Socialism: In Your Words
 

There has been talk here lately about Socialism. It appears to mean different things to different people. I'm interested in your vision of socialism, what it means to you, what it could mean for the world, how you envision it in its purest form and furthest implementation. What would a world based on Socialism look like to you?

Socialism is an institutionalized system for the equitable distribution of wealth in a society. In its pure form, it's an excellent idea--the debits and credits against the national wealth balance out, everyone is taken care of, and even those who pay more than they get are satisfied and fulfilled with the national success that their work forwards.

Unfortunately, the real world has some factors that add friction to the wheels of perfect Socialism. First, the institutional nature of it requires significant bureaucracy. That bureaucracy costs the system without feeding it. Second, human greed is a huge drain on this system. Any system that has as its goal the complete even distribution of resources is probably doomed to fail, given human nature.

Third and probably most importantly, Socialism is an idealistic system. When forced to compete with Capitalism--which I'd call "pragmatic" so I don't have to use the phrase "greed-driven"--it simply can't compete.

In terms of actual political life, Socialism is a dinosaur. Nobody actually believes it can work anymore--even the so-called socialized nations have huge capitalist infrastructures. These days it's mainly a scare tactic from conservatives to prevent things like national health care from being considered.

Socialism is a very simple concept, a sense of responsibility not just to self, but to community, taken to it's logical applications. Socialism is about individuals of a community working for the community first, and themselves second.

As an economic system, it's about a society agreeing that their wealth can be shared, while still respecting the level of contribution from the individual. There is a great deal of planning so that no member of the society is left behind. It's not 'state ownership' exactly, as it's often referred to. It's everyone sharing in the communities acquired success. A proper socialist economic system is HIGHLY democratic, allowing not the centralized government, but everyone to develop an economic policy. I know a socialist democracy sounds nuts to most people, but I think it's our best bet so far as bringing about real positive change on all fronts. Imagine a world where there is no risk of monopoly. Imagine no more unemployment. Imagine no more $5 an hour minimum wage. Imagine no more multi-billionaires, hogging all the wealth. Most importantly, imagine no more exploitation of workers.

The British Labour Party calls itself a "democratic socialist party." I would say a "socialist democracy" doesn't sound crazy to me. In many ways, Canada can be called socialist. This I think is mainly attributed to the workings of the parliamentary system, which tends to force politicians to appease the interests of various groups, especially when things are balanced in certain ways.

My view of socialism is that it acts as a balancing force to capitalism. One is for the benefit of the working class, the other benefits those who control wealth. In their purest forms, each are more susceptible to human folly. We must strike a balance.

I don't think socialist democracy sounds crazy at all. Just look to Sweden. They have a fully functioning democracy. So does Canada, and Canada has some very strong elements of socialism running through its political system.

Neither Sweden nor Canada is purely socialist but I would argue that there are no nations that are purely "capitalist" either. All are tempered by some form of government regulation or intervention.

It's just where any given system sits on the continuum between liberty and equality. Some lean towards more equality and others towards more liberty. As always, it's in the balance of the two that you will see the most success.

I wouldn't want to live in a world where it's not possible to become a "multi-billionaire, hogging all the wealth". Socialism sounds naive.

I wouldn't want to live in a world that doesn't work towards ending child poverty. The point here is that the virtues of a pure capitalist system aren't self-evident. Trickle-down economics doesn't work. Capitalism doesn't have a built-in morality.

As Charlatan has pointed out, there are elements of it in practice already; many of them are entrenched.

The problem is the continual human inherency to think that one way is better than another when it comes to things like religion and social politics.

Part of the problem here is that the word "socialism" is an intergral part of the communist lexicon and hierarchy. Most of the major communist philosophers identify socialism as a predecessor to a communist state. Some even used the two terms interchangably (thanks, Uncle Joe). The Soviet Union was never a communist country by this definition but a socialist one, as reflected in its very name and the fact that it had a government.

