*sigh* Must I, once again, warn against the perils of
false dichotomy? Today I encountered a
college-level
economics textbook from the
Eisenhower era. It took the same viewpoint that you did -- that
capitalism implies less government and
socialism implies increased power of government. It lavished praise upon
Samuel Gompers, a
reformist trade-unionist, while dismissing radical unionism as an
anachronism. Still, in
small print it gave mention to the
IWW as a "surviving radical
left-wing union." Seems ambiguous, no? What is a radical leftist? An extreme
statist? Undoubtedly this book, and others like it, gave many the wrong impression. I find this node linked to
Preamble to the IWW Constitution. The IWW is not
Communist. The IWW is
Anarcho-Syndicalist. Extreme statism is not the only form of
leftism.
Basically, there are four
major forms of property relations:
Proponents of the latter three all claim to be
socialists. Adding to the confusion, pro-capitalists usually think only two-dimensionally; that is, they think only of the second as
socialism (a myth readily accepted by state socialists.) Of the four, there are examples of the first three in practice.
So you see that a defense of
capitalism based upon the failures of
nationalization (or
state socialism) is rather unpersuasive to those of us who are more familiar with socialistic theory.
BTW, even so-called "anarcho-capitalism" is authoritarian; reasons for which I shall not go into great detail in this node. Suffice it to say that whether or not an oligarchy holds state power, it is still an oligarchy.