Capitalism is the only system where one is treated as an equal with the opportunity and freedom to do whatever you feel. This isn't in terms of personal wealth but in terms of the potential and freedom to do it.
Socialism restricts potential by restricting what an individual can do because there is no such thing as the individual in socialism. There is also no such thing as freedom because socialism controls the ability to freely do what you want and make what you want for yourself.
In a capitalist system there are numerous, countless examples of people with nothing making their own way to create something. In socialism the only thing important is the contribution of everyone to one thing but if they don't contribute then the system falls down.
All previous states have got around the last part by enforcing socialism (via military means or worse) and not openly practicing it as say a democracy.
Socialism only actively equalizes society by making everyone as equally as poor as the lowest common denominator without any choice or say in the matter.
Thanks for this - appreciated. What I am tending to look at is a way beyond the dogmas of both capitalism
and socialism. For me, there is an argument to say that capitalism
is one form of the idea of 'the way of gaining the world but losing the soul.' This 'losing the soul' might be interpreted as an inability to know the 'spirit of a law' but instead left
with only an understanding of 'the letter of the law.' In short, one loses touch with a unifying essence, instead left with 'my dogmas better than your dogma'. Beyond that (and this might seem a strange example to use here but...) this loss of essence is like a lessening of the depth of intimacy that can be experienced - for example it will get it the way of opening to the divine aspect of women (beyond physical, emotional, mental). That which is 'of heaven' comes to shape this world in a way that is not possible within only the paradigms of capitalism and socialism. Anyhow, I appreciate that this kind of thing does not generally fit within bluemoon but such is life, lol - is another way of looking at/being with these things. And if the likes of war, poverty, pollution etc are symptoms of imbalance, I don't think it's a bad thing to question what might be at the root of this.
ps if the only way people have been educated about power is '
thinking from the head downwards' rather than a power that is based in '
feeling from the ground upwards' then, more than likely, anything above will, at best, come across as upside down.