That said, I think that we can all agree that the type of socialism that we're talking about here exists outside of the communist matrix, at least for the purposes of this discussion. If that's not right, let me know and I'll add my thoughts on that.

Western socialism exists to level the playing field, at least in its pure form. All governments have at least some socialist qualities in that they do provide some services to all citizens on an equal basis (infrastructure, etc.). Taken to the heights of the Swedish example, the extremes of the economic scale are closer together than non-socialist countries. The rich are not as rich but the poor are not as poor.

With the understanding that a "pure" socialist government is impossible and that if that hurdle were overcome a worldwide socialist system could never be imposed, nations would share wealth with one another to raise the global standard of living through taxation of corporations and individuals. I imagine that there would be some sort of right to work laws with less of a variation of income from state to state.

For me, the divide between capitolism and socialism revolves around Thomas Jefferson's "All men are created equally". Its a HUGE simplification of the ideas but I believe its a good illustration.

Socialism: All men are created equally... and stay that way throughout life.

Capitolism: All men are created equally, but your worth can change with the amount of work you put into life.


For me the idea of living in a purely socialist world is a stiffling and oppressive thought. For socialism to work, it has to be controlled by very strict governments. Governments that are willing to force people to work, willing to tell people what their job is, and willing to collect everything and redistribute it. Other wise, in a socialist system with no oppressive government, the slackers of the world would have even less motivation to do anything productive and the people who actually give a shit would be forced to work more so the slackers could get away with doing less. There is no way a system like that can sustain itself.

I prefer the freedom capitolism offers. In a purely capitolistic world, I am free to live life for myself and not a collective community. I am free to choose what I want to be. I can choose to work hard and achieve goals, or I can choose to sit around and do nothing. I am also free to volunteer or make donations and help the community when I feel like it, or NOT volunteer when I don't feel like it. It follows natures law of natural selection, and as far as I know, natural selection does not need a large beuracracy to make sure the predators and prey balance eachother out.

It's a great word to use to get most Americans all riled up!

:)

It's a wonderful concept. It's also idealistic in this day and age.

The only time socialism ever worked was when we were a tribal society. Everyone lived for the good of the tribe. The minute one tribe bagen producing a product and keeping what they produced under lock and key the tribal society went away - and with it the concept of socialism. At that point shared ownership went away.

There's a good book by Daniel Quinn called My Ishmael. It talks about this subject and also deals with our educational system.

Socalism is the chokehold on innovation. If you are living under socalism, why should you try to come up new and better things to advance the civilization and better peoples lives when all the money that will be made will go to someone else? Why should you work harder if you won't get extra benefit from it? The extra money you make will just be taken from you and given to those who did not work as hard, a.k.a. "redistributed".

One thing I noticed on my recent trip to Russia, is that while Moscow is the city where capitalism has gone ballistic, outside of the capital, the Soviet Socalist mentality still exists in people's minds. I was surprised in how often I saw in people a complete lack of desire to make things better. If they had what they needed to get through the day, then that was enough. If someone tried to take a different path, to make things better for himself or herself, this person would be critized and ridiculed. This person was not doing his or her part in their society and so must be convinced to give up his or her hopes to make things better. And this convincing to abandon all hopes of bettering things is done in a "peer pressure" and "family pressure" manner to emphisize that change is not necessary, because they have enough to survive. As long as this socalist mentality exists in the minds of the non-Moscovite Russians, then Russia outside of Moscow will forever be poor.

As with capitalism, people are encouraged to work harder, to come up with new and better innovations. And the reward for such work is a better standard of living for yourself and your family. CNBC has a show in the evenings called, "The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch" which interviews people who have gone from lower or middle class to wealthy, all because of an idea and some hard work. Ideas like maternity clothes or dyson vacuum cleaners. In capitalism, you have the chance to change things and give yourself a better life and in the process create a better standard of living.

