JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,776
- 2,220
So many conservatives refer to Socialism as though it were synonymous with Marxism, but it is not. That is a fallacy, and when the Strong AI begins to dominate the labor market, we will have to reconsider our hostility to having a socially sensitive form of capitalism as our loadstone for economic policy.
Market socialism - Wikipedia
Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production.[1][2][3] Depending on the specific model of market socialism, profits generated by socially owned firms (i.e. net revenue not reinvested into expanding the firm) may variously be used to directly remunerate employees, accrue to society at large as the source of public finance or be distributed amongst the population in a social dividend.[4]
Market socialism is distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy because unlike the mixed economy, models of market socialism are complete and self-regulating systems.[5] Market socialism also contrasts with social democratic policies implemented within capitalist market economies: while social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.[6]
...
Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for cooperative enterprises operating in a free-market economy. The aim of such proposals was to eliminate exploitation by allowing individuals to receive the full product of their labor while removing the market-distorting effects of concentrating ownership and wealth in the hands of a small class of private owners.[9] Among early advocates of market socialism were the Ricardian socialist economists and mutualist philosophers. In the early 20th century, Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner outlined a neoclassical model of socialism which included a role for a central planning board (CPB) in setting prices equal to marginal cost to achieve Pareto efficiency. Even though these early models did not rely on genuine markets, they were labeled "market socialist" for their utilization of financial prices and calculation. In more recent models proposed by American neoclassical economists, public ownership of the means of production is achieved through public ownership of equity and social control of investment.
Paternalistic conservatism - Wikipedia
Paternalistic conservatism is a strand in conservatism which reflects the belief that societies exist and develop organically and that members within them have obligations towards each other.[1] There is particular emphasis on the paternalistic obligation of those who are privileged and wealthy to the poorer parts of society. Since it is consistent with principles such as organicism, hierarchy and duty, it can be seen an outgrowth of traditional conservatism. Paternal conservatives support neither the individual nor the state in principle, but are instead prepared to support either or recommend a balance between the two depending on what is most practical.[2]
Social democracy - Wikipedia
Social democracy is a political, social and economic philosophy that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution and regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions.[1][2][3] In this way, social democracy aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes.[4] Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in the Nordic countries, social democracy has become associated in policy circles with the Nordic model in the latter part of the 20th century.[5]
Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism.[6] In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternative path to socialism or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism.[7] In this period, social democrats embraced a capitalist mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism and the welfare state while abandoning the prior goal of replacing the capitalist system (factor markets, private property and wage labour)[4] with a qualitatively different socialist economic system.[8][9][10] With the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right by the 1980s,[11] many social democratic parties incorporated the Third Way ideology,[12] aiming to fuse liberal economics with social democratic welfare policies.[13][14] By the 2010s, the Third Way had generally fallen out of favour.
Modern social democracy is characterised by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups and poverty,[15] including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care and workers' compensation.[16] The social democratic movement often has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions which are supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders
Democratic socialism - Wikipedia
Democratic socialism is a political philosophy that advocates political democracy alongside a socially owned economy,[1] with an emphasis on workers' self-management and democratic control of economic institutions within a market or some form of a decentralised planned socialist economy.[2] Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of liberty, equality and solidarity and that these ideals can be achieved only through the realisation of a socialist society. Democratic socialism can support either revolutionary or reformist politics as a means to establish socialism.[3]
In the term democratic socialism, the adjective democratic is added and used to distinguish democratic socialists from Marxist–Leninist inspired socialism which to many is viewed as being undemocratic or authoritarian in practice.[3][4][5][6] Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and the Soviet-type economic system, rejecting the perceived authoritarian form of governance and highly centralised command economy that took form in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states in the early 20th century.[6] Democratic socialism is distinguished from 20th-century social democracy on the basis that democratic socialists are committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism whereas modern social democrats are opposed to ultimately ending capitalism and are instead supportive of progressive reforms to capitalism.[3][4]
In contrast to modern social democrats, democratic socialists believe that reforms state interventions aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism would only see them emerge elsewhere in a different guise.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Democratic socialists believe that the systemic issues of capitalism can only be solved by replacing the capitalist economic system with socialism, i.e. by replacing private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere.[3][4][14] The origins of democratic socialism can be traced to 19th-century utopian socialist thinkers and the British Chartist movement that differed in detail yet all shared the essence of democratic decision making and public ownership of the means of production as positive characteristics of the society they advocated.[15] In the early 20th century, the gradualist, reformist socialism promoted by the British Fabian Society and Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism in Germany influenced the development of democratic socialism....
Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled, alongside a democratic political system of government.[1] Democratic socialism rejects self-described socialist states as it rejects Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives such as Stalinism and Maoism, among others.[3][4][5][6] As a result, Peter Hain classifies democratic socialism along with libertarian socialism as a form of anti-authoritarian socialism from below (using the term popularised by Hal Draper) in contrast to Stalinism and state socialism. For Hain, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide.[19] In this type of democratic socialism, it is the active participation of the population as a whole and workers in particular in the self-management of the economy that characterises democratic socialism while nationalisation and centralised economic planning (whether coordinated by an elected government or not) are characteristic of state socialism. A similar, more complex argument is made by Nicos Poulantzas.[20] Draper himself used the term revolutionary-democratic socialism as a type of socialism from below in his The Two Souls of Socialism, writing: "[T]he leading spokesman in the Second International of a revolutionary-democratic Socialism-from-Below [...] was Rosa Luxemburg, who so emphatically put her faith and hope in the spontaneous struggle of a free working class that the myth-makers invented for her a "theory of spontaneity".[21] Similarly, he wrote about Eugene V. Debs: "Debsian socialism" evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism".[22]
Democratic socialism has also been defined as social democracy prior to the 1970s, when the displacement of Keynesianism caused many social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the current powers that be and redefining socialism in a way that it maintains the capitalist structure intact.[23][24][11][25][26] As an example, the new version of Clause IV of the New Labour Constitution conflates democratic socialism with modern social democracy. While affirming a commitment to democratic socialism,[27][28] it no longer definitely commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services [...] either owned by the public or accountable to them".[27] Like traditional social democracy, democratic socialism tends to follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one, a tendency that is captured in the statement that Labour Party revisionist Anthony Crosland, intellectual leader of the liberal and right-wing of the party, "argued that the socialism of the pre-war world (not just that of the Marxists, but of the democratic socialists too) were now increasingly irrelevant".[29][30] This tendency is also often invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism as in Norman Thomas' Democratic Socialism: A New Appraisal,[31] Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism,[32] Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951[33] and Donald F. Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey.[5] A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1941) that liberal democracies were evolving from liberal capitalism into democratic socialism with the growth of workers' self-management, industrial democracy and regulatory institutions.[34]
As a term, democratic socialism has some significant overlap on practical policy positions with social democracy, although they are often distinguished from each other.[3][4][14] Policies commonly supported are Keynesian in nature, including significant of regulation over a mixed economy, social insurance schemes, public pension programs and a gradual expansion of public ownership over major industries.[35] Policies such as free healthcare and education are described as "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society".[36] Partly because of this overlap, some political commentators use the terms interchangeably.[37][38] The difference between the two is that modern social democrats support practical reforms to capitalism as an end in itself whereas democratic socialists ultimately want to go beyond social democratic reforms and advocate systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism.[3][4][14] During the late 20th century, these labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the emergence of developments within the European left such as Eurocommunism, the rise of neoliberalism, the fall of the Soviet Union and Marxist–Leninist governments, the Third Way and the rise of anti-austerity and Occupy movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession. This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians that represent the more traditional social democracy such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States,[39] who assumed the label democratic socialist to describe their rejection of centrist, Third Way politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties.[40][41]
Market socialism - Wikipedia
Market socialism is a type of economic system involving the public, cooperative or social ownership of the means of production in the framework of a market economy. Market socialism differs from non-market socialism in that the market mechanism is utilized for the allocation of capital goods and the means of production.[1][2][3] Depending on the specific model of market socialism, profits generated by socially owned firms (i.e. net revenue not reinvested into expanding the firm) may variously be used to directly remunerate employees, accrue to society at large as the source of public finance or be distributed amongst the population in a social dividend.[4]
Market socialism is distinguished from the concept of the mixed economy because unlike the mixed economy, models of market socialism are complete and self-regulating systems.[5] Market socialism also contrasts with social democratic policies implemented within capitalist market economies: while social democracy aims to achieve greater economic stability and equality through policy measures such as taxes, subsidies and social welfare programs, market socialism aims to achieve similar goals through changing patterns of enterprise ownership and management.[6]
...
Early models of market socialism trace their roots to the work of Adam Smith and the theories of classical economics, which consisted of proposals for cooperative enterprises operating in a free-market economy. The aim of such proposals was to eliminate exploitation by allowing individuals to receive the full product of their labor while removing the market-distorting effects of concentrating ownership and wealth in the hands of a small class of private owners.[9] Among early advocates of market socialism were the Ricardian socialist economists and mutualist philosophers. In the early 20th century, Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner outlined a neoclassical model of socialism which included a role for a central planning board (CPB) in setting prices equal to marginal cost to achieve Pareto efficiency. Even though these early models did not rely on genuine markets, they were labeled "market socialist" for their utilization of financial prices and calculation. In more recent models proposed by American neoclassical economists, public ownership of the means of production is achieved through public ownership of equity and social control of investment.
Paternalistic conservatism - Wikipedia
Paternalistic conservatism is a strand in conservatism which reflects the belief that societies exist and develop organically and that members within them have obligations towards each other.[1] There is particular emphasis on the paternalistic obligation of those who are privileged and wealthy to the poorer parts of society. Since it is consistent with principles such as organicism, hierarchy and duty, it can be seen an outgrowth of traditional conservatism. Paternal conservatives support neither the individual nor the state in principle, but are instead prepared to support either or recommend a balance between the two depending on what is most practical.[2]
Social democracy - Wikipedia
Social democracy is a political, social and economic philosophy that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal democratic polity and a capitalist mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution and regulation of the economy in the general interest and welfare state provisions.[1][2][3] In this way, social democracy aims to create the conditions for capitalism to lead to greater democratic, egalitarian and solidaristic outcomes.[4] Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in the Nordic countries, social democracy has become associated in policy circles with the Nordic model in the latter part of the 20th century.[5]
Social democracy originated as a political ideology that advocated an evolutionary and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism using established political processes in contrast to the revolutionary approach to transition associated with orthodox Marxism.[6] In the early post-war era in Western Europe, social democratic parties rejected the Stalinist political and economic model then current in the Soviet Union, committing themselves either to an alternative path to socialism or to a compromise between capitalism and socialism.[7] In this period, social democrats embraced a capitalist mixed economy based on the predominance of private property, with only a minority of essential utilities and public services under public ownership. As a result, social democracy became associated with Keynesian economics, state interventionism and the welfare state while abandoning the prior goal of replacing the capitalist system (factor markets, private property and wage labour)[4] with a qualitatively different socialist economic system.[8][9][10] With the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right by the 1980s,[11] many social democratic parties incorporated the Third Way ideology,[12] aiming to fuse liberal economics with social democratic welfare policies.[13][14] By the 2010s, the Third Way had generally fallen out of favour.
Modern social democracy is characterised by a commitment to policies aimed at curbing inequality, oppression of underprivileged groups and poverty,[15] including support for universally accessible public services like care for the elderly, child care, education, health care and workers' compensation.[16] The social democratic movement often has strong connections with the labour movement and trade unions which are supportive of collective bargaining rights for workers as well as measures to extend decision-making beyond politics into the economic sphere in the form of co-determination for employees and other economic stakeholders
Democratic socialism - Wikipedia
Democratic socialism is a political philosophy that advocates political democracy alongside a socially owned economy,[1] with an emphasis on workers' self-management and democratic control of economic institutions within a market or some form of a decentralised planned socialist economy.[2] Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of liberty, equality and solidarity and that these ideals can be achieved only through the realisation of a socialist society. Democratic socialism can support either revolutionary or reformist politics as a means to establish socialism.[3]
In the term democratic socialism, the adjective democratic is added and used to distinguish democratic socialists from Marxist–Leninist inspired socialism which to many is viewed as being undemocratic or authoritarian in practice.[3][4][5][6] Democratic socialists oppose the Stalinist political system and the Soviet-type economic system, rejecting the perceived authoritarian form of governance and highly centralised command economy that took form in the Soviet Union and other Marxist–Leninist states in the early 20th century.[6] Democratic socialism is distinguished from 20th-century social democracy on the basis that democratic socialists are committed to systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism whereas modern social democrats are opposed to ultimately ending capitalism and are instead supportive of progressive reforms to capitalism.[3][4]
In contrast to modern social democrats, democratic socialists believe that reforms state interventions aimed at addressing social inequalities and suppressing the economic contradictions of capitalism would only see them emerge elsewhere in a different guise.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] Democratic socialists believe that the systemic issues of capitalism can only be solved by replacing the capitalist economic system with socialism, i.e. by replacing private ownership with collective ownership of the means of production and extending democracy to the economic sphere.[3][4][14] The origins of democratic socialism can be traced to 19th-century utopian socialist thinkers and the British Chartist movement that differed in detail yet all shared the essence of democratic decision making and public ownership of the means of production as positive characteristics of the society they advocated.[15] In the early 20th century, the gradualist, reformist socialism promoted by the British Fabian Society and Eduard Bernstein's evolutionary socialism in Germany influenced the development of democratic socialism....
