# Ask the Socialist candidate for the European Parliament election **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 31, 2009, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252 "2009-05-31T10:14:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2009, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/121 "2009-06-02T21:54:39Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Well, there are only two options: the tyranny of the minority, or of the majority; one or the other must get their way. Bullshit. You can also let people choose for themselves, rather than using your numerical advantage to force your views on other people. There’s nothing stopping you and your mates cutting yourselves off from capitalism _right now_, and setting up some socialist commune somewhere. We’d be wishing you luck, if not for your insistence on conducting the biggest robbery in the history of mankind to make your plan work. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/122 "2009-06-03T03:00:30Z")
Again, **psychonaut:** Never mind your long-term vision of a global socialist community. You are running for a public office in the European Union, an established political institution with a geographically and constitutionally limited jurisdiction. If elected, what exactly do you intend to **do,** as a Socialist MEP? That’s what the voters want, or should want, to know. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/123 "2009-06-03T03:09:48Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Bullshit. You can also let people choose for themselves . . . :dubious: What, individually? Choose the basic socioeconomic circumstances of their lives, individually? No, sir, you can’t. That is not an option. Never was, never will be. The whole of Libertarianism is based on a lie in contradiction of that plain and obvious fact. > [@Grumman](#): > > There’s nothing stopping you and your mates cutting yourselves off from capitalism _right now_, and setting up some socialist commune somewhere. We’d be wishing you luck . . . No, you wouldn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/124 "2009-06-03T09:51:59Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, you wouldn’t. Yes, I would. Because if a bunch of consenting adults want to pool their resources for the use of the entire group, it doesn’t hurt me one bit. It’s only because **Psychonaut** wants to _force_ other people into the collective, and dismantle the most vital components of government, that I oppose him. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/125 "2009-06-03T11:51:48Z")
I’m still only on page two of this thread, but so far I’ve noticed that many of the questions or objections raised have to do with the subject of greed, altruism, and human nature. Some posters are claiming that humans are naturally greedy, aggressive, or otherwise antisocial, or that everyone would have to “become” altruistic in order for socialism to work. There is no denying that people have the capacity to be greedy and violent, but it is equally evident that we have the ability to be kind and altruistic. The question is, are individual humans genetically programmed to show one trait or the other, or are we capable of a range of behaviours which manifest themselves in different social environments? There is a wealth of information showing that not only is the latter the case, but that humans are preferentially pro-social in their behaviour, and that we tend to have an exaggerated notion of the prevalence of anti-social behaviour precisely because, when it does occur, it stands out in such stark contrast to our normal state of being. One independent researcher who has made an in-depth study of human nature is Alfie Kohn. Obviously I cannot repeat in detail all of his research here, but I will quote some of the things he has observed and the conclusions he has reached: > [@](#): > > The phrase “human nature” … is reserved, as if by some linguistic convention, for what is nasty and negative in our repertoire. We invoke it to explain selfishness rather than service, competition rather than cooperation, egocentricity rather than empathy. On any given day we may witness innumerable gestures of caring, ranging from small acts of kindness to enormous sacrifices, but never do we shrug and say, “Well, what did you expect? It’s just human nature to be generous.” […] There is good evidence to support the proposition that it is as “natural” to help as it is to hurt, that concern for the wellbeing of others often cannot be reduced to self-interest, that social structures predicated on human selfishness have no claim to inevitability or even prudence. In short, the cynical consensus about our species is out of step with the hard data. > > […] > > In my experience, cars do not spin their wheels on ice for very long before someone stops to offer a push. We disrupt our schedules to visit sick friends, stop to give directions to lost travelers, ask crying people if there is anything we can do to help. According to the polls, nearly 90 percent of Americans given money to charitable causes and nearly half take the time to do some sort of volunteer work. In one study, 83 percent of blood donors indicated a willingness to undergo anesthesia and stay overnight in a hospital in order to donate bone marrow to a complete stranger. > > And if we, like some researchers, choose to expand the idea of pro-social behaviour to include