This assumes the only motivation for mankind is money. That's a fundamentally flawed assumption. I wonder what my monetary gain would be from volunteering my time at a homeless shelter. Or spending time with my family, what would be my monetary gain from that? Or taking my grandmother's trash out every week?

What kind of a person will only do something for money?


Socialism doesn't work because people are unwilling to be good and selfless. The flaw in socialism is the flaw in man.

Right on, will. :thumbsup:

You've hit the nail on the head. 'Tis the flaw in capitalism, as well. Ideals are ideals because we perpetually cannot live up to them.

Socialism cannot thrive without capitalism and vice versa. I think it's fairly self-evident.

Socialism is the belief that no person should have less than is necessary to live comfortably, regardless of input into the system, and necessarily at the expense of those who earn more, regardless of input into the system.
Sweden also has around a 66% tax rate and I haven't heard anything good about the system from anyone who lives there and doesn't get government benefits.

But socialism works when people are good overall. That's the thing. The tribesmen of the past weren't perfect little moral machines, living up to their ideals every second of every day. They made mistakes. The important thing was that they always remembered their responsibility to their family and their tribe. Is that so much to ask? Is it really so hard to say "if you see someone starving, don't just keep walking by"? If that's the case, if it really is too difficult for people to simply have a shred of empathy, then I'm moving to Mars and no one else is invited.

Money has a different effect on different people. The problem with socialism is that it forces everybody into a one size fits all solution by taking the money away from those who have earned it and giving it to those who have not. Those who have earned the money are typically the ones who are driven by it and when they see the money taken from them, they lose the desire to work becuase they see no reward in it. Those who did not earn the money see money being handed to them and then see no desire to work because they are given all that they need without having to do anything for it. Then you end up with a society where everybody only does the minimum to get by and innovation dies. Welcome to Russia tovarisch (comrade).


People who go on reality TV.

Again, big assumptions here. First of all, socialism is not taking money from people who earned it and giving it to those who have not. It's the taking of some money from everyone just to make sure that no one is in poverty. If you make $1m a year now, you're not going to be making $60k a year in a socialist system. You're going to be making $800k. Hardly something to sneeze at. You still keep what you ear, you just earn a little less if you make a shitton of money. Not only that, but everyone works. No one sits at home getting money. That's not socialism. 100% employment means everyone earns their way.

Innovation has a better chance in a socialist system because you don't have to compete for money. You can develop innovative technologies without having to worry about living up to a cooperation's expectation. If you're working on a way to get 200 mpg, the oil industry can't bury you. That's real innovation, clear of the influence of selfish corporations.

Well, you might want to buy your ticket to Mars early before the rush.

I don't believe that pure socialism can exist on the scale it would take to nourish whole societies as we have today in a manner consistent with what you envision. No, people don't have that much empathy. And I don't think the variety of political structure we live under really has anything to do with it. Nothing is stopping people, living in a capitalistic society, from being more selfless and altruistic - they just aren't. If we were to impose pure socialism on a Western capitalistic society you would absolutely see the phenomena that mirevolver is talking about in his posts. People crave individuality and self-determination, probably moreso in a global age when the individual can seem so small and insignificant. Therefore I think the only route to healthy, thriving societies is a mix of the two ideologies to measure and balance the the flaws inherent in each.

Granted these are only my own jaded observations. Ideals you might call them. :p

No government can exist with such a large population. That's another conversation, though.

i dont have the time i'd like to have to devote to this post, so i'll just outline a couple things and maybe do more later.

