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5. There is no need to fear communism.

5.1. Two ways of overcoming limits

In my previous narratives, I have argued that capitalism, which has "won" over collectivism, has not run amok or collapsed, but has reached its limits in some pathological ways. There are two major ways to overcome this capitalist limit.

One is to try to overcome the above-mentioned limitations within the framework of capitalism. If we compare this to medicine, it is a pharmacotherapy for the limitations of capitalism.

The welfare state model, which was once prevalent, also introduced livelihood security such as public pensions and insurance within the framework of capitalism in order to prevent the impoverishment of the working class that would occur when capitalism was adhered to in principle. It was a powerful medical therapy that enriched the system.

However, the welfare state model has nothing to do with the first fundamental limitation, which is related to environmental sustainability. Despite its own "sustainability" being questioned, so far no new medical therapies have been found that can replace the welfare state model.

In this regard, in recent years, a system concept called Universal Basic Income (hereinafter abbreviated as UBI), which aims to uniformly provide a fixed amount of money to all citizens as basic living expenses by the state sourced from taxes and other national treasury revenues has been advocated, and it is beginning to be tried in some countries.

In contrast to the conventional welfare state, in which the state provides income guarantees only in the event of unemployment, old age, illness, or certain other circumstances while maintaining the principle of "self-help" in terms of income, UBI is sometimes promoted as the "ultimate" livelihood security system that exceeds the welfare state model in that the state provides a fixed basic income to all citizens in a uniform manner regardless of such special circumstances. 

Of course, there is the problem that a historically large tax increase is indispensable to procure the huge amount of financial resources necessary for this ultimate big treat, but there is also a problem in the principle dimension that it violates one great law that can be called the charter of capitalism. 

The capitalist charter is "Earn, or die!". In other words, the capitalist principle of life is that as long as you are able to work, you must earn everything yourself, including your basic income - unless you have unearned income such as interest or rent.

Capitalism is a doctrine in which earnings, in other words, the ability to earn money, is everything. Therefore, if a person possesses this ability, he or she can enjoy a rich life on their own, but without it, no matter how virtuous and knowledgeable you may be, you must hit rock bottom and even starve to death.

On the other hand, UBI is a caring system that aims to support the earning ability with a public minimum income guarantee, but we cannot forget the fact that the calculating capitalists are preparing tactics such as piggyback wage cuts or staff dounsizing on the pretext of minimum income guaranteed by UBI. This is why some capital enterprize executives are also sympathetic to UBI.

As a source of funding for UBI, the capitalist state, which is the “committee in charge of the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”(Marx), would raise the consumption tax and the income tax, not the corporate tax hike, which increases the tax burden on capital. It is certain that a tax increase for the common people, such as lowering tax exemption conditions that increase the burden on low-income earners, rather than strengthening progressive taxation, which increases the burden on high-income earners, will come. It is highly doubtful, then, that UBI is the ultimate alternative to the welfare state model.

Thus, communism, which is the subject of this article, will emerge as another direction to overcome the limitations of capitalism. This is a surgical remedy for the limits of capitalism in the sense that the capitalist system itself is to be fundamentally removed.

Throughout history, mankind has tried various economic systems, and at this point it seems that they have largely settled on a capitalist economy. But a system that has never been tested--aside from the archaeological hypothesis of "primitive communism"--is true communism.

5.2. Image of communism

When you hears about the transition to communism, the negative image of deprivation of property rights and regimented society comes first. In the end, a negative campaign could start by bringing up the Great Purge by Stalin in the former Soviet Union or the Massacre by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge (Communist Party of Kampuchea) that shook the world.

However, true communism does not confiscate all personal property. As for the negative image of regimented society, it comes from intentionally or mistakenly confusing communism with Soviet-style socialism, more precisely speaking, collectivism.

A communist society is certainly an equal society. However, that “equality” is equality in basic food, clothing and housing. In other words, it is a society that cooperates so that everyone can meet basic needs such as food, clothing and housing without having a special means of exchange such as money. I do not think there are so many people who categorically reject such a society as regimented .

A communist society is a society of such social cooperation, in other words, a society of mutual help. Therefore, forced exclusion such as purges and massacres would not occur in a genuine communist society. Such a policy of violent exclusion was the destination of collectivism combined with political totalitarianism rather than communism in its proper sense.

