This was what capitalism was like until the mid 20th century. Its market mechanism — the free market — was viewed as a system of self-regulation of production and distribution (including self-regulation of inter-industry proportions) and taken at long historic time intervals. It can be characterized by the following features:
suppressing the potential of guaranteed satisfaction of the demographically grounded needs of all laborers due to its adjustment to satisfaction of degraded parasitic needs as priority, and first and foremost — to satisfaction of degraded parasitic needs of the ruling “elite” due to the way current incomes and savings were distributed within the society;
disrupting productive capacities due to the regulating process’s instability in regard to factors that are beyond the bounds of manufacturing processes and of real needs of people (influence of natural elements, financial and stock-exchange speculations and hysteria, fashion etc.);
disrupting productive capacities due to «overregulating» — redundantly strong reaction to quick changes in the solvent demand distribution among specialized markets of products and services caused by whatever reasons;
being almost completely incapable of reacting to avert an unwanted event in advance and predominantly reacting to events that have already taken place. Even if this does not lead to disrupting productive capacities it results in low efficiency of the production and distribution system measured against the criteria of speed of operation and volume of output and delivery.
The above-mentioned features are inherent to the free market as a system of self-regulation of production and distribution of products in the society and of self-regulation of productive capacities’ levels and inter-industry proportions.[125]
Besides, after a certain production achieves a level of capacity allowing satisfying the demographically grounded needs assuredly and in a short time period, the demand will drop to a minimal level determined by how quickly previously satisfied needs come back. The market mechanism will block the structural reorganization of the multiindustrial production and consumption system yet it encourages artificial stimulation of demand by means of lowering the ergonomic and resource characteristics of production.
On the scale of the society in general this is a macroeconomy directed towards getting lots of people involved into a fuss (vanity) that is detrimental for everyone and not towards satisfying people’s vital needs.
The people are forced to bog down in this vanity by the macroeconomic organization. Thus they waste their vigor and time on it without a chance to develop their personality. Such direction towards creating an artificial vane business has the following reasons:
the market mechanism does not «know» how to dispose of labor resources that are released in the course of technological and organizational progress;
professional politicians, people of culture see no other way of social development but to offer the people released from labor to ruin themselves and waste their spare time indulging in satisfying their passions and sensualities, mostly within the same range of degraded parasitic needs (booze, gambling and shows, «safe» and «non-conventional» sex etc.)
Therefore, the more freedom market gets in the society the further people are from fulfilling their human potentiaclass="underline" at work a man is an appendage to his workplace and outside work he has either no strength left or he wastes his time for drowning himself in a sea of pleasures.
In the feudal era and in the earlier times of blunt slavery social life was placed within a pattern of classes and castes preventing money from acquiring that almost absolute power within society it has assumed in the capitalist era, especially in the «wild» capitalism of free market. In the pre-capitalist era this circumstance concealed and partially curbed the flawed nature the system of free market regulation of production and distribution of products had in the society where inhuman psychology, ethics and morals are dominant.
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But in the capitalist era it became evident to many that this system of production and distribution was flawed. That is why starting from the middle of the 19th century various measures were taken in different societies toward curbing its antihuman nature. These measures had and continue to have a broad range.
Among these measures are efforts to introduce the following:
progressive income tax;
progressive prices and charges — more like penalties — on consumption exceeding the limits set in legislature;
tax benefits for businessmen who spend their profits on funding charity foundations and programs of public consequence;
quotas determined by the State and agreements of producers concerning production volumes and delivery times of their products to the markets which have been divided between these producers;
governmental subsidies for the producers and consumers of certain products.
These measures and some other including those of a non-financial or economic nature to some extent suppress solvent demand and funding of production within the degraded parasitic range and allow to maintain the socially necessary volume of production in the demographically grounded range of needs in industries where with such production volume prices fall to a level when non-subsidized production becomes unprofitable or when consumption without subsidies is not possible on the prices allowing for the production’s self-repayment.
Measures of this kind can also to some extent level out the consequences of «overregulation» ensuring a more stable operation of industries and product distribution system. This kind of stability makes the life of many average people happier and predictable for themselves which partially mitigates personal and class antagonism in the society and adds some peace and order to social life.
These measures are not founded upon a conscious differentiation between the demographically grounded and the degraded parasitic range of needs. Because of that they bring no change into the nature of the inhuman civilization (judged by the psychic types that are dominant in it). They preserve flawed morals directing vices onto a course that poses no danger for the social system’s present stability thereby increasing chances of its potential future downfall.
There are many ways the society reacts to the flawed nature of the free-market regulation of production and consumption. The range of such reactions is crowned by the effort to introduce a system of production and consumption on a planned basis which conforms to really vital needs of all laborers and denies civil rights to unrepentant (persisting) parasites and those who oppose to organizing public life upon declaring the principle of conscientious labor to the benefit of all other laborers. In the course of history such social and economic order has been termed «socialism».[126]
Yet in order to grasp what the very possibility of making a practically consistent plan is objectively caused by we must turn again to the structure of vital needs generated by the society. Because planning deals with satisfying current and future needs then if it is impossible to determine and predict the dynamics of needs in future it is impossible to make plans and run the economy on a planned basis. Therefore the issue of stable predictability of needs is the key issue when running the economy on a planned basis is concerned.