cooperative activities—working with others for mutual benefits such as in structured collaboration at work—we would find even more evidence of pro-social inclination. All of this, it should be stressed, is particularly remarkable in light of the fact that we are socialized in an ethic of competitive individualism. In his book _The Brighter Side of Human Nature_, Kohn spends 15 pages tackling the question of whether aggressive behaviour is part of human nature. He concludes that it isn’t. Here are some extracts: > [@](#): > > The frequency with which nations draft their citizens into combat (and invoke stiff penalties for those who resist it) qualifies as powerful evidence against the idea that wars reflect natural human aggressiveness. > > There is absolutely no evidence from animal behaviour or human psychology to suggest that individuals of any species fight because of spontaneous internal stimulation. > > Like other beliefs about the intrinsic unsavoriness of our species … an assumption about aggression can also be explained … in terms of images presented to us by the mass media, and in terms of the powerful interests who are benefited by just such an assumption. Kohn devotes three chapters to altruism versus individualism, and the motivation for people to work. He addresses that part of the “human nature” argument which states that the world’s work will only get done if people are paid to do it. Kohn observes that “[p]eople do their best work when they find it fun, not when they are in it for the money”. Rewards actually _erode_ intrinsic interest. He found that encouraging pro-social behaviour by the use of incentives or other appeals to self-interest don’t work very well, or only work in the short run. There are independent sources and studies, besides Kohn’s, which support this point of view, and socialists have long relied upon them when dealing with this “human nature” argument. Unfortunately, a lot of our articles and pamphlets on the topic are not yet online, but the following material is relevant and may be of interest to those who raised this issue: [ul] [li][Human-nature](http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/etheory/Early90s/html/92HumanNature.html)[/li][li][But what about human nature?](http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sep02/nature.html)[/li][li][Questions of the Day: Human nature](http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/QOD/quod13.html)[/li][li][Is socialism against human nature?](http://www.worldsocialism.org/articles/is_socialism_against_human.php)[/li][li][Some notes on man’s social nature](http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/socialnature.html)[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/126 "2009-06-03T13:47:14Z")
> [@mutantmoose](#): > > As an anarchist I agree with the OPs final goal. The only point we differ on is I don’t think you can trust any government to hold power even for a short time. Karl Marx foresaw the eventual withering away of the state - this was his only mistake. You can’t wait for the state to wither away, you have to establish anarchism immediately. You have to jump straight from democracy to anarchism without any intermediate stage. > > It’s always the intermediate stage that has sunk socialism. No attempt at socialism has ever got out of that “intermediate” stage. Lenin didn’t expect his party to be in power for long, he thought the state would be dismantled within two or three years. He was wrong. He made the same mistake as Marx, thinking you need an intermediary stage. The intermediary stage is fatal to the whole enterprise. > > You have to jump straight to anarchism but you can only do that when the whole world wants to do it. So it might be a few hundred years off yet. Whatever you do though, you can’t trust an intermediate government. This govenment will by definition be totalitarian since there will be no other ideas around. So your plan, by necessity, involves a short period of totalitarian government. You can’t have totalitarian government even for a short time. They never go away once you put them in. I don’t see where you get the idea that we advocate an “intermediate stage” or a “transitional period”; we’ve always made a point of saying that we don’t. We propose sending delegates to Parliament not because we want to participate in government, but because we need to gauge the electorate’s support for socialism, and to allow these delegates to observe first-hand and report back on the workings of government. Keep in mind that if we are ever going to have socialism, it’s not the socialist MPs who are going to establish it nor the Socialist Party itself, but rather the people themselves. