septimus, join the ranks upon ranks who fail to understand what Socialism and Communism are.
Tories are specialists in misrepresenting Socialism, and to your credit I think you have fully absorbed and understood the misrepresentation with which they have fooled you.
The question is: do you want to hold onto the illusions you have been sold, or do you want to understand what Socialism and Communism actually are first?
History is not on your side at all - you need to understand more about Politics first. Take the U.S.S.R. for example. They used the term Socialism to describe what they had achieved in order to aid victory over counter revolutionaries, due to the good reputation that the term had at the time. The Totalitarianism that had actually emerged could thus also easily be associated with Socialism by the Right Wing that was in power over the West. “They wanna call that nightmare Socialism? Fine, now all we have to do is agree with them to defame the biggest threat Capitalism has ever faced”.
What Socialist texts have you actually read? Did you know that Socialist government is necessarily run by workers? Was the U.S.S.R.? Has any Socialist/Communist society ever been run by the workers themselves?
If you have any philosophical integrity at all, you will at least concede that Socialism doesn’t “not work” but perhaps rather is impossible to set up. But even then you would be falling foul to the problem of induction.
If you understood the real factors as to why Socialism and Communism have never yet materialised, you will realise that the ever-changing attitudes of the people towards Capitalism in practice tend towards Socialism much more globally than ever before. Of course it’s going to fail in backward Feudal countries. But in the developing world that is consistently failed no matter which way we try Capitalism? Some good has transpired despite consistent failings, which completely changes and facilitates the necessary landscape for fundamental economic change, such as the emergence of supercomputers, the internet, far more intellectual knowledge and experience than before, and increasingly willing and educated worker participants who are just aching to collectively run things independently of removed and untrustworthy politicians and capitalists.
Winston Churchill was a man of his time and his views on Socialism were his views on the Socialism of his time–which I don’t think really existed as a form of government, did it? It seems to me the socialism of Churchill’s time was an economic philosophy that was often confused with Communism, a form of government.
Marx and Engels were German Hegelianists at a time when Germany was a bunch of small, aristocratically-run states. They wanted to change the governments so as to improve the lives of the peasants. Churchill was a Colonial Imperialist, who’s way of improving the lives of peasants was to make the peasant countries part of the British Empire–exactly the opposite of Marx and Engels.
It’s no wonder, then, that Churchill opposed Socialism as a philosophy. Of course, he did welcome Russia, despite its Communism, when it was needed as an ally in WWII. As a politician, it was convenient for him to do so.
Socialism requires suppression of freedom to exist. I denies something for the better of others.
I am not right wig, definitely not. I am an individualist who values his ideas, his identity and his decisions. Furthermore I am a business owner, I grown built a business and earn profit, I employ people and make decisions. Socialism is completely against individualism and private enterprise.
Want to open up a bakery shop? Oh, too bad, you can’t. Want to start up a new, democratic party? Oh too bad, you can’t. Want to publish an article in the state owned newspaper? Oh too bad, you can’t. Angry with our great one party system? Oh too bad you’re dead.
I am referring to the past Socialist-Communist state experiments. And I disregard the argument that dictators “ruined” and used the regime and philosophy to their ends, I believe this regime and philosophy creates dictators and cannot live without them.
septimus, great job on disregarding my posts in favour of simply reiterating your misunderstandings to yourself.
I do not dispute that if you replace all mentions of Socialism and Communism with Totalitarianism, then what you say makes perfect sense.
I do not dispute that revolutions have often historically amounted to little more than the same thing as before but under a different name, even if they have had Socialism and/or Communism in mind.
What I do dispute is the relentless misrepresentation of the terms Socialism and Communism. Just read my last two posts - I say it again: “Socialist government is necessarily run by workers. Was the U.S.S.R.? How much has any supposed Socialist or Communist country ever been headed by the workers themselves?”
If they haven’t, IT’S NOT SOCIALISM. And if there’s any State at all, by definition it is not Communism! READ about it before you reel off the misrepresentation with which the Right Wing fills your head.
