Dualta wrote:thegreekdog wrote:1970. Evolution = capitalism
1971. People misunderstanding evolution.
Marx identified five epochs of human economic evolution:
a. Primitive communism - shared property, direct democracy, i.e. ancient hunting and gathering tribal societies
b. Slave societies - ruling classes emerge who own slaves, states develop as a means to protect the slave owners, agriculture emerges (for example ancient Greece and Rome, but evident on all continents)
c. Feudalist society - aristocracies emerge, organised religion is used to control people, nation states also start to form.
d. Capitalism - market economies, private property, wage labour, division of labour, financial institutions.
e. Socialism - government by the working class, a planned economy (decentralised), common ownership (nationalisation), decentralised democracy and the reduction in the size of the state.
f. Communism - the state withers away and dies, classes dissipate and there is a classless society, private property becomes history.
He believed that capitalism had within itself, its own death gene, i.e. greed. A celebrated and necessary element of capitalism, it would result in the massive accumulation of wealth by the few at the expense of the many (sound familiar?), therefore, triggering a revolution that would overthrow capitalism and introduce an economy geared towards the needs of all the people.
Many, who I agree with, have argued that Marx's dream of a communist society is unrealistic. However, his critique of capitalism is very astute. We can see it unfolding now that it is not an economic system that delivers for all the people, but only for a increasingly select few. A recent study by the development charity Oxfam found that the richest 85 people in the world own as much as the poorest 3.5 billion, and this is a trend of wealth accumulation by the richest, to the detriment of the majority. To argue that capitalism is the end of history, as I suspect you are doing, is premature. Capitalism will most definitely eat itself, but what will replace it is much harder to predict.
1973. Capitalism = survival of the fittest
(But only for South America 
N.Am got it in 1991