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/127 "2009-06-03T14:37:38Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > ALL resources are scarce. In an absolute sense, of course, but that doesn’t really enter into it. What we are concerned about is the availability of resource _in relation to_ people’s need for them. Thus, while there are only a finite number of oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, we can still refer to it as a non-scare resource, because there is enough air for everyone to breathe. > [@](#): > > The reason you don’t see the scarcity in a capitalist country is because prices control the production and consumption of goods that cannot be created in unlimited quantities. I see plenty of scarcity in capitalism. Millions of people have little or no access to food, medicine, shelter, and clean drinking water. While nature and technology have given us the _capacity_ to meed these needs, artificial conditions of scarcity prevent them from being fulfilled. > [@](#): > > Tell me: In your system, how do you know how many hammers to make? What do you do when there are only enough people to make hammers, OR to make saws, but not enough people to make both? How do you decide what percentage of your labor will be devoted to hammers vs saws? Are you suggesting that a centralized or planned economy would be necessary to produce or allocate goods? Because that doesn’t happen even in capitalism. > [@](#): > > How do you decide how many people will be doctors? Whoever wants to become a doctor could become one. If there are not enough doctors, society will recognize this need and encourage more people to study medicine. If there are too many doctors, some of them can direct their productive energies to other pursuits some or all of the time. Again, there’s nothing particularly difficult about this. There will be no central planning agency determining who gets to study medicine in socialism, just as there is none under capitalism today. > [@](#): > > What do you do when everyone wants to be a movie star, but no one wants to clean sewers? You’re abolishing money, so what incentive to do you offer to people to ensure that dirty, low-status, yet important jobs are still done? Ah, finally we come to a good question (well, apart from the “everyone would want to be movie stars” bit, which is just silly). Certainly there will be some jobs which are less pleasant than others. How would we ensure that these get done? There are a number of ways of addressing this. First, under capitalism, work tends to be a chore, and in some cases quite miserable. This is due to (among other things) two reasons: we have to do an awful lot of it, and the manner in which we do it is often unrewarding. As I mentioned in a previous post, a phenomenal proportion of the labour that goes on today is concerned solely with the maintenance of the money supply and other property relations. If the workers in these jobs were freed of this socially unproductive labour, they could then direct their energies to other, more useful jobs. The net result is that everyone would end up having to work fewer days in a week in order for us to maintain the same standard of living. So work—even unpleasant work—might not be such a chore, simply because there wouldn’t be as much of it. To illustrate my comment about unrewarding production methods, consider assembly-line factory work. This tends to be boring and repetitive. Furthermore assembly line workers, being constrained to a specific task, rarely get to see the fruits of their work. Studies have shown that when workers are taken off assembly lines, and trained instead to build complete products in small groups, job satisfaction shoots up dramatically, with only a small loss in overall efficiency. In capitalism this loss in efficiency is unacceptable given the need to improve profits, but in socialism there’s no reason why some efficiency couldn’t be sacrificed if it meant allowing people to get satisfaction out of previously mundane jobs. Another way of improving unpleasant jobs is automation. In socialism we could direct more research efforts to automating jobs that people are reluctant to do. Certainly much automation occurs under capitalism, though we tend to focus on automating jobs which are expensive to perform manually rather than those which are unpleasant. Finally, it is worth keeping in mind that people already perform unpleasant jobs without any monetary or material compensation. We all tend to take out our trash and clean our own toilets because of the unpleasant consequences of not doing so. When living with others, most roommates and families share these chores. In various social groups and organizations, people routinely volunteer to perform less pleasant jobs, because they know they need to get done somehow, and possibly also for the admiration of their peers. > [@](#): > > If there’s only enough food to give everyone 1000 calories a day, what are you going to do with the person who chooses to consume 3000 calories and let two other people starve? > > If there’s only so much land in London, and everyone wants to live in London, how are you going to decide who gets to use the property? We’re back to specious arguments again, I see. It is not the case that there is only enough food on the planet to give everyone 1000 calories a day. It is not true that everyone wants to live in London. > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > In capitalism, much, if not most, of scarcity, particularly for essential goods and services, is artificial; for example, while people go hungry, food is routinely destroyed simply because it is not profitable to ship it to them, and governments pay farmers to let otherwise productive fields lie fallow in order to manipulate prices. > > Really? Then it should be trivial for you to show that capitalist countries under-produce goods and services as compared to socialist and communist countries. Please do so. Of course I can’t show that. There has never been a socialist or communist country in the sense that we have been discussing in this thread. > [@](#): > > So… No need for accountants in your