Can you open up a shop under Socialism? Sure. The matter is discussed just as it is under Capitalism - except it is discussed publically and workers have their say, based on publically available facts and based on their needs as workers that are actually listened to and taken into account upon the creation and operation of any shop or business in general. It’s not discussed privately amongst the rich removed few, with only one goal in mind, and subject to whatever the market happens to be dictating at the time. The same goes for setting up a political party, publishing a newspaper article and expressing dissent for anything at all. Under SOCIALISM, this is all fine. Under TOTALITARIANISM it is not.
If you only wanted to talk about the Totalitarian states that have emerged through attempted Socialist revolution, then fine. I don’t think you’re going to come up with much opposition whether you say such regimes are ruined by dictators, or such regimes create dictators and cannot live without them.
Just get your damn terminology straight.
This is spot on, liz - and a great example of the political hypocrisy that goes on under indirect democracies.
I’ve argued in the past and maintain the position that there is often a lack of controls when considering whether Communist reforms in countries like Russia/China/Cuba/etc. because rather than comparing those countries before Communism or those countries undergoing capitalist reforms either prior or post Communist reforms they are compared to other, substantially more developed countries. The results are bound to make Communism look crappy. But if you compare each country on its own, you’ll find that Communism was wildly successful at stimulating economic growth, reducing wealth inequality, extending lifespan, increasing literacy, improving vital infrastructure and, yes, personal freedoms. That doesn’t mean that any of those metrics met or exceeded those of other, more developed countries (which happen to be capitalist) but that really shouldn’t surprise us either.
I do agree that we have not seen ‘real’ socialism, but I’m not sure it’s even possible (and I think we have seen enough ) … and at any rate we have also certainly not seen a real free market yet. Though I would say that from what we have seen of socialism…it doesn’t look to promising to say the least.
It is human nature to take care of ones own self interest first. I do not see this as any kind of a bad thing, but it simply is reality. To have socialism/communism requires that there is a third party to get in between voluntary transactions and use threat of physical force because the ideology says that this voluntary transaction between two parties is ‘evil’. My belief is that the kind of people that like the sound of socialism believe that human nature is bad/evil/selfish/wrong and that it needs to be ‘controlled’… of course this is completely ridiculous because it requires people (with the same human nature) to do the controlling.
‘Capitalism’ simply means that property rights exist and that people are free to enter voluntary agreements with no third party forcing their way in. There is a false dichotomy between the ‘capitalists’ and the ‘workers’… they are one and the same.
I really think more people need to study economics as this stuff is pretty important, imo. No one would defend Nazi Germany but are happy to defend ideas that have lead to faaaar more death, human misery and suffering.
False. One of the many contradictions of Capitalism is that it assumes complete uniformity in many respects - for all of its focusing on on individualism.
The sweeping assumptions, such as “uniform human nature”, and the necessity of uniform ability, uniform perfect knowledge and mobility - in order for perfect competition to come even close to arriving and all that… it is not just Totalitarianism that needs human equality in order to work. And then you factor in the refinement of the best worker attitude that it is necessary to fake in order to be employed and remain employed, and the necessary “type” that one needs to be a member of in order to compete in the employer respect. You won’t hang onto your inherited riches if you don’t have it, and you won’t “earn” any riches if you’re poor and aren’t the right “type” of person.
In short, it is necessary to remember that there is no “human nature”.
Humans vary, sometimes significantly. If ever a large proportion of people take care of their own self-interest first, others do not. And of course there are environmental aspects that bring out self-centredness where there would have been none under different environmental circumstances. It’s easy to make sweeping generalisations when you live under an economy that rewards only self-centredness and hinders more altruistic behaviours - meaning selfishness is nearly all you see. But even under such economic conditions, there are still plenty who are not primarily self-interested. The natures of humans are extremely varied with much potential for adaptation. To treat humans otherwise, as classical liberals and neo-liberals do, is a great tyranny - for all the “freedom” that their ideas are supposed to celebrate.
