Why do you think that Socialism is so bad?

So many people seem to think socialism is a dirty word. I wonder what their reasons are?

 

Well, I don't think socialism is bad at all, so I can't do the poll. It is unpopular in America because the very rich control everything and because a lot of people gave up their own countries in the hope of getting very rich, I suppose, and because Senator Mccarthy and his chums put the fear of God into anyone decent who cared for other people. The dreams of the mugs are inevitably tenacious, because they are the only way they can keep going..

 

I do not think socialism is bad - though I do not technically ascribe to it in any orthodox "Marxist" sense. The reasons for this are that I do not: (a.) believe the ruling class conspires to dominate the workers, (b.) buy into the labor theory of value, (c.) support the proletariat in defeating the capitalists via class struggle, (d.) interpret social conflict or capital in manners consistent with Marx's writings, and (e.) think it is important for the People to control all means of production.

A lot while back on the U.S. Election Atlas's forums I typed up a post about why I think socialism is so very unpopular in the United States. The explanation I offered went something like this:

The traditional, national myth of the U.S. glorifies self-reliance and autonomy from state. Anglo-Saxon culture arguably had a stronger influence on U.S. society's development than any other, as well - with that culture including enduring tendencies of classical liberalism and imperialism. Americans had no significant experiences with feudalism to make them wary of economic or (Protestant) religious elites, and so to this day many folks are still raised in environs where they are as a default taught to trust the state less than many other, private bastions of concentrated power and authority.

Some experiences in history have shaken that paradigm... but did not break its back. Social liberalists (i.e. modern-day "liberals") became opposed to laissez-faire policies and unfettered markets while never truly departing from the spirit of capitalism. Indeed, for more than a century the U.S. has avoided any major national crises; the homeland has been laid waste to by no foreign power, and no economic downturn has resulted in revolution. The government also succeeded in subduing leftist political elements and addressing the Great Depression satisfactorily enough to avoid the ascent of any strong socialist or anarchist factions to challenge the two major parties in our elections. Let's face it - despite its many flaws, since after the Civil War the government has not screwed up badly enough to lose broadly-perceived legitimacy.

The two-party system still stands as a major impediment to socialism, by the way. Ours is a political culture dominated by a right-wing party and a centrist party. There is plenty of debate over social mores and foreign policy, yet Democrats and Republicans tend to agree about how the economy and government ought to be run - at least to a much greater extent than I suspect most folks on either side of the aisle currently realize. Their disputes are over fine details; they do not represent the sort of massive rifts in ideals one would expect from fundamentally juxtaposed worldviews. Both major parties, at their very cores, remain liberal. Not only does this make it difficult for social democrats, socialists, libertarians, etc. to get representation in government - it may also suggest many of those who do become active in minor, hopelessly disadvantaged parties are of the radical, zealous, idealist, conspiracist sort that - for lack of better words - come off as bat$h!t insane to the average, relatively moderate voting citizen. This keeps ideologies such as socialism on the fringes, where it is not taken seriously as a viable (much less desirable) alternative to the status-quo.

Yet another factor may be simple propaganda. Nationalistic U.S. regimes for decades portrayed fascism and Marxist-Leninism as oppressive, un-Christian, non-individualistic systems. They remain excellent punching bags for those who perceive the U.S. as a global paragon of liberty, virtue, and success today thanks to traditional, conservative values. Most Americans seem to overlook the authoritarian tendencies of our own system - whether past or present - which may serve to further bolster the aforementioned prejudices. Virtually no adult in the U.S. need know much about the political ways of former geopolitical adversaries to develop very strongly negative opinions about them.

The ensuing ignorance oftentimes spills over into the discussion of other groups or ideologies (e.g., in comparisons of Republicans with Nazis or Democrats with Stalinists - which in either case is incredibly absurd). To top it all off, a lot of Americans seem to have a certain populist tendency to trust "common sense" and the People in general to know what is best for the nation - which I think may help explain why so many folks express hostility toward left-wing intellectuals and "elitist" politicians, and declare their ideas to be "un-American" even before they can hear out and acquire a solid grasp of why those people advocate their respective theories and public policy prescriptions.