system? No one needs to track production, or figure out forecasts for what will be needed next year and plan ways to make sure it can be made? Of course we will need to track and plan production. What led you to believe that I said we wouldn’t? All I said is that this could be done without money. > [@](#): > > Do you have some specific numbers for your assertion? Just how many people in a typical capitalist country are employed in ‘non-productive’ pursuits? I’ll be generous and accept a number with ±5% accuracy - surely you’ve got such numbers since you’re willing to tear down society to achieve this efficiency. I have to assume you know what will be gained by that. Not off the top of my head, but I’ll see if I can dig up a reference for you. > [@](#): > > Specialization of labor doesn’t exist under capitalism? Are you joking? Please don’t exaggerate my words. I said that your example presupposed an _extreme_ specialization of labour that doesn’t exist under capitalism. And it’s self-evident that this is correct. There are no mindless robots whose only useful function in life is to make TVs. Everyone has a variety of skills which, if not applied at their place of work, often manifest themselves in unpaid labour such as hobbies and maintenance of their homes and families. Even the least skilled television assembly-line worker is able to cook, clean, mind children, help out around the house, and do other socially productive work. I’m sure that many of them could indeed fix a car, sew a shirt, or grow potatoes, as you challenged. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/128 "2009-06-03T14:46:56Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > If your objectives require a post-scarcity economy, what do we need _you_ for? The benefits you require come from having a post-scarcity economy, not from having a socialist at the helm. It’s the other way around; it’s not that socialism requires a post-scarcity economy, but that socialism will bring such an economy about. The technology developed during capitalism has given us the ability to produce enough to meet the needs of the world’s population; the only problem is that it’s not being applied to do so. Thus any currently existing scarcity is artificial in nature. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/129 "2009-06-03T14:54:01Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > I believe his point is that as long as there’s no socialist at the helm, scarcity will remain artificially enforced. Well, you got it almost right. Scarcity will be artificially enforced until such time as we have enough socialistst to implement socialism. Being a truly democratic system without leaders and governments, there would be no one “at the helm”. > [@](#): > > On the other hand, even if I don’t share all of his opinions, I do have much respect for a guy who’s not willing to compromise his ideal just because “it’ll never work” or “it’s too irrealistic, man, it’s just human nature to X” and refuses to let the bastards grind him down. But then, quixotic is my middle name. If I believed socialism was indeed against human nature (which it isn’t—see my earlier post on the topic), or that some other aspect of the world made it impossible, I would indeed compromise. I haven’t been a socialist forever and I might not be one in ten or twenty years. It depends on what the available evidence tells me, and there’s no shame in revising or changing one’s opinions in the light of new facts. As Bertrand Russel said, > [@Bertrand Russell](#): > > I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions … I am not myself in any degree ashamed of [that habit]. What physicist who was already active in 1900 would dream of boasting that his opinions had not changed during the last half century? … [The] kind of philosophy that I value and have endeavoured to pursue is scientific, in the sense that there is some definite knowledge to be obtained and that new discoveries can make the admission of former error inevitable to any candid mind. For what I have said, whether early or late, I do not claim the kind of truth which theologians claim for their creeds. I claim only, at best, that the opinion expressed was a sensible one to hold at the time … I should be much surprised if subsequent research did not show that it needed to be modified. [Such opinions were not] intended as pontifical pronouncements, but only as the best I could do at the time towards the promotion of clear and accurate thinking. Clarity, above all, has been my aim. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/130 "2009-06-03T15:02:19Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > > [@Olentzero](#): > > > > Regallag - the Soviet Union from 1917 to sometime in the late 1920s and the victory of Stalinism, which wasn’t socialism, communism, or even a logical continuation of Leninism but a crime against the first two and a diametrically opposed break with the third. > > I am always surprised that socialists and Utopians don’t learn anything from this example. I can’t speak for other people calling themselves “socialist”, but the Socialist Party denounced the Russian Revolution as non-socialist within hours of hearing of it. Russia at the time was, in most respects, a feudal society; there is no way the vast masses of peasants could even have heard of socialism. It was clear that the revolution was carried out by a tiny minority of relatively educated persons, not by the working class as a whole. At least Lenin was honest enough to admit that the best this vanguard could do was establish state capitalism (i.e., government control of a capitalist economy). That remained the USSR’s socio-economic system until its collapse. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/131 "2009-06-03T16:55:15Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I wouldn’t say that capitalists have no justification whatever. The most common justification they provide is that they created the means of production, and want to retain ownership of it so as to benefit from it. Until they learn to create matter out of vacuum, they didn’t “create” anything. It would be far more honest to say they isolated or appropriated the means of production. > [@](#): > > I don’t steal existing software from someone else; I write it from scratch. On a computer. Made in a capitalist factory. And often using systems that were in the commons, but are now capitalized. > [@](#): > > It is in everybody’s best interest to keep people producing like that. If the government takes it away from me, and I don’t benefit from it any more than anyone else, then the disproportionate effort I put into creating it is not rewarded in anything like a proportionate scale. And therefore, I have no more motivation than the next guy to put forth any more effort than he did - namely, nothing. The entire existence of the Open Source movement gives the lie to this line of reasoning. > [@](#): > > It is much the same for other means as well. I want to build a shoe factory. It doesn’t exist now, and it will take a lot of effort and risk to build it. I have to assemble the raw materials, hire the workers, build the factory, buy or build the machines, and so forth. But when I am done, there is something there that wasn’t there before. I am not stealing the shoe factory from anyone. Unless you are creating your factory from raw chaos-stuff, yes, at some point you or your predecessors are stealing it - from _everyone_. > [@](#): > > But now that I have built the factory, I am not going to benefit from it anymore than the clown down the road who didn’t lift a finger to help. So why should I bother in the first place? Why do people bother with public works and charities? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/132 "2009-06-03T17:29:39Z")
Thanks, **MrDibble**. I agree completely with your reply to **Shodan** , and probably couldn’t have put it more succinctly myself. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/133 "2009-06-03T17:51:24Z")
I’ve been following this thread with some interest and frustration, so let me present a real-world problem and ask for a socialist solution. The problem is immigration into the United States (or, substitute “the geographical region occupied by the former United States” in the stateless, socialist future–I will abbreviate by just writing “the United States”): First, I present three facts: [ol] [li]There are currently more people who wish to immigrate into the United States than the government believes is optimal. This is evidenced by the fact that there is [at least one](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigrant_population_of_the_United_States) person currently residing in the United States illegally.[/li][li]There is at least one person in the United States who believes that more people should be allowed to legally enter the country than are currently allowed, as evidenced by the existence of [this editorial](http://www.reason.com/news/show/117320.html).[/li][li]There is at least one person in the United States who believes that fewer people should be allowed to enter the country than currently are, as evidenced by the existence of [this political advocacy group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Coalition_for_Immigration_Reform).[/li][/ol] Now, what is the socialist solution to this problem? Specifically, answer: [ol] [li]By what method would a socialist world determine the optimal number of people who should immigrate to the United States, or, equivalent, determine the optimal number of people who should reside in the United States? Presumably this will be determined by a vote, but who gets to vote (e.g., only current residents of the United States? Only those who want to immigrate? Both? The entire world?)? If there are more than two options on the ballot (e.g., 250 million, 300 million, 350 million, etc.), what voting method is used (this can make a significant difference in the outcome)?[/li][li]**(a)** Suppose that the optimal population of the United States determined by the algorithm you gave is less than the number of people who wish to reside in the United States. What method will be used to determine which individuals are allowed to reside in the United States? **(b)** If the situation described in (a) is impossible (the optimal population will always be at least the number who wish to reside there), please provide an argument for why this is the case.[/li][li]For that matter, what if the determined optimal population is greater than the number that wish to reside there? What then?