We have. If even the disaster of Chile under General Pinochet is denied as a “real” free market, it is the closest we have seen to one.
For the sake of going with those who deny this is an acceptable example, we see examples of “free” economies anywhere else in life that isn’t human. They result in a harsh, unforgiving life where the weak literally die out and only the strongest survive - and even then they don’t survive for long without the organisation of more centralised planning. This is the default situation for all “free” economies - a regression back to the animal. Humanity is indeed defined by its ability to plan its economy, and its history in doing so is such that it came to dominate all other forms of life on earth.
Minarchist versions of Capitalism simply outlaw force and fraud, which are by no means the only ways that cause the weak to literally die out, leaving only the strong to survive a stressful and shortened life - due to the lack of emphasis on wider social cooperation. Planning beyond such minimal measures to moderate “real” free market Capitalism is the only thing from stopping black markets from proliferating everywhere selling all sorts of socially detrimental products and services.
The “real” free market denies humanity its greatest and most defining strength, and leads to faaaar more death, human misery and suffering than what we are used to (just as the far right, which must not be confused with “real” Socialism and Communism).
There is a fiction amongst Capitalist defenders that all planning is detrimental to freedom and prosperity - except of course their own private planning that is concealed from other private planners who stem information flow for the sake of such privacy and all the “competitive advantage” that this affords them… and the fiction that such private planning is all about freedom, with no negative side effects whatsoever…
The primary negative side effect of such ideology is the very real dichotomy between capitalists and wage labourers. The capitalist must always desire more from the wage labourers who sell their labour to them - obviously this increases the profits that are the whole incentive, which is somehow deified as the only incentive that really causes people to innovate and work their best: a materialistic incentive. And the wage labourer must desire to keep the capitalist demands upon them to human levels - in as as far as they can, which isn’t very far because of all the threat of the huge pool of unemployed people out there, gunning for their job.
Capitalism is not without the threat of physical force - it’s just monopolised in a Minarchist State or privatised under Anarcho-Capitalism. If you don’t play by the rules, or you’re too poor to do so, you certainly feel such physical force.
There is a lot more to Leftism than having a bleeding heart and a vengeful desire to control the “bad/evil/selfish/wrong” people.
Yet the experiment of trying to get everyone to care for everyone else like brothers and sisters proved not to be as successful as the competitive model that Western countries undertook. Russia essentially failed because of a lack of incentive for workers to work hard; if there’s no incentive to work harder than the next guy, that is, if all are paid the same amount regardless, then people won’t put in any greater effort than required. One reason why capitalist economies work better is because they bring out something quite fundamental in human nature: the will to compete, strive, attain. It could be surmised that the drive to compete in human beings is stronger than the drive to treat everyone as brothers and sisters. Hence why one model works better than the other. The drive to treat everyone as comrades may work in family settings or small communities, but given our massive populations it is very hard to try and make people care about millions of other people they have never met.
A “human nature” does exist. I know denying any human nature is a postmodern trend. It’s used by leftists, feminists etc to try and sprout their slogans of ‘equality’ and justify their anger toward whoever rules, because it’s somehow ‘unfair’ that some people may be more advantaged than others.
While human nature may be to a degree elastic, there are definite traits that have developed over time, (most probably for evolutionary reasons) and the trait of competition has become quite dominant and integral to what “human nature” is today.
I direct you to Xunian’s post concerning comparisons between “the experiment of trying to get everyone to care for everyone else like brothers and sisters” and “the competitive model that Western countries undertook”. (Though, as consistent with my view on the whole Socialism/Communism thing, I do not regard what happened in Russia and other places to which you refer as representative of “the experiment of trying to get everyone to care for everyone else like brothers and sisters” anyway).
There is plenty of incentive to work harder than the next guy under Socialism/Communism. Capitalist advocates tend to regard material incentive as “incentive = on” and no material incentive as “incentive = off”. This is, of course, as ignorant as it is narrow. It’s like saying that kids wouldn’t compete unless they got paid more for winning than losing.