Negative images of communism are mostly remnants of the anti-communist propaganda circulated by the Western camp, led mainly by the United States, during the Cold War era. Even today, after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, they are occasionally retrieved from old archives as necessary.

Without being deceived by such propaganda, here we face up to the limits of capitalism that will become increasingly apparent towards the middle of the 21st century. And we would like to see communism, which will come after capitalism, not as a mere social theory, but in a more concrete and practical way, while contrasting it with capitalist reality. This task will be pursued sequentially in the following six chapters.

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4. Capitalism has been reaching its limits.

 Four Limits

Predicting that capitalism will not collapse easily does not mean unconditional optimism that capitalism has no limits and is eternal. Rather, capitalism today seems to have exposed its decisive limits in at least four critical ways.

 Limit (1): Environmental unsustainability

The most fundamental limit is that the global environment (ecosystem), which constitutes the conditions for the survival of human society itself, will not continue as long as the capitalist production system continues.

In particular, "global warming" is understood to be caused by an increase in greenhouse gases as a result of capitalist production activities since the industrial revolution, unlike past climate change.

It is also the "After the Banquet" of the capitalist economic growth unfolded by the advanced capitalist countries such as Western Europe, North America, and Japan. China led India, followed by Russia and Eastern Europe, which "returned" to capitalism, and the African continent, which is belatedly entering global capitalism with its natural resources as a weapon. Thus a wave of capitalist economic growth is brewing across the globe.

The global environment has been sufficiently damaged by the capitalist feast of less than a billion people in Western Europe, North America, and Japan. If all the rest of the world were to repeat the same thing, how much would the global environment be damaged? This is the terror of the unknown.

Precisely because people are already aware of this to some extent, in the era of global capitalism, global environmental issues have been raised with greater force than ever before. Still, as symbolized by the issue of greenhouse gas emission regulations, the interests of advanced countries that have already reached a certain stage of development and the ambitious emerging countries that are chasing and overtaking them tend to be in sharp conflict.

It is natural for emerging countries to want to avoid environmental regulations that could become a drag on their growing economic activities. However, the situation is the same for the developed countries. Since capitalism is originally a "quantity economy" in which capital accumulation is the self-purposed goal, It is reluctant, under any pretext, to any regulation that puts a brake on production or forces it to adopt costly production methods. Thus environmental regulation and capitalism must inherently clash.

Although the conventional debate on the global environment tends to be overly biased toward the so-called global warming problem, the global environmental problems facing modern society are not limited to that, including various other problems such as air, water, soil, acid rain, forests, hazardous substances, radiation protection, biodiversity, etc. So the time has come to deal with these pressing issues comprehensively and interrelatedly, and to formulate concrete numerical criteria that go beyond mere slogans.

To that end, it is necessary to adopt an ecologically sustainable planned economy that directly regulates not only the production method but also the amount of production while applying numerical environmental criteria. It needs to be introduced on a global scale.

However, such a thing is impossible as long as the capitalist production mode in which each country's capital enterprises develop production activities competitively based on individual management plans is maintained. At best, we have no choice but to limit ourselves to indirect regulations such as the imposition of an environmental tax. Even so, there are not a few countries that are hard to realize it due to the resistance of the economic world. Here, the limits of capitalism are so exposed that even apocalyptic prophecies of human extinction are not exaggerated.

  Limit (2): Instability of life

In recent years, the expansion of income inequality as a result of neo-liberalist or capital supremacist policies has often been criticized. But the problem is not the inequality itself. Even if there is an astronomical income disparity, humans will not be dissatisfied if they are able to live reasonably stable lives. This may explain part of the reason why the proletarian revolution has never occurred in the United States, where income disparities are large.

However, the globalization of capitalism has increased the instability of life beyond inequality. This is because, under global capitalism, the business cycles that are inherent to capitalism, which by nature avoids planned economies, continue to occur on a global scale, directly impacting the lives of the general public in each country.  The Great Recession of 2008 can be said to have been a typical and unprecedented event of the globalization of such life insecurity.

In the midst of this great situation of insecurity in daily life, job insecurity and old age insecurity are also contained within. In addition to the motor revolution, which had already been experienced long before globalization, the computer revolution, which coincided with and was driven by globalization, has increased the productivity of capitalist enterprises as a whole, and they no longer need as much labor as they did in the past. The development of knowledge-intensive industries has also reduced the amount of labor required.

