Communism, Socialism or Capitalism?

[midcan5]

Capitalism and socialism are broadly opposing schools....
One of the oddest ideas I encounter on a regular basis (typically among Americans, because of the limited nature of our political discourse), is belief the the mixed economy is specifically a mixture of capitalism and socialism. It is not. The mixed economy is fundamentally capitalist in nature; "a little socialism" is not a meaningful concept in an economic structure. An economic system must incorporate public/collective control of the means of production to be legitimately socialist; anything short of that is likely a form of capitalism.

No ideology is pure, the collective control of the means of production in our so called capitalist economy is obvious in any business owned by the employees. There are lots. Even the purchasing of stock could be considered owning the means of prod.

 

[Freedomgone2009]

Are you saying you want Communism and or Socialism to help fix our problems?

Are you on crack?

That is the last thing we need right now, Government giving us money and telling us how to run our business is no way I want to live. Besides, Ok say were socialists for awhile but like welfare, has anyone removed the welfare system since it began? If we become socialists now and or communists it will never end 100%.

Capitalism is the only way to go IMHO. Life or die by your decisions.

No reasonably intelligent person will believe that you can have a purely capitalistic or socialist or communist country. I believe that it takes a little bit of all through to make this country work. Yes, Fox News and the Republicans are on the roof top yelling that Obama is taking the country to socialism, and some idiots like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity also be that the country is headed to Communism! I really wish that we would be put our politics for a while....at least until we fix our current problems!

 

[Indiana Oracle]

Agnapostate --
At the risk of being humiliated for failing to grasp the historical foundations and writhings of socialism and its offshoots, let me state first that I would not argue with the history. I also, for what it may be worth, lived in Switzerland for a good period of time and am a student of political philosophy.

What I would add is that the arguements you put forward do not generally conform to the American perspective when discussing socialism. There is a much stronger and longer history of socialism in Europe which Americans do not share. In the US its establishment has, is and will likely continue to meet with resistance. Americans tend to be suspicious of any form of command and control. I would also add that the Obama crowd is probably underestimating this and where a radical alteration to our political structure might lead.

 

[WorldAHope]

I think it is vital for people to refrain from tossing out useless labels that are amorphous and are totally unusable as tools to fix our serious problems. Terminology is irrelevant and is an unneeded distraction (usually a deliberate disruption) from the tasks of immediatly addressing the situation that is in front of our faces.
We must examine the situations from a standpoint of "What Should We Do to Fix This ?" not from a restrictive, cowardly '''ohhh...it might be socialism to pump funds into saving jobs and the banking system....better we should do nothing, let it fail and make the entire world economy collapse into chaos and turmoil and the dark ages...."
If doctors in the emergency room were arguing about the ideological reasons they WON'T do anything save your kid who was in an auto accident and is bleeding on the gurney, you'd be reaching for a knife or gun to hold to somebody's throat to get them moving.
We need to go to a sound Managed Capitalism system, supervise the vital market activities so this collapse doe not happen again. Call it whatever you want, but EVERY COMPANY in America does exactly that. They Manage their internal Capitalism. The magic of the MarketPlace is a fairytale.
It does not exist.
Anyone who wastes time blabbering on about labels and tries to justifiy a LACK of action in an emergency, such as we are in,
is seperated from reality. Theroticians who have never had to act decisively in life or death situations, or have no idea how a company or business actually operates should not be discussing economics or business.
We act to Save the sick shaky Capitalist systems,
or the result will be something none of us want. Worldwide chaos, turmoil, suffering.

 

[Agnapostate]

No ideology is pure, the collective control of the means of production in our so called capitalist economy is obvious in any business owned by the employees. There are lots. Even the purchasing of stock could be considered owning the means of prod.

ESOPs? They don't constitute a significant enough portion of the firm population to compose a majority over ownership of the means of production. More than that, the same divergence between ownership and actual managerial control sometimes manifests itself in that variety of firm structure, in that a system of "one share, one vote" is more common than one of "one person, one vote," thereby undermining democracy.

Agnapostate --
At the risk of being humiliated for failing to grasp the historical foundations and writhings of socialism and its offshoots, let me state first that I would not argue with the history. I also, for what it may be worth, lived in Switzerland for a good period of time and am a student of political philosophy.

