Debunked: Socialism has never worked

[Sparko]

OK I watched the whole thing (thanks for the speed up tip)

Most of it just went and defined the various types of socialism. I found that pretty interesting. At the end he started proselytizing which I disagreed with.

One thing I will note is that most times socialists want to do as Starlight did and claim it is putting the power in the hands of the people, but in fact it is putting all of the power in the hands of the government. In true socialism, the government controls the means of production and the redistribution of wealth. Rather than making everyone free and giving the power and wealth to the people, the people are slaves to the government and have to depend on the government for everything from food to healthcare to jobs. As long as you have a completely benevolent government you are OK, but where in the history of the world has that ever happened?

[Mountain Man]

I would say they were never socialist. Socialism is about distributing power among society (be it among the workers in a business, among the wider community, or among everyone in the country) particular with regard to economic power and control over economic resources and businesses.

If power is concentrated into the hands of a single dictator, that's the opposite of socialism because the power isn't distributed. If you had a democratic government that owned all businesses and ran the entire economy, that would be a version of socialism because you'd have actually distributed the power among the people via the mechanism of democracy. But if you just replace the capitialistic business owner who gives orders to the workers with a national dictator who gives orders to the workers, you haven't socialized the power and empowered the workers, you've just directly substituted one form of authoritarianism for another which is what socialism opposes in the first place. The OP video describes USSR/China as "authoritarian right-wing" which I think is accurate in the sense that their authoritarian natures were what primarily characterized them - they definitely didn't distribute (socialize) economic power to the people in the way that socialism seeks to.

I find a very useful way to conceptualize it is to create a chart with arrows of who has power over who. If the power-chart is hierarchical (e.g. the CEO is at the top in a business, and he gives orders to the managers under them, and they give orders to the staff under them) then you've got an authoritarian business model. If the power-chart isn't hierarchical and has loops in it (e.g. if the workers at the bottom are in a trade-union and their elected union representative negotiates with the CEO as to how the company is run and so has a degree of power over him, and thus you have an arrow going from the workers at the bottom right up to the top) then you've got a socialized system. Democracy is a method of socializing power, because the elected government has power over the people, but the people have power to replace the government, so there's arrows of power going both up and down. In traditional capitalism, the power structure is purely hierarchical with the CEO giving orders on down to the minimum wage workers at the bottom having no power and just taking orders. Socialism seeks to find ways of breaking that hierarchical structure in some way and socializing the power so that all the workers have a say in how the company is run, or the wider community does - methods of doing this can include, but are not limited to: Trade unions, the employees being shareholders and thus having a vote in how the company is run, an elected worker representative on the Board, an elected community representative on the board, a democratic government or council have significant control over the company, etc. All of these break the strict hierarchy in the chart of who has power over who in the business, and mean power is being socialized to everyone.

Oh, I see, so any example of the failures of socialism, you're just going to "loosely define" as "not really socialism", and any examples of a successful government, you're going to "loosely define" as "essentially like socialism".

Did you really think nobody would see through this ruse?

[seer]

Yes. Having the government more involved seems to work much better than countries where the government is 'smaller' and there are less social safety nets.

Yes but the monies generated for these social programs come from free market enterprises, largely through taxes. No free markets, no social programs. You end up like the Soviet Union. Why do you think China is running to free market solutions?

Socialism has never required the government per se to control those things, merely that there was distributed control of them and they weren't solely in the hands of the captialists / a single 'owner' of the business.

Classically that is what socialism was, government control of the means of production. What you are speaking of is greater or lesser degrees of wealth redistribution. Of course you need wealth in the first place to redistribute it.

That claim doesn't seem well-evidenced.

Then show me one actual socialistic model that worked. The countries you reference were largely based on free markets.

[Mountain Man]

As long as you have a completely benevolent government you are OK, but where in the history of the world has that ever happened?

As the saying goes, a government at its best is a necessary evil; at its worst, an intolerable one.

[seer]

Rather than making everyone free and giving the power and wealth to the people, the people are slaves to the government and have to depend on the government for everything from food to healthcare to jobs. As long as you have a completely benevolent government you are OK, but where in the history of the world has that ever happened?

That is an important point, the power in the end is not broadly shared by the people, but the people are ruled by elite government officials.

[Mountain Man]

Then show me one actual socialistic model that worked. The countries you reference were largely based on free markets.

