Socialist Psychology: There Are Two Kinds of Socialism

Originally posted by Exuberant1
reply to post by woodwardjnr

 

So you mean to use men with guns and gulags to enforce this limitation of savings and wealth within your ideal utopia.

I expected that.

Your ideal Utopia is so wonderful that it would have to be involuntary and enforced with violence and threats of violence.

I hope that in my utopia people believe in the ideals of the utopia, where wealth and growth are not the driving force of the society and are not worshiped as they currently are.

Violence wouldn't be needed as people would learn that it is better to advance the society as a whole rather than let certain members of the society take advantage for their own selfish means.

Obviously this Utopia is pie in the Sky, Unlike the system you prefer which won out years ago and is responsible for much of the violence in the world.

reply to post by woodwardjnr

Originally posted by woodwardjnr

Strict taxation would ensure that wasn't possible, as long as you are 3x'x as wealthy as the poorest, why do you need to be more wealthy?

I'm looking at those who would benefit from the system like the poorer in the utopia not those who want to continue their capitalist greed.

So the best option is to punish those who decide to save? Who are you going to give their money to? The poorer people? How will you adequately monitor proper usage of the 'stolen' money and to make sure it doesn't get abused? How will you motivate people to exceed and excel if you take away any 'excess' earnings?

It is in the human nature to seek dominion over one another, whether this involves enacting force or merely fulfilling the ego by 'earning' more money than your neighbor so that you can feel more powerful. That's nature, and healthy competition is good. Idealizing some semi-socialist utopia won't trim down the fine lines of reality.

If you are against Capitalism and look at the Anglo-American empire as the beacon of this ideology and the chaos it has caused throughout history, I would just like to remind you that the economic policies of the Empire from the beginning of the 20th century onwards have not been a capitalist approach, rather a corporatist one. The fusion between corporatism and fascism has been merging at an ever more rapid rate in the last few decades. The current major wars are not the result of free market ideologies, they are the result of corpo-fascist ideologies.

Capitalists created Corporations, they were a natural evolution from Capitalism. More money more power, influence government, government supports the corps not the people that voted for them. Its the goal of capitalists to own the means of production, if that means buying off politicians controlling the media then so be it. The pursuit of wealth is the only goal.

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
Capitalists created Corporations, they were a natural evolution from Capitalism.

Corporatism is not a natural evolution of Capitalism. Of course corporate enterprise is the result of capitalist action, but corporatism (with the corporation in focus) is more or less Capitalism diverting from the right path. A free market capitalist system would not, for example, protect private financial entities, regulate business, work with corporations and award no-bid contracts, have a private central bank, etc.

Originally posted by serbsta

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
Capitalists created Corporations, they were a natural evolution from Capitalism.

Corporatism is not a natural evolution of Capitalism. Of course corporate enterprise is the result of capitalist action, but corporatism (with the corporation in focus) is more or less Capitalism diverting from the right path. A free market capitalist system would not, for example, protect private financial entities, regulate business, work with corporations and award no-bid contracts, have a private central bank, etc.

So your utopia would be unregulated capitalism? what is to stop the capitalist diverting from the right path? Buying up more buinesses and then influencing the elected officials of the society? Buying the media to push their message to society?

reply to post by woodwardjnr


Nope, my utopia would work under a resource based economy.

Again, I'm not promoting free markets as the optimum way in which things can be done, rather stating the difference between free markets and the not-so-free markets which are operating today and work under the guise of capitalism.

but by your own admission "corporate enterprise is the result of capitalist action". No capitalism no corporation. Corporations didn't just appear out of thin air

Originally posted by mnemeth1

Walter Block writes the best papers on the planet.


Block speaks on socialism and its close relationship with fascism:

Lol Those two lines should have alerted me to the fact that you were joking, I didn't get it at first, well done, nice one.

Now who can say Merkans can't do irony

[edit on 10-8-2010 by Thepreye]

[edit on 10-8-2010 by Thepreye]

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
but by your own admission "corporate enterprise is the result of capitalist action". No capitalism no corporation. Corporations didn't just appear out of thin air

Youre right they are chartered by *governments*.

Corperations are only so dominant in todays society because they use their capital to bribe governments to use its monopoly of violence in the corperations favour. They dont spend billions of dollars lobbying the state for nothing. They spend it because the state has the guns and the corps want the guns pointed at their competition. IE us.

Solution = no monopoly of violence for those with capital to bribe. Not more guns in the hands of the monopoly of violence.

Originally posted by mnemeth1


The Nazi's called themselves socialists, thus I don't think Block is incorrect in using the terminology of socialism to describe the State they had envisioned.

If you continue listening, Block explains what's going on.

Anyone who believes the Nazis were Socialists simply because they have the term "Socialist" in their name either doesn't understand what Socialism is, or doesn't understand what Nazism is.

Socialism is an economic and political theory calling for public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Socialism

Nazism presented itself as politically syncretic, incorporating policies, tactics and philosophies from right- and left-wing ideologies; in practice, Nazism was a far right form of politics.

Nazism

Socialism is left wing, Nazism was right wing. The two are not really comparable, despite their similar nomenclature.

reply to post by drwizardphd


You just said that socialism isn't comparable to socialism....

And you are pretending that Nazism is from the Far-right of the spectrum.

Originally posted by Exuberant1


You just said that socialism isn't comparable to socialism....

And you are pretending that Nazism is from the Far-right of the spectrum.

