I’ve Abandoned Free Market Principles to Save the Free Market System.

Two basic questions that I like to ask about governments is who owns the means of production and who controls the means of production.  I use this basic definition to list the four possibilities and name them.

Socialism is basically defined as the government owning the means of production and controlling the means of production. This is the standard definition. 

Communism is where the government owns the means of production but the people control the means of production. There is some measure of egalitarianism. 

Capitalism is where the people own the means of production and control the means of production. 

Fascism is where the people own the means of production but the government controls the means of production. 

There is no form of government that was ever 100% one or the other. It is always a matter of degree. One of the most socialist of all governments, the Soviet Union, still allowed the people to "own" and control private plots of land, and they really had to as that is where most of the food was produced. Note that in the 70's even with the breadbasket of Ukraine, the Soviet Union had to import grain. Yet after the end of Socialism, Russia, without Ukraine, became a grain exporter. Socialism does not work, so when Bernie Sanders says he is one, I lose whatever little interest I had in him. 

There has never been a pure communist society. In fact it is really more of a utopian illusion of Marx who felt that socialism would be an intermediate stage on the path to his real goal–a golden age of communism where the common man would change himself to a new man capable of living in such a world. Obviously in the case of the Soviet Union this did not work. There are two interesting examples of a communist-type system. One was when God took the Israelites out of Egypt and they took over Palestine. God, as the government, owned the means of production, the agricultural land. Yet the people controlled it as they farmed the land God owned in family groups. No family could dominate the land, as while the land could be rented from the family groups, the land would be returned to them every 50 years. Slave farming, the Egyptian model, was difficult as the land would be held by various family groups. Another example of communism is the early church where the people voluntarily added all their assets together and it was distributed by the early deacons. Make of it what you will that the only examples I could think of for historic communism were Biblical. 

While I do not want to make the error of "no True Scotsman," (see this link for an example I have used before) I can think of few examples of capitalism in history. The Irish before they were conquered by the English is the main example I can think of. We in the US do not live in a capitalist society. 

What kind of society do we live in? Yes the only one left, a fascist society. Note that I am not using any of these terms pejoratively.

While I would prefer a capitalist type of society, I am not naive like Marx and think that such a golden age will miraculously appear. You will always have a mix of the types like Corporate Socialism of China, Corporate Fascism of Mussolini, or the Corporate Capitalism of the US that ends up being fascist. 

So when I hear the call for more regulation, like I did on a forum I am on, I hear a call for a more fascist society. At least the trains will run on time, as they do in the socialist train system of Russia. But on the other hand if I hear a call for less regulation, I see a train wreck coming as our modern corporate capitalist system is so top heavy I doubt it could survive without regulation, see the 2008 crisis. Basic reforms must precede deregulation. We just regulate the deregulation in order to save the regulation. Yes we must destroy the village in order to save it. Or as former President Bush said it: "I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." 

Doing the basic reforms needed is difficult as that would hurt those who are paying our politicians. So rather than doing that we will put band aids over the body politic and hope for the best. 

It will not end well.