Originally posted by Artol
That is definitely a common view, it's popular particularly in the general population of the United States and among free market libertarians. It's by no means universal though, others argue that capitalism fundamentally requires a state for its functioning.[b]State capitalism
The idea of state capitalism also goes back at least to the 19th century. The idea is that the government acts like a big corporation (or even like multiple corporations) that work towards the accumulation of profit, using market mechanisms. Private capital interest can also use a state to further their own goals, we can things like that in the US. Some will argue that is not capitalism, but a form of corporatism, but that's certainly not how the terms have historically been used. Additionally capitalism did certainly develop in connection with nation states.
Chinese Communism
As for whether China is communist at all, that has a similar shortcoming of a vagueness of terms. What do we consider communism, certainly China considers itself communist, however what aspects of communism does it have that we could point to nowadays. Americans in particularly will say the state runs everything and that's communism, but that doesn't have anything in common with what communism generally means, certainly nothing is factually owned communally for example, and there are para-capitalist businessman running large aspects of the market. The economy also isn't centrally planned, which has been a defining factor in the USSR style communism of the 20th century. Your point that there is a lot of authoritarian state control is correct, but that is neither a necessary nor sufficient aspect of communism. You can have an authoritarian run state economy and not be communist (e.g. Fascist countries, Absolute Monarchies, war-time economies) and you can be communist without state control of the means of production (examples of that are less common since they don't seem to be stable or save from outside influence in the long run).
The Means of Production
At its essence the question is always who owns the means of production. In the US that is generally private people and corporations (disregarding the immense chuck that goes to the state run military that moves into every aspect of the US economy). In European social democracies there is somewhat of a mix, some things are run by the state others left to the private market, recently with the neo-liberal transformation it has moved more to private market with oversight. In China the state nominally owns most everything, but there are actors that behave and are sanctioned more or less like US capitalists. And the fundamental idea that the workers own the means of production as is the idea of pure socialism or that there is an even stateless, moneyless society as in pure communism, doesn't really exist anywhere (although there are and were attempts, things like worker co-ops exist, but often even high minded attempts would devolve into state run authoritarianism).
Democracy
Interestingly in regards to your example of dictatorship or oligarchies being democracies, there is a move by basically all governments to make themselves appear democratically legitimate, for example the USSR did that as well, and of course the shortcomings of US "democracy" are apparent as well. Additionally there is a concept of the dictatorship of the majority as well.
I'm not sure my text helped at all to aid our conversation when talking about these terms, the fact just is it is a very complex system and different people mean very different things when they use the words capitalism and communism. [/B]
I’ll try not to take offense at the likely unintentional “jab” and simply state that my position is not simply the “common” understanding of capitalism but also more the purist/libertarian understanding/belief of it. Wealth of Nations was the main econ reading material back in my business school days so I tend to subscribe to a more Adam Smith definition of “capitalism”.
Fact is, as you said, there is no such thing as “pure” capitalism anymore because it is pretty obvious that personal greed can allow for things like monopolies and other abuses to occur. Thus, government steps in to regulate and prevent such abuses from happening (capitalism, for example does not subscribe to things like tariffs and minumum wage).
And as you said, most large economies right now are “mixed”. Neither purely socialist nor capitalist.
So, if we are to take our political biases aside and look at this objectively, we are left with simply breaking things down to their core and defining them within a sliding scale. And within this sliding scale, “capitalism” has always been the level of freedom private enterprise has from government. The less freedom, the less capitalistic it is. IIRC Lenin himself noted that State Capitalism is one step away from implementing a permanent and invincible foothold for Socialism (he was proven wrong of course).
Essentially, the economics I was taught (w/c eventually shaped my way of thinking on the matter) was very free market/capitalistic. And to those of us who subscibe to these same beliefs, the very nature of social capitalism would be the furthest end of the “capitalist/socialist” spectrum. It is like having someone being pro-life but subscribing to nothing else but democrat/liberal values. You can call that person republican due to that one stance, perhaps create a new term like “choice-conservative” or something, but that would still be a bit of a reach to attribute that person’s political position and actions as coming from a conservative.
Yes, the term Social Capitalism DOES exist and it has been used to describe countries like China. But it is still an oxymoron (much like “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” is). There ARE points where the logic makes sense (use of companies and market capital are some areas), I will agree. But I will go back to my original description of “communism with loosened restriction of capitalism” rather than simple capitalism.
The beauty of words, however, (especially nouns) is that definitions can sometimes evolve based on how some people use it. Have a word used long enough a certain way and it gets a new use for it (there was a time when sex and gender were interchangeable but more recently, there is a new, separate use for the words). And in politics, words can be co-opted for rhetoric or simpy just used for lack of a better or more acceptable word.
But to a purist like me, Capitalism has as much to do with the “State-Capitalist” actions of China as Socialism does to the actions of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party.
And you’re right. People do use words differently based on a lot of factors. And it is more complex than simply saying that a word can never be used a certain way. That is why in discussions/debates we should go back to the core meaning of the word and the core values behind it so that we can at least make the discussion more objective and less subjective.