Why is it that everyone that wants socialism

Quote: Can you name any?

.......Cuba, Venezuela, not too many

Quote: The VA, Medicare, and Medicaid

.......Well, let's say VA is socialism; Both publicly funded and publicly delivered.

According to my studies, most First World government-sponsored PRIMARY health care systems are publicly funded, and services are privately delivered/for-profit, and most First World SECONDARY health care systems are privatized, thus, most First World health care systems are MIXED.

 

Quote: "it is impossible to specify exactly what a socialist economy will look like or how it will function"

Very true.

Company A (my employer) has 3,000 employees world-wide, and last year, we've generated $23 billion in revenues. Lowest paid employee earns $46,000, and most employees earns a 6 figure income.

Company B (McDonalds) has 235,000 employees world-wide, and last year, they've generated $23 billion in revenues. Lowest paid employee earns $16,000, and the average hourly rate is $12/hr.

Question; Will a socialist economy confiscate my 6 figure income?

 

That's awesome. But most of your posts are foolish.

 

No idea what you're trying to say here.

Meantime, I live in a nation with nationalised free public healthcare (for all, not just 'the poor').

 

You're asking a guy who opposes violently seizing state power to attempt to impose socialism. My preferred approach is to gradually introduce socialist businesses to give them time to figure it out, consolidate, work out the kinks, grow, expand, multiply, prove themselves, attract the commitment of politicians, develop dedicated new politicians to produce legislation to facilitate formation of such businesses, and grow from there over time. Those socialist businesses are currently called "worker-owned, worker-controlled cooperative corporations", or "workers self-directed enterprises" (WSDEs).

In this temporary (maybe for just 2 or 3 generations - whatever it takes) scheme, each business is its own self-controlled entity. If such a business can pay six figures to everyone and everyone agrees to divide the revenue that way, then no, your 6-figure income would not be confiscated because that would be up to you and your coworkers.

 

ALL of yours are extreme right wing garbage.

 

If you live in Canada, then 35% of your health care system is privatized, and your single-payer/PRIMARY health care, basically Medicare Par A and B for all, Medicare Part D for seniors is mostly delivered privately, and for profit. Your SECONDARY health care system, i.e. dental, vision, etc. is mostly privatized. Thus, overall, Canada has a MIXED economic health care system, thus, it isn't socialism.

 

You're saying the same thing.

 

Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln, Reagan, and Texas Republican ... all right wing kooks.

 

The VA is socialism.. Medicare is NOT.. Medicare is private delivery single payor.

 

There's no comparison between them and you.

 

Yup. Declining poverty. Healthcare for all. Demilitarization of the police. Cuts to defense spending. Shrinking income and wealth disparity ..........

No. Get some education on this. That wouldn't be socialism. It would be state capitalism like in Russia and China.

 

The socialist effort in the USSR wasn't stagnant. It was changing, growing, developing. And as it developed it veered to the right. At one point during that time they passed a law that said the government bureaucrats managing the factories could sell off "obsolete" equipment and could keep the money from the sale for themselves!!! I was outraged. This was the people's equipment! And now top managers were getting rich on it! Obviously this led to a growing trend of equipment being labeled "obsolete" and it harmed production too.

That is just one of a growing number of policies that converted the socialist effort into state capitalism. As these changes occurred, socialist began to worry and change their conclusions about the USSR and what it was and where it was going with their new experiment in economics.

Your thoughtless characterization that socialists "suddenly decided it was actually ... 'fascist' " defies reality, truth, logic, and common sense, as though it were just some kind of fickle group-think whim.

 

Well, that's just what it was. Monthly Review changed its view not because anything in the Soviet Union had changed between 1957 and 1967 (or whenever they flipped, I don't remember the exact date). What had changed was that by the late 60s, young radicals considered the Soviet Union stodgy old fuddy-duddies, not like the exciting, sexy Castroite guerillas, or the militant Chinese. So they just flipped, in order to swim with the current. They may have flipped back later ... I'm not sure. The Stalinoid newspaper The National Guardian did the same.

In fact, China, the USSR, the E European satellites, Cuba, all had the same sort of economy: nationalized industry where economic decisions were made according to a centralized plan. There were minor variations in Hungary and Poland and especially Yugoslavia, but none of these countries were in any meaningful sense capitalist. The means of production were not privately owned.

The Soviet economy was stagnant by the 80s ... everyone there knew it. They couldn't even produce a pair of blue jeans, much less microcomputers. A good fictional description of the day-to-day reality can be found in Francis Spufford's Red Plenty. Or you can visit Cuba to see the dead hand of socialism clutched around the throat of what should be a thriving country.

Anyway, I thought you believed that socialism means co operatives.

 

I don't accept your characterization.

