This is my point. Socialism’s economic basis is the creation of a permanent surplus of goods so that the material basis for famine and reduction in personal wealth, as you put it, is eliminated. Thus a permanent basis for cooperation and coordination worldwide.
Olentzaro,
You are invited to join a panel of experts assembling here in Great Debates.
Yes, if there’s an organized political party arguing from a socialist viewpoint, serving as a pole of attraction for people disillusioned with the way things are now, and trying to get them active as well.
Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky all said that crises in capitalism are inevitable, and the history of the last 150 years bears that out, often all too bloodily. It can and will happen again, and people are going to look for a way out. I plan on being out there with a damn good answer.
**
And I had to chuckle when I saw this. The old against human nature argument. That’s been around forever, can’t you think of anything new? In classic Greece they complained that democracy is against human nature and would never work. The same was said during the French revolution. Human nature used to be though of as being in service to God, anything else would be unthinkable. Now, the vogue argument is that human nature is selfish. Why? Just look around you, everyone is selfish. However, the problem with this argument is that if I can point out one unselfish act, your whole argument falls apart. Because, if someone is unselfish at some point, then it is no longer human nature to be selfish. Or if it is, that person is no longer human.
Of course people cooperate because it increases their own benefits. People aren’t going to do something deliberately detrimental to themselves. However, under socialism, it’s in people’s interest to cooperate.
**
Yes.
**
Well, no one said it would be easy. However, many people were also shocked by the mass protests of the 60’s, if you had asked them 10 years earlier if they would have thought it possible, many would say no. If you had asked people prior to the Gulf War if so many people would be protesting it? They would say no. If you asked people if they thought the Rodney King verdict would have such an explosive effect, they would say no.
Olentzero
I do understand English. I also noticed here you started callong me names, where I referred to ‘you guys’ as a group, trying not to get personal. But OK, I had that one coming.
Then you said:
And here is where you lost me. What the heck is a kashei? Just really curios now.
To show respect, and try to attone from previous inappropriate behaviour in this thread, here is a nice polite question or two.
Who determines ‘ability’, and who evaluates the work in ‘according to his work’
a lucid thought, does not stay with you long though…
Again, who determines ‘ability’, and who determines ‘need’?
Well, please don’t assume. Although, since you have defined communism/socialism as that which has never existed, it’s hard to argue with you. But I did spend time in a society which claimed to have communist and socialist beliefs, and that was a major downer, trust me (or don’t, I can give plenty of examples). I have also seen a very pure form of communism, on several Kibutz in Israel. That works great until one guy wants a TV set – then they all get them or no one does. Sucks big time when you can’t get BBC…
Oldscratch:
This is probably one I agree with, more free time under socialism/communism. Lots, in fact, rotting away in political prison.
Sili
I’m not even going to get into your and Olentzero’s foreign conversation. It’s crazy talk, crazy talk I tell you.
**
Let’s put it this way. China and Russia both claimed to be democratic. Where they? Can someone living in those societies criticize democracy based on their experiences? No, of course not. The problem with the Kibutz is two fold. One, you can not have communism on stolen land. Two, you can not have communism in isolation. The Kibutz can also not be looked at as how Communism would work, any more than hippie communes in the US would.
**
Not, if we shoot people first. 
Again, please refrain from making comments based on your experiences. This would be like someone in China decrying democracy. If you are interested in making arguments, one you could make would be. Socialism will always end up like it was in Russia. A revolution can never spread fast enough, it will always become isolated and devolve into dictatorship. That would be an appropriate comment, one that doesn’t rely on stupid jabs.
Carl and Mark were patently wrong when they made this assumption. Co-operation did take place but at the very primitive family/tribe level. Competition for resouces became more extreme as resources declined. You need look no further than at histories of North American or South American or African Native societies prior to industrialization of those continents.
Similarly, surplus and over-abundance of commodities tends to drive the price down on the open market and therefore reduce competition because there is no opportunity for reasonable gain.
Well, they are not. But they do have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness limited only by their own shortcommings or pesonal goals.