What I would add is that the arguements you put forward do not generally conform to the American perspective when discussing socialism. There is a much stronger and longer history of socialism in Europe which Americans do not share. In the US its establishment has, is and will likely continue to meet with resistance. Americans tend to be suspicious of any form of command and control. I would also add that the Obama crowd is probably underestimating this and where a radical alteration to our political structure might lead.

Europe is certainly steeped in socialist history and related traditions, with Germany obviously being the birthplace of Marxism, and Spain being the effective home of applied anarchism, despite major anarchist thinkers coming from France (Proudhon) and Russia (Bakunin and Kropotkin). My personal advocacy isn't of any variety of command economy or "control" structure; I favor a transition to decentralized market socialism, and the eventual establishment of a participatory economy. The reason that so many Americans are wary of socialism is because of the myth that the Soviet Union was a legitimate example of a socialist country, thereby associating it with authoritarianism.

 

[AVG-JOE]

It appears to this reporter that 'humanity' and 'government' are still evolving... Film at 11:00

 

[Cecilie1200]

For the cohesive society of differing functions, somehow working together, that humanity on Planet Earth must become if our children are to fulfill their destiny and reach for the stars (assuming we don't burn down our infrastructure instead), there must be some guidance and long term vision expressed collectively by The Peoples Interests and Will through government as well as an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, weeding through ideas and processes to sort the good ideas and business models from the bad.

There are two systems currently in place with the resources to foist such a society upon the world...

1. The United States, a capitalist system, which is currently experiencing the pain of learning what happens with everyone doing their own thing with no central planning. While raw capitalism produces a plethora of ideas and processes in the marketplace, especially when there is an abundance of natural resources and undeveloped land available for the taking, it also can produce uncontrollably large and powerful business organizations which cause havoc in the market place when they implode.

2. China, a socialist system, which has been experimenting over the last 30 years with central vision and planning, combined with letting people make many of their own decisions in the market place and allowing them to reap the rewards and losses of those decisions.

Guess which system currently owes the other more money than God could repay...

So here is the question my fellow Americans:

Do you think capitalism, with some semblance of vision and central planning might recover from its current embarrassing situation and kick ass on socialism that is experimenting with the value of marketplace freedoms, or are we doomed to pay our mortgages in yuan instead of dollars 10 years from now, because nobody wants the electric grid running through their back yard and by God were free to say "Fuck you" to the rest of us?

-Joe

This sort of thinking is what brings down great societies. "Humans just aren't smart enough and good enough, and I, in my infinitely superior wisdom and morality, need to barge in and show them how they OUGHT to be, because I can change human nature."

There is no necessity whatsoever for human beings to be warm and fuzzy and altruistic, and the honest truth is that you are NEVER going to get 100% of them to be that way, or even to believe it's a good idea. Which means the closest you'll ever get is to turn the majority of society into sheep with a handful of wolves in the herd.

Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", because right there you have negated the entire premise of capitalism. Seriously, what is it with people that they think they, personally (or any one person, for that matter) can be smart enough to singlehandedly replace every bit of knowledge and every single economic decision made by hundreds of millions of people every day? That's what central planning is: the government is going to decide what people need and want most, instead of letting the individual people decide and reflect their decisions in market forces.

 

[Agnapostate]

This sort of thinking is what brings down great societies. "Humans just aren't smart enough and good enough, and I, in my infinitely superior wisdom and morality, need to barge in and show them how they OUGHT to be, because I can change human nature."

There is no necessity whatsoever for human beings to be warm and fuzzy and altruistic, and the honest truth is that you are NEVER going to get 100% of them to be that way, or even to believe it's a good idea. Which means the closest you'll ever get is to turn the majority of society into sheep with a handful of wolves in the herd.

Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", because right there you have negated the entire premise of capitalism. Seriously, what is it with people that they think they, personally (or any one person, for that matter) can be smart enough to singlehandedly replace every bit of knowledge and every single economic decision made by hundreds of millions of people every day? That's what central planning is: the government is going to decide what people need and want most, instead of letting the individual people decide and reflect their decisions in market forces.

The role and power of the financial and coordinator classes in a capitalist economy necessitates the creation of hierarchical, centralized structures. Were worker ownership and participatory democracy to prevail, they'd quickly lose their artificial ownership and management roles, and the effective moral poverty of their affluence would be exposed.

