Yet socialism has proven to be little more than the loyal opposition to capitalism? Why?
The narrative success of capitalism is that it equates itself with a market based economy and markets are a fact of life.
The fallacy is that markets need money to circulate, but people tend to see it as the signal to extract and store. Requiring ever more to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted. So capitalism is about the creation of money as an end in itself. Which is actually extremely destructive of markets, as excess money overwhelms any real price setting mechanism.
As notational wealth is a contract, with the asset backed by a debt, storing the asset requires creating sufficient debt.
One way is squeezing the money flowing through the necessary economy, requiring it to run on debt and drawing that saved money back into circulation.
Which creates a centripetal effect, as positive feedback draws the asset to the center and negative feedback pushes the debt to the edges of society.
Which is like the heart telling the hands and feet they don't need so much blood and should work harder for what they do get.
The Ancients used debt jubilees to overcome this. In fact they had been avoided for some centuries and Jesus's actual message was, "Forgive them their debts." Remember the money changers? But that got co-opted by imperial Rome and we ended up with "Forgive them their sins."
Another, more modern way is for the government to be debtor of last resort. It should be obvious to all that the capital markets couldn't function, without the government siphoning up trillions in surplus money, but that elephant is swept under the rug and we get identity politics instead.
We have endless, strategically inept wars and no one is court marshalled, because thir real function is to spend the money, so that more can be borrowed.
The secret sauce of capitalism is that public debt backs private wealth.
We do all save for many of the same reasons, so eventually we will have to go back to some form of public commons, as a store of collective wealth, rather than assuming the black hole of the financial system can do it for us individually.
Government, as the executive and regulatory function of society, was private once. When monarchs lost sight of their function and became more trouble than they were worth, it became a public utility. Banking is now having it's, "Let them eat cake." moment.