Once upon a time a man had a cow. He took that cow to his neighbour who had a bull. They made a deal that if the two mated, they would share the milk or meat of the resultant offspring. Well that cow gave birth to several calves and the man had enough milk for himself and his neighbour. He sold a few calfs for some farm tools and seeds. He began to grow his own feed. Soon his sons and daughters were old enough to help so the farm prospered and as the calves grew to maturity they bore more milk and more offspring. The milk and meat supported the family because they were able to sell what they did not need at the village market. Several generations of this family continued to work on the farm and they saw it prosper. Finally, one grandson of the original farmer decided that he would invest some money in pasteurization equipment and develope a dairy. The dairy did well and soon they were producing not only milk but butter, cream, cheese and ice cream as well. Well by that time they business was so big that they had to hire some people from the village to help them. They paid them market wages and the people were happy to work near their home and near their families. They prospered as the business thrived. After another few years the business became so big that they not only had their own herd of cattle but they bought milk from dairy farmers in the surrounding countryside. And that’s how a guy with a cow developed a huge dairy business that rewarded him and his family for their innovation and hard work as well as enrich the lives of his neighbours.
Who was taken advantage of pray tell? (Well, perhaps the cows. :))
In a society full of sheep, perhaps that’s possible. In our time with the current human characteristics, not the least bit likely… unless you are suggesting we cull the heard of the ambitious members who choose to be individuals rather than submit to herd mentality.
Some bosses are smart and good. Others not so much - but ultimately these lose their workforce and their business. Some peasants are stupid and bad. But many are very good worker bees who are happy being payed equitably for their efforts and not have to worry about attending weekly commitet meetings to vote on which types of pencils the administrative staff should order this month and from which supplier.
I suggest that an average employee who works 8 hours a day can in good consience leave the office and forget about his work until the next day. I have yet to meet a competent and successfull business owner who can actually leave his business behind. If you are talking about the mid management/director types in large corporate environments then I will agree with you to a degree. As an independent IT consultant (read: worker bee) I have my own special brand of contempt for these jokers. However, I hardly consider restructuring an entire social structure to communism just to make these guys do a day’s work as a balanced and reasonable solution.
CAUTION: Huge sweeping generalization above.
Forgive me but I just got a wonderfully funny mental picture of Bill Gates choking the life out of his IE team because they became card carrying communists.
War is an unpleasant business. I’ve got one for you. My grandmother remebers vividly when the heroic revolutionary forces came to her father’s farm. He had some land, some cows and chickens to support his wife and 9 kids. They did not have servants and did all the work themselves. It was enough to live on for them. They confiscated the land and animals and gave them an hour to gather their belongings and get off the property. They were told that they should consider themselves lucky to be left alive because they did not feel like killing any jews that day.
Spoken like a true revolutionary thug. You’d make Lenin proud.
Yes, the US economy and culture has had its ups and downs in the last 150 years, but nothing so far that would come close to making the drastic change of culture, economy and government that you two (Olent and Oldscratch) are suggesting.
So while each of you do indeed seem to believe that socialism will come to dominate the United States within our lifetimes, I personally won’t hold my breath.
I’m not holding my breath either. Personally, I can only hold it for several minutes. I don’t think socialism will come in the next several minutes. 
"When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it – lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew…
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!”
Rudyard Kipling, 1892
Oldscratch
Allright, Oldscratch. I’ll avoid stupid jabs, just as long as you avoid the need to kill all those who oppose.
But seriously, here are a few questions from my previous posts:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.”
Who determines ‘ability’, and who evaluates the work in ‘according to his work’
Who determines ‘ability’ and ‘need’ in the phrases
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”?
Yes, please, we would not want to contaminate this lofty discussion with any kind of facts as we are dealing with pure theory, totally unrelated to the real world. And those who think there’s any chance of the American people rising to demand this kind of thing… please, tell me you are not serious. I mean, come on! You must be talking about a different country. Is there anybody running on this kind of platform? What percentage of the vote is she getting?
Do you realize this is more or less what Fidel Castro have in mind when he started out? We take all the “means of production from the American bastards” and they become the property of the people who will be good and benevolent etc.
Of course, when things do not go according to plan and the people start to complain, then you label them antirevolutionary and execute them.
A few years ago these ideas might have sounded scary. Today they are just amusing as there is not a chance in hell this will come to happen. Anyone who thinks it can happen does not have a clue of the real world.
