What is Socialism?

[Cow Poke]

An amusing but potentially useful way of thinking about Marx himself, I think, is to interpret him as if he were a Science Fiction writer (which, of course, hadn't yet been invented in his day)...

Jules Verne would disagree, I think.

[JimL]

An oxymoron.

An oxymoron you've been fortunate enough, though unappreciative of, to have been raised in since the New Deal.

[Sparko]

I'm usually not interested in people talking about merits or demerits of socialism, since the term will mean different things to different people at different times and in different parts of the world. I watched the video anyway to give it a chance. I'm going to assume that the type of socialism they both describe is a fair and accurate description. Here are my thoughts:

It's strange to hear someone from Guatemala talk about the benefits of capitalism compared to socialism, considering the cost in lives capitalism has had in that country.

The interviewer says that if Sanders was elected the USA could have become socialist.

The argument is made that capitalist participants, "the baker", know better than bureaucrats. In the US government, the baker can be elected to office, appointed to a position, or act as an advisor. How is socialism any different?

Because she is talking about the Baker knowing better than the bureaucrats for himself and his own situation, not everyone elses.

She says that because "absolute power corrupts absolutely", socialist bureaucracy is unstable, but how is that not just as true for especially dominant capitalists? What's the difference between Castro or Chavez and the Koch brothers or Bezos?

Because generally when the socialists get in power, they stay there. And in capitalism there are built in checks and balances. The free market reacts. If you have a product nobody wants, your business fails. Under socialism, it remains because it is propped up by the government and becomes the standard. That is why when you go to socialist countries you see everyone driving the same crappy car that looks like it was built in the 1980s. No need to improve when you control the consumer and the production.

"If a bureaucrat makes a mistake his bank account is not affected." "With capitalism, if you don't serve the wants and needs of your customers, you lose your own money." Then what are corporations for? What about CEOs who ruin a company and jump ship with a golden parachute to the next company?

um what? The companies and their owners lose their own money if their products are not wanted or good. Companies are not slave owners. If you are an employee you are free to leave whenever you want.

And it ends with the moronic idea that people who talk about government provided programs as "free" don't know what taxes are.

That's true enough. Just ask the new Senator "Just pay for it" Cortez.

[Sparko]

I don't get the reference.

I read Marx and Marxism last month which is an interesting historical survey of socialism published this year, which filled a bit of a gap in my knowledge, because while I tend to personally engage a lot with modern democratic socialists I hadn't read much on the history of socialism (to a significant extent because I don't view the history as particularly important).

One of the big takeaways I got from it is that Marx himself isn't necessarily all that helpful or clear in his own works. He lived during a time when the French had decided that feudalism sucked and had cut the heads off their nobles and moved to capitalism in the hope that this would usher in an age of "Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood"... and it hadn't particularly done so. Marx fancied himself a philosopher and set out to answer the question of "what is it about Capitalism that makes life suck for the workers almost as much as it did under Feudalism?" in a deep philosophical way using fairly abstract terms. To the question of why there was no sense of brotherhood among men, he pointed out that capitalism fosters competition among workers as it forces them to compete with each other to get jobs and for pay rises, and their managers boss them around much like the feudal lords before them did. Thus, rather than promote friendliness and brotherhood, capitalism "alienates" (one of his favorite terms) men from one another. He thought that due to capitalism, wealth inequality was going to spiral out of control, and eventually the workers would get sick of the inequality and break out the pitchforks much as they had done for the nobles of the feudal system. This, he thought, would lead to some sort of post-Capitalist system that he called "socialism" but he wasn't very clear on what it was particularly, other than that workers would have it better and there would be more sense of brotherhood among them.

Marx tended towards abstract philosophical discussions rather than practical analysis, but insofar as he had clear practical ideas of how to improve the situation, his suggestions included progressive income tax and estate tax, both of which were fairly universally implemented after the Great Depression in most Western countries. In general, he didn't advocate many particular practical steps to improve society or to create any sort of socialist utopia, but preferred to waffle with vague philosophical language about the problems of capitalism and how it "alienated" humanity from one another. For Marx himself "socialism" is sort of a very vague and undefined idea meaning something like "a society where workers have it better than they do currently, and are more friendly toward each other and there is a sense of universal brotherhood among humanity". Insofar as Marx's Socialism goes, it is not really clear in Marx's thinking the extent to which the government might or might not have any particular role in doing it, or whether it is something that arises over time via grassroots as workers think more about their situation and there are social shifts to change things etc. His works are very long, very waffly, and he changed his mind on many things over the course of his life.

This vague concept of Socialism itself had predated Marx, and there were many and various contemporaries of him coming up with a wide variety of different ideas about what Socialism might or might not be. Their ideas included "hey, let's start a commune and share all our stuff" to "our local workplace should be a co-operative where all the workers have a share in ownership" to "let's form a political party and try and get the government to pass some legislation to make life better for workers" to "let's support labour unions". So there was a huge variety among "socialists" in the early 20th century, because there was nothing remotely like any single clear Socialism. There was no agreement as to whether they needed government involvement or participation, and among those who thought they needed government assistance, no agreement as to what political strategy would be most useful getting that assistance.

Then along came Lenin, who had read some of Marx's writings and had various other influences, and had his own bright ideas about how to create a Socialist Utopia. He decided to do it in his native Russia. Most other Socialists at the time laughed at the idea, because Socialism was widely viewed by them as being a Post-Capitalist phase of society, and Russia was dirt-poor pre-capitalist society, so it wasn't the right type of country to do socialism in. Nonetheless, the disinterest of the rest of the world's Socialists didn't stop Lenin successfully leading a takeover of the country and doing the chopping-heads-off-nobles thing, and then declaring himself the leader of the country. But, okay... what then? How does one join the dots from "I am now leader of a country" to "some sort of Socialism is successfully implemented in that country"? What policies might one implement? Lenin had a variety of ideas. Firstly he developed a new idea of the "Party" (not a Marx term). Marx had waffled abstractly and vaguely about a possible future post-capitalist pre-socialist transitional phase of society involving "the dictatorship of the proletariat" which can be reasonably translated by the modern phrase "tyranny of the majority in a democracy". Lenin decided that the "Party" represented the people of his society, and he was the head of the Party, and hence that he himself as dictator represented all the people and hence democracy was summed up in him, and "dictatorship of the proletariat" Totally Meant He Should Be Dictator. That was very convenient for him. Also he decided that the Communist Party represented workers and hence anyone who said anything at all bad about The Party was inherently against all the people in general, and thus was a bad person inherently who should be punished for their criminality. Having established himself a nice dictatorship, he largely declared victory, and sat on his laurels as having achieved the great Socialist Utopia. Anyone who thought he hadn't done so within Russia was silenced with force, and socialists outside Russia, such as George Orwell, mocked him (Orwell wrote Animal Farm satirizing this Russian "socialism" by pointing out it was a pretty standard feudal dictatorship and there was minimal difference to capitalism/feudalism).

Lenin decided that in order to become properly socialist, Russia needed to advance from its pre-capitalist state, into capitalism, before it could emerge out the other side into a socialist society. So he decided to rush that change as fast as possible, by industrializing as quickly as possible. So in an extremely short time-span Russia went from having mostly a bunch of peasant farmers into a massive industrial revolution. Conditions for workers in the factories, were, ironically much much worse than they typically were under capitalism or feudalism, with little or no interest paid by the Party to the miserable conditions of their workers. When Stalin took over from Lenin, he happily took up the mantle of brutal dictator, and proceeded to kill everyone he didn't like. A reasonably similar pattern played out in China under Mao.

The general view of Socialists in the West was that these things were not really Socialism and not really all that interesting. Crazy dictators were crazy dictators, and certainly nothing they were doing appeared to be improving the situation of the workers or particularly benefiting their people in general. Meanwhile the socialists in the West focused on things like labour unions, progressive income taxes, healthcare for all, minimum wages, paid sick leave and vacation time, and generally improving the situation of the worker and the average person. The typical terms used to distinguish these vast differences, are those in the Western are "democratic socialists" or "social democrats", while the Lenin/Stalin/Mao dictatorship is "communism". Thus "democratic socialism" and "communism" are two almost entirely different schools of thought in the wider umbrella of "socialism" and have very very little in common and often little interest in each other.

