I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Ownership of the clothes on your back, your personal possessions, your home, the land you work... Sure.
Ownership of some plot of land hundreds of miles away where some stranger lives and works just because you have a piece of paper saying so? Not so much.
Ownership of an idea, a story, a song? Heh no.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
If you look at pre-industrial societies, the concept of ownership is a lot more fluid and superseded by ties based on clan and locality. The concept of "mine" existed, but the laws and norms involving who deserved to have what was not decided solely by who had legal possession. As in, it would not be unusual for members of a village to decide that a neighbor was hoarding too much, followed by everyone going to take their stuff, and redistribute it.
The big change is that the idea that capital could be divorced from liability is a modern concept that is not organic to human society. By which, I mean, most pre-capitalist societies would be fine with the idea that if a "corporation" committed a crime, then everyone who invested in it should be divested of fund or arrested for the crime. The conceptual break in liability is what makes the capitalist era different than the private merchants of the past.
I think in any sort of social analysis like that you need to take into account population density.
In a small pre-industrial village, everyone is related to each other within a couple of generations. Its basically an extended family.
Similarly, hunter gatherer tribes are extended families not unlike wolf packs. The elders of the tribe are literally their elders, their father/grand father/grand uncle/etc.
So trying to transplant past small scale societies into modern urban society is not going to work. I cannot trust my neighbor or my government as a family member.
Kind of irrelevant to the initial point about the concept of ownership and property though. We have a tendency to think of the ideas that we believe in as being universal and obvious but many of them are not and are just learned constructs of one sort or another. The point being that our current conception of property and ownership is far from the only one that's been used by humans.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
If you look at pre-industrial societies, the concept of ownership is a lot more fluid and superseded by ties based on clan and locality. The concept of "mine" existed, but the laws and norms involving who deserved to have what was not decided solely by who had legal possession. As in, it would not be unusual for members of a village to decide that a neighbor was hoarding too much, followed by everyone going to take their stuff, and redistribute it.
The big change is that the idea that capital could be divorced from liability is a modern concept that is not organic to human society. By which, I mean, most pre-capitalist societies would be fine with the idea that if a "corporation" committed a crime, then everyone who invested in it should be divested of fund or arrested for the crime. The conceptual break in liability is what makes the capitalist era different than the private merchants of the past.
I think in any sort of social analysis like that you need to take into account population density.
In a small pre-industrial village, everyone is related to each other within a couple of generations. Its basically an extended family.
Similarly, hunter gatherer tribes are extended families not unlike wolf packs. The elders of the tribe are literally their elders, their father/grand father/grand uncle/etc.
So trying to transplant past small scale societies into modern urban society is not going to work. I cannot trust my neighbor or my government as a family member.
Kind of irrelevant to the initial point about the concept of ownership and property though. We have a tendency to think of the ideas that we believe in as being universal and obvious but many of them are not and are just learned constructs of one sort or another. The point being that our current conception of property and ownership is far from the only one that's been used by humans.
There is also the problem with the fact that we have limited view of the past due to our history books being focused towards kings and battles and other irrelevant stuff.
Ye medieval society was much more complex then the Hollywood dung age look we get in books and movies. For instance in Spain there exists special courts that decide water rights according to need and despite being a "socialist" institution, many of them have been functioning for hundreds of years.
The "Tragedy of the commons" economists talk about is a reference to common grazing land of a village and unlike the economic example had several strict regulations and laws to prevented overgrazing. That only happened once capitalist got them enclosed for personal gain.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
Trade is not capitalism. Ownership is not capitalism. These concepts predate it by hundreds of thousands of years.
That's what we are trying to get at here. Capitalists have essentially co-opted a bunch of ancient practices - yup, merchants predate cities - and lumped them all under capitalism. In reality, capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old and was started as a tool to promote colonial expansion.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
Trade is not capitalism. Ownership is not capitalism. These concepts predate it by hundreds of thousands of years.
That's what we are trying to get at here. Capitalists have essentially co-opted a bunch of ancient practices - yup, merchants predate cities - and lumped them all under capitalism. In reality, capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old and was started as a tool to promote colonial expansion.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
The US isn't Hyper Capitalist, or even ideologically pure Capitalist. The US has some really fucky capitalist types that need reform, but we've also actually had periods of hyper capitalism we can contrast that against.
We include worker regulations, safety regulations, merger regulations, product regulations. These were established specifically to combat a period of hyper-capitalism.
Monopolies are the endgame of capitalism. A company continues to grow and expand as it absorbs more and more of its competition.
Worker exploitation is the endgame of capitalism. Companies are interested in making the most for the least, and that means finding ways to pay less for the same or more work.
Capitalism isn't concerned with people, it is concerned with production and profits. Any social considerations are ancillary to those two Ps.
Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and socialist policies are concerned with the wellbeing of the people.
We aren't entirely capitalist in the US, but there are still extremes that exist largely because of ignoring or skirting the existing regulations. Though, those regulations exist because of socialist reforms.
It's important to remember that the United States, up until the end of the 19th century, was more of a settler exploitation colony than a traditional nation state. Even after independence, the U.S. was where European capital dumped trillions into infrastructure development to get access to North America's resources.
That was not incidental to the nation's political development. Voting rights and worker conditions were set up in such a way as to limit the ability of the working class to improve their condition. It wasn't until a mass of immigrants from Europe in the late 19th century - who were further along in terms of developing tactics to fight back against capital to the point that many were literally fleeing after failed socialist revolutions - that the U.S. underwent a wave of activism aimed at increasing voting and worker rights.
There is a reason beyond just racism and xenophobia that the GOP has had an anti-immigrant wing since pretty its founding. Immigrants have a long history of upending capital's gravy train.