Adding pressure to cut labor costs to respond to global competition, employment is dwindling. Under global capitalism, the phenomenon of "employmentless growth" that is constantly accompanied by this kind of employment instability - a broadly defined "anxiety" that includes unstable employment - will also become common.

On the other hand, public pensions, which are the main source of income for the majority of ordinary workers after retirement, were a product of an era when the average age was short and the rate of aging was low. However, at a time when the state's financial crisis is deepening, danger signals are beginning to appear in its sustainability. In addition, low-wage workers and long-term unemployed people who lack the means to pay pension premiums are likely to receive low pension benefits in the future or even lose them, further exacerbating their anxiety about their post-retirement lives.

This constant instability in people's lives will lead to restrained consumption by the general public, and the long-term economic stagnation due to sluggish sales will become a factor in chronic recession, weakening the strength of capitalism itself.

By the way, although emerging and developing countries have seen an overall improvement in living standards as a result of capitalist economic growth, they also suffer from economic vulnerabilities peculiar to emerging countries, and instability of life due to long-term political turmoil and deteriorating security. As a result, people are migrating to developed countries in large numbers in search of a more stable life. This is an paradoxical immigration phenomenon peculiar to modern capitalism, different from outbreak of refugees caused by starvation.

Furthermore, the increasing frequency of abnormal weather and the progress of rising sea levels are raising threats to life year by year. These threats bring about instability to all humankind, regardless of race or class, but it is already clear that capitalism cannot fundamentally solve this problem.

 Limit (3): Stagnation of technological innovation

Various technological innovations, such as scientific technology and information technology, have often been touted as a brilliant achievement of the developed  capitalism since the 19th century. Certainly, the fact cannot be wholly denied. However, all technologies supported by capitalism are limited to those that contribute to the expansion of profits of capitalist enterprises. In plain words, it is a technological innovation that becomes a means of making money.

Therefore, even if the idea of a technology itself is excellent, if the development or commercialization of the technology requires a large amount of cost, or if the beneficiary of the technology, and therefore the purchaser is a minority (for example, the disabled), it will be left behind from the capitalist technological innovation.

The development of information technology since the latter half of the 20th century has been praised, but in fact, it has reached a plateau in the 21st century, and it remains in the form of continuous improvement of existing technology. This is because technological development is facing limits in terms of cost issues and the size of the product market in the information technology field, which is a treasure trove of ideas.

Similarly, renewable energy technology and the development of products with a low environmental impact have been promoted as slogans, but have not made remarkable progress in the capitalist system that prioritizes cost and profit, and have plateaued.

On the other hand, even if the beneficiaries are limited, if the technology can aim for a high level of profit, innovation will be promoted even if it is anti-human. The most prominent of these is the development of high-tech weapons. Buyers of high-tech weapons are mostly limited to sovereign states, but since the customers have the largest purchasing power on earth, high-tech weapons are at the forefront of capitalist technological development as high-priced products with the largest profit per unit.

Ultimately, although capitalist technological innovation has progressed year by year solely for the sake of making money, it can be said that technological innovation as a whole has been forced to stagnate from the perspective of human history.

 Limit (4): Human desocialization

Capitalism stimulates the selfish side of human beings, and in particular, it maintains itself through human attachment to money as its ethos. Capitalist economic competition boils down to competition for money. Keynes has a point, albeit somewhat schematic, in trying to see the ethos of capitalism in "love of money" in contrast to communism, whose ethos is "service to society."

As I mentioned earlier, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as capitalism has become a kind of ideology in the midst of globalization, the selfish side of human beings has even been actively praised, and the number of egomaniacs has increased. On the other hand, the affluence of consumer life, the greatest field in which capitalism has triumphed over collectivism confused with communism, has cut human beings into individual consumption units and made them desocialized captives of commodities.

In general, humans in general have lost their sociality, which has led to the deterioration of their humanity as social animals. At the individual level, this promotes mental childishness. Egoistic humans with underdeveloped social skills perceive, like children, that the world revolves around them (me), even if they are adults. This phenomenon of enlargement of the "self" is almost always connected to the root of various modern social pathologies.

The loss of human sociality also promotes the dissolution of "society" at the social level, specifically the disintegration of local communities and even family relationships, which in turn leads to the social isolation of individuals. Even among capitalists, it has become to call for the restoration of "social bonds."