[/li][/ol] ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/134 "2009-06-03T17:53:21Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Until they learn to create matter out of vacuum, they didn’t “create” anything. No - actually, they did create something, generally referred to as “value”. > [@](#): > > It would be far more honest to say they isolated or appropriated the means of production. No, “created” is more accurate. You can’t steal something that doesn’t exist - therefore I am not stealing. There was no business, now there is one. I own it, because I created it; you don’t, because you didn’t. > [@](#): > > On a computer. Made in a capitalist factory. And often using systems that were in the commons, but are now capitalized. And my own ingenuity and experience, for which I am paid. A quick question - I assume you work for a living. Why don’t you do it for free? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/135 "2009-06-03T17:58:09Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > I can’t speak for other people calling themselves “socialist”, but the Socialist Party denounced the Russian Revolution as non-socialist within hours of hearing of it. Russia at the time was, in most respects, a feudal society; there is no way the vast masses of peasants could even have heard of socialism. It was clear that the revolution was carried out by a tiny minority of relatively educated persons, not by the working class as a whole. At least Lenin was honest enough to admit that the best this vanguard could do was establish state capitalism (i.e., government control of a capitalist economy). That remained the USSR’s socio-economic system until its collapse. I guess you are going further than even **Olentzero** - socialism (in your sense) has never existed, and will never exist, until everybody on earth decides to do it at once. > [@](#): > > In an absolute sense, of course, but that doesn’t really enter into it. What we are concerned about is the availability of resource in relation to people’s need for them. Thus, while there are only a finite number of oxygen molecules in the atmosphere, we can still refer to it as a non-scare resource, because there is enough air for everyone to breathe. IOW, there is no need to worry about air pollution, and I can emit as much as I like - air is a non-scarce resource. Same with fresh water - I can use as much of it as I want, and nonsense about sustainable agriculture is easily ignored. Water falls from the sky - what are you worrying about? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/136 "2009-06-03T18:05:05Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > They mean that during the period you held up as the best example of the flowering of socialism, the Bolsheviks engaged in mass murder. > Oh yes - God forbid we should allow the workers to go on strike, the way socialists generally assert they have a right to do. Why, if we had done that, then the Bolshevik government might have fallen, and then Stalin would never have been able to become the second greatest mass murderer in history! > > Regards, > Shodan So much for the “workers paradise”. It didn’t work, it won’t work, it CAN’T work. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/137 "2009-06-03T18:57:01Z")
This is turning into a futile exercise, as I knew it would. **Psychonaut** : I am fully aware that you have your socialist bible of articles written by fellow socialists (all your cites are non-peer reviewed articles written for a socialist journal). Those articles are so full of straw men and logical fallacies that I don’t even know where to start. And I’m familiar with how this game works - if I go to the trouble of refuting every point line-by-line, you’ll simply dump a few more articles in my lap without comment, and if I don’t respond to them you’ll say “Hah! You don’t have an answer!”. And we’ll repeat ad nauseum. This is the same form of argumentation you get with JFK assassination conspiracy theorists and idiots who believe the moon landings didn’t happen. Nonetheless, I will pull one item out at random. From [this link](http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/sep02/nature.html): > [@](#): > > In socialism there will be much more scope for us to help each other, and no reason for us to act acquisitively. Each will be free to take what they need from the common store, so there will be no point in anyone trying to get more of anything than their neighbour. How do you define ‘need’? What if my definition is different from yours? In America, the _poverty line_ is set at about twice the world income. Clearly, Americans have a different definition of ‘need’ than someone in Zimbabwe. I don’t desire things simply because my neighbor has them. I desire them because once they exist and are shown to be useful, I can see how they could better my own life. Your cites all make the assumption that materialism and ‘acquisitiveness’ is the result of capitalistic competition, and that if capitalism went away, people would feel less need to compete, and therefore they would want fewer things. This is a gross, fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates people. > [@](#): > > Such behaviour would not only be unnecessary but also a nuisance. Air is free to all and nobody is stupid enough to try to store any up. the same would apply to things generally in socialism, to which access will be free, each determining their own needs. As long as everything is as abundant as the air. And if no one has to do physical labor to create it. Both conditions only exist in fairy tales. Here’s a simple question for you: Can I just take a car out of the ‘common store’? If so, please tell me what