democratic socialism is a variant of capitalism in which the state actively intervenes to shape the parameters of the captialist game--so it might subsidise businesses in particular sectors because the system interest is in full employment rather than in profit maximization for private holders of capital---in labor relations, it formalized and extended the role of trade unions and generated very different types of work environments than you tend to find in privately dominated capitalism (again, think how differently american capitalism would look if full employment were taken seriously as a goal--the barbarism that is american capitalism deals with structural unemployment by not counting it. go figure). the state redistributes wealth generally under teh assumption that flatter distribution curves are preferable if the idea is to maintain solidarity with the existing order over any period in political terms. the state also diverts wealth into providing basic services--which routinely include universal health care--and (on a matter that pisses me off to no end) actual funding for the arts--simply because it is assumed that physical and mental well-being are social concerns--and that art production is important, not simply a luxury (perhaps because artists tend to be quite innovative and capitalism can benefit from buying or stealing ideas--and art raises the quality of life in general--that sort of thing.)...so democratic socialism is a variant on capitalism there's alot more to it even at the level of ldeal-type and even more if you start considering the simple fact that there are in the empirical world a bewildering number of variants of social democracy.

but the bottom line is easy: democratic socialism represents a different set of conclusions about what constitutes the best way to maintain social and political solidarity in the face of the atomizing tendency of capitalism.

so in the main, i dont know what people are talking about above, what they have in mind when they talk about regimentation and so forth in the context of democratic socialism. there is no opposition between capitalism and democratic socialism--they are variants of the same economic system.

much of what you think of ds systems comes down to where your priorities are analytically--particular if you assume--as i do--that most claims regarding "human nature" are circular repetitions of the ideological situation of the speaker and do not refer to anything past that. if you want a capitalism that is sustainable socially, politically and environmentally, you cannot rely on private capital. ds-systems are based around that assumption.

state socialism of the type articulated in the soviet union etc are basically different--i could go on about them, but do not consider them relevant as they were in most ways kind of horrifying extensions of the logic of capitalism which the ideologues of these systems tended to imagine were otherwise. the best way of saying it quick: bureaucratic capitalism/state capitalism repeated all the worst features of capitalism while managing to erase even the small margins for individual autonomy that the latter allows--so for example in capitalism you can quit your job, but for a period in the ussr, you couldnt. that kind of thing.

in principle, socialism seems to me closest to direct democracy.
but here i have to stop.

But it is something that has never existed, really. Has it?

Perhaps I am of too little faith or imagination.

True democracy has never existed either.

Not busting on you for this part will, but isn't this supposedly the same argument that I've posed about why no wars isn't achievable?

I was restating the point of mired back to him for clarity. I refuse to believe that people can't be good. I think that pessimism causes anger, suffering and death on a global scale because people are too damned stubborn to be good and righteous.

Just to throw out a bit of a red herring:

National Socialism
Democratic Socialism
Western Socialism

Are all very very very different things and occupy three distinct places in the political spectrum, namely the two extremes and the center (or close to it in some places).

i dont follow the last two terms in your list, jazz: they seem to refer to the same thing. democratic socialist regimes are in germany, france, uk, sweden, etc....and they are not particularly far "to the left" really--except perhaps from the extreme rightwing position that is somehow the norm in the united states.

as for direct democracy and its implementation: the longest run it has had was in classical athens, about 500 years if memory serves..since then in short runs--e.g. the paris commune, the kronstadt revolt, the hungarian revolution. if you want an idea of just how delighted were the representatives of soviet-style bureaucratic/state capitalism were by this direct democracy business, have a look at what happened to kronstadt after the revolt, and to hungry after about 2 weeks in oct-nov. 1956.

RB, by Democratic Socialism, I'm thinking of People's Republics, not socialist democrats. The DPRNK for instance.

ah--well that's confusing because typically western european socialism is called democratic socialism. it just is that way.

maybe "communist" style instead? i haven't got a good alternative.

but the term switch will confuse me over and over again, i know it.

Yeah, I was surprised not to see Communism on the list.

Applying that model of $1m to the Swedish system already mentioned with 66% taxes. That would leave you with $340k. As someone who is already annoyed by the comparatively small amount taken from my paycheck in the US, I would be furious if I saw the government take 2/3 of my money. Under those circumstances, what would be the point of working for more money, after all, the government would just take more money from you.

