it denies the natural and personal rights of life, liberty and private ownership of property. Communism also denies the principle that the benefits of society received by a person should be proportionate to the contribution made by the person.
Radical capitalism or pure and total capitalism is completely opposite to communism. In a purely and totally capitalistic economy, all property is privately owned or controlled. All land is privately owned or controlled. There are no public forests, public forest preserves or public parks. All roads and streets are privately owned or controlled. There are no public highways whatsoever. All natural resources are privately owned or controlled. All trees, water, coal, ore, natural gas, petroleum, and chemical deposits are privately owned or controlled. There are no public lakes or rivers. Theoretically, even space and the air could be privately owned or controlled. All buildings, all machinery, all equipment, all materials, all energy, and all furniture are privately owned or controlled. There are no public buildings. There are no public schools. There are no public museums. All theories, models, designs, formulations, recipes, music, artistic expressions, literary expressions, manual labor and communication are privately owned or controlled. From a theoretical point of view, even human beings could be privately owned or controlled in a purely capitalistic economy. The government in a purely capitalistic economy provides virtually no public services. The military is privatized, law enforcement is privatized. There is no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no unemployment security program.
Radical capitalism minimizes the role of government and makes governments virtually powerless. It is based on the false principle of ‘survival of the fittest’ and allows individuals to accumulate property without any limit or constraint. If further denies the universality of the human right to own private property and it denies the equality of human beings. Radical capitalism holds that private property should only be held by the most elite members of society and not by everyone.
Imagine a society in which everything was privately owned and controlled. There would be no public roads, no public services, no public education, no public fire protection, no public emergency services, and no public law enforcement. The person or persons who owned the water supplies, or the roads, or the schools or the police, or the fire services, etc. could choose to sell or not to sell water or access to roads, or access to schools, or access to police and fire protection services. That is because private property is considered an absolute in a purely capitalistic society. In a purely capitalistic society, private property is superior to all other rights. It should be obvious to everyone that natural resources (land, trees, water, coal, ore, natural gas, petroleum, chemical deposits, etc.) are limited—there is not an infinite supply. If one person or a small group of people own or control all or even the vast majority of natural resources, then the majority of people are subject to and dependent on the plutocratic minority for the necessities of life. The government in a purely and totally capitalistic society is controlled by the minority which owns the majority of property. Democracy and pure capitalism are completely incompatible for pure capitalism is based on inequality. The rights of those who own or control more property are greater than the rights of those who own little or no property. Uncontrolled capitalism as it moves towards absolute capitalism tends towards plutocracy as a government and plutonomy as an economic system with extreme economic disparity, very low social mobility (great difficulty in moving from the working class to the capitalist class), and economic slavery of the working class to the rich class. Like communist governments, plutocratic governments based on radical capitalism are also totalitarian.
The United States is not capitalistic. It is in fact partially socialistic and partly capitalistic. Public roads, public services, public buildings, public schools, libraries, veterans’ services, Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, workers compensation, police protection, fire protection, etc are all examples of socialism within the United States. However, there has been a movement in the United States over the last forty years which is trying to transform the economy from a hybrid socialistic-capitalistic one into a purely and totally capitalistic one. Most people in the United States have been led to believe that capitalism is good and both socialism and communism are bad. The only real way of measuring or evaluating an economic system is to look at the standard of living for the majority of people living within the system. Are public roads, public services, public buildings and public schools bad? The vast majority of Americans enjoy these services. Are public libraries a bad thing? Are healthcare for veterans, education and training benefits for veterans, home loan programs for veterans, and burial benefits for veterans bad things? Is social security which is government mandated old-age and disability insurance and which provides benefits to 63 million Americans a bad thing? Are Medicare, unemployment insurance or workers compensation bad things?
If the essence of a capitalist system is the private ownership and or control of the production system, then kingdoms and empires were capitalist systems since the production systems were owned and controlled by the king and his noblemen. Unfortunately, the economic life of the majority working class within kingdoms and empires was terrible. The king and his noblemen owned virtually everything including the lives of the people. The economy of the United States has always been based on capitalism. Yet, there have many periods in US history that show a complete failure of capitalism as measured by the majority working class; the age of the Robber barons and the Great Depression being the most infamous. The Great Recession of 2008 is another example. There have been 47 recessions since the founding of the United States. Recessions always have a significant impact on the working class. Recessions have been and are bad for the majority of people, but they are very good for a select minority. Many wealthy families owe their wealth to a recession.
Capitalism as an economic system in which the production system is owned and or controlled by private individuals does not necessarily bring about an economy which benefits the majority of the members of the nation. At least this is true when a relative minority of the population (perhaps one or two percent) own or control virtually the entire production system of the economy. It would be different if it was ninety-nine percent or more of the population which owned the production system. Within kingdoms and empires and throughout the history of the United States the production systems were owned and or controlled and are owned or controlled by a small and elite minority. The vast majority of the people have little to no ownership share whatsoever in the US production system and virtually no control over the US production system. While people do in fact comprise the production system and generate as output all of the goods and services that are available for consumption, the capitalists claim ownership of virtually everything. They look down on the working class and do not consider the worker as a partner or equal in the production system. As a result, the capitalists within kingdoms, empires, during the period of the Robber Barons and during the Great Depression took far more than their fair share of the profits of the production system and deprived the working class (which represented the majority of the population) of what was their fair share preventing them from being able to buy the goods and services which they needed and wanted and which was necessary to drive the economy. In order for capitalism to be effective, the private ownership of the production system needs to be as widespread as possible throughout the members of the nation. Capitalism, or private ownership of the production system, needs to be distributed throughout the entire population and not concentrated in the hands of a few.
This means that the ownership and control of the United States production system, the complex network of farms, factories, distribution centers, transportation carriers, stores, banks, hospitals, schools, etc, should not be concentrated in the hands of a small minority of individuals. No, instead the ownership of the United States production system needs to be distributed as much as possible throughout the entire population.
What is better for the economy ; one mega $400 billion corporation, with over 6100 stores or 6100 different corporations with average revenues of $66 million? ($400 billion divided by 6100)? What is better for the economy, one mega $370 billion corporation, Exxon-Mobil, with 22,000 stations or 22,000 corporations with average revenues of $17 million? What is better for the economy, one mega Bank of $140 billion, Citigroup, with over 5000 branches or 5000 independent, separate banks with an average of $28 million in annual revenue?
Giant