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Chapter 1: LIMITATIONS OF CAPITALISM

3. Capitalism might not collapse.

3.1. Keynes'aphorism

The Great Recession of 2008 aroused pessimism about the "collapse of capitalism" even among those who had been touting the victory of global capitalism. However, will a situation like the final judgment of "the collapse of capitalism" really come?

This theory of the collapse of capitalism is reminiscent of Marx, who left an apocalyptic prophecy in the first volume of "Capitalism," saying, "The bell will ring announcing the end of capitalist private ownership." This God-like rhetoric could undermine the prestige of Marx's theory, which emphasized "science."

Rather, Keynes's aphorism, "Capitalism, so long as it is managed wisely, can be more efficient than any alternative economic organization ever seen,'' is more convincing. There is enough evidence to admit it.

In fact, even during the Great Recession, there were predictions that it would lead to a Great Depression at first, and there was a tumultuous mood as if it was the end of the world. The financial crisis that triggered the Great Recession, where various measures were swiftly taken, and the United States, the head of capitalism, violated a taboo by using methods such as injecting public funds into private capital and de facto nationalization. As a result of rushing to rescue the financial world and the automobile industry, which is a symbol of American capitalism, the worst situation was avoided for the time being.

Modern capitalism is no longer a pure laissez-faire economy, but should also be called a "coordinated economy," which includes monetary controls that are carried out regularly by the central bank and direct capital relief measures by the government during economic crises. It can be said that this system is still maintained under global capitalism, where deregulation and privatization have become the top priority, and that it has been proved once again that this system works quite effectively even in the face of large-scale economic crises.

3.2. Resilient capitalism

In addition, since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the capitalist economy has been repeatedly hit by economic crises on an international scale, and has a wealth of experience in overcoming them each time. In other words, it is like having a cheat sheet for crisis management. From these facts, it cannot be denied that the modern capitalist economy has become a crisis-resistant or resilient system.

Of course, in history, no economic system lasted forever. The slave economy, the feudal economy, the socialist economy, etc. have all ended. There is by no means evidence that capitalist economies are the only exception.

In a sense, the fact that the United States was forced to take measures such as the nationalization of private capital during the Great Recession might be a terminal event. And President Obama at the time, who led those taboo measures, might have been a person equivalent to General Secretary (later President) Gorbachev, who tried to partially introduce a market economy, which had been taboo in the Soviet Union.

In particular, the decline of financial capital and automobile capital, which were symbols of the U.S. economy, together with the depreciation of the dollar, are the beginning of the end of the great capitalism that the U.S. has embodied. Historically, it may have as much significance as the dissolution of the Soviet Union, whether or not the United States dissolves and the fifty states become independent.

If a situation that could truly be called the "collapse of capitalism" were to occur, it is highly likely that American financial capital would pull the trigger. In the second volume of Capital, Marx points out that the credit system, which promotes the material development of productive forces and the formation of the world market, simultaneously promotes crises and promotes the elements of the dismantling of the old mode of production. It can be said that this part was a correct diagnosis.

However, the capitalist economy has the most powerful self-preservation mechanism of any economic system in history, and it comes to mind that the capitalist economy will continue to exist almost indefinitely as long as humanity continues to adhere to it.

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Chapter 1: LIMITATIONS OF CAPITALISM

2. Capitalism is not out of control.

2.1. The real image of global capitalism

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the spread of capitalism all over the world—global capitalism—has begun to show a qualitatively different aspect from the capitalism that preceded it.

In other words, global capitalism is the so-called deregulation and privatization (commercial capitalization) to expand economic freedom, the flexibility of the labor market through the deregulation of labor laws, and social security cost control measures that emphasize fiscal balance. It has come to openly advocate a neoliberal program and press governments to implement it.

This situation is sometimes criticized as "runaway capitalism." This criticism intensified in the wake of the 2008 global recession triggered by the financial crisis in the United States, the headquarters of capitalism. Did capitalism, intoxicated by its "victory" over collectivism, set off a revelry?

That is part of it. During the Cold War era, capitalism advertised itself as a rational economic system unrelated to socialism, communism, and other "ideologies." However, after the proclaimed "victory" against Soviet collectivism, capitalism began to absolutize itself as an ideology, and began to develop itself as a doctrine as if to say "there is no other way but capitalism." Neo-liberalism can be said to be the manifestation of such fundamentalization of capitalism.

The ideological aspect of neoliberalism is most clearly expressed in the axiom of shareholder supremacy, which holds that the distribution of profits to shareholders, the legal owners of capitalist companies (joint-stock companies), should be more important than the distribution of wages to workers, the employees of those companies.