Democratic socialism is defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled, alongside a democratic political system of government.[1] Democratic socialism rejects self-described socialist states as it rejects Marxism–Leninism and its derivatives such as Stalinism and Maoism, among others.[3][4][5][6] As a result, Peter Hain classifies democratic socialism along with libertarian socialism as a form of anti-authoritarian socialism from below (using the term popularised by Hal Draper) in contrast to Stalinism and state socialism. For Hain, this democratic/authoritarian divide is more important than the revolutionary/reformist divide.[19] In this type of democratic socialism, it is the active participation of the population as a whole and workers in particular in the self-management of the economy that characterises democratic socialism while nationalisation and centralised economic planning (whether coordinated by an elected government or not) are characteristic of state socialism. A similar, more complex argument is made by Nicos Poulantzas.[20] Draper himself used the term revolutionary-democratic socialism as a type of socialism from below in his The Two Souls of Socialism, writing: "[T]he leading spokesman in the Second International of a revolutionary-democratic Socialism-from-Below [...] was Rosa Luxemburg, who so emphatically put her faith and hope in the spontaneous struggle of a free working class that the myth-makers invented for her a "theory of spontaneity".[21] Similarly, he wrote about Eugene V. Debs: "Debsian socialism" evoked a tremendous response from the heart of the people, but Debs had no successor as a tribune of revolutionary-democratic socialism".[22]
Democratic socialism has also been defined as social democracy prior to the 1970s, when the displacement of Keynesianism caused many social democratic parties to adopt the Third Way ideology, accepting capitalism as the current powers that be and redefining socialism in a way that it maintains the capitalist structure intact.[23][24][11][25][26] As an example, the new version of Clause IV of the New Labour Constitution conflates democratic socialism with modern social democracy. While affirming a commitment to democratic socialism,[27][28] it no longer definitely commits the party to public ownership of industry and in its place advocates "the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition" along with "high quality public services [...] either owned by the public or accountable to them".[27] Like traditional social democracy, democratic socialism tends to follow a gradual, reformist or evolutionary path to socialism rather than a revolutionary one, a tendency that is captured in the statement that Labour Party revisionist Anthony Crosland, intellectual leader of the liberal and right-wing of the party, "argued that the socialism of the pre-war world (not just that of the Marxists, but of the democratic socialists too) were now increasingly irrelevant".[29][30] This tendency is also often invoked in an attempt to distinguish democratic socialism from Marxist–Leninist socialism as in Norman Thomas' Democratic Socialism: A New Appraisal,[31] Roy Hattersley's Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism,[32] Jim Tomlinson's Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years, 1945–1951[33] and Donald F. Busky's Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey.[5] A variant of this set of definitions is Joseph Schumpeter's argument set out in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1941) that liberal democracies were evolving from liberal capitalism into democratic socialism with the growth of workers' self-management, industrial democracy and regulatory institutions.[34]
As a term, democratic socialism has some significant overlap on practical policy positions with social democracy, although they are often distinguished from each other.[3][4][14] Policies commonly supported are Keynesian in nature, including significant of regulation over a mixed economy, social insurance schemes, public pension programs and a gradual expansion of public ownership over major industries.[35] Policies such as free healthcare and education are described as "pure Socialism" because they are opposed to "the hedonism of capitalist society".[36] Partly because of this overlap, some political commentators use the terms interchangeably.[37][38] The difference between the two is that modern social democrats support practical reforms to capitalism as an end in itself whereas democratic socialists ultimately want to go beyond social democratic reforms and advocate systemic transformation of the economy from capitalism to socialism.[3][4][14] During the late 20th century, these labels were embraced, contested and rejected due to the emergence of developments within the European left such as Eurocommunism, the rise of neoliberalism, the fall of the Soviet Union and Marxist–Leninist governments, the Third Way and the rise of anti-austerity and Occupy movements in the late 2000s and early 2010s due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008 and the Great Recession. This latest development contributed to the rise of politicians that represent the more traditional social democracy such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States,[39] who assumed the label democratic socialist to describe their rejection of centrist, Third Way politicians that supported triangulation within the Labour and Democratic parties.[40][41]