Martin Armstrong On The Recurring Battle Between Socialism and Capitalism

Submitted by Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics,

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; This battle between socialism and capitalism, is there any precedent from history that you can site for this clash of Titans?

ANSWER: Oh yes. Marx was convinced about communism from the French who began the commune movement in the late 1700s with the French Revolution. However, Marx did research and took the side of Sparta against Athens using in part Aristotle’s complaint about the market economy in Athens was changing the social values. He called them the people who made money from money. Aristotle felt that the establishment of brokers who then would encourage farmers to grow more crops that could be sold overseas changed Athens. True, it made Athens the financial capital of the world. The famous Athenian decadrams were a two-tier coinage used for international trade in large transactions. They were too big for normal circulation. Kind of like a $100,000 bill.

Communism first appeared in the historical record back in Ancient Greece. This was the classic battle like our modern cold war. Athens was the capitalistic system that had its own internal battle between the Oligarchy and Democracy, which we have still today. Sparta was the communistic state so much so, they NEVER adopted coinage and these spits were maintained to PREVENT people from hoarding wealth – sound familiar with electronic money and cancelling currencies?

Marx drew his belief that Communism would prevail because Sparta defeated Athens in 404BC. However, to be fair, Sparta was in league with its neighbors, especially Corinth whose own coinage competed with Athens in trade. So Sparta was the Communist state, but it was aided by other capitalistic cities to knock out the financial capital of the world so they could replace it. This division eventually led to opening the door to the northern Macedonians to take all of Greece under Philip II and his son Alexander the Great.

We can see the impact of this battle against Athens as its coinage was debased just as in Roman. The coinage going into the collapse 406-404BC became bronze silver plated.

So yes. This battle has been fought many times in history. As I have said, you cannot forecast the future without understanding the past. It is truly a catalogue of solutions if you take the time to map it out without bias and prejudice.

You simply cannot have a mixture as we have today.

This is why you see politicians doing everything possible to kill democracy for that falls whenever socialistic/communism rises.

That collapses the economy sucking in everything like a black-hole and then the pendulum swings back and you get freedom once again with revolution against the oligarchy/monarchy – no taxation without representation.

The EU Commission is doing the precise pattern as always – deny representation to serve the oligarchy.

The USA is moving in the same direction.