100% employment is great in theroy, but in 2005, the socialist welfare system in Germany hit a crisis when unemployment hit 12.5%, more than double the unemployment percentage in the US at the same time. People in Germany who lost their jobs and ended up in the welfare system were receiving funds that were comparable to what they were making when working, and many of them just lost the desire to go back to work. People on the welfare became overly dependant on the government's money and the German government found it was running out of welfare money.

In the socalist states in europe where gas has consistantly been 4 to 5 times higher than in the US, I have not seen a 200mpg vehicle rolling off their assmebly lines. I'll grant you that their vehicles are more fuel efficient than the average american car, but they're also half the size, which really has nothing to do with economic systems.

What innovations came out of China in the last 50 years? What innovations came out of Russia during soviet times? What innovations have come from Cuba since the 50s?

Cuba isn't a fair comparison. We're talking about a few million people. What did the Soviets create? There were some small things like Sputnik, Vostok, Salyut, and Mir but nothing truly great. They also took themselves from being a peasant society to an industrial superpower.

I'm not a fan of pure socialism but capitalism is bogus as well. Is a system where 90% of the wealth is held by 5% of the population truly better? Would the economy be better if that gap was smaller?

We have this crazy idea that all it takes is a little hard work. It's total bullshit. Plenty of people work their asses off and all they have to show for it is some run-down house that is all they can afford. Most of the population is a serious illness away from losing everything.

I think this statement is bogus. You can apply it to any tax system. Why push for making $10/hr if the man is just going to take some of it away from you? The end result is that you have more money than you would have before.

Three words:

Free Rider Problem

You're repeating yourself, but there's been new information. They don't take more money from you so that you make the same as if you made less. Even in a system out of control like Sweeden, many people living in my own neighborhood would take home something like $500k-$1m a year for their work. That's with a 2/3 tax. I wonder how much complaining you'd do with $1m a year. I'd have to give some of it away.
It's the people's money, not the government's. And they screwed up because they didn't commit to the welfare system.
150-170 mpg on a scooter isn't bad. Also, they drive less. And shit, what idiot really needs as much room as you can find in a Ford Explorer? Even with a 5 person family, that stupid 9 mpg piece of American consumerism is totally overkill. My wife's BMW can fit 5 adults. My car (95 eclipse) can fit two adults and two children. With the average family size in the US hovering around 3.14 (that's mom, pop, and baby), the idea that we all need these tanks is so far beyond ludicrous that people should be institutionalized for looking at them.
China isn't socialist, it's fascist/capitalist... and Russia was able to compete with our space program for a fraction of the price while they were at their peak... and that was with the massive corruption. Imagine how it could have been had the people taken responsibility and removed the corrupt from office.

For me socialism is working your ass off after high school to pay for SOMEONE ELSE to go to college.

In the US it can only exist in stark contradiction to the constitution and the original founder's intent. Socialism is opposite of personal liberty in which this country was founded.

The only form of Socialism that I can even entertain would be a voluntary local community level or something. Anything else takes away too much personal freedom.

You're right, our Constitution says nothing about equality. Nor does our Declaration of Independence.

China: Globalized economy
Soviet Russia: Sputnik program
Cuba: Music

[QUOTE=kutulu]Cuba isn't a fair comparison. We're talking about a few million people. What did the Soviets create? There were some small things like Sputnik, Vostok, Salyut, and Mir but nothing truly great. They also took themselves from being a peasant society to an industrial superpower.

Yeah, but why did the Soviets go to space? It wasn't for the common good of the people. It was to compete with the US. Same reason they spent money on nuclear missiles while most of the citizens lived fairly poor lives compared to their western counterparts. But hey, everyone was poor. So no rich people or poor people to ruin your day :thumbsup:

We've already established that the Soviets were corrupt: