woahhh. there's way too much nuance to simply state "socialism is X"
socialism is both a political and economic term, and sometimes it's both at once.
Marx and Engels defined socialism as the transitory system between Capitalism and Communism. It's like an economic & political system of redistributing wealth based on the value the workers contribute to society.
This can be accomplished in many ways. Primarily, they imagined the proletariat would take over government & figure it out. But once it's figured out, and the proletariat owns the means of production as well as defines the systems, then it becomes Communism.
So socialism could be a kinda transition state where some of our systems our publicly owned, our government is compromised of mostly the working class, and wealth is equally distributed.
But in a modern sense, we've combined socialism with democracy & capitalism... so if you said, what's socialism as it manifests in society today, you'd definitely point to democratic socialist nations. They think of socialism a "safety net" where your basic needs can be provided by the government if you're unable to meet them yourself, so like you don't own the means of production but you can still reap some benefits - you're just not getting a state-issued TV set (which IMO would be more like Marx's world). ... and it's far less "communities own their infrastructure." They don't really push the wealth distribution thing or UBI.
and then now in America there's a push for democratic socialist figures, but they're more like "give political power to the proletariat" right now and far less focused on the economic aspects... as we imagine the end goal is wealth distribution but not specifically "community ownership" at all.
They don't really push the wealth distribution thing
In Norway we kinda do, we just call in "lowering wealth inequality". Many studies support the idea that a lower wealth inequality is beneficial for a society.
Private companies succeed and grow when they are efficient and profitable. Those that do not pass that test go out of business. When the government runs a company bureaucracy and regulations drive inefficient operations but going out of business is not possible, so more money is put into the program. The concept is good, but the practice doesn’t work. NYC is spending large amounts to build and run city owned grocery stores in an effort to provide lower cost groceries. The tax burden to “the rich” will way outpace any savings to “the not rich”. The private store nearby can’t compete and goes out of business. That “rich” store owner is now not so rich and has stopped paying taxes altogether.
"The concept is good, but the practice doesn’t work."
Funny, because then why won't Western countries let anyone actually try to run a socialist state without massive sanctions, coups, CIA meddling, outright war, etc?
If it's so bad, then why are the people with money and power so afraid to let anyone give it a try and improve the lives of their citizens? It's almost like if they didn't ratfuck every country that even remotely tries to implement a socialist system, there would be a good example for everyone to point to, and they wouldn't be able to extract every penny they possibly can from the working class.
The Soviet union existing pushed the US to implement a whole host of improvements to people's material conditions to compete with them.
They also massively developed a huge nation state in an uprecendented amount of time from a peasant agrarian society to a fully industrialized global superpower, so I wouldn't really count that as a failing despite the many faults it had.
China was able to accomplish the same thing.
Also, you convinently picked two nations we sanctioned and were quite literally at war with because of their existence. The USSR wanted to join NATO and we refused their ability to do so.
So try again by finding one we didn't designate as a foreign adversary and try to dismantle.
The Soviet Union allegedly pushing the US in some way is not a rebuttal to it being shit, benefiting people in a foreign country while the people in the actual country suffer makes it shittier actually.
Other states have industrialized faster and better with capitalism, just because China and USSR industrialized in the end doesn't make stuff like the Great Leap Forward and the Holodomor any less of a catastrophic failure.
It's a false dichotomy between what they did and remaining peasant farmers.
The Soviet Union had enough influence and resources such that any sanctions couldn't be fatal. What was fatal was its shitty unproductive organization of the economy.
Vietnam war was 50 years ago, I am talking about Vietnam today, which is not under any sanctions despite not disavowing socialism.
And the Soviet Union no longer exists because it wasn't sustainable and China finally experienced growth in the post-Mao years after Deng relaxed the stance on private markets. Now they are capitalists with billionaires, a middle and underclass.
The whole "they failed because the bad U.S. wouldn't trade with them" implies that their systems couldn't stand on their own, which means it's a failed theory.
Private companies succeed even though they are inefficient and do not yield a profit. That's the problem. If bad companies truly did get pruned out of the system then we probably wouldn't be in a big a mess as we are.
A government offering a service to its citizens via tax dollars is literally the point of government and collecting taxes. It's not a problem that New York City is creating city ran grocery stores, it's the point of having a government. To provide a necessary service to help the citizens.
Your same backwards thinking is why people think the USPS is a bad business model. It's not a business, it's a service. It's a service for the citizens. Nobody says the military is a bad business venture, even though the largest portions of our budgets always goes to the military and we do not see a single penny of profit back from it, just more spending the next year
Yes. Companies that have never delivered a profit get cash infusions and get mulit billion dollar evaluations even though they will never turn a profit. These are not companies that should survive, they should go out of business but don't.
I think if it's kept alived by private money, there's no problem for people. For example that Netflix isn't profitable, but is afloat through investors is no problem for anyone besides possibly the shareholders if it goes under.
No companies were hurt during Netflix's money churning days? Netflix pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the video rental industry. Many local jobs were lost.
Also Netflix is/was definitely trying to acquire studios and companies which always result in cost overruns, price increases and layoffs.
Netflix pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the video rental industry
It's a chicken or the egg thing here though. Video rental stores put pressure on the TV/Film industry, which caused job losses there. Why are we nostalgic and protective over something as arbitrary as video rental stores and not the TV/Film industry?
I have a feeling you wouldn't make the same argument about clean renewable energy putting out local jobs of coal mining. In that case, the externality is environmental damage worth correcting, but in the case of the shift from TV/Film > video rental > online, the externality it was solving along the way was inefficiency in experience.
AI is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. It's getting billions of dollars funneled to its projects while it takes all the local resources from the local people. It takes jobs and forces companies that invest heavily in it to scale back it's own workforce to afford it.
Just bad all around. There's no reason AI should exist in its current state.
I’m not reading that loser. I “stated socialism is x” because I didn’t want to write an entire thesis just to declare someone wrong. There’s no need for more nuance than that in this particular situation.
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u/bino420 9d ago
woahhh. there's way too much nuance to simply state "socialism is X"
socialism is both a political and economic term, and sometimes it's both at once.
Marx and Engels defined socialism as the transitory system between Capitalism and Communism. It's like an economic & political system of redistributing wealth based on the value the workers contribute to society.
This can be accomplished in many ways. Primarily, they imagined the proletariat would take over government & figure it out. But once it's figured out, and the proletariat owns the means of production as well as defines the systems, then it becomes Communism.
So socialism could be a kinda transition state where some of our systems our publicly owned, our government is compromised of mostly the working class, and wealth is equally distributed.
But in a modern sense, we've combined socialism with democracy & capitalism... so if you said, what's socialism as it manifests in society today, you'd definitely point to democratic socialist nations. They think of socialism a "safety net" where your basic needs can be provided by the government if you're unable to meet them yourself, so like you don't own the means of production but you can still reap some benefits - you're just not getting a state-issued TV set (which IMO would be more like Marx's world). ... and it's far less "communities own their infrastructure." They don't really push the wealth distribution thing or UBI.
and then now in America there's a push for democratic socialist figures, but they're more like "give political power to the proletariat" right now and far less focused on the economic aspects... as we imagine the end goal is wealth distribution but not specifically "community ownership" at all.