But that is not all. Inherently, capitalism has an internal tendency toward a laissez-faire competitive economy. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this inherent tendency of capitalism has seemed to be reproduced as a historical reaction in the course of the process in which not only the Eastern European countries that were under the control of the former Soviet Union, but also emerging countries such as China and India have entered international capitalist mega-competition in earnest.

Therefore, it can be said that the trend of so-called neo-liberalism also has an ideological aspect as well as an aspect of economic strategy that corresponds to the inherent tendencies of capitalism.

In a bold simplification of the latter aspect, it is a tactical platform for the advanced capitalist countries to compete with the the late capitalist countries that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Also,it is the platform that applies to the emerging countries themselves.

Since the middle of the 1990s, this neo-liberal strategy has already carved a history of nearly thirty years. It is about time to drop the adjective "neo-liberal" and change the name to "capital supremacism" in line with the fact that the freedom of enterprise is given top priority as the supreme value.

2.2. The pitfalls of the theory of "out-of-control capitalism"

In light of the above, it is somewhat problematic to use the word "runaway" to describe the development of global capitalism. Those who emphasize the "runaway" of capitalism seemingly want to believe that there could be a "capitalism with a human face" that is different from the one we are presented with. 

Perhaps what is assumed by those humanitarian capitalists is a modified form of capitalism that considers the lives of the working class. It was certainly a form of capitalism during the Cold War. However, the modified capitalism was the figure of capitalism, which was taken as a self-defense measure when it still felt the real threat of communist revolution. Now that the situation has changed and capitalism has realized that it no longer needs to wear heavy makeup, it has begun to expose its true face - the face of money.

Instead of facing this reality head-on, immersing yourself in nostalgia for the capitalism of the days when it were wearing heavy makeup can actually lead you into a pitfall. A significant example of this is the issue of deregulation of the labor market.

There are arguments—which are morally justifiable—that regulations should be tightened again in order to stabilize the status of workers again, for the reason that the deregulation of labor laws, which has been implemented as a program of capital supremacism, especially the expansion of so-called non-standard employment, has widened the income disparity among workers and led to poverty.

However, saving labor costs, that is, "exploitation," is the very essence of capitalist enterprise management. If labor laws were to be reinforced, capitalist companies would, for the time being, adopt a tactic of narrowing down the number of workers while proceeding with the standardization of the labor force. Naturally, this will lead to high unemployment, which could happen in countries with strict regulations on non-standard employment.

Not only that, but the business community will demand a relaxation of labor standards for regular workers, especially provisions regulating dismissal, as legal compensation for tightening regulations on non-regular employment. If this is not accepted, capitalist companies will likely resort to a strategy of hollowing out domestic industry by moving production bases overseas, where labor laws and regulations are lax and wages are low.

In any case, the tightening of labor market regulations runs the risk of having the opposite effect in terms of job creation. Considering this, I cannot help but think that the idea of modified capitalism, which denounces capital spremacism only morally and calls for its withdrawal, underestimates the nature of capitalism. It is impossible to reverse the wheels of history to push capitalism back to the nostalgic Cold War days before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

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1.  Capitalism has not won the game.

1.3. The failure of Soviet-style socialism

Why did Soviet-style socialism fail in the first place? The most central reason is that the state's economic planning has not worked effectively. The plans by national planning agencies were desk plans by planning officials who were administrative bureaucrats,tended to be an unreasonable challenge pushed by the Communist Party's leadership to "catch up and overtake the West, especially the United States!"

A more fundamental problem was the introduction of a planned economy without abolishing the commodity economy. Money is by nature an anarchic object that does not fit well with planning, and it was an unfulfilled dream to regulate the flow of goods and money in an orderly manner, even with any desk plan. The planned economy of the Soviet Union was nothing more than a flawed controlled economy. Conversely, a true planned economy would have gained meaning and functioned effectively only after the commodity economy was abolished.

In addition, in the Soviet Union's rush to industrialize and build up its armament, it adopted a policy that focused on heavy industry and military industries, which meant that the production system for consumer goods related to civilian life was lagging behind, leaving empty shelves in stores, which were often ridiculed in the West. The shortage of goods it symbolized became permanent, and critics dubbed it a "scarcity economy."

