- Apr 5, 2010
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It can work if only you could remove greed, sloth and envy...
Until then it is just a dream of delusional people thinking they discovered the cure...
Socialism can only work in a free market. It MUST compete with individual intiative to work, that is why all the elites that run our economy hate the free market.
Did you know that the FEDERAL RESERVE is a monopoly and opposed to the free market?
Examples of successful socialism in a free market;
Credit union - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers'_co-operative
National Cooperative Business Association - Wikipedia
Cooperative - Wikipedia
Mutual organization - Wikipedia
Friendly society - Wikipedia
Food cooperative - Wikipedia
Agricultural cooperative - Wikipedia
Ocean Spray (cooperative) - Wikipedia
Sunkist Growers, Incorporated - Wikipedia
United Egg Producers - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_O'Lakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida's_Natural_Growers
List of energy cooperatives - Wikipedia
That type of "mixed" economy the elites practice they call "capitalism" but is, in reality, something called dirgism.
Dirigisme - Wikipedia
This is something used to oppress the lower classes, maintain tight control on a corrupt society and enrich the oligarchy.
Cooperatives are not socialism. You need to governmental involvement in means of production for socialism to be considered, and you need the whole class argument thing to be involved if you want to imply marxism (of which socialism is the method of removing class struggle)
A bunch of people banding together to sell oranges may be cronyism, but it isn't socialism.
If we are going to quibble over definitions, there will be no debate then.
Under this definition;
Socialism is a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management,[10] as well as the political theories and movements associated with them.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective or cooperative ownership, or citizen ownership of equity.[12] There are many varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them,[13] with social ownership being the common element shared by its various forms.[5][14][15]
Everything I just listed IS socialism. Furthermore, socialism DOES NOT need government and IT CAN exist in a free market.
I am going to quibble over the definition. A voluntary collective agreement is just a contract, it isn't socialism. There were collective organizations before Marx such as guilds, or even the collective security found in feudalism, but socialism as a modern construct came from Marx, and Marx was all about class struggle and the use of government to eliminate that class struggle.
Damn you ARE stubborn.
So it was MARX that called that FIRST INTERNATIONALE? And they all came running?
If you want to discuss the marxist/anarchist split we can go to another thread (actually not).
When people use socialism, they don't think of Florida orange growers or some hippie commune in the valley.
They think of government control of supply and demand.