Since it's founding? That doesn't really track with the history I'm familiar with...
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
Trade is not capitalism. Ownership is not capitalism. These concepts predate it by hundreds of thousands of years.
That's what we are trying to get at here. Capitalists have essentially co-opted a bunch of ancient practices - yup, merchants predate cities - and lumped them all under capitalism. In reality, capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old and was started as a tool to promote colonial expansion.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
No. Capital is the system that developed when the English Crown divorced financial and criminal liability from ownership in share companies, which allowed colonial charter companies to be funded by private capital. This expanded beyond this limited sphere until it became the dominant economic relationship in the Western world and eventually the planet.
A government that "does nothing" will not get you to capitalism. Capitalism requires governments to use the court system to enforce rules of ownership, because the concept of shares requires an independent system to enforce and vet ownership. In the absence of this, you get Afghanistan where warlords control the means of production because they will shoot you if you don't give it to them.
The issue is that capitalists do what you are doing - essentially co-opt the entire concept of trade, ownership, and value. That's propaganda and rhetoric, especially the idea that governments and capitalism are somehow in eternal opposition where one ebbs as the other crests.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
Trade and ownership were fundamental parts of feudalism and mercantilism, too. You're getting necessary and sufficient conditions confused.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The issue is that capitalists do what you are doing - essentially co-opt the entire concept of trade, ownership, and value. That's propaganda and rhetoric, especially the idea that governments and capitalism are somehow in eternal opposition where one ebbs as the other crests.
I think we've all seen more than one libertarian equating the existence of currency with capitalism.
I think the biggest issue that people have with Socialism is that they think it's a binary option between it and captalism and that every country that's tried it has "failed", when for my money it's less of two options then it is a case of a sliding scale.
True, Too much socialism creates issues with government corruption, stifling innovation and a sprawling bueraucracy that all grind society to a halt, but the opposite is situations like what we saw in the guilded age wherein the wealthy were able to simply buy the government, own entire towns and the masses were generally fucked.
No, the better option is to simply use socialism as a check on capitalism so that innovation and personal innitiative are still rewarded at the same time steps are taken to ensure that the quality of life for the citizenry as a whole is elavated and a fiscal feudal system can't be formed.
The US isn't Hyper Capitalist, or even ideologically pure Capitalist. The US has some really fucky capitalist types that need reform, but we've also actually had periods of hyper capitalism we can contrast that against.
We include worker regulations, safety regulations, merger regulations, product regulations. These were established specifically to combat a period of hyper-capitalism.
Monopolies are the endgame of capitalism. A company continues to grow and expand as it absorbs more and more of its competition.
Worker exploitation is the endgame of capitalism. Companies are interested in making the most for the least, and that means finding ways to pay less for the same or more work.
Capitalism isn't concerned with people, it is concerned with production and profits. Any social considerations are ancillary to those two Ps.
Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and socialist policies are concerned with the wellbeing of the people.
We aren't entirely capitalist in the US, but there are still extremes that exist largely because of ignoring or skirting the existing regulations. Though, those regulations exist because of socialist reforms.
It's important to remember that the United States, up until the end of the 19th century, was more of a settler exploitation colony than a traditional nation state. Even after independence, the U.S. was where European capital dumped trillions into infrastructure development to get access to North America's resources.
That was not incidental to the nation's political development. Voting rights and worker conditions were set up in such a way as to limit the ability of the working class to improve their condition. It wasn't until a mass of immigrants from Europe in the late 19th century - who were further along in terms of developing tactics to fight back against capital to the point that many were literally fleeing after failed socialist revolutions - that the U.S. underwent a wave of activism aimed at increasing voting and worker rights.
There is a reason beyond just racism and xenophobia that the GOP has had an anti-immigrant wing since pretty its founding. Immigrants have a long history of upending capital's gravy train.
Since it's founding? That doesn't really track with the history I'm familiar with...
The US isn't Hyper Capitalist, or even ideologically pure Capitalist. The US has some really fucky capitalist types that need reform, but we've also actually had periods of hyper capitalism we can contrast that against.
We include worker regulations, safety regulations, merger regulations, product regulations. These were established specifically to combat a period of hyper-capitalism.
Monopolies are the endgame of capitalism. A company continues to grow and expand as it absorbs more and more of its competition.
Worker exploitation is the endgame of capitalism. Companies are interested in making the most for the least, and that means finding ways to pay less for the same or more work.
Capitalism isn't concerned with people, it is concerned with production and profits. Any social considerations are ancillary to those two Ps.
Socialism, Democratic Socialism, and socialist policies are concerned with the wellbeing of the people.
We aren't entirely capitalist in the US, but there are still extremes that exist largely because of ignoring or skirting the existing regulations. Though, those regulations exist because of socialist reforms.
It's important to remember that the United States, up until the end of the 19th century, was more of a settler exploitation colony than a traditional nation state. Even after independence, the U.S. was where European capital dumped trillions into infrastructure development to get access to North America's resources.
That was not incidental to the nation's political development. Voting rights and worker conditions were set up in such a way as to limit the ability of the working class to improve their condition. It wasn't until a mass of immigrants from Europe in the late 19th century - who were further along in terms of developing tactics to fight back against capital to the point that many were literally fleeing after failed socialist revolutions - that the U.S. underwent a wave of activism aimed at increasing voting and worker rights.
There is a reason beyond just racism and xenophobia that the GOP has had an anti-immigrant wing since pretty its founding. Immigrants have a long history of upending capital's gravy train.
Since it's founding? That doesn't really track with the history I'm familiar with...