Due to these circumstances, the "developed socialist society" of the Soviet Union led to poverty in consumer life compared to the capitalist society of the West, leading to the accumulation of dissatisfaction among the masses.

1.4. Capitalism's "victory" and "non-victory"

The opponent that capitalism claimed to have won was actually collectivism with the above-mentioned reality. Surely we should admit this. In particular, the affluence of consumer life was the field in which capitalism achieved its most spectacular victory.

However, this "victory" is also with reservations. Capitalist countries have never let market economies go unchecked. Postwar Japan, in which the government has managed the capitalist economy through administrative guidance, is probably a good example of that.

In addition, as symbolized by the Swedish model, which has often been idealized in contrast to the Soviet model, welfare state providing labor laws and social security systems has been developed within the framework of a capitalist economy to support the lives of the working class and promote harmony between labor and management. Even the United States, the champion of capitalism with a laissez-faire economic system, has taken a similar course since the New Deal policy to deal with the Great Depression in the 1930s.

In this way, the revision of the principles of capitalism, in which capitalism leaned toward socialism, was also a major factor in bringing about the "victory."

However, the opponent that capitalism has not yet won is communism. Of course,the fact that capitalism has not won does not mean that it has lost to communism. For true communism has never been seriously attempted. It can be said that communism is still an unknown rival to capitalism. But before we start talking about this enigmatic unknown, it is necessary to give an overview of the current "victorious" state of capitalism.

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Chapter 1: LIMITATIONS OF CAPITALISM

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the “victory of capitalism” has been touted. However, now that some time has passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, capitalism is beginning to reveal its limitations. What are the limitations?

1. Capitalism has not won the game.

1.1. Meaning of the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 following the end of the Cold War, the "victory of capitalism" has been touted both in international and domestic public opinion. In short, the demise of the Soviet Union, which was opposed to the "Western" capitalism headquartered in the United States, and the confluence of the former Soviet Union bloc with capitalism, meant that capitalism has defeated "communism" as embodied by the Soviet Union, leader of the "Eastern Block".

It is true that the Communist Party ruled the Soviet Union as the only political party for most of its history, but it would be premature to conclude that the ruling political party was the Communist Party and that the social system was also communist. In the first place, the official name of the Soviet Union was the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", and the fact that it did not call itself "Communist" should not be simply ignored.

In fact, the 1977 Constitution, enacted on the 60th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia and regarded as the culmination of Soviet-style socialist constitutions, defines the Soviet society at that time as a "developed socialist society" in its preamble. It then put forward the proposition that "a developed socialist society is a lawful stage on the road to communism." It also clarified the national purpose that "the supreme goal of the Soviet state is the construction of a classless communist society in which social communist autonomy is well developed," and set the construction of a communist society as the goal of the future. 

However, this stipulation of communism had already become empty at the time, and without being achieved, the "reformist" General Secretary (later President)Mikhail Gorbachev, who emerged in 1985,decided to abandon communist goals. And the Soviet Union moved closer to capitalism through the introduction of market economy elements, such as the transition of state-owned enterprises to a self-supporting accounting system and the acceptance of private business.

These Gorbachev "reforms" were naturally welcomed by the capitalist camp in the West, but because they were half-finished, they actually worsened the economic crisis in the Soviet Union, including shortages of consumer goods, and put pressure on the lives of the Soviet masses, increasing dissatisfaction.

In August 1991, taking advantage of such public dissatisfaction, the "conservative" party leaders who saw the danger of the dissolution of the Soviet Union carried out a coup d'etat aimed at overthrowing the Gorbachev regime. This plot was thwarted in three days by resistance from "radical reformist" Boris Yeltsin and the Muscovites. Yeltsin and his colleagues, in turn, forced Gorbachev to resign and led the final dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

In this way, Russia, which took off the mask of the Soviet Union, went through an economic turmoil brought about by the almost anarchic treatment of the market economy under the new leader Yeltsin. And then under the authoritarian leadership of President Vladimir Putin who succeeded Yeltsin, as an emerging capitalist state with strong political leadership, it has achieved a certain degree of stability.

Looking at in this way, it is correct to say that the opponent to whom capitalism was claimed to have won was not "communism,'' but rather Soviet-style socialism--"advanced socialism," according to the former Soviet Union's own official ideology. 

So what exactly was Soviet-style socialism, and why did it fail? This question is such a big subject that it would take several volumes of books just to clarify it, so I can't discuss it in detail here, but I would like to give an overview as far as it is related to the theme of this article.

