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Isn't it literally true that capitalism is the best form of organizing the relations of production that has hitherto existed?
That being over slavery and feudalism.
Engage
You're both right, it just depends on what is meant by "we". If it means humanity, then socialism has existed and it is better. If it means the country the speaker is from then it varies, and usually capitalism would have been a great advancement socially over precapitalist systems (whether that be primitive accumulation of capital through slavery in the Americas or feudalism in many other places).
Between the American unbridled unregulated capitalism and full on socialism there's the Nordic countries spin on capitalism. I'd very much argue that's the best system.
Maybe for those with the privilege to live securely in that system, but it is still a capitalist system. Exploitation of labor is still fundamental, it just manages to export most of it to the global south while keeping stronger safety nets for citizens. It is certainly more comfortable for people living under it than the blatantly decaying US, but the sacrifices to keep the machine running are just hidden from view.
The Nordic model reduces some capitalism problems but not all and they're still there and the system is broken. It really needs a non-capitalism based successor very soon.
But it's true that in only bad options one can still be the "best"
Best, I think, carries a lot of loaded meaning. It's certainly very good at making stuff and concentrating stuff, but it also creates a lot of human misery
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 democracyI 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.