I don't think it's fruitful to compare a socialist country with a capitalist country. Countries are very different places, and even in one country, you have radically different situations in different places and over the passage of time.
Socialism hasn't "failed," socialism has provided nations with some benefits and some problems. It's also faced global anti-socialist forces. But the comparison between the USSR in 1951 and Russia 2018 is ridiculous because the first is in 1951 and the second is in 2018. A better question would be, what might we have seen if the USSR was different? What might we see if Russia was different?
Socialism is a broad term. You can use it to mean a dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. party rule, or you can use it to mean a strong and well-entrenched democracy. Socialism simply means that social ownership is prevalent over private ownership. Co-operatives, state institutions, nationalised industries etc. And we can definitely see the advantage of nationalising healthcare, education, transportation etc. A more socialist policy would be to socialise things like credit institutions and such.
I think that the US is scared of socialism, that is, even if we take out the word socialism, the idea of socially owned institutions (be that co-operatives, unions, state industries etc), because of a strong inbuilt idea of self-reliance and independence from the government that can go into forms of paranoid extremist thought and behaviour, where people will not accept anything that they do not personally own or cannot be personally owned as acceptable, and the idea of being taxed by the government is reprehensible. I think it ties into a fetish for my property, my family, which I must protect myself.
The US seems to have a fetish for the individual not needing anyone else. That, in of itself, is anti-socialist. And even where the word "socialism" doesn't come into it, there's a lot of anti-socialist thought in the US that ties into a national culture which draws on that manifest destiny, live off the land, everyone for themselves, work hard and you can be a millionaire and the President etc. Every time I go to America, I'm struck by how much stuff is marketed to you as helping you live by yourself, without any need for help.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
The broader point seemed to be that the nations which are very wealthy and powerful are the ones that conquered, colonized and exploited many other countries, and that perhaps we should see this as the source of their economic success instead of the specific system of capitalism itself. Colonial imperialism was very profitable, it seems.
The implied argument is that capitalism is not, itself, a superior path to economic success. This seems like a big claim, though.
Japan's economy being a powerhouse is almost entire post war when they all but eliminated their military. And it was heavily capitalist in paradigm. They are now the world's third (or 4th depending on how you count the EU) economy.
China's is the second largest. While they definitely have roots that could be compared to European imperialism, they haven't done so post-war. Their economy was stagnant and ineffective until strongly capitalistic elements (allowing private businesses, privatization, decollectivization, opening to foreign investment and reducing trade barriers) in the late 70s to late 80s and they've grown to be the second largest economy in that time period. It still has strongly socialist elements but that growth can be pretty directly linked to those reforms and its more accurately called a mixed economy now.
India was a British colony that is the 6th largest economy. It had low growth with explicitly socialist economic policies until the early 90s when again there was economic liberalization with lower trade barriers, foreign investment, elimination of public monopolies and state owned industries etc. From the 50s to the 80s there was 3-4% growth and from the 90s on it was 7-9+% growth, or 1% real income growth per capita to 7-8% real income growth per capita.
Not to rain on your parade here, but the original claim was in reference to per-capita rich countries. Pointing to #28 and the two largest countries by population is not the solid defense of capitalism you imagine it to be. That countries with a billion+ population are going to have large economies is a given, how could they not?
The top of the list on a per capita basis is: countries with a lot of oil, city states, and the West.
I think the biggest issue that people have with Socialism is that they think it's a binary option between it and captalism and that every country that's tried it has "failed", when for my money it's less of two options then it is a case of a sliding scale.
True, Too much socialism creates issues with government corruption, stifling innovation and a sprawling bueraucracy that all grind society to a halt, but the opposite is situations like what we saw in the guilded age wherein the wealthy were able to simply buy the government, own entire towns and the masses were generally fucked.
No, the better option is to simply use socialism as a check on capitalism so that innovation and personal innitiative are still rewarded at the same time steps are taken to ensure that the quality of life for the citizenry as a whole is elavated and a fiscal feudal system can't be formed.
Socialism isn't the government doing things. The government doing things is Statism.
Socialism is democratization of economics. That is what "workers owning the means of production" means. The workers should own the capital that provides for their livelihood instead of the capitalist owners.
If you frame it right, it actually fits right into the American ideal of the small landowning farmer and the small self owned business. Jefferson's vision of a nation of yeoman farmers (ignoring slavery for the moment), equal in both political and economic stature, is actually a socialist vision.
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
You can have market socialism with worker owned companies, but that is likely to have many of the problems of capitalism still even if it would be an overall improvement.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Ownership of the clothes on your back, your personal possessions, your home, the land you work... Sure.
Ownership of some plot of land hundreds of miles away where some stranger lives and works just because you have a piece of paper saying so? Not so much.
Hell, I wouldn't even say that we learned that form of ownership. Resignation over it's enforcement by society? Sure. But I don't think many people consider it right and just that some guy who never even visited the place you work gets all the profit from your work.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
Trade is not capitalism. Ownership is not capitalism. These concepts predate it by hundreds of thousands of years.
That's what we are trying to get at here. Capitalists have essentially co-opted a bunch of ancient practices - yup, merchants predate cities - and lumped them all under capitalism. In reality, capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old and was started as a tool to promote colonial expansion.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
I mean, collective ownership of the means of production kind of indicates that ownership is not exclusive to capitalism.
And trade and markets being exclusive to capitalism runs into the problem of market socialism.
The question of capitalism vs socialism is narrow. It hinges on what type of ownership is allowed. In capitalism you can individually own the means of production and the resulting products regardless of your involvement in that production. In socialism the ownership is exclusively for those who do the producing.
The consequences of this small difference are of course huge, but that's the world for ya.
