The mentality of socialism versus capitalism

Ahhh go check your history they almost all starved to death as socialist and only survived when they establish private property ownership and a free market.

It almost killed them all.

Why not both those are failing on an even more historical scale with their socialist economies.

 

In fact what saved them was a highly socialist bunch of Indians who SHARED what they had.

BTW there is a wide range of socialism across countries which include this system of resource distribution including Europe and in fact the USA.
Hardly failing...

 

We are not discussing you.
We are discussing the benefits or not of the system on your terms.
Your terms usually include the disruption to communities of newcomers...which you seem to think is socialism.
It isn't...and therefore what you really object to is those who enter into your "community" and change the parameters. Expand that to nationstates and you have a good example of xenophobic nationalism which shows itself in the disapproval of immigration, saying that it asks too much of the established population and assumes that they are all destitute, unskilled and cross the border to take advantage of the USA.
(you are in good company...much of Brexit in the UK was won on such claims).
However this is not evidence of socialism. Socialism is NOT what allows immigrants to survive. They would cross borders irrelevant of what economic system in in play.

 

Right there you contradict yourself. The welfare state does not create "every an for himself".
The welfare state is a definition of a socialist state where individuals are supported by the state.

TBH you are describing a system of community that does not exist, on the whole, in today's global world. It may exist in minority groups who want to cling to common ethnic understandings but in today's world, people move, travel, mix in order to achieve what small communities cannot.
and therefore depend LESS on state support as they get better jobs from a wider availability.

I think perhaps this has run its course. I can't keep countering your contradictions and assumptions, and your generalised conclusions in a modern world of huge mobility, international businesses and international job opportunities . I just keep seeing tiny villages in the middle of nowhere, all sowing and reaping together when I read your posts, tinged with visions of VietNamese rice fields or 19th century mining villages.
So I'm out.

 

No what saved them was being allowed private property on which they could grow their own food and sell or trade what excess they produced which then grew into a division of labor.

"1. Lessons From A Capitalist Thanksgiving by Jerry Bower based on the memoirs of Plymouth governor William Bradford:

The first Thanksgiving was a celebration of abundance after a period of socialism and starvation. The members of the Plymouth colony had arrived in the New World with a plan for collective property ownership. Reflecting the current opinion of the aristocratic class in the 1620s, their charter called for farmland to be worked communally and for the harvests to be shared.

You probably will not be surprised to hear that the colonists starved. Men were unwilling to work to feed someone else’s children. Women were unwilling to cook for other women’s husbands. Fields lay largely untilled and unplanted.

Famine came as soon as they ate through their provisions. After famine came plague. Half the colony died. Unlike most socialists, they learned from their mistakes, giving each person a parcel of land to tend to for themselves. The colonists threw off the statist intellectual fashions of their day.

The results were overwhelmingly beneficial. Men worked hard, even though before they had constantly pleaded illness. Fields were not only tilled and planted but also diligently harvested. Colonists traded with the surrounding Indian nation and learned to plant maize, squash and pumpkin and to rotate these crops from year to year. The harvest was bountiful, and new colonists immigrated to the thriving settlement."
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/than...e-success-of-private-property-and-capitalism/


Which socialist countries in Europe?

 

The only people who advocate for socialism are those people who stand to benefit. The ones who support the concept of collectivism over individualism, because they want or need something from everybody else. The can't or won't do it crowd.

They absolutely love the idea of socialism, where an authoritarian decides what is the appropriate amount of production and outcome based on artificial inputs.

The idea that outcomes are based on individual inputs... or that the idea that free markets drive down costs while profits drive up efficiencies is completely and utterly disregarded.

I have never met a socialist that has ever contributed more to society than they have taken. There is a reason for that.

 

Your first post was absolutely an attack on the OP, because from your pedestal of intellectual superiority (self perceived) nobody has the capability to discuss the topic at the lengths it takes to understand.

Failures of your first and subsequent posts:

- You elected not to discuss the topic at all

- You criticized the other poster for not having the bandwidth for logical discourse

- You presented your complete lack of actual opinion extremely arrogantly.


You should fit in here perfectly.

 

Temporarily, but what saved the colony in the long run was the switch to private property and free enterprise:

The same problem and solution to the problem occurred in Jamestown (Virginia), too.

In The Great Charter of 1618

 

Not to dispute anything you said, but I think The Godfather of Communism, the French revolutionary Francois-Noel Babeuf, expressed the mentality of socialism vs. capitalism more directly:

"Nature has given to every man the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property"

As you can see in my signature, Samuel Adams and the Founding Fathers were firm believers in the right to private property ownership, as were the philosophers who influenced them, such as John Locke who famously asserted the rights to "Life, Liberty and Property".

