Capitalism tends to be a faster way of expanding the productive forces than feudalism (which functions via tightly controlling a well-defined region and periodically looting it) or slavery (which involves industrial scale kidnapping to replace an industrial labor force that is rapidly worked into exhaustion and death). That's because the capitalist system focuses on reproducing infrastructure improvements to improve production, rather than just robbing primitive locals or throwing generation after generation of kidnapped foreigners into the industrial meat grinder.
However, what we've seen both in the nascent socialist experiments in the USSR and the modern socialist experiment in China (and, to a lesser degree, social democracies in Europe and the US) are centrally managed economies that seek to balance out competing individualist interests while building out capital projects, such that universal higher quality of life is achieved. This grants the civilian population more opportunities to pursue advanced professional careers. And these professional careers add more unit-value to the overall economy than primitive agriculture or slave labor. What's more, because the economy generates a broader base of professional specialists than modern capitalist economies, the overall value-add of residents is compounded with population size. In early 20th-century capitalist societies, you were pulling from a talent pool of thousands of petite bourgeois households in England and tens of thousands in the US. Meanwhile, the USSR was mobilizing a competitive number of specialists despite a smaller-than-US population. China is mobilizing greater percentages while capitalizing on a larger population, promising the Chinese state as the forerunner of future professional developing on a world stage. India has the benefit of an enormous population, but is hindered by its caste system, such that it will likely eclipse its Western peers but not its large socialist neighbor.
TL;DR; Socialism is the most effective means of cultivating and rapidly reproducing a large professional labor force. From that labor force, you generate more productive capital improvements and reproduce them across your country more rapidly. And from that improved capital you generate more economic value, which opens up more opportunity to expand your professional labor force.
That is, fundamentally, what makes it the best economic system to date.
Incidentally, also why anarcho-whatevers tend to fumble the ball. They can't socially reproduce like strict hierarchical systems - be they feudal military dictatorships or fully communist command economies.
I mean, its the reason the US managed any kind of post-WW2 growth at all. Social Democracy delivered the promises of Fascism without the explicit stink of ethnic nationalism. You got strong unions (for whites) and expansive industry (for whites) and an enormous investment in public education and housing and guaranteed jobs (for whites) and you even got those endless foreign wars that Americans love so much. You just didn't have to worry about a Soviet Army breathing down your neck, because you'd struck a Detente and done a Cold War rather than a Hot one. You could integrate enough of the (newly christened "white") migrants into the fold without tripping over the contradictory economic demands for labor and ideological demands for racial purity.
So you got some of the knock-on benefits of a large professionalized workforce by dramatically expanding the cohort of prospective elites from "handful of ultra-wealthy coastal families" to "anyone who can pass the test".
The horrifying thing about social democracy is that - if you can keep yourself from tripping over your own dick and stumbling back into capitalism->feudalism->slavery again - you can do a compartmentalized socialism and reap enough benefit to stay ahead of the curve internationally. It works in a certain macabre fashion. And it can keep working, so long as you can socially reproduce it.
Capitalism tends to be a faster way of expanding the productive forces than feudalism (which functions via tightly controlling a well-defined region and periodically looting it) or slavery (which involves industrial scale kidnapping to replace an industrial labor force that is rapidly worked into exhaustion and death). That's because the capitalist system focuses on reproducing infrastructure improvements to improve production, rather than just robbing primitive locals or throwing generation after generation of kidnapped foreigners into the industrial meat grinder.
However, what we've seen both in the nascent socialist experiments in the USSR and the modern socialist experiment in China (and, to a lesser degree, social democracies in Europe and the US) are centrally managed economies that seek to balance out competing individualist interests while building out capital projects, such that universal higher quality of life is achieved. This grants the civilian population more opportunities to pursue advanced professional careers. And these professional careers add more unit-value to the overall economy than primitive agriculture or slave labor. What's more, because the economy generates a broader base of professional specialists than modern capitalist economies, the overall value-add of residents is compounded with population size. In early 20th-century capitalist societies, you were pulling from a talent pool of thousands of petite bourgeois households in England and tens of thousands in the US. Meanwhile, the USSR was mobilizing a competitive number of specialists despite a smaller-than-US population. China is mobilizing greater percentages while capitalizing on a larger population, promising the Chinese state as the forerunner of future professional developing on a world stage. India has the benefit of an enormous population, but is hindered by its caste system, such that it will likely eclipse its Western peers but not its large socialist neighbor.
TL;DR; Socialism is the most effective means of cultivating and rapidly reproducing a large professional labor force. From that labor force, you generate more productive capital improvements and reproduce them across your country more rapidly. And from that improved capital you generate more economic value, which opens up more opportunity to expand your professional labor force.
That is, fundamentally, what makes it the best economic system to date.
Incidentally, also why anarcho-whatevers tend to fumble the ball. They can't socially reproduce like strict hierarchical systems - be they feudal military dictatorships or fully communist command economies.
I agree with everything you said except for
social democracy
I mean, its the reason the US managed any kind of post-WW2 growth at all. Social Democracy delivered the promises of Fascism without the explicit stink of ethnic nationalism. You got strong unions (for whites) and expansive industry (for whites) and an enormous investment in public education and housing and guaranteed jobs (for whites) and you even got those endless foreign wars that Americans love so much. You just didn't have to worry about a Soviet Army breathing down your neck, because you'd struck a Detente and done a Cold War rather than a Hot one. You could integrate enough of the (newly christened "white") migrants into the fold without tripping over the contradictory economic demands for labor and ideological demands for racial purity.
So you got some of the knock-on benefits of a large professionalized workforce by dramatically expanding the cohort of prospective elites from "handful of ultra-wealthy coastal families" to "anyone who can pass the
test".
The horrifying thing about social democracy is that - if you can keep yourself from tripping over your own dick and stumbling back into capitalism->feudalism->slavery again - you can do a compartmentalized socialism and reap enough benefit to stay ahead of the curve internationally. It works in a certain macabre fashion. And it can keep working, so long as you can socially reproduce it.
Keep spittin comrade