What we saw in the Soviet Union was a State-dictated working class that fought off fierce (competitive model/Capitalist) counter revolution for about 70 years, and saw massive life expectancy increases, economic growth and GDP/capita increases (actually greater than in the following Capitalist years on all accounts). So even using this as an example of Socialism/Communism goes counter to your claim that there was a lack of incentive in such societies.
Arguably a lot of the incentive was from a refusal to let things go back to how they were. But for examples of other incentives to compete that don’t involve this or material gain, just look to the rest of life on earth. Do they compete less because they can’t afford a new limousine for earning alpha male status or winning against their prey? Monetary reward is only a means to an end anyway - usually for the purposes of affording symbols of social prestige (when money doesn’t simply go towards affording one’s simple conditions to live a normal, modest life - like with most of the population). There are all sorts of means to earning symbols of social prestige that don’t disappear as soon as you step outside of Capitalism.
Surely it’s anti-equality to say humans don’t all conform to a particular nature. Lol.
I know you’ve got some kind of malignant issue with postmodernism, but do think about what you’re saying.
I’m not saying that humans exhibit no general trends at this point in time. Right now, certain natures are certainly more brought out of humans than at other points in history. But in terms of history as a whole, “human nature” proves to be elastic beyond identifiability. For every behaviour there seems to be an example of someone going completely against it. For every general trend there seems to be an example of a society of people going against it - and if not yet, there realistically seems to be room for them to do so in future. “Human nature” just seems to be a convenient oversight to help conservatives push their scared ideologies.
The fact remains that capitalist economies have spread wealth and materials more successfully than any socialist system has done. If all these non-material incentives (whatever they are you don’t say) are supposedly so successful, then why aren’t economies like that dominating the world? Nationalism in Russia was the (non-material) incentive to work hard, but ultimately it could not sustain this in the long term. In fact, I couldn’t picture one metaphysical system, that is, a system guided by non-material incentives, that would be successful. Maybe in the past when spirits and gods were considered real there may have been a non-material system of wealth and material creation, but today this is no longer practical.
Leftists aslo appeal to something in human nature to achieve their objective. Yet they fail because the aspect they try and bring out - call to equality, fairness, pity for anything supposedly oppressed - is not as strong as other aspects of human nature. The will to strive, dominate, achieve etc outweighs the will to equality etc.
However, I would surmise the drive of leftists is more motivated on revenge toward the successful, strong, and outgoing than any will to equality. Equality’s merely a mask to sugarcoat a seething underlying hatred of one’s betters. In this sense, the leftist’s will to dominate and achieve is similar to the will of the successful who already have achieved, they just haven’t attained it yet.
While I agree that there are many factors other than material possessions and money that drive people (though from my experience this is the big one by far), my opinion is that every single action a person takes in their life is done for purely ‘selfish’ reasons. For instance… if a guy gives away all his worldly possessions to charity then he is doing so because it lets him feel good about himself or gives him some kind of emotional rise.
Obviously humans are quite different from one another… I do not see how this is an argument against the free market. I don’t see what exactly you mean by ‘type’… certainly you need to have competence and do a good job…but if you are out in the wilderness by yourself you have to be of this ‘type’ to survive also. Of course people do tend to care about people who are not of this ‘type’ also, and I believe would take care of them through charity, if people did not care then there is simply no system that would take care of them.
Socialists always seem to have trouble with some rich kids inheritance which I don’t really understand…why should you care if some guy gets a bunch of inheritance ? It does not affect you. Some people are also born super handsome and smart…is this a problem as well ? Also, the people that have a problem with inheritance can perhaps take some comfort in the fact that spoiled rich kids born into massive wealth usually tend to have pretty miserable lives
In short, it is necessary to remember that th ere is no “human nature”.
Let’s not go into discussing history …it never leads to anything fruitful. That said I think that this is just absolute nonsense.