Here we see the fundamental flaw. The Party sees itself as being the Defender of the Revolution much the same way as Louis XIV was Defender of the Faith: As it suits them, and as it increases their power. Humans are humans, and powerful humans are corrupt ones. The Revolution becomes a power play as the various groups, united in the beginning but now power-drunk, feud as to which interpretation of the Manifesto shall rule. The government that wins wins by the worst methods, making for a very bad government. Don’t say ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ when Marx gave no hints as to how such a government would be implemented. Soviets work on a small scale simply because they are small. Communism, however, demands a global uprising as the workers of the world demand their rights. Marx assumed that nobody would dare give proles the ballot. Now that most can vote in the rich nations, where is that uprising? Channeled into voting liberal? Communism was never meant to be a government, just a transition from feudalism (nobody votes but the rich) to socialism (in theory, there is no government to vote for). Now that feudalism is gone, where is communism? States don’t like ‘withering away’. Power begets power. Communism begets totalitarianism.
tradesilicon,
You’ll get nothing but hand waving and hocus pocus answers to their fairy tale.
Ask them this question,
Under Socialism how will you make sure there is enough milk in New York City everyday?
Maybe folks thing this is kind of a pithy question when we are talking about such a broad topic as socialism. But it is the absolute crux of the matter. If socialism can answer this problem then you might have something.
If you haven’t noticed, by the way, capitalism answers very effectively. That is probably why many people wouldn’t even think it is an issue.
BTW, you don’t have to answer Commie Bastard, I know that some magic committee will figure it all out.
>> Under Socialism how will you make sure there is enough milk in New York City everyday?
You keep trying to contaminate this highly intellectual discussion with facts and trivialities Who cares if we don’t have milk since we will all be happy in our brotherhood and the glorious party has decided milk is not good for you anyway. And since we will all be so happy we will get laid more…
Socialism, of course, was summarily debunked by Nobel Laureate Friedrich A. von Hayek, primarily in two of his books, The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism (The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, Vol 1) and The Road to Serfdom.
The The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences states in its October 9, 1974 press release that “He presented new ideas with regard to basic difficulties in “socialistic calculating”, and investigated the possibilities of achieving effective results by decentralized “market socialism” in various forms. His guiding principle when comparing various systems is to study how efficiently all the knowledge and all the information dispersed among individuals and enterprises is utilized. His conclusion is that only by far-reaching decentralization in a market system with competition and free price-fixing is it possible to make full use of knowledge and information.”
The re-discovery of Hayek’s work marked the beginning of the end for socialism worldwide. He had been ignored for decades as the world experimented with Keynesian macro-economic models, until the inescapable induction became too obvious to ignore: socialism cannot deal with prices. Virginia Postrel, in a November, 1999 Reason Magazine article gives a bit of context to the various kinds of socialism (like North Korea’s “hot socialism” versus Sweden’s softer gentler variety) and their shortcomings.
A good source of books by and about Hayek, as well as other Austrian School economists is The Scholars Bookstore, an associate of the Hayek Center for Interdisciplinary Research .
See also the following essays by Hayek:
Economics and Knowledge, November 10, 1936 — the drawbacks of failing incorporate time into equilibrium analysis, and the difficulties of framing an economic praxis from subjective criteria.
The Use of Knowledge in Society, September 4, 1945 — the vast insoluble difficulties of centralizing decision making with respect to economic data, and the tautological nature of static equilibrium analysis.
I suppose at this point I should ask the Commie Bastard a question. What is your response to Hayek’s charges in The Fatal Conceit?
Olentzero and oldscratch:
A central point seems to be that socialism can’t be imposed on the world, but that it must come from the people themselves. Olentzero stated it in this thread as:
“Socialism cannot be forced on the majority of society from above. It has to be built from below, not in one country but worldwide.”
and also later:
“Activism, activism, and more activism.”
Part of the “building from below” requires the education and enlightenment of the people in order for them to realize what needs to be done. I find it interesting that many libertarians say the same thing about their own philosophy; that liberty (in their definition) can’t be forced on people, but that educating and enlightening them would enable them to demand it for themselves. Libertarians see the internet as a great means toward this end, as I’m sure socialists do as well. (You’re here, after all.) Libertarians are strongly against the censorship of ideas, on the internet as well as other media such as newspapers and books. Against the censorship of any ideas, including ones they disagree with. I would think that socialists agree, but I’m not sure. Olentzero says:
“…but if you take up arms or otherwise actively attempt to sabotage the revolution and the building of a new society, don’t expect a conciliatory pat on the shoulder and a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.”
