> 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.
No. Absolutely No. Let Samuelson equate government ownership with socialism if he wishes. A Marxist should understand that unless the state is owned and controlled by the working class, state ownership is no socialism. (Ok some socialists believe that an undemocratic state not controlled by the working class can be acting in their interests and that public ownership by this kind of state is a type of socialism. While this looks like nonsense to me, I don't think anyone can claim that US government acts primarily in the interests of the working class.) That is not to say that public ownership within a capitalist state cannot be *strongly* in the interests of working people. Just that it should not be confused with socialism. If the various branches of government in a nation control 20% of the GDP or even own 20% of the means of production, that does not make that nation 20% socialist, if the government itself is a capitalist government. Again that does not mean that large scale public ownership and provision of services by a capitalist state can't be very much in the interests of the working class, especially compared to a capitalist state with minimal regulation, minimal taxation, little public provision of public goods, and virtually no public ownership.
> 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.
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