Is Socialism an Utopia?

[Darat]

I guess we can simply come up with our definitions for words now, in spite of their actual meanings? Utopia doesn't mean "the best we can do" or "optimum society", it means a perfect society.

..snip...

Please tell me what "perfection" means in terms of a society.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't think that a couple of percent more unemployed would skew the productivity/hour numbers that much, sorry.

Except unemployment measures are not terribly useful at capturing these differences, because people who aren't looking for work, for example, are not considered unemployed. Additionally, the shorter work week in France will also inflate the "productivity per hour" figure. People tend to prioritize their labor: if you cut your hours, you will cut the less productive work first. But of course, this ALSO ignores the issue of non-market work. For example, if you fix your own toilet instead of calling a plumber, that work and its value won't get counted in most economic figures. And we know that French do more non-market labor than Americans (surveys of leisure hours come out pretty close). But what non-market labor do people engage in? Well, mostly low-productivity labor, because that's the stuff that doesn't require special skills. And that's also the stuff that labor laws will inflate the cost of the most, and which we should expect the biggest difference in terms of whether people do it themselves or hire someone to do it.

And of course, we haven't even touched on immigration. If we kicked out illegal aliens, that too would raise our productivity per hour. I'll leave it for you to decide whether or not that's a good thing, but the effects on that statistic are rather obvious.

Plus, it seems to me that the Phillips Curve still applies. Lower unemployment means higher inflation, or viceversa.

Sometimes. But frequently not.

There's hardly any more need for the kind of speculation that the french just deny someone employment, that, again, I was answering to.

Strawman. I never said that's what France actually does. I said that doing so would have the effect of raising productivity per hour, and so using that statistic as a metric of merit for an economic system was dubious.

But while France doesn't deny employment to people as a matter of policy it does discourage employment of low-productivity workers. While you mention that the unemployment rate isn't really very high, the unemployment rate among young males of immigrant descent is simply ginormous.

 

[The Painter]

As an individual, probably not. I haven't the resources to take care of people who have acted morally. An ideal society will have collective funds available to help all who fall behind. Those who have not contributred to the best of their ability to build that safety net have no business whining that it does not catch them.

WOW I mean WOW. Selective Socialism. It only applies to those who produce. A completely new governing system. Congratulations to Lefty. Did you think of this all by yourself? Does this sound a little like independent capitalism or am I wrong??

 

[Phrost]

Please tell me what "perfection" means in terms of a society.

That's like trying to find two or more people that agree on a choice of pizza toppings.

 

[Cain]

I got it, and I agreed with your zing. So I voted with you.

I see. I didn't know I was voting, but in retrospect I did cast a worthless opinion.

----

Has anyone here read Sir Thomas More's small book? I purchased a copy from the bookstore, which meant I overpaid. Not just because I bought it from a a physical store store, but because I paid for something in the public domain. (I was with a girl and I HAD to buy something to pretend I liked theory. Maybe I rationalized it on the grounds that it's a "new" translation and features extensive footnotes.)

I highlighted a few passages, and this one seems relevant:

The natives who refuse to live under their laws are driven out of the territory the Utopians have marked off for their use; if they resist, the Utopians make war against them. For they think it is quite just to wage war against someone who has land which he himself does not use, leaving it fallow and unproductive, but denying its possession and use to someone else who has a right, by the law of nature, to be maintained by it.

I'm suddenly reminded of More's obsession with conditioning (binding slaves with gold, so they grow to dislike the metal).

From here they bring the cattle which have been slaughtered andcleaned by the hands of bondsmen. For they do not allow their own citizens to become accustomed to butchering animals; they think that to do so gradually eliminates compassion, the finest feeling of human nature.

and on compassion in general:

To mock someone for being disfigured or crippled is considered shameful and disfiguring, not to the person mocked but to the mocker, since ti is stupid for him to blame someone for a defect which it is not in his power to avoid.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Guys, thank you all for the contributions to the thread. However, this conversation I had with my friend did leave me with some essential questions that I would like to have answered:

-Is it true that there is no other way an individual can reach an independent economical status without being part of a chain-reaction type of exploitation from other people, as Socialism claims?