Without “taking up arms”, can the promotion and distribution of ideas and literature that are contrary to socialism be considered an “attempt to sabotage the revolution”, and therefore something to be punished?
Lib:
Since you brought it up, did Hayek expand on ideas already put forth by Mises in Socialism, or did he come up with new and different objections?
Gilligan
Both.
As Mises’ student, Hayek was thoroughly influenced by Mises’ interpretation of the praxeological economic theory of the Austrian School. Many even consider Mises’ Socialism to have been the original refutation of socialism, but Hayek brought home the point of price fixing as being not just the lack of a sufficient calculation methodology, but in fact futile by the very nature of the beast. In other words, it isn’t just that you can’t gather all the facts; it’s that once they are gathered, they are already old and useless! A sort of Uncertainty Principle.
That line of thinking no doubt inspired Hayek’s Theory of Spontaneous Order.
In any case, the simplicity of the Austrian model, once derided by Keynesians as simplistic, is now Ockhamly chic. Just as it is easy to infer corollaries into a political context from the Noncoercion Principle of libertarianism, so it is easy to extrapolate economic implications from a basic comprehension of the simple economic praxis.
In another thread on whether you had to be evil to become really wealthy (I believe the consensus was: no, but it helps) I made a very controversial statement. I said that the world is an evil place and the super-rich (i.e. billionaires NOT mid-level managers) are just the best adapted to the world we live in. I made the point that the super-rich are very selfish and undeserving of praise but that does not mean that the poor working man is any less selfish, only less successful. There are selfish, ruthless, unscrupulous, greedy, cruel people in every society. Do you really think these people will magically disappear under socialism? I think that they will they pay lip service to socialist ideals while accumulating as much power and influence and wealth as their wicked little minds can think up ways to cheat their fellow man.
I am a cynic but I don’t doubt the sincerity or the motives of American socialists. It doesn’t make you very popular (and it certainly doesn’t make you rich) being a socialist. However, I am 100% convinced that socialism could never work (not anywhere, not ever, not on a small scale (i.e. one nation), not on a global scale). It has failed completely everywhere it has ever been mandatory (i.e. having a bunch of people get together voluntarily and form a commune says nothing about how communism would work in a nation where it was not voluntary). People who are forced to work for the benefit of society and not for their own enrichment will soon determine the absolute minimum work required to stay out of trouble. It was mentioned in a previous post that a slacker would be dealt with by fellow employees who are doing all the work. I knew a guy from Yugoslavia and he told me that the reality of socialism is the exact opposite. The one guy who is working real hard and producing more than anyone else (i.e. making them look bad) gets “dealt” with when nobody is looking. Everyone learns that to avoid a beating you just pretend to work and the system will pretend to pay you. Does anyone here disagree with my Yugoslavian pal about how socialism really works? Would YOU do any more than the bare minimum in a socialist society? Do you think that such a system could ever produce an excess of all human necessities, or just the bare minimum?
Rather than just attack socialism, though, I thought I’d give you a chance to attack my ideas. Accepting the fact that SOME people are highly ambitous, greedy, and selfish shouldn’t we, as a democratic society, try and use these people for all they’re worth? For starters we could stop making it so easy to ship jobs overseas by erecting large tariff and non-tariff trade barriers (the way every other nation on earth has already done). We are running a gigantic trade deficit so don’t tell me that tariff barriers would have a net effect of destroying jobs. If we need more cheap labor we should import the labor not export the jobs. I just don’t see the logic of our current administration’s policy of letting China have such a good trade deal with us, could someone explain it to me. Sorry for the thread hijack, I just thought you might like to take a few digs at me and my capitalist ideas.
Tretiak,
I will give them the benefit of the doubt, since I did make a very rood entrance here. But to your point, I have not heard an answer to those questions that did not, in some way, involve force against those who disagreed. I cannot understand why Socialists do not see that it is better to allow people to have self-determination rather than a Nanny-Government. Simple, but elusive concept for some.
SarumanRex
Excellent point. But not all people who are willing to work hard for a corresponding reward are bad, simply motivated to succeed. Those who are the brightest among us would be silenced first. Human nature defeats socialism.
Absolutely correct. They also find other ways to cheat the system. Black market, bribery, theft, murder, and other creative (illegal) ways.