Define socialism?

a reply to: Akragon

Interesting question.

Heh, socialism 'might' work...IF you remove government from the equation.

But, I guess that's 'anarchy'.

No matter what way you slice the salami, it's always 'government' who makes you cut your finger.

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: Sublimecraft

Just doesn't sound right though....

Starving people will not refuse to work for what can provide...

Again... lets not use history to define the word

Really? You are aware of the uproars in the US from welfare recipients when told they have to work to collect benefits? ...or be drug tested to prove their available to work in order to collect benefits? Additionally, many corporations pay extravagant taxes to their communities (yes, there are some that use loopholes).

Back to OP and on topic...I define socialism the same as most who are willing to work hard to provide for themselves and their family...a system designed to take what I’ve earned and distribute it to others who aren’t willing to make the same sacrifices as I, as well as line the pockets of those leading the Socialists (Democrats, usually).

originally posted by: Vector99

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: Vector99

True... when it becomes a political stance

aspects of it are a part of many countries... including mine

There is no free land anywhere in the world, socialism will always be a political factor no matter where you live.

Once politics mixes with socialism you get corruption and a downward spiral.

That is literally true for ANY economic idea Capitalism included.

originally posted by: Sublimecraft
a reply to: Akragon

An economic system that encourages folks to scale 15' high walls & risk being shot, just to get away from it. A system where taxes are a minimum of 50%+ so everyone can have 'free stuff' mainly because 50% or more of the population refuses to work - because they just want the free stuff.

"What is Europe?".
Trebek: Correct, now you have the board.
"I'll take political systems for $500"
The answer is
An economic system that encourages folks to scale 15' high wall with the guarantee of being shot.
"What is communism?"

originally posted by: Akragon
It seems to me by definition...

IF the community owns production, distribution and exchange as a whole, it should give back to said community

Something no government does on earth...

Actually provide for its people without taking

Where are these companies?

Who are they and what to they produce?

How does it all work?

Who pays the start up?

a reply to: Akragon

But.. but..

I thought socialism meant pedo rings in pizza shops, Hitler and OBAMA!!


You mean it has a dictionary definition than differs from what the Fox News propaganda whore spout?!?!


Color me shocked..

a reply to: Akragon

Good luck trying to expect a logical discourse based on reality...

What do you expect.. the conservatives all have their own version of reality.. so of course they have a ridiculously made up definitions for words that clearly already have definitions..


Ask Webster lol

a reply to: Akragon

Yes, but when you say that the "community as a whole" owns a thing, what it boils down to in social reality is that those things are "public" goods which means they are really owned and administered by the government ostensibly for the good of all.

We have socialized systems in this country. The larger they are, the more inefficient and corrupt they tend to be.

In truth they end up being no better and sometimes worse than corporations. Corporations are only insulated from profit motive by their size which affords them some insulation from ticking off segments of their customer base and which also affords them some ability to bring pressure to bear on government entities via lobbying and monetary donation (i.e buying influence) to influence legislation and regulatory policy more amenable to them.

Governments simply dictate those things as they choose. They are the law.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Even in the smallest social grouping - the family - there has to be a government of sorts.

You could argue that most families more or less operate as socialist units as it is. A lot of families share many of their goods and labor in common, but there is always an organizing principle or person who has to delegate, particularly if there are children involved.

a reply to: Akragon

Socialism is an ideal that sounds great in classrooms, coffee shops, beer halls.

But not so good when put in place because; people.

People will never make socialism function well because people are lazy, greedy, corrupt.

a reply to: ketsuko

Oh I agree. My post was somewhat tongue in cheek, in a societal sense.

Socialism: legalized plunder; the hatred of natural social organization; state feudalism; the fear of freedom...I could go on... but mostly it’s about the workers owning the means of production.

originally posted by: Akragon
a reply to: Vector99

Once politics mixes with socialism you get corruption and a downward spiral.

