The position I will attempt to demonstrate argues that the actual and future performance of the capitalist system disproves the idea of its collapse under the weight of economic failure—instead, precisely because of its success, the capitalist system undermines the social institutions that protect it, "inevitably" creating the conditions under which it will disappear and which highlight socialism as its only heir...

There is no doubt that the worker of our time has at his disposal certain goods that Louis XIV would have greatly desired but could not have—modern dental services, for example. Overall, however, such a thick wallet had little to gain from the achievements of capitalism. We can assume that even the shortening of travel routes would have little value for such a respectable man.

Electric light is not a great benefit for someone who has the money to buy the necessary number of candles and the servants to light them. The achievements of capitalism are cheap clothes, cheap cotton, synthetic silk fabrics, army boots, and cars, without these advances necessarily meaning anything for the wealthiest. Queen Elizabeth had silk stockings. The most characteristic achievement of capitalism is not that more stockings are produced for queens, but that factory workers can acquire them by toiling less and less...

Can socialism work? Of course, it can. There is no doubt that it can, provided, first, that the required stage of industrial development has been completed and, second, that the problems of transition will be successfully resolved...

Democracy is a political method, that is, a specific type of institutional arrangement for making political—legislative and administrative—decisions, which, therefore, cannot be self-sufficient, i.e., independent from the decisions it produces under given historical conditions. This point should be the starting point of any attempt to define it...

Joseph A. Schumpeter