Co-operation vastly outweighs competition in natural systems, in my opinion.
Source/reason/logic/anecdote ??? And while we are onto this can people please stop talking about about how living standards were so great in communist Russia/China/wherever and trying to use it as an argument but providing absolutely no evidence for this. If I came here and defended Nazi Germany saying Jewish peoples living standards actually increased under the Nazi’s… the least you would expect from me is some kind of evidence for this, right ?
The rest I disagree with completely but I’m tired and as I can admit that I am only writing this post for purely selfish reasons, I am going to stop now.
What leads you to believe this is wrong ? Would it be the same source that lead you to your insights that living conditions in communist Russia and China were actually really really great ? ( perhaps the evil greedy ‘capitalists’ just made up all the bad stuff, right ? ).
Anyway, here is what Capitalism actually is if you wish to learn something… youtube.com/watch?v=bFxvy9XyUtg. I hope this forum is a place where people actually seek truth rather than just blindly supporting ‘their’ team.
The EU has the highest GDP, USA second, China third and that’s only because it’s moved toward a capitalist system and away from pure socialism.
Cuba and North Korea, the supposed beacons of a socialist paradise, don’t even make the list. They didn’t even make the top 190 countries.
The fact is that… the government will recognize that resources are required, a lot later, and a lot less accurately, than combined conscience of the market would. This happened in the Soviet Union. The government decided who needed cars and bread and how much they needed of them. Turns out they couldn’t predict correctly because they were out of touch with how the market works. If people are encouraged to be entrepreneurs, they will see the opportunity to sell resources to people that need them. They will also have an incentive to produce the bread very efficiently and sell it at a low price so they could compete with other entrepreneurs that see the same opportunity. The government official will have very little incentive to make the delivery and production of bread efficient. (I know that you could argue that he is a really moral man and will do his best… His morality unfortunately doesn’t prove his capability to run the bread production and delivery efficiently). The market has no way of correcting for the inefficiency of the government official and thus he remains in place providing bread to the people at a significantly higher societal cost than necessary. If an entrepreneur was inefficient, he wouldn’t make a profit, and thus his business would fail to other more efficient and capable entrepreneurs. (The failed entrepreneur would then find whatever he is good at and provide a service to society a different way…) Thus the market corrects for inefficiency while planned government programs don’t.
If Marx wants to do away with the state… How is he going to keep all those naughty people that want to work hard as poor as everyone else? There needs to be a police presence that keeps order over them.
I would be interested in hearing about this also. Is ‘real’ socialism actually ‘anarcho-socialism’ ?? And I know they might not call it a ‘state’ but if I wish to pay someone a wage for their labor and they wish to accept the deal, then this is a voluntary transaction between two parties. So is some other guy (maybe wearing a uniform or maybe not) going to have to come in between us and if need be use force to stop this transaction ? Also would this 3rd party guy be paid for this ‘service’ or not ? I could be way off here but could someone tell me so I have a better understanding ?
I did some quick wiki research. In the closing 20 years of the Soviet Union, GDP had more than tripled (a steady rate of growth). In the same time period, US GDP had less than doubled.
The US GDP has been higher because it started much higher. In 1970, US GDP was about $4,700 billion whilst Soviet Union GDP was about $430 billion, less than 10 times the GDP - and Soviet growth rates were slowing down by the 70s meaning the starting point of Soviet GDP was proportionally even lower in the previous decades.
You conveniently forget that the Soviet Union was only coming out of what was basically Feudalism in the early 20th century, whilst America had more than a 200 year head start in this respect.
And yet now (less than 100 years later), Russia has the 6th largest GDP (PPP) in the world, ahead of the UK and not far behind Germany. This was despite the complete collapse of its economy after it reintroduced Capitalism. It took 16 years to get the GDP back to similar levels under Capitalism, and now it is back to a similar level to what it would have been if the 70s-90s growth rate under Totalitarianism had continued as steadily as it was (i.e. it’s not got the 6th largest GDP (PPP) in the world because of Capitalism, but rather in spite of Capitalism). America wasn’t at war with the U.S.S.R. because they were sad that everyone was living under Totalitarianism, they were dealing with what was a huge economic threat.