Of course, the right to private property ownership is one that goes back to the dawn of Western Civilization and beyond. In The Ancient City, Fustel De Coulanges noted that one of the inviolable rights of the Hellenes who originally settled Ancient Greece was the right to private property ownership (and the right to inherit private property), and the earliest forms of civil and religious authority were expressly forbidden from trespassing on what was considered a sacred right:



The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome

Originally published in 1864 as La Cité Antique, this remarkable work describes society as it existed in Greece during the age of Pericles and in Rome at the time of Cicero. Working with only a fraction of the materials available to today's classical scholar, Fustel de Coulanges fashioned a complete picture of life in the ancient city, resulting in a book impressive today as much for the depth of its portrait as for the thesis it presents.

In The Ancient City, Fustel argues that primitive religion constituted the foundation of all civic life. Developing his comparisons between belifes and laws, Fustel covers such topis as rites and festivals; marriage and the family; divorce, death, and burial; and political and legal structures. "Religion," the suthor states, "constituted the Greek and Roman family, established marriage and paternal authority, fixed the order of relationship, and consecrated the right of property, and the right of inheritance. This same religion, after having enlarged and extended the family, formed a stull larger association, the city, and reigned in that as it had reigned in the family. From it came all the institutions, as well as the private law, of the ancients."

As Arnaldo Momigliano and S. C. Humphreys note in their foreword, The Ancient City rightly takes its place alongside a number of pioneering works of the late nineteenth century that offered radically new inerpretations of ancient society and culture. Indeed, modern anthropology, as well as classics, owes a debt to Fustel de Coulanges, whose early insights in The Ancient City remain valid and provocative today.

https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-City-Religion-Institutions-Greece/dp/0801823048

 

1) No, YOU are simply unable to understand what is being said. Either I've explained it badly, or the very idea is so shocking an upset to a cherished ideology that you can't process it. The Welfare State is responsible for the degradation of the collectivism that all social mammals rely on. The WS has enabled people to turn away from each other for their survival ... instead placing their survival in the hands of the State. Not only has the WS enabled this practically (by offering an alternative), they've simultaneously aligned themselves to pro-individualism by demonising the realities of collectivism (private property, conformity, stable families, community, obligation, responsibility, etc). It's absolutely on the Welfare State. And in that the WS absolutely creates nations of 'every man for himself' individualists.

2) Exactly ... INDIVIDUALS. The WS is anti-collectivism, as you've just admitted.

3) This 'system' is the norm for the vast majority of humanity. It's only failed in the privileged First World nations wherein a Welfare State has been in existence long enough to erode collectivism. The habit of mobility in the common man is acquired as part and parcel of the hubris enabled by the WS. We become so certain that we don't need others to survive, we're prepared to abandon our collectives. Under other circumstances, the common man would never take such a risk. He would know that only the very rich can afford to risk such isolation.

4) No rice fields in Vietnam are required. Collectivists live in suburbs all over the world. Cities too, sometimes. Meantime, I suspect this is all just a bit too much new thought at once ... so understand your reluctance to proceed. If none of this has ever occurred to you, it's probably like hearing someone say Santa Klaus isn't real for the first time. If a cherished ideology is revealed as a naked emporer, that's going to both confuse and wound. Take your time, but please do give it the consideration it deserves. With every acolyte they lose, the people gain back some of the strength being seduced out of them.

 

A nation is NOT a community. Not unless it retains its ancient and intact monoculture, wherein trust is demanded and newcomers are carefully vetted. When all citizens can trust that all other citizens are on the same page and will do their bit (in terms of conformity, obligation, responsibility, compromise, etc), a healthy society can arise. Since so few such societies still exist in the First World - thanks to spastic migration and Welfare States - it can now never happen again. Japan and Singapore are probably the only two States still able to retain something like the social trust and agreement needed, and your average Progressive Leftist despises the 'social pressures and xenophobia' of those nations. They say they want community, but hate the obligations and necessities that go with it.

Meantime, it doesn't matter WHERE the 'newcomer' is from, it matters what they DO. They could come from Norway and be a self-indulgent, anti-conformity, selfish, exploitative bastard .. or they could come from mainland China and be an exemplary, hard working, self-reliant, citizen, worthy of our trust that they will not deliberately make themselves a potential burden on the State. Meantime, your lazy reliance on the cartoonish 'racist!' trope is beneath you. Up your game, for your own sake if not mine.