-Is it true that this "exploitation" that Socialism criticizes is actually an exploitation per se or is this relative? (Especially considering that no one's being held a gun to their head and forced to work for a company)

-Is it feasible to conceive of a society that has no division of classes, where everything is equal or does this ignore some basic aspects of human nature that would make this an Utopia?

-Is such scenario actually envisioned by Socialism, or is there always a certain type of class division no matter what?

 

[daenku32]

I can confidently say socialism is NOT an utopia.

Oh come one, having happiness that doesn't depend on the amount of your paycheck? That's pretty sweet sounding to me.

Maintaining finances and having to worry about having money in the account is no fun.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

-Is it true that there is no other way an individual can reach an independent economical status without being part of a chain-reaction type of exploitation from other people, as Socialism claims?

It depends on what you mean by "independent economical status". The only way to be truly independent of the rest of the economy is to be alone on an island.

-Is it true that this "exploitation" that Socialism criticizes is actually an exploitation per se or is this relative? (Especially considering that no one's being held a gun to their head and forced to work for a company)

I'm not sure what you mean. Having a gun to the head was never a central argument of it all, so I have to wonder.

The fact is, it goes kinda like this: let's Joe, Tom, Dick and Harry make their own late 19'th century style car workshop and make 2 cars. Joe takes one car 'cause he's the boss. Tom, Dick and Harry get to carpool in the other one, 'cause they're the ones who actually hammered metal. Is it a fair distribution of the result of their work? Does it really matter if Joe held a gun to their heads, or just talked them into being shafted, or there was some other kind of setup?

But in RL situations you have CEOs who get 1000 times as much as the guys at the assembly line. Even when they're driving the company in a death spiral.

The fact is, money don't exist in a vaccuum. For the purpose of wages, it's just a way to divide the pie. A million people make a huge pie, and they get vouchers for how much of it they can take. That's money in a nutshell. And some guy gets to take 1000 times as much as the next guy who put the same 8 hours into it. WTH did he do for that? Crap golden eggs? The fact is, it's only possible because there were other people chipping in some work to make that 1000x portion possible. That's exploitation.

Gun to the head is a red herring. We created a system where that's the only choice, even without guns involved. The farmers still plough, the bakers still bake, and builders still build houses for them, but somehow they have to make a banker or VC rich in the process too. They may not have a gun at their heads, but they live in the system where most available choices boil down to the same thing, and they _have_ to pick one. Because that's how the system works.

And then some of us think it's high time to fix the system a bit.

-Is it feasible to conceive of a society that has no division of classes, where everything is equal or does this ignore some basic aspects of human nature that would make this an Utopia?

Nature? No. Other societies functioned perfectly well in cultures of sharing. The bushme, potlatch cultures, etc. Even in Europe before Adam Smith greed was a mortal sin, not something to flaunt and get social status out of.

Nurture? Yes. That's the culture we live in, and that's the kind of behaviour we learn.

Unfortunately, it boils down to largely the same problem. Culture turns slower than a battleship, and if you push too hard, it actually starts pushing back. It's not particularly realistic to have a plan that involves radically changing the culture, as the USSR amply proved.

So, yes, we'll never really be classless. That much is very much clear. Yes, some guys will have to take a bigger slice than other guys. It's what motivates people in this culture. But we can at least see to it that some people don't get entirely trampled up in the others' rush for gold.

-Is such scenario actually envisioned by Socialism, or is there always a certain type of class division no matter what?

Depends upon which definition of socialism you use. In the USA the term has been hijacked to be largely a synonim for communism. In Western Europe the aim is more like just to reduce the inequality a bit more.

 

[Francesca R]

WOW I mean WOW. Selective Socialism. It only applies to those who produce. A completely new governing system.

It smacks of retribution against the enemy rather than anything else. As such, not really new, no.

 

[Eyeron]

Plus, what's a "potential rapist" anyway? Someone with male genitalia?

This is a term that comes from any feminazi, and yes they do indeed mean it to be a man.

 

[MikeMangum]

Plus, it seems to me that the Phillips Curve still applies. Lower unemployment means higher inflation, or viceversa. The UK was aiming at a different equilibrium point with 2.3% inflation compared to France's 1.5%, at least in 2007, while the USA was having 2.9% inflation in the same year.