The ability to illustrate the inconsistency of Hayekian criticisms of centralization was what caused socialists to win the economic calculation debate. The incompetence of the initial debaters must be mentioned, of course (such as Mises's incapacity to address Barone's theoretical formation of a Pareto efficient socialist economy, which emerged twelve to thirteen years before his vaunted critique did, as well as his inability to accurately respond to Lange and Taylor), but noting inconsistent applications of Hayek's criticisms is the basis behind post-Hayekian socialism, as is the major thesis of Burczak's Socialism after Hayek (Advances in Heterodox Economics).

This is why anti-socialists were incapable of winning the economic calculation debate: a sole, obfuscatory focus on Marxism, and an inability to even address Marxist arguments in favor of centralization adequately. Anarchism and market socialism effectively bypassed the entire debate because of their reliance on a decentralized and democratic framework rather than a centralized, authoritarian one.

 

[Indiana Oracle]

I am not the first to say this, but debating an idea as the preamble to voting on it in a democratic society which values freedom of expression and embraces concepts of equality as America does, requires that the debater move beyond moral and personal instinct onto a plane of logical arguement.

The debate itself is understood as being decisive in our equality-based societal philosophy. This is used by people such as anarchists, many of whom do nothing else but prepare, and change-everything people and groups of all stripes who are focused on their cause.

The listeners and voters, us, are mostly off doing something else everyday and come into such pivotal debates in learning mode. Because of this, we cannot often: 1) convince idealogues; or 2) out debate them.

So we are left, at the end of the day, with the values we walked in with. The people of the US need to understand this and the concepts of ideological debate better than many presently do. The times demand it.

Pass this on.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I think it is vital for people to refrain from tossing out useless labels that are amorphous and are totally unusable as tools to fix our serious problems. Terminology is irrelevant and is an unneeded distraction (usually a deliberate disruption) from the tasks of immediatly addressing the situation that is in front of our faces.
We must examine the situations from a standpoint of "What Should We Do to Fix This ?" not from a restrictive, cowardly '''ohhh...it might be socialism to pump funds into saving jobs and the banking system....better we should do nothing, let it fail and make the entire world economy collapse into chaos and turmoil and the dark ages...."
If doctors in the emergency room were arguing about the ideological reasons they WON'T do anything save your kid who was in an auto accident and is bleeding on the gurney, you'd be reaching for a knife or gun to hold to somebody's throat to get them moving.
We need to go to a sound Managed Capitalism system, supervise the vital market activities so this collapse doe not happen again. Call it whatever you want, but EVERY COMPANY in America does exactly that. They Manage their internal Capitalism. The magic of the MarketPlace is a fairytale.
It does not exist.
Anyone who wastes time blabbering on about labels and tries to justifiy a LACK of action in an emergency, such as we are in,
is seperated from reality. Theroticians who have never had to act decisively in life or death situations, or have no idea how a company or business actually operates should not be discussing economics or business.
We act to Save the sick shaky Capitalist systems,
or the result will be something none of us want. Worldwide chaos, turmoil, suffering.

I like that. "We shouldn't waste time knowing what we're talking about, or GOD FORBID! communicating with each other about it clearly. We should just freaking panic and DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!"

You aren't "saving" anything, least of all "sick shaky capitalist systems". All these problems you're asking for socialism to fix were created by too much government meddling to begin with, not by unbridled capitalism. You don't save something by an increase in what caused the problem in the first place.

 

[garyd]

Under socialism and Germany and France in most regards are much more socialist than Scandinavia, you have what we in america would call intolerably high un employment. Both have been running unemployment rates of around 8% +2 -1 for more than a decade. Economic growth is also stagnant or near to it most years. Socialism generally keeps you from having really bad years (though not always) but it also prevents you from having really good years.

Capitalism is much more subject to the boom and bust cycle but generally if left to it's own devices averages out a little better. Unfortunately politicians are loathe to leave it to it's own dfvices as witness the current debacle.

 

[Agnapostate]

I like that. "We shouldn't waste time knowing what we're talking about, or GOD FORBID! communicating with each other about it clearly. We should just freaking panic and DO SOMETHING! ANYTHING!"

You aren't "saving" anything, least of all "sick shaky capitalist systems". All these problems you're asking for socialism to fix were created by too much government meddling to begin with, not by unbridled capitalism. You don't save something by an increase in what caused the problem in the first place.

More economic ignorance. The government is a necessary stabilizing agent in a capitalist economy, as can be inferred from the strategic use of trade policy to protect the development of infant industries and thereby maximize dynamic comparative advantage.