These thoughts are a wee bit disorganized. Nonetheless, I hope it was worthwhile to read and am tremendously curious as to how much of this ya'll reckon is true of U.S. politics. Could other factors be at work, as well? I suspect a certain Swedish colleague of ours may have some words on the role ethnic homogeneity could have on the willingness of people to embrace massive social programmes and egalitarian economic policies, for instance. There are a lot of possibilities listed in this thread to think about and I look forward to reading some more posts here.

 

Socialism robs the freedom to exploit or work another person to live like royalty.

In England they have royalty with all the money, and everyone else lives under them in socialist squalor.

In America, those who work hard are rewarded with riches and control over peasants beneath them in Capitalism.

So Socialism is bad in that respect, because of its hypocrisy. But it is the lesser evil, as in Capitalism the peasants are starved and imprisoned if they don't want to work, because there is no welfare.

 

I think socialism is bad because it is against nature. It is in the nature of individuals to compete and exceed other individuals. It's in the nature of individuals to want to be successful. You can't force a person with an IQ of 155 to be equal with one of 85. You just can't.

You should be happy with the way your England is now, with high taxes and effective social services. They simply take from the rich and give to the poor or the incompetent. What more can you want... This is better than socialism and has a better, more sustainable effect than socialism.

Yes, I agree it's the first step towards communism because people, feeling the need to shine somehow, will just seek to grab more and more power and abuse it.

 

In many ways Socialism is a good thing. Co-operatives and universal health care, comparatively even access to education and fairly impartial justice are really all socialist concepts at their beginnings. Where I have trouble with Socialism is when it tries to ignore basic economic realities. One classic is rent controls, which over the long run is ALWAYS a bad idea (supply of rental units dries up) and another is the welfare trap, where incentives to not work exceed the incentives to get a low paying job and get off welfare.

Pretty much all the socialist ideas have been tried at this point. It would be nice if someone was to accumulate the evidence for and against the implementation of various socialist ideas, note what measures were particularily positive or negative and end with a quick primer of the lessons learned in the real world. Then both Socialists and anti-Socialists could argue an issue with some degree of comprehension.

 

Personal experience mostly. Also I think Marx's criticism of capitalism is outdated since the digital age.

 

because i work for a living to provide for me and mine, its not my responsibility to share my hard earned dollar with you or anyone else.

 

I am against coercion of any kind.

 

Off the top I remember Aristotle's comment (in objection to the lofty rhetoric of the great Plato) that if everybody owns everything, nobody will make much of an effort to preserve anything.

Human nature always mugs the thinkers of Euphoria. (a thinker of which I must admit, when the realities of life allow it, I am a member).......be of good cheer !

 

It makes everybody poor and apathetic, and the government becomes the controller of people's lives. Socialism is disgusting.

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+1. I want to keep what I've earned to spend as I deem fit, and I want to be able to strive for more without having that also taken from me, or having my way barred by red tape.

 

Socialism is based on the idea that rich people are evil, and if a person is 'poor' then they just need more welfare, even if the real reason is that they're just lazy. This is why socialism is bad.

 

To be fair I think the word socialism gets thrown around far too often than it should and don't think it should be a dirty word but I disagree with the ideology to a large degree. I personally think Friedrich Hayek had a good response to socialism but I can't remember the full quote because it was a long response but I can try to summarize it, the idea of centralizing a lot of our economic power to the state does not work as well in a lot of cases as the free market works on neccesity since people buying products with their capital shows that there is a need for production this is most commonly expressed as the invisible hand of the free market and as necessity decreases profit will decrease or until a more cost efficient product is available, socialism instead would use the possible necessities of a few and use it's power instead of the large amount of people choosing for themselves. Now can some forms of socialism be beneficial most probably but it being done on a system by itself is doomed to fail since profit is not necessarily an end goal and because it's not it's not really sustainable unless the population is living on bare minimums.

 

It's a full-blown system of unintended consequences.

