"A capitalist road to communism": A comment.

This article comments on an article about the transition from capitalism to communism. Full communism is a sort of Marxian utopia, in which scarcity and human selfishness are overcome, and they must be overcome together: scarcity inevitably breeds selfishness, because what we get must involve some others not getting. People identify with the needs they know, and identify these with the common good. Soviet-type economies and societies do not show themselves able to overcome either scarcity or human selfishness. Certainly, Karl Marx was wrong to imagine that capitalism has exhausted its productive potential, that the search for profit acts as a brake upon the productive forces. Of course the West has many economic problems, not least unemployment, but one can certainly argue that the present-day Soviet system is in contradiction with the productive forces, that it tends indeed to routine and inertia. However, capitalism has other features that the authors did not mention. One is the constant stimulation of wants, and secondly, it stimulates overuse of natural resources, and there is also ecological damage. So capitalism may be an efficient way to increase output, and this despite the efforts of monetarists and laissez-faire fanatics to upset the social-economic applecart.