I was already afraid, Henryk, that you do not have a good command on what Capitalism, Communism and Socialism stand for. You come close, but you don't nail it.

Let me start out with Socialism because that is the overarching ideology, of promoting socialist ideals.

The path toward that goal is not one path but is available from a variety of pathways. Communism is the dictatorial pathway in which no other influences are tolerated.

Many social-democracies have socialist parties in them that would hate it if we associated them with communism. They would rather shoot themselves than embrace any form of dictatorship to get to the goals they indeed share with communists. They are democrats first, and only second do they desire implementation of the socialists ideals.

That is the organization: Socialism in top; communism one version of getting there, social-democracy (which I understand as the clean version of socialism) is the other version. Clean, because it is free of dominance other than through agreements among parties and people.

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Capitalism is not a political system; it is an economic system. Communists sometimes call it the Anglo-Dutch system.

Dutch, because the Belgian and Netherlandish changes put in place in the 16th/17th Century are vital to the functioning of modern capitalism. It allowed even those with limited income to put the tiniest amount of money into a company or venture and prosper (or lose it all). Rather quickly, investors do figure out which routes are the smartest route (to making more money) and as such finance is like a million-eyed creature that guides the financial process (in socially desired and socially non-desired manners) toward the largest returns.

When the Low Countries boomed in the 16th/17th Century and became what the United States became two centuries later, an immigrant magnet of historical proportions, it became the richest area of the world quickly. Within half a century, the British ended this success story by putting up their Navigation Acts. British ships in British harbors only. But... they also accepted capitalism as the new system.

Slowly but surely, the gravity of the financial world shifted from Amsterdam to London, including Dutch and Belgian investors investing their money in London-based companies. As such, a political aspect got added to the originally capitalist framework that did not exist prior. Nationalism and power play entered the framework, and we know how the Brits dominated the rest of the world for three centuries. The French ended up doing the same, giving the Brits an equally good run for their money later on.

German and Italian states had no choice in the 1860s and 1870s to end up becoming large nations themselves because the game got skewed by the British and the French empires and Germany and Italy (and others) had no option to remain the little group of princedoms and states that they had been so far.

I think you can recognize the word lebensraum because the Brits and French occupied half the world and therefore controlled these markets that the Germans and Italians could not enjoy freely.

World Wars I and II were fought because of economic struggles started up by the British Navigation Acts centuries prior. Nationalism is one of the political wings of capitalism, success always with the largest of course and not with the smallest. There are more political wings to capitalism.

Capitalism itself is not a political instrument. But the political hand of the UK, for instance, is unmistaken. Today, everywhere in capitalist nations, governments are either doing a lot of control or exactly the opposite of little control. The amount of control over the capitalist market -- that is political.

Nations in the Western world that do not control their markets much (UK, USA) are also not giving their population much political freedom. Those that need higher minimum wages cannot form a political bulwark and demand higher minimum wages the same way people in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain can establish political bulwarks.

Meanwhile, other nations need to compete with these nations with the lower wages. That puts pressure on the minimum wages of all countries that have 'open' borders with one another.

So, of the two forms of democracy, we have an inclusive democracy and we have an exclusive democracy. The exclusive democracy gives more to the elite and to the investors. If we want to control capitalism, because it is definitively not all just good, we all know that, then we need to have governments that are better managers. And that is only possible when we have at least three or four empowered parties, not just two.

Thank you, Hendrik, for letting me speak my mind.

Thank you for sharing your articles. There isn't much wrong with what you say; I just miss that extra color, that's all.