In the 18th and 19th centuries, during the period of barbaric growth and primitive accumulation of Western capitalism, in the face of the increasingly serious social contradictions and the problems of the division between the rich and the poor and the hardships of the bottom, socialism as a trend of thought that pinned on the ideals of many people began to emerge. Whether it is the original utopian socialism or the scientific socialism proposed by Marx and Engels, this is no different.
In the 20th century, Lenin launched the Russian Revolution, established the Socialist System in the Soviet Union, and for the first time transformed socialism from ideas and workers' movements into concrete state practices.
Unfortunately, with the highly centralized political and economic system based on the planned economy, although the Soviet Union once shined, rapidly industrialized in a short period of time, and kept pace with the capitalist camp dominated by the United States, it finally watched him rise up, watched him entertain guests, and watched him collapse. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and its dominant international socialist camp, socialism was labeled backward and failed by many people around the world, as if capitalism was the future or fate of mankind. But judging from the rapid development of capitalism around the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, it is difficult for many people to have confidence in the future of capitalism.
Of course, this is by no means a return to the Soviet model of socialism, which has long been proved unworkable by history, but rather that capitalism is not necessarily the fate of mankind, and that mankind should explore a better future on the basis of the experience of prison capitalism.
There is no doubt that, as Marx said, "the productive forces created by the bourgeoisie in its less than a hundred years of class rule are greater and greater than the total productive forces created by all previous generations", capitalism has its merits in giving great impetus to economic development. And since Marx criticized capitalism, capitalism has undergone many changes, not exactly the capitalism that was once criticized as "every pore dripping with the blood and tears of industrial workers".
Especially after The Rise of Roosevelt's New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement after World War II, the Western capitalist countries have carried out reforms and absorbed many elements of socialism, so that in terms of the living standards of ordinary people, the Western countries are far more socialist than the Soviet Union at that time. But since the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, socialism has been stigmatized, and neoliberalism has become popular, becoming a trend with a certain ideological domination status.
However, after losing the socialist camp as a competitor, constantly contrasting, urging and warning, capitalism, which has been inflated by neoliberalism, is increasingly regressing to Marx's time. French economist Piquetti's masterpiece Capital in the Twenty-first Century has revealed that since the prevalence of neoliberalism, the division between the rich and the poor in capitalist countries has increasingly regressed back to the 19th century.
Today's world capitalism consists of at least four sets of insurmountable contradictions.
First, the contradiction between the polarization between the rich and the poor, which capitalism is bound to exacerbate, and the desire of human society for fairness. Although the severity of the gap between the rich and the poor in different periods and different forms of capitalist society is not the same, it is unavoidable that the capital pursued with the pursuit of profit as the core, under the social form of economic relations and economic structure that is basically private ownership, will inevitably produce and aggravate the gap between the rich and the poor in the process of continuous expansion, and even form the capitalism of The father, that is, the growth rate of inherited wealth is much higher than that of labor income, and the amount of wealth depends on inheritance, birth rather than acquired efforts and labor. But at the same time, the desire for fairness is basic human nature, and at least fairness is the cornerstone of social stability. When the growing divide between the rich and the poor produced by capitalism meets the narrow road of human desire for fairness, it is bound to cause problems and seriously hinder social stability and the operation of democratic institutions. In order to deal with this problem, usually capitalist society will carry out periodic self-regulation in order to alleviate social contradictions, but often it does not last long, the symptoms are not cured, and the society is still trapped in a kind of cyclical boiled frog dilemma.
Second, the assumption of capitalist economic logic is that rational people, the main body of the market can make wise decisions under the guidance of their own rationality, and even say that all market participants in the whole society have the same wisdom, rational ability and the same rich information resources to achieve the ideal state of freedom and equal competition, but countless cases have repeatedly proved that human rationality is limited, and deeply disturbed by irrational factors, and the rational level and information resources of different people are often uneven. This will not only cause the differentiation of rich and poor, monopoly, big fish eat small fish, but also easy to make market players often fall into the herd effect, appear a variety of irrational, blind, fanatical, short-sighted behavior, from time to time lead to cyclical economic crises and a large number of inefficient activities, waste of resources, environmental pollution.
Third, profit-seeking capitalism alienates the relationship between man and man into a narrow, naked economic relationship, but the relationship between man and man is supposed to be complex and multi-dimensional. No matter which society, once capitalism is popular, it is difficult to avoid alienating people into tools and commodities, people are no longer ends but become means, a person's status and situation in society, groups and families are often vulgarized and classified, the public is eager for money and capital, the amount of wealth has become the most important criterion, warmth, morality, life ideals, spiritual pursuits will be squeezed.
Fourth, the globalization of capital, the contradiction between the borderlessness and the world order with the nation-state as the basic unit of competition. In the process of globalization, capital, especially finance capital, takes advantage of the gaps in the existing nation-state system to obtain maximum benefits. Compared with the specific nation-states subject to the scope of sovereignty, capital flows around the world, becomes more uncontrolled than ever, more difficult to be effectively controlled and regulated, has a larger scope of activity and a more flexible operating system than sovereign countries, and sovereign countries have to rely on globalized capital in order to develop their own economies, and in order to control capital, they are either weak or suspicious, and the result is that capitalism will include the whole world, capital will be full of money, and the class differentiation within a country in the past will be divided. Evolved into class differentiation on a global scale.
In short, although capitalism has a strong momentum in stimulating people's enthusiasm, initiative, establishing economic organization, and promoting economic growth, the above four insurmountable internal contradictions are enough to show that capitalism should not and will not be the fate of mankind. Those who pursue capitalism can only meet the growing needs of the world for a better life by continuously absorbing factors such as fairness and justice, guaranteeing the vulnerable groups, and living in harmony with nature. And such capitalism will become more and more compatible with socialism. The collapse of the international socialist camp represented by the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is not a failure of socialism, but only a failure of the socialist system of the Soviet model, and the idealism and transcendence represented by socialism itself cannot be completely denied because of the failure of the practice of some specific countries.
Capitalism, carrying the neoliberal political express, prevailed in the world for 30 years after the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, had almost no competitors, and continued to expand, causing a large number of deep-seated problems on a global scale.