Socialism is Communism.

Steve said:
Likewise communism and socialism. They are all ideals that do not exist in the real world so criticizing them is rather pointless. An academic exercise at best but mostly just a waste of bandwidth and time. As for starting a thread about any of them........
Click to expand...

I agree. In reality the share of private vs. public property (means of production) varies widely. The trend towards government owning more and more of the property, is socialism/communism.

I have described the current system most accurately as "privatization of gains, socialization of losses". There is no one word (coincidentally) to describe such a system. Plutocratism? Kleptocratism?
 
Please keep to the subject of the thread, which is not eyeglasses. Thanks.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: xjx388
 
JoeMorgue said:
As I said earlier if in "the system" (again I think pigeonholing systems in categories from a hundred years ago is... less than ideal) the "people" choose "the government" the distinction between "the people own the means of production" and "the government owns the means of production" is, at best, an academic minor distinction.
Click to expand...

Only true if "the government" actually represents "the people", in many cases this isn't what happens.

Something else to keep in mind when looking at older economic works like those of Adam Smith is that in most cases the title of Head of State and therefor the State itself was private property Property rights in this context were not usually aimed at what "governments" as we understand them today should\shouldn't be allowed to do to you, but what particularly powerful individuals should\shouldn't be allowed to do to you.

JoeMorgue said:
I have a hundred cows. My neighbors decide I have too many cows and take 50 of them.
I have a hundred cows. My neighbors all vote on a government that will take 50 of them because they think I have too many cows.

What's the difference?
Click to expand...

Governments need the ability to levy taxes for the common good and to appropriate property for the common good. Eg how could you build a highway system without some mechanism to give up land? This may or may not be done in a fair way, but that's a separate topic.


Conversely individual neighbors certainly do not require either of these powers.
 
Tippit said:
Do you have evidence that all, or even most property in North Korea is titled in Kim Jong-Un's name? You may find this point silly, but the likelihood is that the state owns everything, and Kim Jong-un instead just controls everything.
Click to expand...

Symantec difference at best and has no relevance to the point that was made.
 
lomiller said:
Symantec difference at best and has no relevance to the point that was made.
Click to expand...

It's not irrelevant at all. It shows that while the "state" can have title to all the property, in reality it can be controlled by one autocratic dictator.

I'm still waiting for the evidence that all the property in North Korea is in Kim Jong-Un's name. Do you have any idea how North Korean property is actually titled?
 
JoeMorgue said:
As I said earlier if in "the system" (again I think pigeonholing systems in categories from a hundred years ago is... less than ideal) the "people" choose "the government" the distinction between "the people own the means of production" and "the government owns the means of production" is, at best, an academic minor distinction.

I have a hundred cows. My neighbors decide I have too many cows and take 50 of them.
Click to expand...
That would be cattle-rustling, aka theft. Not legal in most government systems.

I have a hundred cows. My neighbors all vote on a government that will take 50 of them because they think I have too many cows.
Click to expand...
Then you should not be Black and successful in the USA.

What's the difference?
Click to expand...
There could be many different reasons, or none. I've tried to find humorous ones. Your hypothetical does not really relate to governmental systems.
 
Tippit said:
I have proven in the economics forum that the concept of "private ownership" is undone, destroyed, debauched, ruined, dismantled, annihilated, obliterated, pillaged, sacked, ravaged, razed, and rendered irrelevant by the corrupt fiat money/fractional reserve system, it is pointless to criticize what doesn't exist, until it is resurrected.
Click to expand...

Bwahahahaha!

You have proven jack.

Bwahahahahahaha!
 
I don't think Tippit ever did Political Science to an advanced level. Communism is a political philosophy which states that throughout history the bourgeoisie and the working class have clashed over control of the means of production. Marx believed when writing the Communist Manifesto that this tension would lead to a revolution which would see the proletariat seize control of the means of production. There would be a period of a dictatorship of the proletariat before communism would take over where society would be organised so that it was from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Technically in terms of the philosophy, we have never had a communist state, only dictatorships. None of this is Socialism which predates Marx and the Manifesto as evidenced by things like the Trade Union movvement in the UK.
 