Under socialism and Germany and France in most regards are much more socialist than Scandinavia, you have what we in america would call intolerably high un employment. Both have been running unemployment rates of around 8% +2 -1 for more than a decade. Economic growth is also stagnant or near to it most years. Socialism generally keeps you from having really bad years (though not always) but it also prevents you from having really good years.

Capitalism is much more subject to the boom and bust cycle but generally if left to it's own devices averages out a little better. Unfortunately politicians are loathe to leave it to it's own dfvices as witness the current debacle.

I don't know where the idea of European Rhine capitalism being "socialist" comes from, but it's likely related to the fallacy that "government = socialism." Social democracy is also the superior form of capitalism in existence, though it cannot function as a substitute for a socialist economic framework. Previous analyses have borne out the fact that social democracy and forms of capitalism that significantly utilize welfare do not suffer efficiency losses, because, of course, welfare plays an integral role in sustaining capitalism.

For instance, we could examine Headey et al.'s Is There a Trade-Off Between Economic Efficiency and a Generous Welfare State? A Comparison of Best Cases of `The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism’ Consider the abstract:

A crucial debate in policy-making as well as academic circles is whether there is a trade-off between economic efficiency and the size/generosity of the welfare state. One way to contribute to this debate is to compare the performance of best cases of different types of state. Arguably, in the decade 1985-94, the US, West Germany and the Netherlands were best cases - best economic performers - in what G. Esping-Andersen calls the three worlds of welfare capitalism. The US is a liberal welfare-capitalist state, West Germany a corporatist state, and the Netherlands is social democratic in its tax-transfer system, although not its labor market policies. These three countries had rates of economic growth per capita as high or higher than other rich countries of their type, and the lowest rates of unemployment. At a normative or ideological level the three types of state have the same goals but prioritise them differently. The liberal state prioritises economic growth and efficiency, avoids work disincentives, and targets welfare benefits only to those in greatest need. The corporatist state aims to give priority to social stability, especially household income stability, and social integration. The social democratic welfare state claims high priority for minimising poverty, inequality and unemployment. Using ten years of panel data for each country, we assess indicators of their short (one year), medium (five year) and longer term (ten year) performance in achieving economic and welfare goals. Overall, in this time period, the Netherlands achieved the best performance on the welfare goals to which it gave priority, and equalled the other two states on most of the goals to which they gave priority. This result supports the view that there is no necessary trade-off between economic efficiency and a generous welfare state.

The record of actual socialism in promoting economic growth and development, of course, is significantly more impressive.

 

[liberwhacker]

Komissar Obamavitch is doing his best to drive our wonderful antion into communism. The liberal "have nots" believe that this will make them affluent like Republicans who have worked and saved and invested. When it gets here, the libeal parasites will not like communism either. Communists have a class of "have nots" and the libbies will remain there.

 

[Agnapostate]

And to think, Pubicus accused me of having a sock puppet...

 

[editec]

Some of you people think that you want PURE FREEDOM.

You think capitalism is a manifestation of that freedom, too

None of you really want that.

Not unless you want pure anarchy.

What most of you want is as much INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM as possible, but you want it in an ORDERLY CIVIL SOCIETY, too.

That demands tension between YOUR "RIGHTS, and the right of the society that you eixst in to LIMIT your and your neightbors' individual freedoms.

But if you think PURE CAPITALISM grants any of you FREEDOM whatever, you don't know what the hell capitalism even is.

Capitalism has nothing whatever to do with governance.

Capitalism can only exist in a place that has government.

If you doubt that, show me any place in the world today, or EVER, where capitalism ruled the roost, but no government was there to make it possible for people to safely OWN ANYTHING.

No such place ever existed and no such place will ever exist.

PURE CAPITALIST STATES one with no government simply cannot exist.

Why?

Because in that state of affairs MIGHT MAKES RIGHT.

duh!

Anyone with more power can deny you whatever right they choose.

But editec that's theft, that's not capitalism, you say?

No shit, Sherlock. That's my whole fucking point.

Capitalism has no mechanism to protect you (or itself) from crime.

And the moment it creates mechanisms to protect itself from crime, it begins the process of denying others their FREEDOMS.

Remember that PURE FREEDOM is the FREEDOM to take other people's STUFF.

