Benjamin Cain
1 min readApr 14, 2020

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There’s some logic to Marx’s story about how capitalism carries the seeds of its destruction, since the material realities of capitalism (the gross inequalities, exploitation, and periodic depressions) do conflict with its ideological “superstructure” or justifications, namely with liberalism and democracy. But yeah, I don’t think his account is scientific, because society isn’t deterministic.

I don’t quite understand your solution to the problems of capitalism. Your redefinition of “capitalism” seems incomplete, since you leave out the part about private ownership of the means of production.

In your article, most of your bullet points refer to ends rather than means (no unemployment, poverty, or debt, and more self-regulation and sustainability). You even say there would be no taxes. Your only concrete proposal in that article is to give everyone a guaranteed income by the government, if they need it. But I have no idea how that economy would function, apart from surmising that because there would be no restrictions on wealth or income, billionaires would once again capture the government, the regulators, the media, and so on, undermining democracy and creating monopolies and some degree of plutocracy or kleptocracy.

How could the government pay people a guaranteed income if there are no taxes? Indeed, how would the government support itself, the police, the military, and the country’s infrastructure, with no income via taxes? If the government prints money, that causes inflation.

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Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

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