Parsman said:
I don't think Tippit ever did Political Science to an advanced level. Communism is a political philosophy which states that throughout history the bourgeoisie and the working class have clashed over control of the means of production. Marx believed when writing the Communist Manifesto that this tension would lead to a revolution which would see the proletariat seize control of the means of production. There would be a period of a dictatorship of the proletariat before communism would take over where society would be organised so that it was from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. Technically in terms of the philosophy, we have never had a communist state, only dictatorships. None of this is Socialism which predates Marx and the Manifesto as evidenced by things like the Trade Union movvement in the UK.
Click to expand...

Marxian Socialism is sheer fantasy, has zero chance of working in the real world.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Because people are jealous and greedy. Facts celebrated by capitalism.
Click to expand...

Turns out that when jealous and greedy people try to run a communist state, the results are wildly more horrific and depraved than anything that happens under capitalism.

Police state? Check. Willful disregard for the environment? Check. Slavery and ethnic cleansing? Check. Widespread poverty and privation? Check. Show trials and star chambers? Check. Mismanagement and incompetence? Check. Pretty much every failure mode of human society, that humans have been able to mitigate via liberal democracy and free markets, is exacerbated under communism. It takes a special kind of misanthropic totalitarian to blame the failure of communism on the people who suffered under it. And that's exactly what the communist leadership did. Every. Single. Time. Don't be like those guys. Don't use their excuses.

Enlightened self-interest is a better basis for a stable society than utopian altruism.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Because people are jealous and greedy. Facts celebrated by capitalism.
Click to expand...

In other words, human beings will be human. Greed seems to be as basic as the Sex Drive.
What a shock.
best thing I have heard about pure Sociialism is "Beautiful Theory, Wrong Species".
 
dudalb said:
In other words, human beings will be human. Greed seems to be as basic as the Sex Drive.
What a shock.
best thing I have heard about pure Sociialism is "Beautiful Theory, Wrong Species".
Click to expand...

Because society is not about curbing base human drives.
 
theprestige said:
Turns out that when jealous and greedy people try to run a communist state, the results are wildly more horrific and depraved than anything that happens under capitalism.

Police state? Check. Willful disregard for the environment? Check. Slavery and ethnic cleansing? Check. Widespread poverty and privation? Check. Show trials and star chambers? Check. Mismanagement and incompetence? Check. Pretty much every failure mode of human society, that humans have been able to mitigate via liberal democracy and free markets, is exacerbated under communism. It takes a special kind of misanthropic totalitarian to blame the failure of communism on the people who suffered under it. And that's exactly what the communist leadership did. Every. Single. Time. Don't be like those guys. Don't use their excuses.

Enlightened self-interest is a better basis for a stable society than utopian altruism.
Click to expand...

It's not that Capitalism doesn't do these things, it's that when Capitalism does it, it makes sure to do it in other people's countries rather than their own.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It's a reference to the classic children survival/social breakdown novel Lord of the Flies where the boys agree that to talk at the formal meetings you have to be holding a conch shell.

The people who seek out positions of power within a system are more important than the system of power.

Now that's not to say that the system of power is not not worth discussing nor not important, nor is this some wishy-washy "All systems are the same" nonsense, but very rarely do systems create evil people.

Stalin would not have magically been a good or even fundamentally different person if the Soviet Union had been a capitalist or socialist or farming commune country. He would have sought out (or stumbled into or whatever) the positions of power in those systems as well.
Click to expand...


Vladimir Putin has gone from a hardcore communist supporter to leader of an Oligarchy that comes straight out of a Conservative's wet dream.
 
theprestige said:
Turns out that when jealous and greedy people try to run a communist state, the results are wildly more horrific and depraved than anything that happens under capitalism.
Click to expand...
not really, things can get just as bad in unrestricted private ownership. We just stop calling it capitalism at a certain point even though the principles have not really changed . Bad things happen in any system where greedy and unscrupulous people are free to do as they will.

Democracy puts limits on the power such people can have, so things work better regardless of the exact economic policies.
 
lomiller said:
not really, things can get just as bad in unrestricted private ownership. We just stop calling it capitalism at a certain point even though the principles have not really changed . Bad things happen in any system where greedy and unscrupulous people are free to do as they will.

Democracy puts limits on the power such people can have, so things work better regardless of the exact economic policies.
Click to expand...

The comparison always bogs down because capitalism is an economic system, but communism is both an economic system and a political system.

As an economic and political system, capitalist liberal democracy performs much better, by (I think) every important measure, than communism.

I will, however, concede that anarcho-capitalism, wherever it is actually being practiced, probably fares no better than communism.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom