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Socialism Is Always Doomed to Fail
- Thread starter Trausti
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SimpleDon
Veteran Member
Are there two countries named "China"??
Booming economy? It's a Potemkin economy. The government is obsessed with maintaining a 7% growth rate--and doing so through insane level of borrowing. Sooner or later they are going to have a major crash.
No race riots? Agreed--how the government would react to a race riot keeps such things from happening. Plenty of racism, though. I've got some relatives over there that I doubt I'll ever meet--because a relative doesn't want it known that my wife is married to a non-Chinese. (They know she's married to an American but think I'm ethnic Chinese.) I've had multiple people think it's unsafe for us to travel to certain areas--the only reason being the locals aren't Han.
No graffiti?
1) Labor is a lot cheaper over there, the cost of cleaning it up is a lot lower--you would expect a lot less.
2) I've seen a lot of it, although it's almost always advertising.
Clean streets?
Again, labor is a lot cheaper over there. Despite that, I've seen plenty of junk on the streets and even more so out on the highways (where cleaning them would be a lot harder.)
Squalor?
I've never seen the really bad areas. However, what I have seen:
1) Entire dwellings that were roughly 12' square.
2) Dwellings where water & sewer were added after the fact and only outside the house. (Their only water is an outdoor sink.) Electricity was likewise after the fact but apparently internal. (Toilets and trash were at communal points--and I saw lots of guys urinating into any waterways.)
3) A "toilet" at a bus stop--the men's at least was simply an area with a retaining wall. I saw nothing of how it drained or was emptied--and it most certainly needed emptying. Most of the feces there looked like they had been rather urgent. Be glad I have no way of reproducing the smell.
Chinese government care about the people?
Only if that doesn't interfere with the rich and powerful--and it usually does.
Not corrupted?
It's all about what you can get away with. Corruption is at pandemic levels. Virtually everyone in their equivalent of Congress is a billionaire--money they got while in office. How else could that be but corruption?
My direct knowledge of China is twenty years old, but it concurs with Loren's. I dealt with the very highest levels of the Chinese government down to the lowest and didn't meet any one who wasn't corrupt. It is what drove the turn to capitalism, the opprotunity to receive bribes and to a lesser extent the breaking of the iron ricebowl, the guarantee of a job and subsistence.
Harry Bosch
Contributor
The "collective" is meant to stand for "worker-owned" companies with no "outside" owners. There are some employee owned ESOP type of companies in the US. But the average socialist would not consider Apple to be a socialist company!
Harry Bosch
Contributor
The problem in these posts is that people won't agree on accepted definitions. Most accepted definitions agree that socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production. Billy believes that the best definition is a collective group of investors owning a company is socialism. Steve believes that socialism is a company with a strong safety net.
Back to the op: I'd agree with the central point that history has shown that "forced collective ownership of the means of production by a collective group of workers" has not worked. Countries that allow companies to form as they naturally occur (employee owned, individual owned, owned by stock holders, and/or etc) but that tax companies and workers and then offer generous safety nets are the best countries to live in over time. Any argument there?
untermensche
Contributor
What the defenders of capitalism never seem to see is the fragile nature of the system and they never seem to see the victims of the crashes. The blindness of the believers.
It is a system that is constantly crashing.
The last crash was in 2008.
The system had collapsed and the government had to step in and prop it up.
Even despite the massive support from the government about a trillion in wealth just disappeared. The economy faltered and millions lost their jobs and then their homes and dreams.
The system is a bunch of junk that breaks down and produces misery constantly.
It is not worth having.
And this is just the US. Let's not talk about Europe.
It is a system that is constantly crashing.
The last crash was in 2008.
The system had collapsed and the government had to step in and prop it up.
Even despite the massive support from the government about a trillion in wealth just disappeared. The economy faltered and millions lost their jobs and then their homes and dreams.
The system is a bunch of junk that breaks down and produces misery constantly.
It is not worth having.
And this is just the US. Let's not talk about Europe.
Harry Bosch
Contributor
All economies go up and down. The value of a house or a stock is the value at a particular time. Over time it changes. It's one of the reasons why managing wealth or assets is not as easy as it sounds. If you can't handle swings in value, you shouldn't be an owner. You think that the Spanish Anarchists didn't have booms and busts in their short-lived era? Do you think that centrally controlled economies don't experience busts?
Why not talk Europe? As a progressive, I'd say that Europe's greater safety net evens out the booms and busts.
untermensche
Contributor
You cannot make any comments on "all economics".
You don't know many economic theories and most can never be tried because of the dominance of the systems that exist and own the natural means of production. The minerals and the commodities like fertile land, and the minds and habits of the population.
We are stuck with this piece of junk of system that is just a casino for rich people and a death and misery lottery for others.
At this point it would take incredible violence to rid ourselves of this monstrosity.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
But that means Jason's definition is wrong, not bilby's which was bilby's point. Btw, I think family-owned businesses where the workers are the owners and the owners are the workers, like some small farms and some small mom and pop shops are socialist according to your definition.
Don't family-owned businesses have a property-interest in their business to the exclusion of everyone else?
SimpleDon
Veteran Member
The financial sector is inherently unstable. This is because they constantly test the bounds constraining them. They are constantly dreaming up new ways to make money by offering new financial instruments, usually highly leveraged ones like the mortgage-backed securities that promised stable, high returns because home prices never go down. Securities that made the banks who offered them into predatory lenders, they loaned money to people that they knew couldn't pay back the loan because they would take the home and turn around and sell it, often at a higher price.
This is worse now than ever because of the tremendous amount of money that the government has intentionally diverted from wages to profits, from the poor and the middle class to the already wealthy, money that needs investments that offer a high return but with a degree of safety.
This constant testing of the boundaries that are supposed to contain them is why we need to provide oversight of what they are doing. This is the job of the Federal Reserve Bank who has the ultimate responsibility for the stability of the banking system. And it is where the failure of the government to police the banks contributed to the 2008 meltdown. The Fed felt that the financial sector had learned to self-regulate, when in fact the idea that the Fed and the SEC hadn't clamped down was taken as a sign that what the banks were doing was legitimate.
The efforts to maintain the boundaries that the financial system operate in isn't to perfect the economy, it is an effort to police the financial sector to try to prevent bad behavior. It is the same that primarily state and local governments do to police society to enforce the laws against criminals. I don't see the free market crowd suggesting that we can get rid of most of our criminal laws because the criminals have learned to self-regulate. The idea is absurd but they are constantly saying that the financial sector can be self-regulating.
arkirk
Veteran Member
The term socialism denotes a system of governance that concerns itself with the well being of all the citizens within its purview. There has been a lot of argument here about who owns what but the term is NOT ABOUT OWNERSHIP. It is much more about the priorities of the government and about the bounds of human behavior within the society. The best forms of socialism will be democratic. No system of governance is fail safe, or even permanent. What is important is that it be humanistic (humane), fair to all, and democratic with a determination to maintain the greatest level of human rights. The idea of "ownership" has been used over the centuries by unscrupulous people to justify self serving actions by individuals and organizations that violate the most basic of human rights. No system lasts forever. No system has God's unqualified blessing. No system involving living beings can be static. Socialism, when sufficiently democratic and informed can provide a framework for human societies to maintain relative peace and order and well being. As soon as a system degenerates into a mud flinging contest with all sorts of crazy claims of ownership of people and the ecosystem itself, it loses its possibilities of being beneficial to ALL the people within it.
Our society and economy operates within a greater set of systems and we must coordinate with these systems (serve the furtherance of ecosystems that support our species and those other species we rely on). Socialism must have the guidance of good science, education and democracy to work. When it gets taken over by any oligarchic group, it ceases to be useful. The idea behind democracy is that governance serve all the people. It is a fine line between failing system and functional system. This is very obvious to us when we watch the self serving billionaires rip up the environment and society itself for profit.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Pure fantasy and delusion. Risk is a part of life that humans have had to deal with since the beginning. The future is unpredictable. Capitalism is one of the best systems devised to manage and reduce risk and works with wisdom of crowds to best predict the future (which is still pretty bad, but far better than any other method: think about the pricing system for futures contracts, for example, a remarkable achievement and a source of risk reduction in production systems for essential commodities like food and energy). Risk can also be offloaded to those who wish to willingly take it on (when a company fails, employees lose a job and not all their wealth on top it in a case where they are allowed to own companies other than just the one they work at, for example).
When capitalism runs into problems, people may lose their houses and jobs and have reduced wealth while the issues get worked out. When other systems fail, people literally die (think famines, civil wars due to far more political instability compared to the wealthy capitalist countries, etc.). The greater wealth generated by the system provides a massive cushion to weather the tough times in the form of savings (and, as is the case in modern times, a safety net via government). People can diversify their wealth into many different asset classes as well.
Your proposed system is massively more risky for the worker. You propose they own the company they work at and are not allowed to own any other company. If their company fails, they are not only out a job but lose an asset equal to a huge percentage of their net worth. They have little to no ability to invest to build up savings and wealth.
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arkirk
Veteran Member
It is a sore point with Capitalists and even some socialists. The environment owns us, all our money, the air we breathe, all the land and animals, oceans...in short everything. If we were a little smarter we would attempt to serve not the master, the owner, or the oligarch, but instead the principles that help our environment remain a fit place for humans to abide.
Horatio Parker
Veteran Member
Sure, reduce risk, make other people pay. Limited liability is the lifeblood of capitalism. When in trouble, welsh on your debts. For the good of all society, of course.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Given that 7 billion humans are living to the highest average life expectancy ever before achieved in human history, with the highest achieved by the wealthy capitalist countries, I'd say the current environment is the healthiest and fittest environment for humans that has ever been achieved.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
It's difficult to define socialism. A lot of people have different ideas and this has probably always been the case. There were a lot of thinkers who came up with ideas on how society ought to be as part of a critique on the way things were under Empires and under flavors of capitalism, to criticize child labor in the Industrial Revolution. But even before that there were utopian socialists in the Enlightenment and some of their ideas transformed over time and even influenced Marx and others. One of the primary themes of socialism is indeed such critique of things, like for example capitalism. This is why Marx said that socialism was a transition in between capitalism and communism, after an overthrow of capitalism.
So the idea of worker-owned means of production is very narrow. Jason's claim of collective-owned means of production also fails because it is too broad. However, it is interesting to mention because the op also fails in if it claims socialism is a failure because of collective ownership, then so are shareholders as bilby points out. Let's look at some other broader ways socialism could be defined:
While first considering, what parts of our current US system have been part of a backlash to capitalism, let's also consider those such (anti-capitalist) features which may fit into these bullets.
First bullet: "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." First piece "means of production": Means of production could be public property and govt spending on labor in regard to such property such as various energy sources, like hydro power etc or community ownership or cooperatives of same. There are of course some cooperatives in the US which are worker owned, like Sunkist, in addition to govt/community ownership. Second piece "distribution": this seems to be Jason's confusion. Distribution of wealth to the poor and also social security to people who have worked a full life are both aspects of socialist ideas and contrary to capitalism. This is not only backed up by this dictionary definition but also Marx's own words "from each according to ability, to each according to his need," and USSR "from each according to his ability, to each according to his labor." third piece "...regulated by the community...": in this case, our representative democracy makes regulations (or at least tries to while under undue influences but that's a side issue) on behalf of the "community" regarding fairness of a whole host of things which are contrary to pure capitalism, but also include on fair exchange of labor for money via the minimum wage etc and even making large corporations above a certain size provide healthcare options to full-time employees.
Second bullet: "policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism." Refer to bullet above which is very comprehensive.
Third bullet: "a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism." It isn't clear that there is any eventual state of communism. However, right now, we are indeed in a post-capitalist or hybrid state. There was no violent overthrow of capitalism for us, but instead changes through federal, state, and local laws to enable all of the things mentioned two paragraphs up. One might consider FDR's actions to have been revolutionary as he sort of held the oligarchy hostage with threats about adding justices to the Supreme Court. He also tried to introduce worker rights, representing the citizens' interests in the country, contrary again to pure capitalism. The programs he and others introduced did also keep revolution at bay because if we remained in a pure capitalist state much violence could have occurred.
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Finally, I will add that another terrible aspect of capitalism is that it actually leads to the opposite of what its advocates say it produces: competition. The government has to step in to break up monopolies and make anti-trust laws, laws about price-fixing etc. Capitalism doesn't do what it purports to do without community (government) intervention. So what we actually have is a heavily tweaked economy by a representative democracy acting on behalf of community (to a large extent) and this is superior to capitalism, and not pure capitalism because we have learned about the failings of capitalism from socialists and experience and have tried to address them in our very mixed non-pure way.
So the idea of worker-owned means of production is very narrow. Jason's claim of collective-owned means of production also fails because it is too broad. However, it is interesting to mention because the op also fails in if it claims socialism is a failure because of collective ownership, then so are shareholders as bilby points out. Let's look at some other broader ways socialism could be defined:
Google "definition of socialism" said:
While first considering, what parts of our current US system have been part of a backlash to capitalism, let's also consider those such (anti-capitalist) features which may fit into these bullets.
First bullet: "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." First piece "means of production": Means of production could be public property and govt spending on labor in regard to such property such as various energy sources, like hydro power etc or community ownership or cooperatives of same. There are of course some cooperatives in the US which are worker owned, like Sunkist, in addition to govt/community ownership. Second piece "distribution": this seems to be Jason's confusion. Distribution of wealth to the poor and also social security to people who have worked a full life are both aspects of socialist ideas and contrary to capitalism. This is not only backed up by this dictionary definition but also Marx's own words "from each according to ability, to each according to his need," and USSR "from each according to his ability, to each according to his labor." third piece "...regulated by the community...": in this case, our representative democracy makes regulations (or at least tries to while under undue influences but that's a side issue) on behalf of the "community" regarding fairness of a whole host of things which are contrary to pure capitalism, but also include on fair exchange of labor for money via the minimum wage etc and even making large corporations above a certain size provide healthcare options to full-time employees.
Second bullet: "policy or practice based on the political and economic theory of socialism." Refer to bullet above which is very comprehensive.
Third bullet: "a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of communism." It isn't clear that there is any eventual state of communism. However, right now, we are indeed in a post-capitalist or hybrid state. There was no violent overthrow of capitalism for us, but instead changes through federal, state, and local laws to enable all of the things mentioned two paragraphs up. One might consider FDR's actions to have been revolutionary as he sort of held the oligarchy hostage with threats about adding justices to the Supreme Court. He also tried to introduce worker rights, representing the citizens' interests in the country, contrary again to pure capitalism. The programs he and others introduced did also keep revolution at bay because if we remained in a pure capitalist state much violence could have occurred.
___________________________________
Finally, I will add that another terrible aspect of capitalism is that it actually leads to the opposite of what its advocates say it produces: competition. The government has to step in to break up monopolies and make anti-trust laws, laws about price-fixing etc. Capitalism doesn't do what it purports to do without community (government) intervention. So what we actually have is a heavily tweaked economy by a representative democracy acting on behalf of community (to a large extent) and this is superior to capitalism, and not pure capitalism because we have learned about the failings of capitalism from socialists and experience and have tried to address them in our very mixed non-pure way.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Who "pays" that did not agree to take on the risk? When a bank or investor makes a loan, and the company fails, they knew ahead of time they wouldn't be able to go after the owner's personal assets. The risk of failure was partially transferred to the bank, and the bank was compensated for that via the interest rate it charged. Insurance is another way sell risk. The risk is reduced for the policy holder and willingly offloaded to the insurance company in exchange for some upfront cash.
Ownership entails some form of risk, and every asset has to be owned by someone or a group of someones. If someone wants to minimize risk they should never put too much wealth into a single asset. In the case of the housing bust, it was the homeowners and those that financed the purchase that got hit. The renters didn't lose much. But even then, the homeowners generally had limited liability. They weren't on the hook for the rest of their mortgage after abandoning their house.
Also, note that our government massively encourages people to put a huge amount of their wealth into a single asset, a house, through all sorts of policies and programs. Is it surprising that this bad policy eventually backfired when that asset class took its biggest hit in the history of the country? People would be better off if their wealth was diversified across many different assets rather than a single asset.
Don2 (Don1 Revised)
Contributor
Okay, I probably agree with most of what you're saying. See post#96.
Horatio Parker
Veteran Member
So no one gets hurt when investments go bad. No damage done?
You know what written off debts are? Private sector deficit spending.
Axulus
Veteran Member
Huh? How did you get that "no one gets hurt when investments go bad", from what I wrote? In fact I named all sorts of parties that lose out, and specifically referred to the owners (and financiers) of the asset as the ones that take the biggest financial hit (because they willingly take on the financial risk). Other parties can be harmed when an investment goes bad, but investments going bad are part of the inherent unpredictability of the future. Companies fail under any system, for example, which entails workers needing to find a new job.
Your last sentence is incomprehensible.