Agreed

To clarify, politics opens the door to underlying agendas and enforcement. Socialism seems somewhat workable when agreed upon by the participants and starts to fail when enforcement on those that do not agree. The larger the sphere or size, the more enforcement. Not unlike the Corporate system.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: Akragon

That, sir, is an interesting thought...

Capitalism: the working class works to support the owners of the companies that provide jobs.

Socialism: the working class works to support the poor who don't want to (or can't) work.

Seems the choice is who takes the money from the working class.

TheRedneck

A distinction between the two is the Capitalist usually couldn't care less who or what you are or do if his profit is assured. The socialist system seems obsessed with non-production issues such as anything and everything from SJWs to who gets what job, the rate of pay, on and on without apparent limit or satisfaction.

a reply to: Akragon

In historical sense, I see capitalism and socialism as brothers.

Looking back to the feudalistic system we see a system of lords, or as we call them now, elites. That system was to a large degree a system that held that the ''big man'' the ''king'' owned everything. He held his rank and power to divine decree and that rank and power was handed down by lineage, parents to children. Beneath them were the ''lesser'' members of the families who were the lords and dukes and barons etc. Everyone else were the peons, the workers, the peasants, the poor. This of course is a simplistic definition of feudalism but in general holds.

Enter the early stages of the technological revolution. As the success and maintenance of a feudal system came to depend more and more on advancing tech, the system began to need to nurture those few men who held the knowledge of sciences in metals and chemistry for weaponry and luxuries that the elites loved so much. This new ''master' or ''journeyman'' class needed to be supported by the ''lords'' in order to stimulate the knowledge that they held that produced the ''goodies for war and elitist comforts. This too is an over simplification.

As the economic systems began to develop into what we know today, aspects of that system began to develop more and more complex skills needed to maintain the economies. As the exchange of monies,replacing the more simple barter system came around, bookkeepers and specialists were needed to keep the balances. The older metalworkers who knew those ''secret'' sciences that fabricated metal monies slowly morphed into the early bankers.

Shortening up that development, eventually the marketing class, gained strength and in the struggle to gain more wealth, wresting what they could from the systems held by the elites and continuing to use the labor of the poor as the elites had always done was the birth of what we now know as the capitalist system. Once more, that is a very brief simplification.

So as seen from the perspective of wresting power from the elites,capitalism can be seen as the elder brother. Socialism, the younger brother has been seen, in a manner, as the younger brother, the brother that would be the final dismantling of the feudal system as the poor would gain the rights of freedom to pick and choose where to live, where to work and how to live rights already gained by the capitalist,or ownership class.

However, the problems that socialism faced were two fold. Not only how to continue the revolution to freedom from feudalism where economic power was held in the hands of the kings and lords, socialism now also had the struggle to continue the spread of power that had come to reside in the capitalist classes. The capitalists had gained much of the powers and wealth that had previously been the sole domain of the kings and lord and were unwilling to give it up.
The capitalist class mostly treated the peasant class as the feudalist class before them had, using the poor to generate wealth for themselves.

The lines blur in modern day. The capitalist class has pretty much taken control of world politics and economies. They have risen to become the new ''lords'' of the earth, turning themselves into the very elitists that early capitalists struggled against. It was the capitalists who first forced the kings to give up certain divine rights to rule. These were the forgers of the foundations of early parliamentary governments.

Just as the kings were forced to allow power to emerge among the capitalist class, the capitalist class was forced to a degree to utilize the strength of the peasant class to help in the overthrow of the kings, and at least pay lip service to the poor in those governments.

The means of production were owned by the kings , the capitalist system took that away from the feudalist system and gave those means of production into the hands of ''private ownership''. Socialism is the stage where those means of production are taken on by the workers themselves.

a reply to: Akragon

In a Socialist ideal, there still must be those that create Jobs... but again referring to my above statement... said companies actually provide for their people and their community... as opposed to keeping all said profits for the investors/owners/CEOs etc etc etc... the working class carries that entire sector

Where is the incentive to create jobs? It is much harder to create jobs than to perform in a job. If there is no incentive to do a hard thing, why would anyone do such a thing?