...no

What I said was:

Originally posted by drwizardphd

Socialism is left wing, Nazism was right wing. The two are not really comparable, despite their similar nomenclature.

Perhaps you misread?


And I am not pretending that Nazism is far-right, Peter Fritzsche, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin and David Parker are (independently), if you are choosing the tried-and-true "attack the source" method.

Perhaps you would like to clarify which end of the political spectrum you believe Nazism is on?

Originally posted by serbsta
reply to post by ghostsoldier

 

Originally posted by ghostsoldier
Less than 2 minutes in, and he thinks the Nazi and Stalin were socialists... *sigh*

FISSION MAILED

Maybe you should learn what the NAZI party actually was before making such an ignorant statement and trying to comically denounce the entire OP in one line. You've failed miserable, and whats even more sad is that 4 people think you are right.

NAZI comes from Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers' Party).

Mission failed.

Thanks for sharing the vid OP, thought that was highly insightful. I haven't been a fan of Block's commentary but that was interesting.

Cheers.

Unless you're going to argue that the Democratic Republic of North Korea is actually a democracy, your point is essentially worthless. Hitler killed off Ernst Rohm and other members of the Nazi Party who wanted to set in motion a second -more Socialist- German revolution in the Night of the Long Knives.

Originally posted by drwizardphd
And I am not pretending that Nazism is far-right, Peter Fritzsche, Roger Eatwell, Roger Griffin and David Parker are (independently), if you are choosing the tried-and-true "attack the source" method.

Perhaps you would like to clarify which end of the political spectrum you believe Nazism is on?

They were very authoritarian socially and were slightly right-leaning centrists economically.

"Right" and "Left" are redundant when used to measure anything other than economics.

One major issue I see with any comparison of Socialism and Nazism is that they aren't even dealing with the same thing. One is a form of government and the other is an economic policy. It's like comparing a republic to capitalism.

Socialism has proven that it works when used on a small scale. Monasteries, communes, etc. have done fairly well over the centuries. The problem with socialism is when you try to apply it to a larger scale economy. Since one of the core tenets of the system is that everyone gets what they need, you take away both the drive to excel and the necessity of the low. There is no reward for, say, going through years of schooling to get a medical degree other than the desire to practice medicine. This will allow you to have a few doctors but you may need many more than those who want to do it just to do it.

You also have the problem of having enough people who will do the least desirable jobs. Things like trash collector, waste water treatment, or ditch digger still have to be done. Why would you want to do these jobs if you have no incentive to do them?

With a capitalist economy, you incentivize those jobs because of the scarcity of the people who are willing to either preform the job or go through the training necessary to preform that job. You pay more. Socialism has no equivalent incentive to do these jobs. So, you get relatively few doctors and not enough people to do the hard jobs either. Everyone wants to do the easiest job that they can.

Thus, Socialism does not work as well on a large scale unless you have a political system that will force people to do the jobs and get the training to fill jobs that the society needs. You wind up with either having to use force to fill these positions or switching to something with a more capitalist outlook. The Soviet Union went one way, the People's Republic of China has been going the other.

You cannot compare complex political ideologies with only one axis (right-wing, left-wing). You need two independent axes: en.wikipedia.org... One for personal freedom, the other for economic policies.

[edit on 11-8-2010 by Maslo]

reply to post by soontide


Not all types of socialism are like that, however. Other definitions of the term has the means of production owned and run collectively by the workers. All the profits would essentially go to the workers, instead of some going to the stockholders, some going to the CEO, etc. The idea behind this is that the workers receive the reward for the full value of their work.

This type of socialism could still work in a capitalistic society.

I love the claims that unregulated capitalism would end up with one mega corporation buying up the planet hahahahhahahaha


*gasp* hahahahahah

Are people blind to what is going on today or what?

We got 60,000 pages of regulations and every year we pile on thousands more. Regulations are what allow corporations to monopolize markets.

Cable is a government sanctioned monopoly

Energy is a government sanctioned monopoly

Sugar is tariffed to protect corn growers who are further subsidized to grow corn, which means US tax payers are responsible for making Monsanto the mega giant it is today.

The financial sector is a COMPLETE government sanctioned monopoly by the mega banks through their use of the federal reserve system.

The home mortgage industry is now a government sanctioned monopoly.

All patent protections grant an artificial monopoly to new inventors for a long period of time further preventing competition.

The legal system's court costs create monopolies by protecting pre-existing corporations that have the cash to file patent suits and protect themselves from litigation.

First class mail is a government sanctioned monopoly.

Network television is a government sanctioned oligopoly.

The medical insurance industry is a government sanctioned oligopoly, where private insurance companies are not allowed to sell across state lines and mandates prevent new insurance companies from entering the market.

I could go on writing pages of this.

reply to post by mnemeth1


I'm sure there was a point to you saying all that, but I must have missed it.

[edit on 12-8-2010 by LeftWingLarry]

reply to post by LeftWingLarry


I beleive what your talking about is profit sharing, i.e. you own stock in the company you labor for. As a stockholder, you then recieve your share of the fruits of your labor as dividends.

On a side note, doesn't the AFL-CIO now own shares of GM & Chrysler? Wouldn;t that be the workers getting their share of the labor?

One more thing. If the workers get all the profits, then where is the profit for the people that run the company (office workers, clerks, managers, marketers, salesman, etc.)?

[edit on 12-8-2010 by indianajoe77]