[lbo-talk] Capitalist economies are mixed socialist/capitalist economies

[c b]

As the late, great economist Paul Samuelson indicated, capitalist
economies are mixed socialist/capitalist economies and have been for a
long time. Even the US is a very mixed economy. The main local
government functions are major socialist enterprises at the base of
the US economy. Water and sewerage, roads and highways, public
schools, etc. Really since Wall Street and GM and Chrysler are insured
by the federal government, the banking system and big industry are
socialized. The fig leaf of paying back the bailouts doesn't hide the
fact that the People remain sureties of the too-big-to-fails in any
failings in the future. Objectively, the US banks have been socialized
whatever name they put on it.
There is a long history of government bailout of large corporations.
Chrysler has been bailed out twice in the last 35 years (History of
U.S. Gov't Bailouts

  http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts
:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail)

Theoretically, the is part of the General Crisis of Capitalism,
wherein capitalism objectively tends to turn into socialism, even
without a socialist conscious Bolshevik party and working class
vanguard seizing state power. Much of the process of socialization of
society  is just dull evolutionary rationalization of capitalist
economic functions and institutions, rather than exciting
revolutionary insurrection.