Socialism 101

Economically speaking, there's NO difference between the two i.e. command systems.

You might have had a point politically but not economically.....

 

Let me guess, you have a pension but no idea how it is funded?

 

WRONG. I may have to start a diary on how many times your assumptions are wrong. I was thinking, should it begin with WMDs in Iraq, Romney will win, and Benghazi will be Obama's undoing? Hmm, seems someone started a thread about these con assumptions and predictions the other day.

 

How are wages economically irrelevant? Also, not all socialist formulations require command economies.

 

Quote me once saying any of those things please. Dodge on your pension.

 

Socialism 101:

Socialism starts with a Social Contract not a Capital Contract.

 

Problem is, unless everyone agrees on what that social contract is you'll have to start ordering people around. Which is what always happens.

 

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I'm loathe to do so. Given the paucity of evidence or even argument, your post
simply comes down to, "this is why I don't like socialism". Fine, you don't like
socialism.


But if you insist -

Why should there be any confusion about this? It's quite straightforward. Of
course socialism has both components, what economic and social system doesn't?


It's too obvious to even remark upon.

Socialism isn't founded on egalitarianism, politically or otherwise. It is focused
on determining and meeting need, first a foremost, by the use of socially owned
means of production and distribution. Not every citizen of the state has the same
rights to goods. There are basic rights to goods, these are needs, but even then
those who won't work will find their access to those basic goods are not
unlimited.Socialism isn't about charity or enabling the lazy. That's common from
those who either don't understand its basics or who want to misrepresent
socialism.

There is no requirement for the “equal distribution of economic goods.”You still
need money to buy goods in socialist economies. Back in the early 1980s I visited
the then communist states of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia and I found
money very helpful to buy goods, just like the locals. I've visited Cuba and
found the same thing. Both me and the locals used money (albeit I used a
currency specifically for foreigners that was in place to avoid the locals being
gazumped when it came to purchasing consumer goods) to buy stuff. I had to have
money when I needed medical treatment from a doctor (Cubans get it at no cost) in
Cuba. But these policies have nothing to do with the “obvious shortcomings” of
the economic system, they're simply how things work. I haven't been to North
Korea and at this stage I'm not likely to do so. Well I might visit South Korea
and have a look at Panmunjon but I suspect that's as far as I'll get.

Socialism has failed in many societies for various reasons. The primary one
is that it wasn't socialism at all but a form of state capitalism (USSR for
example). On the political side of it one problem has been the tendency to
totalitarianism by communist governments – the USSR and similar states in
which I include the former DDR; the PRC, which despite it's apparent tryst with
capitalism is still under the yolk of a totalitarian regime; North Korea
(obviously) and so on. Where it worked well there was not so much a totalitarian
government as a fairly benignly authoritarian one – Yugoslavia, Hungary are two
good examples. Cuba has an authoritarian government but it has managed to
reinvent itself in the realisation that the regime is not going to be toppled
from outside and so it can ease off the restrictions a bit. The average Cuban I
spoke to (or rather my wife spoke to as she is fluent in Spanish) was critical of
the low level of consumer goods available but appreciative of free health care
and education and certainly didn't want to return to the days of Batista. Nor did
they want to change their form of government to a multi-party(or more
accurately, duopoly) they see in the West. They just wanted more stuff. Given
that Cuba has historically been an agricultural economy and agricultural
economies are by definition more prone to poverty and a lower standard of
material living than industrialised economies, this isn't surprising and has
nothing to do with the fact that it has a communist government. Not sure if you
realise it but Cuba's community party some years ago explicitly
rejected Marxism-Leninism and removed it from the country's constitution.
So,your contention that there is little or no private property in a socialist
economy is wrong. There is plenty. It's just the means ofproduction and
distribution are socially owned. Private enterprise is permitted, encouraged and
strengthens a socialist economy, just aslong as the means of production don't
fall into private hands.


The assertion that there is no incentive to create or use ingenuity is also
totally wrong. As a simple and obvious example look at theformer USSR. Does the
word “Sputnik” ring a bell? How about the name Yuri Gagarin?