Didn't Milton Friedman essentially earn his Nobel by providing empirical evidence against the Phillips Curve and by showing that inflation is an monetary issue?

 

[Skeptic]

Those who have not contributred to the best of their ability to build that safety net have no business whining that it does not catch them.

(Yawn)

And the police should not investigate the murder of anybody who voted democrat. If you didn't do your utmost to keep them all in jail as long as possible, you have no right to complain if they murder you once they're out.

 

[daenku32]

Didn't Milton Friedman essentially earn his Nobel by providing empirical evidence against the Phillips Curve and by showing that inflation is an monetary issue?

At least according to Wikipedia, Friedman certainly believed in connection between inflation and unemployment. It's just some particular details that he challenged. But I'm not at all familiar about why he won the medal.

 

[Newtons Bit]

This is a term that comes from any feminazi, and yes they do indeed mean it to be a man.

Should we start calling all women "potential prostitutes"? It's the same style of absurdity.

 

[dudalb]

If the OPs friend considers Stalin's Russia to be some kind of a great ideal to look up, that alone is enough to put him in the "individual whose opinions on Politics and Economics are best ignored" category.

 

[MikeMangum]

At least according to Wikipedia, Friedman certainly believed in connection between inflation and unemployment. It's just some particular details that he challenged. But I'm not at all familiar about why he won the medal.

I can see how unemployment would affect inflation indirectly in the short term (wikipedia chart showing M2 velocity and EM-ratio), if inflation is based on money supply and velocity, which is what I've been taught. Increased unemployment would tend to reduce velocity. But long term, unemployment is not a driver of inflation, certainly not directly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

That relation between money and prices is historically associated with the quantity theory of money. There is strong empirical evidence of a direct relation between long-term price inflation and money-supply growth.

M*V=P*Q

EDIT: The reason for Friedman's Nobel, according to the Nobel website: "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy".

 

[Grizzly Bear]

Depends upon which definition of socialism you use. In the USA the term has been hijacked to be largely a synonim for communism. In Western Europe the aim is more like just to reduce the inequality a bit more.

If you think about socialism as being on a scale with anarchy on the far left and authoritarian/communism on the far right it would probably fall somewhere between middle and the extreme right.

Communism proposes the creation of an egalitarian society with the means of production controlled and having collective ownership. But the fatal flaw is exactly how you determine who has the best intentions in mind for controlling those means. Historically communism has never worked according to the ideals it proposes, and socialism in its most radical form is modeled by examples such as Venezuela. It's basically a power balance.

IMO by accepting it as a general model one must accept that the government itself is somehow partially/and or entirely immune to the same corruption that afflicts economics in a capitalist society. I don't think the difference that stark.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

If the OPs friend considers Stalin's Russia to be some kind of a great ideal to look up, that alone is enough to put him in the "individual whose opinions on Politics and Economics are best ignored" category.

Why?

(And I don't ask in a tone of defending my friend. I just want to hear an elaboration of what each side has to say)

 

[MikeMangum]

Why?

(And I don't ask in a tone of defending my friend. I just want to hear an elaboration of what each side has to say)

Not to speak for someone else, but it might have something to do with the fact that Stalinist Russia is basically THE benchmark for totalitarian police states that engage in repression and pogrom against their own people.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I guess the bottom of the matter, the issue where it got to me was when I was being told that the concept of "Private Property" is simply put, wrong.

I come from an ideology that anyone should be free to handle their lives however they see fit, as long as they don't hurt others.
I also believe that one has a right to have things of their own, as well as a private property. Heck, even animals have an instinct for territorial demarcation.
So, the question is, is this feasible? Is it possible to have a system that allows private property, without being part of an exploitation scheme? (Or at least one where the exploitation is reduced to a minimum).
And if not, just exactly what kind of world are we suggesting? How does a world where there is no private property look like? Where absolutely everything is public and there are no social classes. Because I can't help thinking that this is more like a man's ideal than a reality. I don't think Stalin's Russia actually achieved that, or did I miss something?