Reply #25: Yes, I am a socialist. I want corporations replaced by co-ops. [View All]

[Odin2005]

And private capital investment should be replaced by government-owned and community-owned investment banks. As I posted in the "what do we need Wall Street for" thread, I consider private investment to be a relic of 200 years ago, back when governments didn't have as much spending power and wealth as they do now. Basically, I thibk the Industrial Revolution and the Computer-Internet-Information Revolution has made the private investment of capital that is the basis of Capitaslism obsolete.

This is where I disagree with Marxists, in that I don't think shifts from one economic system to anotheris some deterministic process. Marxism says that a societies values is determined my it's economic structure, this I think is backward, IMO it a a society's value ststem that determines the economic system that develops. Primitive steam engine technology was know by the ancient Romans, but nothing ever became of it because aristocratic values were too dominant, and knowledge of steam power died with the Roman Empire. It was not until first the monastic sactifification of hard work in the Middle Ages followed by the the influence of Calvinism fatally weakened the aristocratic value regime that the Industrial Revolution could occur. England was the first place the Aristocratic values regime broke down and the Techno-Comercial values regime took over so it's no wonder it was were the Industrial Revolution started. The Industrial Revolution didn't take off fully in the US until the Southern Planter Aristocracy was crushed in the US Civil War.

I see in the history of Western Eurasia a sucession of values regimes that contrary to what Marxists claim, came out of internal cultural change and thus allowed a shift in economic system, not the other way around. these values regimes, from oldest to newest, are:

Despotic-Heiratic (Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia): 4000BC to 1000BC
Aristocratic: 1000BC to 1700AD
Techno-Comercial: 1700 to 1970
Systemic-Holistic-Gaian: 1970 to Now