You're never going to get a straight answer to this. He showed his hand already, and the only way he can even pretend to argue in favor of socialism is if he plays fast and loose with the meanings of words. He's trying to define his way to victory, which is one of the more intellectually dishonest forms of argument.

[Sparko]

seems to me that the ultimate in "power owned by the people" is capitalism. In capitalism you have private ownership of property and the means of production and wealth. The people have the money, the businesses, the production. You might be working for someone, but at least he is a private citizen and not the government. You also have the choice to start your own business and produce your own product and make your own money.

[Mountain Man]

I like the saying: "Capitalism is terrible economic system; it just happens to be better than anything else we've tried."

[demi-conservative]

Socialism, very loosely speaking, is about power to the people and concern for others. So, loosely speaking, democracy is an example of socialism, as is "love your neighbor as yourself".

[Starlight]

Most of it just went and defined the various types of socialism. I found that pretty interesting... In true socialism, the government controls the means of production and the redistribution of wealth.

Having just learned the many varieties of socialism, some of which are anarchist in the sense of having no government, you then turn around and declare that 'true' socialism means government control?

As long as you have a completely benevolent government you are OK, but where in the history of the world has that ever happened?

In the democratic Western world the governments are generally benevolent and that's the point of democracy. There's a rough correlation between how big the government is and how happy the people are in modern Western democratic countries. Denmark, which has the happiest people, has the biggest government (in terms of amount of tax revenue and expenditure in the economy - the government there comprises ~50% of the economy and private industry ~50%).

I get that in the US you have a terrible government, a terrible system of government, a lethally powerful military industrial complex, rogue government spy agencies spying on everyone, etc and so most Americans don't really conceive of your government as 'benevolent'. Whereas if you did a survey here as to whether the government was benevolent people would look at you funny and say "Duh. Of course it is. That's the point of a democracy."

[psstein]

I get that in the US you have a terrible government, a terrible system of government, a lethally powerful military industrial complex, rogue government spy agencies spying on everyone, etc and so most Americans don't really conceive of your government as 'benevolent'. Whereas if you did a survey here as to whether the government was benevolent people would look at you funny and say "Duh. Of course it is. That's the point of a democracy."

A federalist system is a pretty good system for many reasons. Your dislike of it doesn't constitute an argument against it. Most developed countries have significant internal surveillance, including your New Zealand (which you often paint as some sort of special, amazing country).

Government is benevolent when it serves the interests of the people. Most governments rarely do so, including the lovely Scandinavian ones.

[Starlight]

including your New Zealand (which you often paint as some sort of special, amazing country).

NZ's not uniquely special, but it's pretty consistently in the top 10 countries on international multivariate rankings, along with Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Australia, and Canada.

From an international perspective, clearly that group of countries are doing a large number of things right since they so consistently top the charts, and there is obviously much to be learned from them. But there does seem to be a certain degree of patriotic American outrage here of "how dare you imply that your country that consistently ranks so much better than America, might actually be better than America!" There's been a 'socialist' government-run healthcare system here for 75 years, and people here are surprised when they learn that the US government doesn't provide healthcare for all its citizens because failure to do that is something people here associate with 3rd world nations.

FYI, if you asked a person here "what is the best country in the world?" their response would be something like "Um, I guess Denmark or Sweden", whereas when you visit those countries as a NZer the people there literally often ask "why do you come here, when NZ is the best country in the world?" People here are not indoctrinated into believing in the greatness of their own country like they are in the US, and there tends to be the assumption that the grass on the other side is greener.

[Starlight]

Government is benevolent when it serves the interests of the people. Most governments rarely do so, including the lovely Scandinavian ones.

I would say 100% of what the government here and in Scandinavia do is serve the interest of the people. That's the point of them. We elect politicians that will do that.

On what do you base you insane-sounding claim?

[psstein]

I would say 100% of what the government here and in Scandinavia do is serve the interest of the people. That's the point of them. We elect politicians that will do that.

On what do you base you insane-sounding claim?

I don't consider mass Muslim migration, when Islam is fundamentally at odds with Western culture, to be in the interest of the people.

[DesertBerean]

I find that in this forum there is a low-awareness of the first part of that definition among conservatives. There is a lot of "I think that communism in the USSR and Chinese was bad, therefore socialism in general is bad" kind of thinking and a lot of equating communism and socialism.

Being able to think of examples where something hasn't worked doesn't prove though that it doesn't work in general. It's can be like saying "I can think of examples where police did bad things, therefore I'm against there being any police."

The line between social democracy and democratic socialism is pretty thin at times.