So apparently you don’t know what you’re talking about. And let’s not forget that there’s 4 times less people per square kilometre in Russia than in the US, meaning that less people have been covering larger distances yet still achieving faster growth rates than America. AND let’s not forget that I’m not even advocating Totalitarianism! But have a graph anyway:
As for non-material incentives, do you really need me to tell you about things like “a job well done is reward in itself”? Let’s not disregard all the zillions of years of evolution that happened without any money in the face of only 5000 years of money (only 200 of which have been Capitalist) - and only for humans. Until that point, we were incentivised just fine as part of our very physiology! Other lifeforms remain incentivised to this day, competing and cooperating at all levels just fine. If our physiology was not hard-wired to incentivise us more than enough without money we would all have died out long ago.
But to correct the above paragraph and a couple of things I said in my last post, money should NOT be conflated with material. Material exists with or without money. It would exist under any economic system, even Socialism and Communism
The difference is that under Capitalism, excess material can be diverted to the few at the expense of the many - but even then only as a MEANS to an end. The end is power and influence, fame, social respectability - all sorts, as well as the satisfaction of a job well done. And yet, the people who succeed in doing this would be competitive and lust for power even without the ability to divert wealth to them at the expense of others! And guess what, they’re allowed to be just as competitive under actual Socialism and Communism. Power and influence, fame, social respectability and all the rest would still be possible. The satisfaction of a job well done would still exist too.
The only difference is that it wouldn’t take material form of amassing luxuries and means to decadence at the expense of everyone else.
This brings me to my next point, related to this quote:
It’s pretty telling that Capitalist advocates commonly stop here at the superficial “oh they’re just jealous” level of condemnation, rather than taking the intellectual jump to the fact that gross inequality is not the problem in itself. The problem is that gross inequality deprives the majority of people of their ability to maintain an economy that allows anyone to be rich at all. Capitalist individualism has spawned a mentality that rich people become rich all by themselves - as demonstrated recently by everyone’s hailing Steve Jobs as creating the entire Apple empire by himself and being solely responsible for everything that Apple ever did. This is incorrect. Zillions of workers were indispensible to all that, without which Steve would have just been a dreamer with some largely immaterial good ideas.
If you don’t compromise gross inequality for appropriate inequality, everybody loses. Yet Capitalism proves anti-compromising in this way time and time again, and THAT is why Leftists are against gross inequality.
This common superficiality makes it easy to assume that pro-Capitalists are just projecting their jealousy onto those who counter them. Why are today’s pro-Capitalists always so resentful of those they see as lazing around and still getting money for it due to things like the welfare state? They still get fuck all, they just can’t find jobs that aren’t there “coz the market dictates so”. It makes it easy to assume that pro-Capitalists are just jealous because they have to work for their greater quantity of money when others don’t have to work for the tiny amount they get that’s just about liveable on.
But I’m not going to assume pro-Capitalists are uniformly this shallow, just like pro-Capitalists are idiots to assume anti-Capitalists are uniformly shallow.
An inaccurately applied Nietzschean point.
I have already explained that any defining Leftist drive is not a call to equality as an end in itself. It is a social call to greater cooperation that we strive for.
And as even the pro-Capitalist, ags83 correctly points out, “Co-operation vastly outweighs competition in natural systems”.
The social, cooperative desire in humans is not separate from the Nietzschean “strong will”, as you will know from all his talk about “friends”. Capitalism may not be completely without cooperation, but it certainly squanders it. As a result, anyone who is not psychopathic/sociopathic suffers, meaning we squander the untapped potential of 99% of the population, greatly hindering our economic progression.
in the fact that spoiled rich kids born into massive wealth usually tend to have pretty miserable lives