1.2. The real image of Soviet-style socialism

First, if we were to briefly summarize what Soviet-style socialism was, it meant that the state eliminated private companies and became itself a total capitalist , promoting economic development from above through state-owned enterprises. 　

However, the adoption of a so-called one-party dictatorship in which the Communist Party ruled the country without a change of government led to the spread of the formula that Soviet society is a communist society, but the reality is not. Rather, it should have been called "collectivism." 

In short, collectivism is a system in which capital is concentrated in the state, and production, distribution, consumption, and reproduction are carried out according to the economic plan drawn up by the state (national planning agency). From one perspective, it is not impossible to consider it "state capitalism."

In fact, under this system, the main elements of capitalism, the production of commodities and wage labor, continued to exist, so it was not a system that completely broke away from capitalism.

However, as long as the collectivist system realized the nationalization of the means of production by suppressing private companies, it also took on the characteristics of quasi-communism. So there is a reason why it is called an intermediate "socialism" that is neither capitalism nor communism. But capitalism does not only mean the legal freedom of private enterprise, but also is related to the style of commodity production and wage labor. Since it is theoretically possible to say that Soviet-style socialism was collectivism, which still retained such capitalist characteristics, and it was "another form of capitalism" when viewed from an economic perspective. 

So it may be possible to explain the success of China's deft economic course change . After the founding of the country in 1949,China initially adopted a Soviet-style socialist system under the leadership of the Communist Party, but it did not succeed. Then nearly a decade before the Gorbachev reforms in the Soviet Union, China embarked on "reform and opening up" with an awareness of capitalism. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it promoted it even more strongly, defining such capitalist-oriented economy under the Communist Party leadership as a “socialist market economy" and achieved rapid growth as a de facto emerging capitalist country.

China's change of course is often described as a miracle in contrast to the failure of the Soviet Union. If so, it can be said that the Chinese-style “socialist market economy” (=capitalism led by the Communist Party) was one deconstructive “reform” direction of collectivism.

In fact, even in the Soviet Union, since the 1960s, there had already been a wave of economic reforms conscious of a market economy, centered on the decentralization of economic management and the emphasis on profit rate indicators. The phenomenon called the convergence of socialism and capitalism had begun. but the Soviet system itself came to an end without being able to thoroughly shift to a market economy as in China.

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PREFACE

What is communism?

While throwing away all prejudices and past dogmas related to this word, broadly speaking, it can be said that it is a revolutionary project aiming for a world without currency and sovereign states.

If you hear that, most people might be surprised. Will we turn back to the primitive society? The answer to that is half yes, half no.

Certainly, the state of no money or state is a return to the origins of humanity. However, the communism that this article tries to present is not primitive communism without civilization, but civilized "modern/future communism".

At the same time, It's a project that aims to fundamentally correct the distortions of industrialization and informatization, which are the goals of capitalist civilization, and to transform it into something that is ecologically sustainable and that is universally beneficial to people's lives. 

Still, you may ask," How can we live without money and a state? However, I would like to think about it realistically in line with everyday life.

If you're a person struggling to make ends meet in a world where everything you do requires a down payment, which is the simplest definition of capitalism, don't you think how good it would be if we could acquire goods and services without money?

Also, if you are a citizen who is tormented or fed up with politicians and bureaucrats in a tax-grabbing state, wouldn't it be great if the demonic palace called the sovereign state disappeared?

Of course there may be people who say that capitalism is fine because they work harder than others, earn a high income, and have a large amount of assets. That's all well and good, but what if you lose all your income and assets due to a major economic crisis or sudden unfortunate personal circumstances? At times like that, we rely on the state's welfare, so is the state still necessary? But what if the state also goes bankrupt and its financial resources run out?

If you think about it this way, can't you say that the capitalist economy is an "economy of anxiety" even for the wealthy?

Yes? But the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991), the headquarters of communism, should have already proved the failure of communism. It seems that the world is still covered with a kind of resignation that there is not an optimal way other than a market economy and capitalism.

However, the global recession of 2008 and the subsequent unstable and unpredictable global economic situation that does not allow optimism for the future, the global environment getting worse with the globalization of capitalism clearly expose the limitations of capitalism.

With this awareness of the issue, I would appreciate it if you would first embark on a journey to explore the possibilities of redefined "modern communism" together with me without any preconceptions.