Is Capitalism Without a Socialist Backbone Impossible?

The Great Zaganza said:
The flaw of Capitalism is that what we define as Capital is not broad enough.

Social Capital, Reputational Capital, Expertise Capital etc. are all forms of wealth that might be have for useful for a Capitalist Society to be used instead of just forms of money.
Click to expand...

Entrepreneurs use their reputation and expertise to raise capital and attract investors all the time.
 
Brainster said:
Careful with that line of thinking, you're liable to conclude that maybe the Republicans aren't Nazis either, and that both sides tend to exaggerate the danger the other side poses.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. Lumping all members of a party as some damaging classification is part of the blame based understanding system. Where people overgeneralize the other side as 'bad' in order to not have to spend as much time questioning their own ideas.

Part of it is an efficiency thing. People have a lot of things going on in their lives, they only have a limited amount of time to spend, and they don't have time to focus on all of the details of everything. Demonizing The other side gives them the moral certainty of their ideas and the emotional boost of the righteousness of their side.

The consequences is that we get group think, and many people don't question their our own ideologies for fallacies or flaws.

I think that the divide keeping the political tribes in this Country from having meaningful conversations with each other is one of the greatest problems our country faces right now.
 
lomiller said:
2 key things to remember

Government regulations are not Socialism.
Social safety nets are not Socialism


These two things are indeed required for Capitalism to function properly.


Socialism is characterized by public or social ownership of the means of production. IOW business themselves are publically or socially owned. Mainly we think about this in terms of government owned, but other forms like co-operative ownership could also apply.

While not strictly required for Capitalism to function properly, there are cases where these structures result in higher economic efficiency then private ownership. Higher economic efficiency means more goods\services to go around so people are overall better off. By and large though, regulated private ownership usually, (but again not always) yields the best economic efficiency.
Click to expand...
I think that gets to the heart of the question of the thread. If those programs are critical for the function of the means of production in the country, why would that not be considered Socialism?
 
HoverBoarder said:
I think that gets to the heart of the question of the thread. If those programs are critical for the function of the means of production in the country, why would that not be considered Socialism?
Click to expand...

Because that doesn’t fit the definition of socialism that is in mainstream use everywhere with perhaps the USA being the exception.

As others have said socialism is in essence a very simple concept, the means of production is in the hands of the producers i.e. the community as a whole, there is no capital.

What you seem to think is socialism is state regulation and controls on capitalism.
 
Socialism as defined by Oxford Languages;-

a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Click to expand...

And as defined by Wikipedia:-

Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and democratic control or workers' self-management of enterprises.
Click to expand...

Noting the inclusion of cooperative management.


The health and unemployment benefit systems often called Socialism would be better called Welfare.
 
Lplus said:
Socialism as defined by Oxford Languages;-



And as defined by Wikipedia:-



Noting the inclusion of cooperative management.


The health and unemployment benefit systems often called Socialism would be better called Welfare.
Click to expand...
They are in other countries. The name is much better suited to the purpose than the "S" label.
 
Norman Alexander said:
They are in other countries. The name is much better suited to the purpose than the "S" label.
Click to expand...

In the US, however, the word "welfare" is as much poison as is "socialism". A large part of American politics is simply screaming about a neutral term until it becomes a bad one, even if/especially if the people hearing it can't actually define it properly.

Given the platform you could turn a large part of America against anything just by referring to it insultingly, while never defining it. We could lead successful campaigns against Broca's Area, or orographic lift. Did you know that over seventy-five percent of elementary school kids are living withing a mile of at least one numismatist, and the government is doing NOTHING about it?!!?!
 
TragicMonkey said:
Did you know that over seventy-five percent of elementary school kids are living withing a mile of at least one numismatist, and the government is doing NOTHING about it?!!?!
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised if it were even more, and worse degeneracy as well: It's rumoured that my own neighbour has been seen trying to interest young boys in philately!
 
TragicMonkey said:
In the US, however, the word "welfare" is as much poison as is "socialism". A large part of American politics is simply screaming about a neutral term until it becomes a bad one, even if/especially if the people hearing it can't actually define it properly.

Given the platform you could turn a large part of America against anything just by referring to it insultingly, while never defining it. We could lead successful campaigns against Broca's Area, or orographic lift. Did you know that over seventy-five percent of elementary school kids are living withing a mile of at least one numismatist, and the government is doing NOTHING about it?!!?!
Click to expand...

In the UK “welfare” has thanks to decades of demonisation come to be regarded as a negative. You will often hear about how much it costs to keep our layabouts in their lives of luxury - with their flatscreen TVs no less! They’ll throw out that it’s something like £235 billion. Which they carefully forget to ever explain as the biggest single spend is in fact on pensions - often the very ones complaining about the lazy good for nothings getting something for nothing, pensions take up to 40+% of welfare budget. Unemployment support takes up just 1% of the welfare spend! But reality is naughty like that - refuses to conform to our fantasies.
 
theprestige said:
Capitalism is fully compatible with (representative) democracy, taxation, and a social safety net...
Click to expand...

That is one way of putting it, but the more appropriate way would go something like:

Capitalism, and Capitalists in particular, tolerate Socialist trappings, like democratic republics and their rigged elections, corporate regulation, always contested and hated taxations, and wage-slave maintenances such as public healthcare, retirement pensions, etc., until they can fully neuter, and kill them, because they impede and distort the unfettered market and its service to the capitalists, by dampening the peaks and troughs inherent to the fundamentals capitalism builds into its business cycle, when much of the wealth cream which capitalists skim from the system is "earned" through insider trading and manipulation (of course their manipulations aren't seen as dangerous market distortions, as they are following their creed of maximizing personal profits above all other concerns and it would be blasphemous for them to follow any other course) as well as their latest innovation, massive corporate welfare from the Public treasury and "printing presses."
 
