and are constantly finding ways to increase the profitability of their products. In order to do this, they develop innovative products in order to reduce their cost of production or create a more appealing product for consumers. If these companies fail they would simply have to shut down. The threat of losing the business and the reward of profit is described as the most important motivator for companies to innovate which can only exist under capitalism.Under socialism or communism, there would be a lack of competition and profit motive meaning that innovation would effectively be non-existent.
The argument propagated by defenders of capitalism in itself shows a vital flaw in their argument. Innovation is motivated not by the need for it in society but simply if it is profitable. “Capitalism means that there is much more research into male baldness than there is into diseases such as malaria” is an excellent quote surprisingly stated by Bill Gates. Take a look on Amazon and yes you will see a ridiculous range of products but the question is are any of these things actually useful? Innovative ideas that could be incredibly important often take time to become profitable and in a system whereby investors are motivated by profit rather than the benefit of society we see a lack of investment in many of these ideas.
There is no doubt that we have been blessed by an immeasurable advancement in our technology which has coincided with the development of capitalism as we know it today. You are probably reading this off an Apple product for instance. The Apple product key innovations included the central processing units, dynamic random-access memory, hard-drive disks, liquid-crystal displays, batteries, digital single processing, the Internet, the HTTP and HTML languages, cellular networks, GPS system, and voice-user AI programs, which were developed by publicly funded research and development projects and did not in fact come from the “revolutionary” private sector. What about the internet you use to access this article? Described as the backbone of the internet the TCP/IP protocol, was invented by Vincent Cerf and Robert Kahn who developed it on a government grant. Typically when it comes to innovation many of the most life-changing products we use have come into fruition through subsidisation or complete government spending. This doesn’t particularly align with the idea that competition under capitalism is the motivator required for innovation.
Innovation under socialism
“These innovations occurred with the combination of capitalist and socialist policies. An entire socialist company would severely lack innovation”. The USSR is often used as a stick to beat yet the Soviets are an amazing example of technological advancement under socialism. The USSR were consistently on the cutting edge of science throughout the 20th century. The first satellite in space? The first man in space? The first nuclear power plant? The first blood transmutation? All of this and many more came during the Soviet reign. The radical technological advancement within the USSR has fooled people into believing they should be directly compared to the USA forgetting that the country was almost 200 years younger born out of the ruins of World War 1. The obvious other example that stands out is the amazing healthcare system within Cuba. With an infant mortality rate of 4.2 per thousand births (compared with a rate of 3.5 per thousand births in the UK in 2015), the life expectancy of 77 years for men and 81 years for women (on par with the UK’s life expectancy of 79 years for men and 83 years for women) Cuba is incredibly impressive. However, Cuba’s healthcare is most famed for its creation of CIMAvax-EGF which is a lung cancer vaccine. This is a revolutionary development born out of a system that prioritises innovation for the betterment of human development rather than simply profit.
Capitalists have been running a trillion-dollar propaganda scheme for ages and it’s easy to fall victim to many of its lies. It will constantly fall on the argument that it is supposedly the natural way of life and any deviation from it would be incompatible with human nature. The innovation argument is an example of this. It’s important to recognise that we aren’t monsters purely motivated by greed and that many of us are willing to do things for the betterment of society. Once we realise that we will be a step closer to dismantling the system.
