MD Some thoughts on the various socio-economic threads.

[Thracian Bard]

Dear Colleagues,   Having read some of the discussions of socialism and capitalism, I am confused by the use of these two "ism's" as if they reside within the same genus. It seems to me that capitalism is purely an economic convention while socialism seems to be an evolutionary process as old as humanity. As power has periodically been concentrated in the hands of one or a few, socialism, essentially, is the natural dynamic force which attempts to more widely redistribute that power, but not necessarily in monetary terms. For example, the Magna Carta might be considered a type of socialist document, in that it transferred some of the Monarch's rights to a wider yet still privileged class. The printing press was an instrument of socialism in that it transferred the power of the Church to interpret texts to the literate public. The American Revolution sought to transfer power from the Monarch to the landed gentry, as the American Colonies were primarily agrarian. While none of these examples might carry the current connotation of socialism, in order to present my next point, I needed to employ this rather over-simplified socio-evolutionary timeline. After the Renaissance and prior to the Industrial Revolution, the world was full of capitalists who were also socialists. The farmers who, although they were not Dukes, or Earls, or Princes, now began to own their own lands and to exert their influence on the politics of the day. Tradesman who formed guilds and lobbied for reforms in government to protect free enterprise were a form a socialist-capitalist. Socialism and capitalism were not two mutually exclusive concepts but two entirely different things. Socialism was, of its own volition, a naturally occurring process of evolution; capitalism was an effective man-made tool for commerce.   So what was it that resulted in the term socialism being linked to Marx and Engle, and subsequently being confused with Communism which is, like capitalism, another man-made economic convention? THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This aptly named "revolution" which began so stealthily, essentially "turned the Western world upside down in less than a fifty years. It (1) eliminated agrarian power and influence (2) destroyed the tradesman guilds (3) created a dependence by its vast multitude of workers on the need for currency. Everything else eliminated, a worker's time became his only worth, economically. ( Before anyone calls me a Luddite, allow me to add that there were also many, many positive consequences of the Industrial Revolution, not the least of which is the computer from which I now correspond.)    If we view time as a never ending, yet slowly expanding spiral, we see that the Industrial Revolution is the beginning of a new cycle. It's beginning is more obvious than previous cycles, because so much more documentation exists. This new cycle produced a new set of monarchs - venture capitalists. It is not the capitalism that is in contradiction to socialism (or quality), it is this new power structure that resulted from the Industrial Revolution. Socialism, in its naturally dynamic way has now developed into a new movement by the wage-earning workers, fueled by the words of Marx and others, to ensure that power is shared by both the workers (many of whom are both socialist and capitalist) and the investor/entrepreneurs.   For brevity's sake, I've tried to condense what could have been a tome. But I would be delighted to elaborate on any of the points!   Regards! The Bard