 

'Socialism' is political terminology, a political label (deception) What is 'socialism'? The number of terms that end in 'ism' became more and more over the last century (because it sounds professional/political), all these terms were made up to confuse. 'Socialism' is dangerous because people/voters stick a label to their mind and start to believe in something that doesn't exist (works almost like religion) Once you are part of a group (the 'socialists' or 'liberals' or 'greens') they have organized you. All these terms were made up to organize large amounts of people (became the voters, the people that give up their power to rulers) And you see what happened after a century of politics and all this terminology, they have you lined up to vote (by these terms they 'steal'/snatch your vote, votes are power, once the system has reached absolute power you have lost your freedom and future) Via (ideology, terminology, mind labeling) politics and chaos (a repeat of 1929) and capital/wealth they can reach absolute power and control over a country (Russia was taken over by a couple of million dollars (money), Germany by (ideology and psywar, all the red-white-black propaganda in the streets, and ofcourse the loud rethoric of (puppet) Hitler) 'nationalism' and 'socialism', they can use patriotism as 'nationalism')
Politics (ideology, terminology, psyops/psywar) is extremely dangerous, it does not cause 'democracy' (has never existed, they only let you believe that when you vote you support the 'democracy', while a consitution does not need votes)

 

European style social democracy is not socialism and it sucks .

There are many models which socialism can apply and i personally find "modern" state run ones to be pretty bad .

If you completely decentralise the administration , make communities (we have prefectures you have counties) have the final word in decision making and legislation while only maintain the central government as a non elected technocratic body which runs supreme court , the military , international relations and assist/supervises projects involving multiple communities ONLY in my opinion socialism can run fine .
The idea is that with the pass of time communities will diversify providing a variation of systems to chose and apply while the key is to get rid of professional elected politician cast , this can be done if in the communal town hall half of the representatives are elected while the other half are randomly picked citizens in mandatory social service.

 

Against nature? Primitive communism existed in a stable form for millions of years, while we can say that capitalism has existed, being extremely generous, only as far back as the Mercantilism of the 16th and 18th centuries. And, clearly, capitalism is obviously already failing and is extremely unstable.

 

Socialism attempts to legislate away human nature. That just doesn't work.

Socialism is actually the avenue to dictatorship, slow but inexorable.

The problem is that people never can totally agree on how things should work. Government leaders will be incapable of meeting all of the desires of the people. Eventually a smart person or group of people come in and offer to take care of anything if given enough control. Before anyone realizes what is going on, a dictatorship develops. Often many years after the dictatorship has formed the citizens still believe that the government is trying to take care of them and it is some target enemy's fault that things are bad.

 

Primitive communism usually still protected individual property and always had means of forcing people to contribute their share. Primitive communism would eject anyone from the group who didn't contribute. Primitive didn't allow anyone to be part of the group if they didn't contribute. Communism that allows people to reap the rewards of the group without contributing is guaranteed to fail.

 

Seriously less state for the right reasons is the avenue to dictatorship ?
this is political nonsene

"He who does not work shall not eat" - one of the very basic communist principles

you don't know what you are talking about ...

 

This need to get people to work creates a need for gulags and creates a atmosphere of paranoia that your neighbor might claim that you aren't working hard enough. It also centers all of the power in the people who divide the wealth and determine who gets sent to gulags.

 

The Bolsheviks attempt on socialism equals trying to procreate using anal , you should not take their experiment seriously .
Yes they were paranoid but to put things straight calling yourself a communist while you have a chauffeur (like Stalin) is like calling yourself a christian and then walk inside a church and (*)(*)(*)(*) on the crucifix.
Socialism's main purpose is to eliminate centers of power and give authority to the citizens thus it can never be centralised , to take it a bit farther socialism is about people getting directly into the administration and decide how community should be run NOT some form of strict government do as they like.

 

It is difficult to get even a small group to agree on much. It is impossible to get a large group to agree on the things that are central to life - the things that governments take care of. How do you determine what to do when the people don't agree on a course of action?

 

Use previous experience and innovation , try one way and see if it works and if it doesn't try a different .
This is why i insist that communism can not be apply today because people are not ready for it , you have to be brave enough to admit that you are wrong and respect not just tolerate the views of others . The idea is not to agree but to use our reason and examine all angles before making a decision . Of course for everything to work out we need the "social man" who holds the best interests of community above his selfish gene.

 

But who decides which innovation or previous attempt to try? You still end up needing to either create a consensus (which is impossible for any large group), submit people to the will of the majority (if you can get a majority, often impossible if there are more than two options), or have someone take control.