I've been told that ownership is a learned social construct that would not soon be rediscovered if a new generation was brought up without being taught about it by their elders.
I'm not convinced. Defense of goods amd territory being older than the human species, and all.
Property is essentially a social construct, and plenty of societies exist/have existed that do not feature what we think of as "private property." Common ownership was pretty much the rule for the vast majority of human existence; the social conditions which have dominated in recent millennia are more of an aberration than a norm. However I don't necessarily agree that private property wouldn't be quickly rediscovered in your hypothetical, since the material conditions that initially gave rise to the practice of private ownership still exist, and could (likely would, IMO) give rise to the same practice again.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
Trade is not capitalism. Ownership is not capitalism. These concepts predate it by hundreds of thousands of years.
That's what we are trying to get at here. Capitalists have essentially co-opted a bunch of ancient practices - yup, merchants predate cities - and lumped them all under capitalism. In reality, capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old and was started as a tool to promote colonial expansion.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
I mean, collective ownership of the means of production kind of indicates that ownership is not exclusive to capitalism.
And trade and markets being exclusive to capitalism runs into the problem of market socialism.
The question of capitalism vs socialism is narrow. It hinges on what type of ownership is allowed. In capitalism you can individually own the means of production and the resulting products regardless of your involvement in that production. In socialism the ownership is exclusively for those who do the producing.
The consequences of this small difference are of course huge, but that's the world for ya.
The old "He who does not work, neither shall he eat" aphorism comes to mind
except in our wonderful late capitalism hellscape we switched it up to "They who do work shall not eat, and they who own the work but do little to none of it shall eat all."
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
Trade and ownership were fundamental parts of feudalism and mercantilism, too. You're getting necessary and sufficient conditions confused.
Then I would argue that we are having the wrong argument.
Socialism does not oppose capitalism. Socialism opposes feudalism/mercantilism/capitalism etc as a related economic 'sphere'.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
Trade and ownership were fundamental parts of feudalism and mercantilism, too. You're getting necessary and sufficient conditions confused.
Then I would argue that we are having the wrong argument.
Socialism does not oppose capitalism. Socialism opposes feudalism/mercantilism/capitalism etc as a related economic 'sphere'.
Communism is to Socialism as Capitalism is to ???
Megacorp dystopia, The East India Trading Company, or modern Somalia?
I'm pretty sure the theoretical end of capitalism is closer to anarchy than anything else.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
Trade and ownership were fundamental parts of feudalism and mercantilism, too. You're getting necessary and sufficient conditions confused.
Then I would argue that we are having the wrong argument.
Socialism does not oppose capitalism. Socialism opposes feudalism/mercantilism/capitalism etc as a related economic 'sphere'.
Communism is to Socialism as Capitalism is to ???
Megacorp dystopia, The East India Trading Company, or modern Somalia?
I'm pretty sure the theoretical end of capitalism is closer to anarchy than anything else.
Not the theoretical end. The 'overgroup' theory which describes all the implementations. Feudalism/Mercanilism/Capitalism/Megacorp Distopia.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
Trade and ownership were fundamental parts of feudalism and mercantilism, too. You're getting necessary and sufficient conditions confused.
Then I would argue that we are having the wrong argument.
Socialism does not oppose capitalism. Socialism opposes feudalism/mercantilism/capitalism etc as a related economic 'sphere'.
Communism is to Socialism as Capitalism is to ???
Megacorp dystopia, The East India Trading Company, or modern Somalia?
I'm pretty sure the theoretical end of capitalism is closer to anarchy than anything else.
I never understand why Somalia is thrown in here. Somalia has problems but those problems are not accurately described by "laissez-faire capitalism."
We're pretty far along that "megacorp dystopia" path in my opinion.
Socialism is best seen as a capitalist heresy. It has plenty of historical antecedents from the Levellers to the Gracchi to early Christians, but the fixation on the state and who owns the means of production are answers to questions that developed in a world where the modern nation state and industrialization existed.
This tangent doesnt make much sense and seems largely like trying to force linguistic expectations onto reality.
Without some kind of framework as to what Capitolism is, then we're stuck at the level of argument where Socialism is nothing other than bad, because everyone self defines as a capitalist system.
IE, if you aren't advocating seizing the means of production then you aren't a socialist. And then there's no argument to be had., because noone in the modern world is advocating the seizure of all the means of production.
This tangent doesnt make much sense and seems largely like trying to force linguistic expectations onto reality.
Without some kind of framework as to what Capitolism is, then we're stuck at the level of argument where Socialism is nothing other than bad, because everyone self defines as a capitalist system.
IE, if you aren't advocating seizing the means of production then you aren't a socialist. And then there's no argument to be had., because noone in the modern world is advocating the seizure of all the means of production.
That's only a dichotomy if you consider socialism to be something that happened when Karl Marx took up his pen and then died intellectually when he finished writing. There are centuries of history, multiple schools of thought, and entire libraries devoted to socialist thought, and they don't all agree. Even the question of whether communism and socialism are the same system, the evolution of one system to another, or entirely different political systems with common historical roots are highly debated.
It is like saying that, since chattel slavery was crucial to the development of capitalism and was a widely accepted by capitalists at one time, then the only way you can be a capitalist is to advocate the return of chattel slavery.
This tangent doesnt make much sense and seems largely like trying to force linguistic expectations onto reality.
Without some kind of framework as to what Capitolism is, then we're stuck at the level of argument where Socialism is nothing other than bad, because everyone self defines as a capitalist system.
IE, if you aren't advocating seizing the means of production then you aren't a socialist. And then there's no argument to be had., because noone in the modern world is advocating the seizure of all the means of production.
That's only a dichotomy if you consider socialism to be something that happened when Karl Marx took up his pen and then died intellectually when he finished writing. There are centuries of history, multiple schools of thought, and entire libraries devoted to socialist thought, and they don't all agree. Even the question of whether communism and socialism are the same system, the evolution of one system to another, or entirely different political systems with common historical roots are highly debated.
It is like saying that, since chattel slavery was crucial to the development of capitalism and was a widely accepted by capitalists at one time, then the only way you can be a capitalist is to advocate the return of chattel slavery.
I agree, but we've seen it stated in this thread that like, Norway is not a socialist economy. That universal healthcare isn't socialist and so on. If socialism isn't universal healthcare and isn't the Norwegian economic model then pretty much you are left with "Socialism is the USSR and Cuba"
This tangent doesnt make much sense and seems largely like trying to force linguistic expectations onto reality.
Without some kind of framework as to what Capitolism is, then we're stuck at the level of argument where Socialism is nothing other than bad, because everyone self defines as a capitalist system.
IE, if you aren't advocating seizing the means of production then you aren't a socialist. And then there's no argument to be had., because noone in the modern world is advocating the seizure of all the means of production.
That's only a dichotomy if you consider socialism to be something that happened when Karl Marx took up his pen and then died intellectually when he finished writing. There are centuries of history, multiple schools of thought, and entire libraries devoted to socialist thought, and they don't all agree. Even the question of whether communism and socialism are the same system, the evolution of one system to another, or entirely different political systems with common historical roots are highly debated.
It is like saying that, since chattel slavery was crucial to the development of capitalism and was a widely accepted by capitalists at one time, then the only way you can be a capitalist is to advocate the return of chattel slavery.
I agree, but we've seen it stated in this thread that like, Norway is not a socialist economy. That universal healthcare isn't socialist and so on. If socialism isn't universal healthcare and isn't the Norwegian economic model then pretty much you are left with "Socialism is the USSR and Cuba"
If you don't like the definitions of "socialism" and "capitalism" that other people are using, feel free to offer up your own.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Socialism hasn't "failed," socialism has provided nations with some benefits and some problems. It's also faced global anti-socialist forces. But the comparison between the USSR in 1951 and Russia 2018 is ridiculous because the first is in 1951 and the second is in 2018. A better question would be, what might we have seen if the USSR was different? What might we see if Russia was different?
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When socialist countries turn into dictatorships, it's failed. The USSR and PRC are two maples of socialism turned wrong which can't be ignored for why socialism in itself can turn into a bad idea, and they in turn evolved into the China and Russia of today.
Other questions which should be relevant:
Which countries does the thread which countries are considered socialist today? Because I used Google for this and I got Belgium, with many links saying it was socialist.
Regarding the PRC and Soviet Union these countries are complex examples to analyse for exactly how did socialism get wrong and how would America not fall into the same problems. Probably applies to Venezuela, as well. Socialism is a noble and appealing system of government, so how did those countries get to that stage? For PRC/Soviet Union need further analyse in how they switched to what they are today rather than reform themselves into worthy socialist systems.
I feel it is... perhaps disingenuous to go "We gotta take a real hard look at this 'socialism' thing, given how the Soviet Union, China and Venezuela turned out" given the history of capitalist dictatorships not somehow giving us similar pause over this whole "capitalism thing"
I mean, hell, that's kind of the whole thing about America's twentieth century relationship with Central and South America
I feel it is... perhaps disingenuous to go "We gotta take a real hard look at this 'socialism' thing, given how the Soviet Union, China and Venezuela turned out" given the history of capitalist dictatorships not somehow giving us similar pause over this whole "capitalism thing"
I mean, hell, that's kind of the whole thing about America's twentieth century relationship with Central and South America
1) This is a socialism thread
2) That capitalism is responsible for dictatorship doesn't mean we should ignore it when socialism makes the same mistakes. Despite supposedly being a correction for capitalism socialism sure likes repeating the same evils capitalism does too much.
3) The countries are relevant to a thread on socialism since they belong under the socialism umbrella. The ideology has huge flaws in it, which can't be ignored.
4) That those are bought does not mean I'm giving a pass on capitalism's dictatorships, they were evil and disastrous. Nor does their existence cease socialisms bad acts during the Cold War. The USSR did some seriously bad shit in that period, and were a supporter of what became North Korea etc.
Not all evil in the world falls on America's shoulders, but a lot does.
I feel it is... perhaps disingenuous to go "We gotta take a real hard look at this 'socialism' thing, given how the Soviet Union, China and Venezuela turned out" given the history of capitalist dictatorships not somehow giving us similar pause over this whole "capitalism thing"
I mean, hell, that's kind of the whole thing about America's twentieth century relationship with Central and South America
1) This is a socialism thread
2) That capitalism is responsible for dictatorship doesn't mean we should ignore it when socialism makes the same mistakes. Despite supposedly being a correction for capitalism socialism sure likes repeating the same evils capitalism does too much.
3) The countries are relevant to a thread on socialism since they belong under the socialism umbrella. The ideology has huge flaws in it, which can't be ignored.
4) That those are bought does not mean I'm giving a pass on capitalism's dictatorships, they were evil and disastrous. Nor does their existence cease socialisms bad acts during the Cold War. The USSR did some seriously bad shit in that period, and were a supporter of what became North Korea etc.
Not all evil in the world falls on America's shoulders, but a lot does.
He's not talking about you personally Harry. There's no denying that every time a socialist country has problems its an indictment of socialism but capitalism's faults are so baked into what our society accepts that you have entire political factions arguing they're actually good.
There can't be a measured analysis of alternative options when the status quo is so blindly accepted.
Which countries does the thread which countries are considered socialist today?
Fully socialist?
North Korea.
End of list.
All other countries have mixed economies. All countries that have previously been fully socialist (eg, Cuba, Laos, China) have liberalized their economies in the last few decades - they've allowed private entities to own larger shares of capital.
Note that no country is fully capitalist, either. Every country has collective ownership of some capital, primarily through the government, but also through various forms of smaller-scale worker collective.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Even calling North Korea fully socialist is kind of eh tbh. They have the "public" control of production, but there's at least an implication in the ideology that that public control is put to public gain which they obviously fail at.
I feel it is... perhaps disingenuous to go "We gotta take a real hard look at this 'socialism' thing, given how the Soviet Union, China and Venezuela turned out" given the history of capitalist dictatorships not somehow giving us similar pause over this whole "capitalism thing"
I mean, hell, that's kind of the whole thing about America's twentieth century relationship with Central and South America
1) This is a socialism thread
2) That capitalism is responsible for dictatorship doesn't mean we should ignore it when socialism makes the same mistakes. Despite supposedly being a correction for capitalism socialism sure likes repeating the same evils capitalism does too much.
3) The countries are relevant to a thread on socialism since they belong under the socialism umbrella. The ideology has huge flaws in it, which can't be ignored.
4) That those are bought does not mean I'm giving a pass on capitalism's dictatorships, they were evil and disastrous. Nor does their existence cease socialisms bad acts during the Cold War. The USSR did some seriously bad shit in that period, and were a supporter of what became North Korea etc.
Not all evil in the world falls on America's shoulders, but a lot does.
The argument I'm making, if you noticed the following post, is that the economic system is not responsible for the dictatorship.
I draw the comparison between the socialist dictatorships and the capitalist dicatorships because we end up getting caught up in this fictitious idea that the economic system gave way to the dictatorship, instead of actually understanding the way revolutions and war end up giving way to dictatorship in the ensuing power vacuum post-revolution. It's like arguing this whole "democracy" and "republic" thing is a dangerous idea because of The Terror, and then suggesting maybe we'd rather live in an Aristocratic Monarchist Empire, eh?
Ultimately, the idea of "The Economic System is responsible for the dictatorship" is a very American Idea birthed in the 20th century as a reaction to labor movements and other socialist movements that threatened existing capitalist power structures, as they would inevitably depower the capitalists at the top of the country's power hierarchies as power is diffused throughout the system, as well as getting paired up with the Superpower Struggles between the USA and USSR and thus subject to nationalist propaganda where a dividing line is "We're good because we're Capitalists and love Freedom, they're Commies who want to control the individual."
It's more of a boogeyman than an actual empirical hypothesis.
He's not talking about you personally Harry. There's no denying that every time a socialist country has problems its an indictment of socialism but capitalism's faults are so baked into what our society accepts that you have entire political factions arguing they're actually good.
There can't be a measured analysis of alternative options when the status quo is so blindly accepted.
I wasn't thinking he was. Then it is up to socialists to acknowledge those weaknesses in socialism for why it's not appealing and sell the idea which offers a convincing alternative. That anyone can point to countries like the Soviet Union as a good reason for ignore socialism is not going to be solved by ignoring it. You're conceding the argument to the capitalists before the argument began.
Sure there can, we have plenty to work with regarding various socialist countries - including all the above - to figure out went wrong and what they did right. The status quo is irrelevant to this, if socialism wants to become the new hot political system it needs to address its obvious flaws and there are plenty of countries to look at with massive problems. If those countries have troubles making socialism work why would America be different? People are going to be turned off by socialism if they know ending up with the PRC, Cuba etc is a risk. Many people will not seeing that as a risk worth taking since they loathe to live in dictatorships.
Note, this also occurs with capitalist countries. We all know they have flaws, as well, yet no one is suggesting we should ignore America because we like living here.
Every ideology has flaws, and every ideology will be challenged. No ideology is exempt, nor should socialism be.
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Ownership of the clothes on your back, your personal possessions, your home, the land you work... Sure.
Ownership of some plot of land hundreds of miles away where some stranger lives and works just because you have a piece of paper saying so? Not so much.
Ownership of an idea, a story, a song? Heh no.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Kind of irrelevant to the initial point about the concept of ownership and property though. We have a tendency to think of the ideas that we believe in as being universal and obvious but many of them are not and are just learned constructs of one sort or another. The point being that our current conception of property and ownership is far from the only one that's been used by humans.
There is also the problem with the fact that we have limited view of the past due to our history books being focused towards kings and battles and other irrelevant stuff.
Ye medieval society was much more complex then the Hollywood dung age look we get in books and movies. For instance in Spain there exists special courts that decide water rights according to need and despite being a "socialist" institution, many of them have been functioning for hundreds of years.
The "Tragedy of the commons" economists talk about is a reference to common grazing land of a village and unlike the economic example had several strict regulations and laws to prevented overgrazing. That only happened once capitalist got them enclosed for personal gain.
My estimation is that our 'free from the concept of ownership' humans would discover it within about 25 minutes.
As a case in point, when I used to take my two year old son to the sandbox, he would always want to play with diggers but he didn't have a toy digger because I didn't want him losing his toys in the sand. So, when he saw another child with a digger, he would go around the sandbox and gather up all the discarded buckets and spades and like, fish shapes, and put them all inside the biggest bucket. Then (with no words) he would walk up to the child with the digger, and offer them the gathered items in exchange for the digger. If they said no, he would go and gather more items and attempt to exchange those instead. Eventually the other kid would relent, and accept the trade, and my son would play with the digger for a while.
I didn't teach him the principles of capitalism to obtain that digger. He came up with the whole idea of barter and property by himself. Give this, get that is the first 'understanding' of sharing that most kids get.
Trade is not capitalism. Ownership is not capitalism. These concepts predate it by hundreds of thousands of years.
That's what we are trying to get at here. Capitalists have essentially co-opted a bunch of ancient practices - yup, merchants predate cities - and lumped them all under capitalism. In reality, capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old and was started as a tool to promote colonial expansion.
This is a very stange thread where people seem to want to define both socialism and capitalism so narrowly that neither barely exist. Trade and Ownership and how they interact are both fundamental parts of capitalism. If 'you' (the government) do nothing to manage trade and ownership, then you will end up with capitalism. As you take more and more actions to control trade, ownership etc, your economy gets more and more socialist.
Since it's founding? That doesn't really track with the history I'm familiar with...
No. Capital is the system that developed when the English Crown divorced financial and criminal liability from ownership in share companies, which allowed colonial charter companies to be funded by private capital. This expanded beyond this limited sphere until it became the dominant economic relationship in the Western world and eventually the planet.
A government that "does nothing" will not get you to capitalism. Capitalism requires governments to use the court system to enforce rules of ownership, because the concept of shares requires an independent system to enforce and vet ownership. In the absence of this, you get Afghanistan where warlords control the means of production because they will shoot you if you don't give it to them.
The issue is that capitalists do what you are doing - essentially co-opt the entire concept of trade, ownership, and value. That's propaganda and rhetoric, especially the idea that governments and capitalism are somehow in eternal opposition where one ebbs as the other crests.
Trade and ownership were fundamental parts of feudalism and mercantilism, too. You're getting necessary and sufficient conditions confused.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
True, Too much socialism creates issues with government corruption, stifling innovation and a sprawling bueraucracy that all grind society to a halt, but the opposite is situations like what we saw in the guilded age wherein the wealthy were able to simply buy the government, own entire towns and the masses were generally fucked.
No, the better option is to simply use socialism as a check on capitalism so that innovation and personal innitiative are still rewarded at the same time steps are taken to ensure that the quality of life for the citizenry as a whole is elavated and a fiscal feudal system can't be formed.
The GOP? It was founded in 1854. It absorbed the virulently anti-immigrant No Nothing Party in 1856.
To explain why this is a misleading opinion would need it's own thread!
Socialism hasn't "failed," socialism has provided nations with some benefits and some problems. It's also faced global anti-socialist forces. But the comparison between the USSR in 1951 and Russia 2018 is ridiculous because the first is in 1951 and the second is in 2018. A better question would be, what might we have seen if the USSR was different? What might we see if Russia was different?
Socialism is a broad term. You can use it to mean a dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. party rule, or you can use it to mean a strong and well-entrenched democracy. Socialism simply means that social ownership is prevalent over private ownership. Co-operatives, state institutions, nationalised industries etc. And we can definitely see the advantage of nationalising healthcare, education, transportation etc. A more socialist policy would be to socialise things like credit institutions and such.
I think that the US is scared of socialism, that is, even if we take out the word socialism, the idea of socially owned institutions (be that co-operatives, unions, state industries etc), because of a strong inbuilt idea of self-reliance and independence from the government that can go into forms of paranoid extremist thought and behaviour, where people will not accept anything that they do not personally own or cannot be personally owned as acceptable, and the idea of being taxed by the government is reprehensible. I think it ties into a fetish for my property, my family, which I must protect myself.
The US seems to have a fetish for the individual not needing anyone else. That, in of itself, is anti-socialist. And even where the word "socialism" doesn't come into it, there's a lot of anti-socialist thought in the US that ties into a national culture which draws on that manifest destiny, live off the land, everyone for themselves, work hard and you can be a millionaire and the President etc. Every time I go to America, I'm struck by how much stuff is marketed to you as helping you live by yourself, without any need for help.
Not to rain on your parade here, but the original claim was in reference to per-capita rich countries. Pointing to #28 and the two largest countries by population is not the solid defense of capitalism you imagine it to be. That countries with a billion+ population are going to have large economies is a given, how could they not?
The top of the list on a per capita basis is: countries with a lot of oil, city states, and the West.
Socialism isn't the government doing things. The government doing things is Statism.
Socialism is democratization of economics. That is what "workers owning the means of production" means. The workers should own the capital that provides for their livelihood instead of the capitalist owners.
If you frame it right, it actually fits right into the American ideal of the small landowning farmer and the small self owned business. Jefferson's vision of a nation of yeoman farmers (ignoring slavery for the moment), equal in both political and economic stature, is actually a socialist vision.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Hell, I wouldn't even say that we learned that form of ownership. Resignation over it's enforcement by society? Sure. But I don't think many people consider it right and just that some guy who never even visited the place you work gets all the profit from your work.
I mean, collective ownership of the means of production kind of indicates that ownership is not exclusive to capitalism.
And trade and markets being exclusive to capitalism runs into the problem of market socialism.
The question of capitalism vs socialism is narrow. It hinges on what type of ownership is allowed. In capitalism you can individually own the means of production and the resulting products regardless of your involvement in that production. In socialism the ownership is exclusively for those who do the producing.
The consequences of this small difference are of course huge, but that's the world for ya.
The old "He who does not work, neither shall he eat" aphorism comes to mind
except in our wonderful late capitalism hellscape we switched it up to "They who do work shall not eat, and they who own the work but do little to none of it shall eat all."
Then I would argue that we are having the wrong argument.
Socialism does not oppose capitalism. Socialism opposes feudalism/mercantilism/capitalism etc as a related economic 'sphere'.
Communism is to Socialism as Capitalism is to ???
Megacorp dystopia, The East India Trading Company, or modern Somalia?
I'm pretty sure the theoretical end of capitalism is closer to anarchy than anything else.
Not the theoretical end. The 'overgroup' theory which describes all the implementations. Feudalism/Mercanilism/Capitalism/Megacorp Distopia.
We're pretty far along that "megacorp dystopia" path in my opinion.
Without some kind of framework as to what Capitolism is, then we're stuck at the level of argument where Socialism is nothing other than bad, because everyone self defines as a capitalist system.
IE, if you aren't advocating seizing the means of production then you aren't a socialist. And then there's no argument to be had., because noone in the modern world is advocating the seizure of all the means of production.
That's only a dichotomy if you consider socialism to be something that happened when Karl Marx took up his pen and then died intellectually when he finished writing. There are centuries of history, multiple schools of thought, and entire libraries devoted to socialist thought, and they don't all agree. Even the question of whether communism and socialism are the same system, the evolution of one system to another, or entirely different political systems with common historical roots are highly debated.
It is like saying that, since chattel slavery was crucial to the development of capitalism and was a widely accepted by capitalists at one time, then the only way you can be a capitalist is to advocate the return of chattel slavery.
I agree, but we've seen it stated in this thread that like, Norway is not a socialist economy. That universal healthcare isn't socialist and so on. If socialism isn't universal healthcare and isn't the Norwegian economic model then pretty much you are left with "Socialism is the USSR and Cuba"
If you don't like the definitions of "socialism" and "capitalism" that other people are using, feel free to offer up your own.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
When socialist countries turn into dictatorships, it's failed. The USSR and PRC are two maples of socialism turned wrong which can't be ignored for why socialism in itself can turn into a bad idea, and they in turn evolved into the China and Russia of today.
Other questions which should be relevant:
Which countries does the thread which countries are considered socialist today? Because I used Google for this and I got Belgium, with many links saying it was socialist.
Regarding the PRC and Soviet Union these countries are complex examples to analyse for exactly how did socialism get wrong and how would America not fall into the same problems. Probably applies to Venezuela, as well. Socialism is a noble and appealing system of government, so how did those countries get to that stage? For PRC/Soviet Union need further analyse in how they switched to what they are today rather than reform themselves into worthy socialist systems.
I mean, hell, that's kind of the whole thing about America's twentieth century relationship with Central and South America
1) This is a socialism thread
2) That capitalism is responsible for dictatorship doesn't mean we should ignore it when socialism makes the same mistakes. Despite supposedly being a correction for capitalism socialism sure likes repeating the same evils capitalism does too much.
3) The countries are relevant to a thread on socialism since they belong under the socialism umbrella. The ideology has huge flaws in it, which can't be ignored.
4) That those are bought does not mean I'm giving a pass on capitalism's dictatorships, they were evil and disastrous. Nor does their existence cease socialisms bad acts during the Cold War. The USSR did some seriously bad shit in that period, and were a supporter of what became North Korea etc.
Not all evil in the world falls on America's shoulders, but a lot does.
He's not talking about you personally Harry. There's no denying that every time a socialist country has problems its an indictment of socialism but capitalism's faults are so baked into what our society accepts that you have entire political factions arguing they're actually good.
There can't be a measured analysis of alternative options when the status quo is so blindly accepted.
Fully socialist?
North Korea.
End of list.
All other countries have mixed economies. All countries that have previously been fully socialist (eg, Cuba, Laos, China) have liberalized their economies in the last few decades - they've allowed private entities to own larger shares of capital.
Note that no country is fully capitalist, either. Every country has collective ownership of some capital, primarily through the government, but also through various forms of smaller-scale worker collective.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The argument I'm making, if you noticed the following post, is that the economic system is not responsible for the dictatorship.
I draw the comparison between the socialist dictatorships and the capitalist dicatorships because we end up getting caught up in this fictitious idea that the economic system gave way to the dictatorship, instead of actually understanding the way revolutions and war end up giving way to dictatorship in the ensuing power vacuum post-revolution. It's like arguing this whole "democracy" and "republic" thing is a dangerous idea because of The Terror, and then suggesting maybe we'd rather live in an Aristocratic Monarchist Empire, eh?
Ultimately, the idea of "The Economic System is responsible for the dictatorship" is a very American Idea birthed in the 20th century as a reaction to labor movements and other socialist movements that threatened existing capitalist power structures, as they would inevitably depower the capitalists at the top of the country's power hierarchies as power is diffused throughout the system, as well as getting paired up with the Superpower Struggles between the USA and USSR and thus subject to nationalist propaganda where a dividing line is "We're good because we're Capitalists and love Freedom, they're Commies who want to control the individual."
It's more of a boogeyman than an actual empirical hypothesis.
I wasn't thinking he was. Then it is up to socialists to acknowledge those weaknesses in socialism for why it's not appealing and sell the idea which offers a convincing alternative. That anyone can point to countries like the Soviet Union as a good reason for ignore socialism is not going to be solved by ignoring it. You're conceding the argument to the capitalists before the argument began.
Sure there can, we have plenty to work with regarding various socialist countries - including all the above - to figure out went wrong and what they did right. The status quo is irrelevant to this, if socialism wants to become the new hot political system it needs to address its obvious flaws and there are plenty of countries to look at with massive problems. If those countries have troubles making socialism work why would America be different? People are going to be turned off by socialism if they know ending up with the PRC, Cuba etc is a risk. Many people will not seeing that as a risk worth taking since they loathe to live in dictatorships.
Note, this also occurs with capitalist countries. We all know they have flaws, as well, yet no one is suggesting we should ignore America because we like living here.
Every ideology has flaws, and every ideology will be challenged. No ideology is exempt, nor should socialism be.