Million dollar salaries for doing what?

Going to meetings... Golfing... wearing tight Armani suits?

If you believe that is all a CEO does, you are quite mistaken.

I have sat in that chair. It is quite possibly the hardest job I ever undertook, and that was CEO/owner of a very small corporation. Those meetings require a lot of preparation. Golfing (which I don't do) is simply an excuse for a private meeting to discuss deals. The suits are a pain in the butt, only there to impress clients so one can get their business.

In between there is dealing with workers who for one reason or other don't seem to think they need to have the company's best interests at heart. There's handling workload. There is dealing with legalities. There is trying to manage cash flow so the workers can get paid. It is literally a 24/7 job at times, and poor performance means not only that you lose money, but that everyone in the company does.

I doubt that most people reading this could do the job.

Something isn't right... and it's Top down

Everything is top down. Gravity sees to that.

There is an analog to nature in this: in the wild, there are many times more prey animals than predators. It is the predator who determines which prey will be consumed next, not the prey who decides which of them will feed the predator. It sounds unfair (and is), but it is also reality. No other system would allow both to survive. If the predators did not exist, the prey would multiply until they starved from lack of food. If the prey did not exist, the predators would starve. Each requires the other to thrive long term, although each works diligently to ensure their own survival.

The largest difference between that analog and human society is that humans use a government to control the interaction. By definition, that government is the largest, meanest, most dangerous predator of all.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Akragon

lets not use history to define the word

That is illogical. Words have definitions that were instituted in history. If the definition is changed from that history has assigned, the word becomes meaningless sounds or symbols strung together.

if one wishes a new definition to a new ideal, one must create a new word.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: Akragon

Socialism is an ideal that sounds great in classrooms, coffee shops, beer halls.

But not so good when put in place because; people.

People will never make socialism function well because people are lazy, greedy, corrupt.

Seems to me that if you were to replace the word socialism with capitalism you have just described our world as it is today.

So... how does one define Socialism

A multiply failed ideology that worships death, racial strife and authoritarian mumbo-jumbo.

Just ask Venezuela and other S/A dump-nations how socialism is working out for them. Last I checked, Maduro robbed the nation of its gold and transferred it overseas - after installing himself as permanent socialist-failure-in-chief.

But hey, what do I know? Maybe some folks here would enjoy eating their pets and defending themselves against constant robbery/home invasion/rape/kidnapping/extortion/murder.

a reply to: nwtrucker

A distinction between the two is the Capitalist usually couldn't care less who or what you are or do if his profit is assured. The socialist system seems obsessed with non-production issues such as anything and everything from SJWs to who gets what job, the rate of pay, on and on without apparent limit or satisfaction.

To be fair, the lack of limitations exists on both economic systems. When was the last time someone you know turned down money?

Capitalism fails in two areas: the very rich can easy manipulate markets and exert an unhealthy control over large sections of the economy. Without some form of artificial regulation, pure capitalism will eventually lead to dictatorship, or at the least oligarchy. The very poor can easily find themselves unable to compete simply by virtue of their poverty, in a self-reinforcing trap.

In the ideal, the government does not allow large economic powers to exist. They are regulated through such things as anti-trust laws. The poor are kept from extreme poverty by social programs (limited socialism) that prevent them from becoming permanently un-competitive. One can easily argue that these checks against runaway capitalism are malfunctioning or at least poorly implemented, but I see little reasonable argument that they are not needed.

I like to describe capitalism as an Irish tater... nutritious but dull and bland. Socialism is like salt. If you combine the two in the proper ratios, you get French fries... delicious, amazing French fries! Too little salt, and they're just bland. Too much salt and they're inedible. It takes the right balance.

Too little socialism allows capitalism to become unstable at both ends of the spectrum. Too much socialism destroys the very engine that runs capitalism by removing the reward to improve oneself and stifling economic creativity, just like too much salt destroys the French fries.

TheRedneck