To be useful you need to provide dates (the year) of these things. AT ONE TIME they had the "same sort of economy" kinda sorta. But as I detailed, things change and evolve. And the USSR went off course, so it was criticized and eventually abandoned by most as a beacon of hope. Cuba is still a question. They are doing some very interesting things, like converting private businesses to worker co-ops.

Yes, and by then they had largely transitioned to state capitalism.

Today, in the USA, yes. Ultimately, things change as economies evolve. If it stays on course, final, stable, socialism will be very different. But we are either going to enter a transition period, or we are going to descend into unpredictable violence as our current conditions evolve and change in the US.

 

This is fair enough, however do you really think that is what would happen? Are you basing the idea of socialising those certain industries in order to let Leftists, "...take advantage of these opportunities and working for a living like good collective members, instead of complaining about not being rich enough". ?

What happens if it doesn't improve those people you are talking about? Should we change the system back? Or what if it makes it worse?

People who don't want to work and simply end up not working, are not going to work no matter what you give them.

If you are truly of the desire to give people free stuff in order for them to actually start working, what happens if you are wrong?

We will be spending TONS of cash to get nothing, no improvement to our country at all.

If you are right, that would be great! But it kinda seems like a "tax cuts will pay for themselves" over reach to me. I am almost 100% certain that giving people free things will in fact be more likely to make them more lazy than to work harder.

 

Almost every pure capitalist I know of is pissed off about the bailouts, everyone also thinks we should have just let them die on the vine.

It frustrates me that big government people try to blame capitalism, even though it is big government that stuck its neck in to cause the problem as well as to try to fix the problem, which of course they (in my opinion) made worse.

 

Why is it that everyone that wants socialism
Very few people want socialism. Those who do want it would stop wanting it if they had it.

 

Our thoughts and prayers....

 

Yes and no.

I'm no American hero. I'm just an overweight, middle-aged taxpayer trying to get to retirement.

But my thoughts on government mesh identically with the Dounding Fathers.

 

Declining poverty?

Wages for the middle class have stagnated since the 1960's "War on Poverty".

 

Kode: Yes, this [ the nature of 'communist' societies] is an old argument among Marxists.

Basically, it comes down to this: is the characterization of a society based on the ownership of the means of production, or is it based on whether the government does nice (from a socialist point of view) things.

As you probably know, it's called, among those of the Trotskyist persuasion, "The Russian Question", and the argument began way back in the early 1930s. (I never thought the Maoists did any deep thinking about the issue -- or any other issue-- I think their view was that Russia ceased being socialist on Stalin's last heartbeat -- but there was one non-Trotskyist pamphlet on this issue that I thought was pretty good -- it's called Is the Red Flag Still Flying?, and was written by Al Syzmanski, who sadly committed suicide in the early 1980s.) Now the Trotskyists argue about whether China is still basically socialist -- a "deformed workers' state" in their terminology.

I still think Trotsky's characterization of the Soviet bureaucracy -- a "caste" as opposed to a "class" -- makes a lot of sense, although he was wrong that it would take a violent counter-revolution before capitalism could be restored there, as was shown in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Cuba is very interesting. Very far from a Caribbean North Korea. I am in occasional touch with some Cuban socialists who do not support the regime, and, while they cannot publish or demonstrate openly, they are pretty much left alone. Some even have jobs that allow them to travel occasionally. I hope the Cuban regime makes a slow transition to democracy and a market economy, with which co operatives would be perfectly compatible, while preserving the gains of the Revolution, such as their excellent education system. A sensible American attitude to Cuba would facilitate this, but that is probably too much to hope for. Anyone wanting to know about Cuba, including the problem of 'co-operatives' there, needs to read The Havana Times, at HavanaTimes.org. [The editor is an American socialist who lived in Cuba for a long time and worked for he Cuban government as a translator.] Up until about a week ago it carried an excellent column by a Uruguayan Marxist who lives in Cuba, Fernando Ravsberg, but he has apparently been pressured by the government into ceasing to contribute -- a shame.

If you're not familiar with it, you would no doubt enjoy and get a lot out of the Marxism mailing list run by Louis Proyect, and also get a lot out of his blog. He aggregates the best of Marxist writing from all around the world, in English, and some of it is pretty good, in the sense of being serious analysis of world events, often from people on the ground where it's happening. A million miles from the self-indulgent hysterical moralizing of privileged American college kids. (You probably already know about it, but for anyone else reading this, it's at http://www.marxmail.org/ ).

 

Simply stated cant people in this country that think they like socialism SEE how many countries have been ruined by it???????????

 

I don't. Live in Canada.

Our system isn't the same as theirs. Ours is a monolith, paid for via a tax levy.

 

So they steal from their neighbors to fund their charity. Nice.