 

[AVG-JOE]

For the cohesive society of differing functions, somehow working together, that humanity on Planet Earth must become if our children are to fulfill their destiny and reach for the stars (assuming we don't burn down our infrastructure instead), there must be some guidance and long term vision expressed collectively by The Peoples Interests and Will through government as well as an evolutionary process of survival of the fittest, weeding through ideas and processes to sort the good ideas and business models from the bad.

There are two systems currently in place with the resources to foist such a society upon the world...

1. The United States, a capitalist system, which is currently experiencing the pain of learning what happens with everyone doing their own thing with no central planning. While raw capitalism produces a plethora of ideas and processes in the marketplace, especially when there is an abundance of natural resources and undeveloped land available for the taking, it also can produce uncontrollably large and powerful business organizations which cause havoc in the market place when they implode.

2. China, a socialist system, which has been experimenting over the last 30 years with central vision and planning, combined with letting people make many of their own decisions in the market place and allowing them to reap the rewards and losses of those decisions.

Guess which system currently owes the other more money than God could repay...

So here is the question my fellow Americans:

Do you think capitalism, with some semblance of vision and central planning might recover from its current embarrassing situation and kick ass on socialism that is experimenting with the value of marketplace freedoms, or are we doomed to pay our mortgages in yuan instead of dollars 10 years from now, because nobody wants the electric grid running through their back yard and by God were free to say "Fuck you" to the rest of us?

-Joe

This sort of thinking is what brings down great societies. "Humans just aren't smart enough and good enough, and I, in my infinitely superior wisdom and morality, need to barge in and show them how they OUGHT to be, because I can change human nature."

There is no necessity whatsoever for human beings to be warm and fuzzy and altruistic, and the honest truth is that you are NEVER going to get 100% of them to be that way, or even to believe it's a good idea. Which means the closest you'll ever get is to turn the majority of society into sheep with a handful of wolves in the herd.

Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", because right there you have negated the entire premise of capitalism. Seriously, what is it with people that they think they, personally (or any one person, for that matter) can be smart enough to singlehandedly replace every bit of knowledge and every single economic decision made by hundreds of millions of people every day? That's what central planning is: the government is going to decide what people need and want most, instead of letting the individual people decide and reflect their decisions in market forces.

Seriously Cecilie?

Capitalism cannot exist in conjunction with "central planning", eh?

Was America a socialist nation in the 1800's when the government coordinated private investment in a rail line that linked the coasts?

Central planning and capitalism are diametrically opposed, eh?

So the interstate system "just happened" to link up at the state lines? (Assuming some sort of central planning at the state level is allowed in your imagination.)

So the safest food supply in the history of a socially organized mankind "just happened"? Safe food is not exactly a profit oriented goal, unless the producer sees his customers face-to-face on a regular basis...

So America's proudest moments, winning WWII and walking on the moon "just happened"?

Shall I go on?


The economy that leads the world into the 21st century will have to have vision and central planning. Right now, the Chinese are in a position to own us and our leadership position because of our push for short-term gains and lack of long term vision, as a nation, during the last 50 years.

Even if enough greed has been bitch-slapped out of our system to get proper private investment into more-expensive-in-the-short-term alternatives to imported energy, where will the electric grid go? Someone is going to have to allow it in their back yard... That takes central planning.

Shall I go on?

-Joe

 

[Agnapostate]

Her entire conception of capitalism is perverse because of an inaccurate belief that the existence of free markets is a realistic goal, rather than a utopian one. In actuality, the state is and has been a necessary stabilizing agent in a capitalist economy. For instance, we might consider the infant industry argument, wherein government protection of infant industries permits them to develop into competitive industries, thus maximizing dynamic comparative advantage. Free marketers are often dismissive or ignorant of such facts, of course.

 

[Yukon]

The US Government controls the banks, the auto companies the steel companies the airline industry and the killing machine known as the Military. The country should be renamed The Unitedsoviet States of the World.

Freedom is DEAD in the US. DEAD !

 

[editec]

The US Government controls the banks, the auto companies the steel companies the airline industry and the killing machine known as the Military. The country should be renamed The Unitedsoviet States of the World.

Freedom is DEAD in the US. DEAD !

Idiot.

The banks control the US government.

That isn't obvious to you by now?

That's why everyone thinks you're a troll.

That's a compliment actually, because the alternative to you being a troll is that you're somebody stupid enough to believe all the crap you post...like the above.

 

[Agnapostate]

"If you have a gun, you can rob a bank, but if you have a bank, you can rob everyone!" -Bill Maher