To jump forward to the present day, my country's current Prime Minister used to be the president of the International Union of Socialist Youth the purpose of which is "the promotion of democracy, human rights, and youth policy... to advocate for equal opportunities and the right to social and political participation for youth all over the world". One of the US's top socialist professors spends most of his time talking about the value of co-operatives where the workers have partial ownership of the business and participate in democratic processes inside their own workplace to elect their managers etc, which Marx at one point in his rambling writings lists as the most important issue in his view. Bernie Sanders, the US's most-liked politician, and democratic socialist, focuses on getting Medicare for All, and wants to do other things to help workers like increase the minimum wage to a living wage and strengthen unions.

Insofar as the OP is a ramble about some of the problems with central planning (something Lenin used to try and speed fast through the process of industrialization), okay then, don't have central planning. ~shrug~ It's not particularly relevant to socialism in general.

tl;dr

[Cow Poke]

tl;dr

drw?

[Sparko]

An oxymoron you've been fortunate enough, though unappreciative of, to have been raised in since the New Deal.

You are just an ordinary moron.

Social programs are not socialism. Socialism is a form of government. Although social programs can lead to socialism if taken too far.

[Cow Poke]

An oxymoron you've been fortunate enough, though unappreciative of, to have been raised in since the New Deal.

Ah, the New Deal, for which the cost has been placed on the backs of our grandchildren's grandchildren.... but it's OK if it's Democrat debt....

Today, the future cost of old New Deal programs still in effect is reckoned at more than $50 trillion. These programs include Social Security, Medicare (an amendment to Social Security), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (part of Social Security), Fannie Mae , the Tennessee Valley Authority , farm subsidies and large-scale government intervention intended to prop up troubled sectors of the economy.

We aren't paying down these obligations inherited from the old New Deal. On the contrary, the total tab keeps getting bigger every year. While the old New Deal involved unprecedented peacetime spending during the 1930s, its current escalating obligations dwarf that spending.

None of FDR's experts who promoted the old New Deal anticipated how costly these programs would become--despite experience with previous government programs that spun out of control. For instance, the Civil Service Retirement System was established in 1920 to provide retirement benefits for federal employees. It soon cost more than the experts predicted. Federal employees were supposed to pay for their future benefits, but their payments lagged behind benefits over the years. Political pressures eventually prevailed, resulting in taxpayers covering the deficits.

After Lyndon Johnson became president, he launched a succession of crusades, one of which was to amend Social Security with Medicare. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin explains LBJ's approach, "The subjects might change, but the essentials remained the same: in the opening, an expression of dire need; in the middle, a vague proposal; in the end, a buoyant description of the anticipated benefits--all contained in an analysis presented in a manner that often failed to distinguish between expectations and established realities ... Pass the bill now, worry about its effects and implementation later--this was the White House strategy."

The 1965 debate about Medicare involved a great deal of discussion about future costs. Opponents warned that Medicare could become a huge burden on taxpayers, but LBJ persuaded most members of Congress that financing Medicare would be easy because of all the baby boomers entering the workforce. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills estimated that the annual cost of Medicare would be $500 million. Today, Medicare's annual outlays exceed $330 billion.

source

The part I bolded -- so very true of socialism.

[Sparko]

drw?

idk

[rogue06]

Jules Verne would disagree, I think.

Not to mention folks like Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein (the benchmark "mad scientist" story) the year Marx was born.

[Cow Poke]

Not to mention folks like Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein (the benchmark "mad scientist" story) the year Marx was born.

Star needs to take his own advice:

Don't make crazy stuff up.

[Zymologist]

Not to mention folks like Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein (the benchmark "mad scientist" story) the year Marx was born.

Which is a great novel btw, for anyone who hasn't read it.

[rogue06]

Which is a great novel btw, for anyone who hasn't read it.

Nothing like the movie.

[Cow Poke]

Nothing like the movie.

My worst "nothing like the movie" was reading Clancy's Hunt For Red October, then seeing the movie.

[Zymologist]

Nothing like the movie.

The original Frankenstein "monster" is wildly different than any portrayal of him that I'm familiar with.

[One Bad Pig]

The original Frankenstein "monster" is wildly different than any portrayal of him that I'm familiar with.

Can't be any farther off than the real life Dracula is from the vampire version.