Why do socialists find the word Free Market so scary?
We socialists do not find the so-called “free market” scary. Marx actually paid the capitalist system a backhanded compliment when he stated that the system had brought mankind to levels of production and industry never before experienced in human history and rescued many from the “idiocy of rural life”. Socialist criticism is based on the fact that the capitalist free market is incredibly inefficient, wastes resources, has an inherently unfair system of distribution of the fruits of labour and does not allow all individuals to realise their full potential as human beings. Marx expected that capitalism, in terms of industrial organisation and distribution systems, would develop to such a point that rebuilding of industry would not be needed after the Revolution. What happened in Russia was not what Marx expected. Revolution was expected in the fully developed capitalist economies, not a backward one in the process of industrialisation. What would happen was that control would now be in
