It's true that capitalist competition provides incentives, but not for the capitalists to produce things human beings need. It's to make greater profits.
"WITHOUT CAPITALIST competition, creativity and invention would stagnate. There wouldn't be an incentive for people to work."
This is one of the oldest arguments against socialism. The
implication is that capitalist market competition encourages creativity,
efficiency and hard work.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels dealt with the question as far back as The Communist Manifesto
in 1848. "It has been objected," they wrote, "that upon the abolition
of private property all work will cease and universal laziness will
overtake us."
Marx and Engels' answer is as simple as it is devastating. "According
to this," they wrote, "bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to
the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work,
acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work."
While it's true that capitalist competition acts as a spur to
increase production, it's also an extremely wasteful system. One need
only think of the multibillion-dollar advertising industry or the
military-industrial complex to see how much labor is wasted on
essentially worthless enterprises.
Imagine what the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on weapons of
mass destruction or on ads to convince us to buy one brand of, sugar
water over another could do in fixing crumbling schools, providing
universal health care and cleaning up environmental degradation.
Moreover, because capitalist enterprises depend on increasing profits
and market share, they must continually sell their products in ever
greater quantities.
There is therefore a built-in incentive on the part of capitalists to
produce things that don't last. Think of the college textbook industry
where the same $60 book is reissued with a new introduction and
rearranged chapters in order to prevent students from using older
editions.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE HEALTH care business is probably the most distressing example of
what happens when we "let the market decide." Health care for profit
means delivering the least amount of health care service for the maximum
amount of money.
... full article at Socialist Worker.
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