While I sympathize with the position, if the capitalist class didn't exist that wouldn't mean that the working class suddenly had access to capital. They'd still be starving and living under a bridge in winter. Historically the workers seizing the means of production has been a disaster (see, for example, communist Russia). The problem isn't profits or private ownership of the means of production. The problems are that we don't have enough capitalists and that the big corporations are in bed with the government.
When the new Soviet socialist nation was founded in October 1917, it was an unindustrialized, agrarian society, with a low literacy rate. In twenty years, socialists built Russia into an industrial juggernaut, with what at the time
(the 1930s) was considered modern infrastructure. It even had a subway in Moscow, and several impressive hydroelectric plants, providing its citizens with power. The literacy rate skyrocketed to 92% by 1941, when Germany invaded them.
You need to factor in the fact that Soviet Russia was invaded in 1918 by the United States and 14 other countries. Over 220 thousand foreign troops invaded Russia, to fight the socialists
(red army), in support of their enemy, what was then called the "White army", a coalition of anti-socialist forces. By the mid-1920s the "Whites" had been defeated by the Reds.
The USSR was in a state of war from its founding in October 1917 to its collapse in December 1991. It didn't have a year of peace. All resources were constantly being allocated for war, in order to defend itself. It was invaded in June 1941, by 4 million Nazis, in "Operation Barbarossa". This led to the death of nine million Soviet soldiers and 18 million Soviet civilians (14% of their population). Seven out of ten Germans were fighting on the "Eastern Front"
(In Russia).
After WW2, the United States was the biggest winner of all. A nation surrounded by two vast oceans, in a very special place, thousands of miles away from Europe and Japan. Where the Soviets lost 27 million people out of a population of 190 million, amounting to 14% of their country. We lost 460 thousand people, out of a population of 134 million or 0.3% of our population.
The US became the manufacturing hub of the world, providing Western Europe and Japan with the "Marshal Plan", to rebuild these nations and turn them into our close allies
(rightly so). The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was devastated, losing over half of everything that it had built, in the 20 years before the war, from its founding to the German invasion. There was no "Marshal Plan" for the Soviet Union. The Soviets
(the socialists) had to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and rebuild their new nation, which had been so brutally violated and turned to rubble.
By the mid-1950s, less than 12 years after WW2, the Soviet Union was once again a world power but this time it was a nuclear super-power, in a Cold War with the United States and its allies. It became the second economy in the world, rivaling the US, and had an extremely impressive military. There were four periods in Soviet history when there were breadlines, food shortages, and famine within its borders:
1) Shortly after the founding of the new nation in 1917, into the mid-1920s, when the socialists were at war with 14 other countries, including the US.
2) In Ukraine, in 1931-32, due to climate, and the Kulaks
(feudal land owners, refusing to collectivize).
3) WW2 (for obvious reasons, described earlier)
...and
4) The 1980s, when the Soviets decided to placate the United States and enact "Perestroika" and "Glastnos" reforms, to avoid nuclear war and relieve their economy from the cost of defense and the oil price crisis of 1986.
Other than being in the middle of a war in Russia, with invading forces, or fighting Kulaks in Ukraine
(and in mother Russia as well), or in the 1980s, introducing capitalism into the Soviet economy, because the Soviets were shell-shocked after over 50 years of continuous hot-wars, and an expensive cold war. Other than that, no one ever starved or had to stand in a breadline to eat.
The standard of living for Soviet citizens was much higher than it was before the socialist revolution, under capitalism. The Soviet Union was growing economically, until the late 70s, and if it had not tried to become a "Care Bear":
In the middle of a cold war, it would now be, economically equal if not superior to us here in the US. The Soviets were much more sophisticated than the Chinese.
Are there famines now in capitalist economies? Yes. How many dirt-poor, failing states are there in the world, that have capitalist-run economies? They're all over the place. Many.
Did capitalism replace chattel slavery and feudalism overnight? No. It took centuries for the mercantile class of Europe to replace the kings and feudal aristocracy. It didn't happen with one single swoop of the sword, in one battle or war. It occurred when the technology and the right political, and social conditions were present for the merchants to become powerful industrialists. The capitalist Republicans didn't replace the powerful monarchists, and kings, until they had the technology and resources, in the age of industrialization.
Why do you then demand that socialists replace capitalism in one single swoop of the sword, to prove its legitimacy? As technology advances, eventually, inevitably, society will have to adopt a non-profit system of production. Advanced automation and artificial intelligence will reduce human labor to unsustainable levels, requiring the adoption of socialist, non-profit, publicly owned, democratic production. It may not happen in the 2020s, or even in the 2030s or 2040s, but eventually, nonetheless, it will happen.