 

All true .. if you're talking about State Socialism.

Which is a very different animal to ordinary collectivism.

 

Because those indigenous peoples TRUSTED that it would be reciprocated. Blame them for their naivety if you like, but that was entirely the basis of their giving.

 

None of which is socialism. It's capitalist largess.

 

My god .. do you actually read anything at all? I've repeatedly said that there is no socialism in Europe/US. In the First World West there is only capitalist democracy. And an unfortunate side effect of capitalist democracies is the Welfare State, and it's this which attracts the WRONG people .. while the opportunities for self-reliance attract the RIGHT people.

When the wrong people are invited in to plunder your larder, the right people starve. It's pretty ****ing basic math.

 

Of course there is socialism in Europe. Americans often consider us Communists. It is that welfare state you now say exists all over Europe.
More inconsistence.

Above you say:
The Welfare State is responsible for the degradation of the collectivism that all social mammals rely on. The WS has enabled people to turn away from each other for their survival ... instead placing their survival in the hands of the State.

The state is the collective.
I do think you are not understanding political science very well.

 

Or because they don't like letting people starve and freeze to death.
They didn't think that they deserved being cold and hungry because they didn't make enough effort.

 

I made my point.
To introduce another does not erase my point.

BTW in your extract, you include:
When the harvest time came, not only did many families produce enough for their own needs, but also they had surpluses that they could freely exchange with their neighbors for mutual benefit and improvement.

Am I to think that if someone's corn didn't grow well because his field had large boulders in it, they said sod you, you didn't work hard enough, and ignored him??
Now how Christian would that be?

 

I have underlined all the emotive propagandist terminology.

 

Nonsense.
Socialists can earn whatever they want.
They just pay more in taxes for collective needs...from garbage collection to building roads to space programmes and communications satellites , everyone pays what they can and everyone benefits from the collective effort.
I only know of one person who can supply such programmes by his singular capitalist effort.

 

Im curious could you tell me what "Controlling the means of production" means in your opinion.

 

Either investing in or not investing in the means of production. ie State aid.
When the UK Left the EU, this was a huge issue...the EU has rules about the amount of state aid that can be given to companies (ie the aircraft or communications industry,) which tilts a level playing field in competition for very lucrative contracts.

 

Yes, you made your point, and I rebutted it. I never intended much less attempted to erase your point.

Indeed, the Pilgrims produced surpluses after they abandoned communism and embraced private property and free enterprise, and you'll note that the surpluses were freely exchanged with their neighbors for mutual benefit and improvement, which I presume to mean they were bartered. That's quite different from giving the surpluses away or being forced to surrender them to a common storehouse to be redistributed.

As for what the Pilgrims believed God expected of them, let's go straight to the source. This is an excerpt from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation (1623):

All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labours and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

Of course, all of this is a separate matter from charity.

How Christian would it have been of the Pilgrims to deprive the needy of charity?

I suspect that you would agree with me that it wouldn't have been terribly Christian at all, but I have no idea what the Pilgrims would have thought. Their idea of what qualified as Christian is quite different than my own. They thought it was perfectly Christian to flog and execute Quakers for their "heretical" beliefs:

Boston martyrs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_martyrs

They thought it was perfectly Christian to expel their fellow Puritans (Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, et al) who dared to question and/or criticize the policies and beliefs of the authorities in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which forced the exiles to create their own colony where freedom of conscience was respected:

Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_of_Rhode_Island_and_Providence_Plantations

They even thought it was perfectly Christian to ban Christmas:

How the Puritans Banned Christmas
In 1659 the Puritans banned Christmas in Massachusetts. But why?
https://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/how-the-puritans-banned-christmas/

I seriously doubt the Pilgrims would have done nothing to help the members of their community who were starving to death for one reason or another, but they were people who could be terribly uncharitable when it suited them. No one should assume that just because they were pious and puritanical they were necessarily good Christians. In many respects they were not.

 

surpluses were freely exchanged with their neighbors for mutual benefit and improvement, which I presume to mean they were bartered. That's quite different from giving the surpluses away or being forced to surrender them to a common storehouse to be redistributed.

So the settlers became socialists.
Everything in one common storehouse would be communism.
Socialism uses common storehouses when the community votes that such a storehouse will benefit everyone because each individual cannot benefit as much alone.

 

You have identified the historical record and offered nothing to refute it......nothing more.


Private and communal farming (1623)

All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

Source:

William Bradford: History of Plymouth Plantation, c. 1650

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1650bradford.asp#Private and communal farming