>>Except that the capitalism is falling under its own influence since it now lacks its most substantial ingredient: competition.
>
>Do you mean competition with 'communal property'?
>In regard to liberties revoked by socialism (sorry, that the only serious issue that I found in your message), they are essentially following. Socialism infringes on private property right by taking out significant part of individual property with the purpose to redistribute it. In purer form, it takes over all parts.

That's under the assumption that the original distribution was beyond any critique, eh? How much of the wrongs committed by robber barons, colonizations, bribing or directly owning the politicians and all the other ways - how much of it was ever returned? One percent? Or is the civilization OK by having a few crumbs returned in form of charity or museums, and content to leave all that wealth in the hands of the robbers' heirs?

The wealth is currently being redistributed at large, it's just not in that direction, not horizontally. It goes up. The median income is falling while the average is rising. The minimum wage should be $19 to reach the level, corrected for inflation, it had when the previous law was enacted. Is that not redistribution when it is corrected to just $6.25 or so?

This complaint about redistribution somehow assumes that the status quo is perfect, and the evil masses want to shatter it.

My complaint against socialist practice, as observed historically, was that it didn't go after righting the wrongs and doing justice to the victims of the few centuries of robbery and exploitation but went indiscriminately against anyone who owned anything. They went with equal zeal against someone who owned a tavern, a little brewery or a shoe repair shop, and the owners of huge conglomerates. The second complaint is that they didn't trust their own masses to be able to think for themselves. While the masses in my country had more influence, and had many rights to decide what to do with the profits, these rights were gradually eroded, and by the end it was calculated that they actually self-managed about 2% of the GNP, the rest was channeled to various destinations beyond their control (unless you count choosing between two politicians from the same party, or vetted by the same party, as control).

>In my opinion, private property is a cornerstone for any liberties. As you probably remember, despite your profession to grow up on market, that socialism declared any possible liberties except this one, because it knew that people stripped off their property are less dangerous for powers and could be easier manipulated.

We had private property, it's just that if you meant to do business with it, you were seriously limited. You couldn't hire more than five people, or own more than 10ha of land, and that was it. I know of a guy who even so got rich enough to pay for new pavement in his street, or another who grew about 40ha of green peas (there were ways).

If you wanted to hire more people, these people had a right to a share in decision making... i.e. the law considered their work to be an investment in part, because nobody ever got fully paid.

What amazes me, though, is why was the transition, in practically all cases I know of, envisioned as wholesale robbery of all this state or communal property? Why did these communal forms of production have to lose legal ground? If they were so bad, why not let them compete with better forms of ownership and/or production, and let the best guy win? Why was it necessary to let all this wealth go to pieces, so it could be bought for pittance by the new oligarchs? Why was capitalism so unsure of its advantages to feel the need to tilt the field so steeply?