Word: capitalistically
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Capitalism is even showing its first blush in post-Mao China. As part of the Four Modernizations programs, Communist leaders are rehabilitating former capitalist "running dogs." Nearly 5,000 older entrepreneurs have been asked back to become factory managers or advisers. Their confiscated capital has been returned, with interest, and China now has some 100 millionaires in U.S. dollar terms. Hu Qiaomu, the director of the Academy of Social Sciences, admitted in a policy statement in the People's Daily that China has had to adopt such capitalist principles as "the pricing system, the rule of value, and the advantage...
...worst; those that have adopted some degree of private initiative have achieved the most impressive economic gains. Take the cases of neighboring African countries that have similar peoples, natural resources and other conditions: free-enterprising Kenya has surged, whereas Tanzania's command economy has slumped; the Ivory Coast is capitalist and prosperous, while neighboring Guinea is socialist and impoverished...
Capitalism's critics likewise have railed against the inequities, uncertainties and the social flux it creates. As Karl Marx saw it, "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned." Foes charge that the capitalist system perpetuates grave inequalities of wealth and extravagantly rewards success. Communists proclaim that capitalism demands periodic depressions as the way to keep workers poor and subservient. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm wrote that 19th century capitalism's drive for profit made people overly competitive, warped and aggressive. Finally, Economist John Kenneth Galbraith argues that free enterprise values wasteful private consumption more than needed...
Certainly, the large divergence of income within capitalist societies can be a cause of serious social tensions. In the society described by Plato in The Laws, no person would be permitted to be more than four times richer than the poorest. In the U.S. the upper 20% of the population earn 46% of the income, a figure that has changed very little in the past generation. In France that same group earns 44% and in Britain 40%. But those who complain that the chairman of General Motors earns nearly $ 1 million a year never criticize the Who for pocketing that...
...houses? The market system provides the most democratic answers. Rather than a government planner's dictating what a society should produce, consumers themselves decide what they buy. They vote in the marketplace. This is not invalidated by the fact that the votes?and the market?can sometimes be manipulated. Capitalist bosses, for all their power, have far less real sway over people than Communist planners...