Last edited:
dudalb said:
Could we first agree on a definition of "Socialism"?
Click to expand...

We've been having variations of this same conversation for over ten years, here. If we haven't agreed on a definition by now, we're not going to. Either that, or we already have agreement on a definition that's good enough to move forward, but it suits our purposes to act like we don't, and keep the conversation stuck in the same rut for another ten years.
 
HoverBoarder said:
Snipped

While I definitely understand the lethal consequences of some traditionally Socialist countries like Venezuela, I think the massive overuse of "Socialism" as a derogatory claim prevents a lot of meaningful debate on very real and important issues.
Click to expand...

That seems like an oxymoronic statement.

If you understand the lethal consequences of Socialism, there's not much to discuss. The only logical reason for such a discussion is that someone is seeking political spin to make Socialism appear as a friendly alternative to Capitalism, which by your own understanding above, is not.

Capitalism with minimal Government regulation and a social safety net is as close as we need to be to Socialism in the US. A push much further and we'll simply recreate Venezuela. We already have a Venezuela model, no need to create a new one anywhere else.

Arguments which cherry pick limited specific social programs from Socialism are a favorite among some political parties to promote a full Socialist agenda.
However, usually these same folks fail to mention or consider in a discussion of conversion to full Socialism, that along with the good Socialism stuff, comes the very very bad.

Using that type of thinking, one could argue that since we all awake after sleep, put on our pants, socks and shoes, dress and ready for the day just like serial killers do, why then it should be perfectly fine for us to duplicate all the other activity that serial killers do during the day as well.

Yeah, not so much.
 
dudalb said:
Could we first agree on a definition of "Socialism"?
Click to expand...

It's got a definition, and that definition has been stated or alluded to several times in this thread.

The problem is that the political right in the US doesn't actually use that definition and don't really have one of their own. Rather it's used as a generic, catch-all slur for anything they don't like. Because they attach no other real meaning to it they don't need to justify why it's bad or why it's apropos in any given situation. The talking heads call it "Socialism" and the plebs immediately know they are supposed to dislike it without any thought or reason.

Since it's only propose is to convey orthodoxy to followers it doesn't need a real meaning or definition for the political right.
 
lomiller said:
It's got a definition, and that definition has been stated or alluded to several times in this thread.

The problem is that the political right in the US doesn't actually use that definition and don't really have one of their own. Rather it's used as a generic, catch-all slur for anything they don't like. Because they attach no other real meaning to it they don't need to justify why it's bad or why it's apropos in any given situation. The talking heads call it "Socialism" and the plebs immediately know they are supposed to dislike it without any thought or reason.

Since it's only propose is to convey orthodoxy to followers it doesn't need a real meaning or definition for the political right.
Click to expand...

So rather like the political left use the word Nazi for anything to the right of their views?
 
theprestige said:
We've been having variations of this same conversation for over ten years, here. If we haven't agreed on a definition by now, we're not going to. Either that, or we already have agreement on a definition that's good enough to move forward, but it suits our purposes to act like we don't, and keep the conversation stuck in the same rut for another ten years.
Click to expand...

There's no point in having a definition of Socialism that forces the traditional posters on this forum to face the fact that their preferred "socialist" outlook is actually far from Socialist.

Gotta stay in the "south west" quadrant of the "political compass" somehow....
 
Last edited:
Lplus said:
So rather like the political left use the word Nazi for anything to the right of their views?
Click to expand...

Since when? This seems more like another baseless assertion the right wing talking heads use to control their people.

Things that resemble fascism do get labelled as such, which is as it should be. This tends to be fairly well scrutinized and what usually happens is that the resemblance to historical fascism ends up being understated, which is very different that the political right's use of the term "socialism".
 
Lplus said:
There's no point in having a definition of Socialism that forces the traditional posters on this forum to face the fact that their preferred "socialist" outlook is actually far from Socialist.

Gotta stay in the "south west" quadrant of the "political compass" somehow....
Click to expand...

Again wrong. The political right had moved to such extremes that to them, views that would have firmly right of center in the 1990's are now being called "socialist" in right wing political dogma. In the US, economic polices that were "core conservative values" 25 years ago have been completely abandoned by Republicans and now form the core of mainstream Democratic economic policy.

The right wing talking heads now call these things "socialist" in order to keep their power base from fragmenting so they can hold onto power even though they have no realistic policy ideas of their own. Since they have no actual policies to pursue holding onto power for powers sake is all most of the old guard are doing. The scary thing is that the younger idealist are actually willing to try some of the bats*** crazy ideas that is all Republicans have left after 40 years of moving farther and farther right to maintain a differentiation between themselves and Democrats.

This is why economists who have used to support Republicans now vote Democrat by a wide margin. In practical terms many policy ideas promoted by more intellectual Republicans are often indistinguishable from AnCaps.

With the rise of Trump, this is somehow glued together with populist Republicans that support something resembling the Fascist countries in WW2. This includes both economic isolationism that restricts imports under the guise of "self sufficiency" while exports are encouraged as a means of projecting power. Privately owned business is encouraged but only those that are willing to support right wing leaders in their political goals are supported by government while those who refuse such support are undermined at every turn.

This is a toxic mix that history tells us can only lead to explosion or implosion, but everything else is deemed "socialism" by the talking heads in order to keep the rank and file in line.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom