Socialism, Should we give it another try?

Depends on definition.

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another try?

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McG is right of course ...

it's never really been given a try yet.

Between the horrors of communism and the sedate accomplishments of social-democracy though, there is still an opportunity that could be used one day ...

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Perhaps we should review case histories of successful socialist governments.

And I tend to define "successful" as allowing all citizens freedom to rise to any social or financial level they so choose, un- or minimally-impeded by their own government.

Their only obstacles being fate and self.

I would also like case histories of which great inventions came about (or were made practical or efficient) under socialist regimes. For instance, vacuum cleaners, automobiles, airplanes, the microchip and computers, genetics research that allows one acre of land to produce far more crops than ever, the farm implements and irrigation systems to make arrid places plantable, etc.

I really don't know what was invented under what forms of government, but it would be interesting to know.

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GeneralTsao wrote:

And I tend to define "successful" as allowing all citizens freedom to rise to any [..] financial level they so choose, un- or minimally-impeded by their own government.

Heh.

Thats kinda like defining a "successful" capitalist government as one that accords each citizen the state-provided guarantee of work, a living wage and decent working conditions ...

GeneralTsao wrote:

I would also like case histories of which great inventions came about (or were made practical or efficient) under socialist regimes. For instance, vacuum cleaners, automobiles, airplanes, the microchip and computers, ..

Well, if we're going to fall into the trap of talking about the communist Soviet states when the topic was socialism, then this would be the one score where apologists of those states would have something to come up with ... I mean, they were the first in space (Sputnik, Laika) and all that ...

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GeneralTsao wrote:

Perhaps we should review case histories of successful socialist governments.

This would be a lot easier if we managed to define "socialist governments". Some like Nimh claim one has never existed, others claim leninist governments were socialist, others marxist, others site social democracies, and others yet bring up native american societies. What exactly are we talking about?

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And I tend to define "successful" as allowing all citizens freedom to rise to any social or financial level they so choose, un- or minimally-impeded by their own government.

Then no successful government has ever existed, or will ever exist.

I suppose many of the east block cold war regimes came quite close to the equal opportunity ideal, offering all people regardless of heritage an equal opportunity to get any position save top positions in the government. (before taking corruption into account) This caps "social level" at the highest non governmental position existing in that system, and "financial level" at the highest level that could be attained by the nation's highest salaries (20 times its lowest in Russia) and 'capital investment' in the form of putting money in the bank.

Off course the economy was generally mismanaged, two world wars caused wanton destruction, and a cold war stretched the remaining industrial resources very thin, so only the corrupt really got rich.

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Their only obstacles being fate and self.

Any obstacle can be construed as fate, but remove that bit and the demand becomes completely unreasonable. Impossible even. You should try to define success in a way that makes for a scale of successfulness, ranging from not very successful to very successful.

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I would also like case histories of which great inventions came about (or were made practical or efficient) under socialist regimes. For instance, vacuum cleaners, automobiles, airplanes, the microchip and computers, genetics research that allows one acre of land to produce far more crops than ever, the farm implements and irrigation systems to make arrid places plantable, etc.

Don't know a whole lot, but I reckon if Sovjet was socialist under your definition, they were on the cutting edge of science for a while.

They developed most of the same tecknologies the west did, (with both sides spying on eachother). They were the first to orbit the earth for instance. I suspect you are looking for civilian inventions though, and I really couldn't tell you where any civilian inventions originated (nor many military ones for that matter). I suspect the achievements of the USSR are more impressive in the military department though, as that was their priority.

South american indians developed a lot of ancient sciences including astronomy, irrigation, and ways to control the impact of frost on crops in a societies some call socialist.

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I really don't know what was invented under what forms of government, but it would be interesting to know.

I really don't know either.

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BM

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GeneralTsao wrote:

Perhaps we should review case histories of successful socialist governments.

And I tend to define "successful" as allowing all citizens freedom to rise to any social or financial level they so choose, un- or minimally-impeded by their own government.

Their only obstacles being fate and self.

I would also like case histories of which great inventions came about (or were made practical or efficient) under socialist regimes. For instance, vacuum cleaners, automobiles, airplanes, the microchip and computers, genetics research that allows one acre of land to produce far more crops than ever, the farm implements and irrigation systems to make arrid places plantable, etc.

I really don't know what was invented under what forms of government, but it would be interesting to know.

People I speak to who've traveled much in Russia tell me that anything decent in the country at all is either from before or from after the communist/socialist era, i.e. that the commie era has absolutely nothing to show for the seventy-year space of time it occupied.

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When you talk about technology, you have to consider that Caesar could have walked into the world of George Washington without much confusion or difficulty. He'd have required a week of intro to firearms and another week to take in the advances in ships, but that would have been most of it, and that would have been after a span of 1800 years. On the other hand, George Washington would have been totally lost in the world of Teddy Roosevelt, just a hundred years later.

The two nations most responsible for that hundred year span of development were probably England and the United States, the two nations furthest removed from anything resembling socialism. Most of that progress was driven by developments in about a half dozen to a dozen areas: firearms, the steam engine, machines for producing fabrics and working with them (the sewing machine), the telegraph, and a few other areas.

The nation most noted for anything resembling socialism prior to modern times was probably Sparta. If any meaningful technological or scientific advancements came out of Sparta, I'm not aware of them.

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Well, I think that it is possible is to trace adumbrations of modern socialist ideas as far back as Plato's Republic, Thomas More's Utopia, and the profuse Utopian literature of the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Realistically, however, socialism had its roots during the Industrial Revolution, especially in England.

(Sparta could be connected - if! - somehow to communism, I think, but not really to socialsm. But here occurs again the problem with the US-definitions .....)

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Conversations on "socialism" always strike me as a bit odd. Does anyone have a good specific definition of socialism?

What exactly are you talking about. Are programs like WIC that use public funds to provide food to needy families socialism? Are publically funded programs for the public good like NASA or the FDA socialism?

What about government subsidized immunization programs?

Dogmatic arguments about poorly defined labels seem unproductive. Better to talk about specific issues.

It also seems to me that pure "socialism" (whatever that means) would be a disaster. Pure "capitalism" would likewise be a disaster.

The US (as well as Europe and much of the world) is a mixture of capitalism and socialism. This seems like a pretty good thing.

So let's talk about specifics.

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ebrown_p wrote:

Conversations on "socialism" always strike me as a bit odd. Does anyone have a good specific definition of socialism?

Depends on your definition of good. I've run into lots of definitions over the years. Some define it as a leninist system of government, some define it as planned economics, some define it as wealth redistribution, some define it as "the society following capitalism and proceeding communism according to marxist theory" without specifying the nature of this society.

I agree that we would do well to discuss specifics rather than poorly defined concepts. How about government ownership of buisnes?

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Is that socialism, neccessarily?

There are many instances of gov't ownership of businesses in capitalism or other forms of governance.

Perhaps to say a majority of businesses are gov't-owned?

Cycloptichorn

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The uses and abuses of the word socialism are legion. As early as 1845, Friedrich Engels complained that the socialism of many Germans was "vague, undefined, and undefinable." Since Engels' day the term socialism has been the property of anyone who wished to use it. The same Bismarck who as German chancellor in the late 1870s outlawed any organization that advocated socialism in Germany declared a few years later that "the state must introduce even more socialism in our Reich." Modern sophisticated conservatives, as well as Fascists and various totalitarian dictators, have often claimed that they were engaged in building socialism.

source: Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.
11 Nov. 2004 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9109587>.

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Is that socialism, neccessarily?

There are many instances of gov't ownership of businesses in capitalism or other forms of governance.

Perhaps to say a majority of businesses are gov't-owned?

Cycloptichorn

We could not come up with a good definition, e_brown suggested we debate specifics, I agreed and brought up this specific.

I think a lot of people would consider it socialism for government to own certain buisnises which government, according to most, have no buisnes owning, say malls for instance, or resturants.

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We could not come up with a good definition, e_brown suggested we debate specifics, I agreed and brought up this specific.

I think a lot of people would consider it socialism for government to own certain buisnises which government, according to most, have no buisnes owning, say malls for instance, or resturants.

Cool.

Well, that being the case, I would say that governmental ownership of business has it's ups and downs, just like private or public ownership does.

Do you (in general to whoever is reading this) believe that we can achieve a compromise between socialism and capitalism? Sort of a competition AND cooperation type of deal? Do we ALREADY live under such a system?

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Cool.

Well, that being the case, I would say that governmental ownership of business has it's ups and downs, just like private or public ownership does.

Do you (in general to whoever is reading this) believe that we can achieve a compromise between socialism and capitalism? Sort of a competition AND cooperation type of deal? Do we ALREADY live under such a system?

Cycloptichorn

Yes, I think it would be possible to combine market dynamics with governmental ownership of buisnis. One would have to provide buisnisadministrations with incentive to exel, so I would have their salaries depend on how the buisnis did. Or perhaps fixed mediocre salaries with considerable bonuses as a function of performance.

There would be a danger of course of corruption taking the form of entering into unprofitable buisnes arrangements with foreign private companies, bolstering their value at the expense of the government. I'm not sure wether a system of automatically replacing buisnesleaders who underperform would do, or wether one should also restrict or ban private investment in foreign buisnises. This seems to me the trickiest part of implementing governmental ownership of buisnes. (how do you spell buisnes? was that right? it is driving me nuts Mad

)

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Business is the spelling, I believe.

I agree with you, the trickiest part of governmental ownership of business is in structuring the relationship between private corporations and governmentally owned businesses.

We would definately have to have an active and strong oversight committee, which would by neccessity be quite transparent. But hell, we have the FTC and other oversight agencies right now, so it would merely be an extension of the same concept.

Another question for anyone: should we change the way that businesses/corporations are set up here in America so that they can no longer be considered and individual in the eyes of the law? This would seem to be a neccessary step to me to implement any sort of socialistic reform, but I'm harldy an expert on the subject....

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Business is the spelling, I believe.

Thanks.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

I agree with you, the trickiest part of governmental ownership of business is in structuring the relationship between private corporations and governmentally owned businesses.

We would definately have to have an active and strong oversight committee, which would by neccessity be quite transparent. But hell, we have the FTC and other oversight agencies right now, so it would merely be an extension of the same concept.

I suppose. One way to get at the problem would be to ban private investment, leaving only foreign nationals with anything to gain from such corruption. Valuta transactions across the border would be monitored to catch payoffs. Problem is people have friends and family, which complicates things, and they may even have friends in other countries, which complicates things further. An extreme solution might be to ban money transactions across the border as well, that should get rid of payoffs.

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Another question for anyone: should we change the way that businesses/corporations are set up here in America so that they can no longer be considered and individual in the eyes of the law? This would seem to be a neccessary step to me to implement any sort of socialistic reform, but I'm harldy an expert on the subject....

Cycloptichorn

Know too little about your legislation, or anyones for that matter, to come up with a good answer.

I reckon if we were to try something like what I have drawn up it would be necessary to distinguish between businesses and citizens.

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Socialism, Should we give it another try?

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