There are inefficiencies in command economies, that isn't disputed. But these
inefficiencies can be corrected and in fact have been corrected. The introduction
of the theories underpinning market socialism have done this. It's still
socialism, in the sense that the means of production are still socially owned,
it's just that the methods of determining needs and wants at the consumer level
are more effective. You may have to accept though that when it comes to
being really effective at getting things done for the national wellbeing, such as
in war-time, centralised planning along the lines of a command economy works
extremely well. Take Britain for example. During the Great War round about 1916
it nearly failed in its war effort because it tried to mix laissez-faire
economics with the war effort. Just in time the government realised its
terrible mistake and centralised all industrial production so that it could pull
out of its slump and eventually succeed. At the beginning ofthe Second World
War the British government didn't take the same economic path and immediately
introduced central planning to ensure success.


Following from this it must be obvious that the state in a socialist
economy doesn't actually make decisions about consumer needs and wants
in isolation from those very consumers. Go back to my point about
market socialism.


Now,do I need to go on or is that enough to be getting on with for the moment?

 

Our supreme law of the land is a Social Contract not a Capital Contract.

 

Yup. And it seems that with the exception of anti-gun people and the US Government itself, Americans tend to agree to it. However, it's barebones basic stuff. Once you start getting in to specific aspects of life like socialists do, people agree less and less.

 

Socialism requires social morals for free to function.

 

True, socially owned should be locally owned - I think the example might be the
collective approach in the former Yugoslavia. I'm not in favour of the
monolithic approach of the former Soviet Union for example.


The idea of exploitation of labour is, I think, that the capitalist doesn't pay
the labourer fairly for work in that the capitalist seeks to pay x and then
sell for y, the difference being profit. Again I realise I've over-simplified.
In a socialist economy I think there still needs to be profit in the sense that
price is greater than cost with the return being used for improving production
rather than being siphoned off into the hands of shareholders.


True that there is an innate tendency in humans to maintain the status quo,
as in your example of Tito. I'm not sure of this on a theoretical basis
but I think that may have been part of Trotsky's thinking about the
continuing revolution. While capitalism exists anywhere there can be no
advance towards pure communism. And if the push for revolutionary
socialism is stalled by reactionaries then obviously that will halt the
push towards pure communism.

 

Right, because politicians are trustworthy and competent and should have an exclusive monopoly over every drop of oil in America. It's so obvious to me now...

 

It's not a valid contract unless there is consent and shared meaning between the respective parties.

 

I am just glad our Founding Fathers did such an excellent job at the Convention; and thought of every Thing:

 

Without consent and shared meaning between parties, there can be no contract. Nothing you say will change that.

 

Ratification accomplished that; only anarchists without a Cause claim otherwise.

 

Oh, not what I am referring to here. But let me explain.

Yes, I trust our elected officials more than I trust Corporate officials with my National Security. If they mess up there are 300+ million Americans to vote them out of office, not a handful of greedy boardmembers.

The only drops of oil I exclusively want, are yours and mine, our National Oil that belongs to all US citizens on our National Federal lands. I have no desire to touch one drop of privately owned oil.

So there you have what is obvious when I say National Oil,.....NOT privately owned oil.

 

Regardless of airy-fairy ideological musings, the reality is that all the advanced, first-world nations have combined a socialistic component with capitalistic economies, achieving a decent quality of life for the vast majority of their citizens.

Those who are indoctrinated into either extreme are destined to be frustrated, because pragmatism supports what demonstrably and repeatedly works best, a balanced approach to governance.

Zealots for both doctrinaire socialism and unrestrained capitalism have no paradigms to offer. None has ever actually succeeded.




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Modern commerce depends on legally enforceable trust; the wide extension of credit, impersonal management, and the pooling of service facilities. Refraining from interference is not enough; the government has to be the patron, judge, and policeman of the movement. China: A Macro History

 

Wages have nothing to do with whether a system is socialist or not..... Yes, any socialist economy=command systems......

 

Socialism has FAILED everywhere it's been tried.... It's WELL documented WHY it fails too. Take any economics 101 course to find out why......

Do you know what pick a point means??????? Let's debate it point by point.....

 

Only truer forms of Socialism have failed, as have any truer forms of anarcho-capitalism.

 

Under socialism, people are paid based on their contribution. Under communism, wealth is divided equally. See the difference? And no, socialism != command economy. For instance, the case in which private companies are owned by the employees - no government control needed.

 

We call those employee owned businesses, not socialism. That's stretching the political definition into a small scale.

Socialism/communism(command system) as economic systems, by definition, is when the government( or other entity) controls the means of production for a nation.

You're attempting to tell me that government bureaucrats under communism get paid the same amount of "resources" as a janitor?