incentive I have to maintain it? Why not just run it into the ground and then go get another one? > [@](#): > > Anyone storing up much more than they need would be treated sympathetically, perhaps indulged a bit as an eccentric. Oh, that’s hilarious. Because throughout history, people have always looked upon those who hoard things with humor and sympathy. Like those Kulaks mentioned at the start of the Russian Revolution. Or the wealthy classes in any ‘people’s revolution’ for that matter. All of this nonsense flows from your basic assumption that under socialism, there will be no scarcity. Take that assumption away, and your whole model breaks down. And that assumption is frankly nuts. > [@](#): > > Then there is the question of whether the alleged aggressive propensity of human nature would make socialism impossible. In his book The Brighter Side of Human Nature Alfie Kohn effectively rebuts the claim that aggressive behaviour is part of human nature: > > ``` > * The frequency with which national leaders have to draft their citizens into combat is powerful evidence against the idea that wars reflect natural human aggressiveness > > ``` First fallacy: The weak association made between the draft and human aggressiveness. The fact that some countries draft citizens has nothing to do with whether or not people are aggressive. Second fallacy: The notion that the problem is ‘natural aggressiveness’ in the first place. People aren’t ‘naturally aggressive’, but they do seek their own self-interest. Populations come into conflict when their needs and desires collide, not because they’re just naturally aggressive. The Native Americans fought with each other all the time, and yet there was no capitalism to make them do so. It wasn’t because they were naturally aggressive, it was because they came into conflict because they wanted what the others had, or feared that the others would take what they had. In the history of the world, the pattern is clear. When government and the rule of law breaks down, people generally form into tribal units, clans, or other organizations of mutual interest and defense, and then spend a lot of their time fighting off the other tribal units and clans. Eventually, one group becomes larger and stronger than the rest, and begins to dominate at the expense of the others. It’s not like anarchism has never been tried before, you know. > [@](#): > > - There is no evidence from animal behaviour or human psychology to suggest that individuals of any species fight because of spontaneous internal stimulation Straw man. No one ever claimed they did. There is plenty of evidence, however, that animals and humans are naturally territorial and will fight with each other if necessary to protect their territory or belongings. > [@](#): > > - Assumptions about aggression owe much to images presented by the mass media, controlled by interests who benefit from just such assumptions So as a test of this, would you say that people were less aggressive before the era of mass media? Do you have some evidence of that? > [@](#): > > Another human nature objection to socialism is that men and women are naturally lazy and will only work if they are forced to by economic or other means. Another straw man. Of course people will do something. Hell, even cave men painted pictures on the walls when they had nothing better to do. The question isn’t whether everyone would just lay down and sleep or vegetate if they had nothing to do - the question is whether they would do anything that’s particularly productive in terms of the needs of society. > [@](#): > > Certainly the profit system encourages workers to get the best price they can for their skills, and to withhold it if the pay is too low or the working conditions too bad. And do you know what happens when they do that? They gravitate to those activities that derive the most value for other people, because those are the activities that pay the most. If the pay is too low, it means no one values what they offer enough to give up the money that they would rather spend on an activity that represents higher value to them. It is precisely this aspect of capitalism which directs labor to the most efficient, most highly desired activities. It’s precisely what is lost in your socialist world. I’d love to spend my time painting and making models and playing pool. But I’m not a good enough painter for anyone to want what I paint, and I’m not a good enough pool player to get people to want to pay to watch me do it. In your socialist world, I would be very industrious, and I’d be busy all day long. But I wouldn’t be creating anything of value that anyone wants. So all that productive effort I do in my job today, which IS quite valuable, would be lost. > [@](#): > > But all the evidence is that healthy human beings are normally active and creative and don’t relish sitting around doing nothing for any length of time. In fact studies show that people do their best work when they find it fun or enjoy doing it in the company of others, not when they are in it for the money. All the evidence we have ALSO suggests that without proper incentives, there aren’t enough people who will voluntarily produce the goods and services we need. Because if there were, the capitalist system would die a natural death as for-profit activities were replaced by free goods and services. Your links are all like this. Hardly a paragraph goes by without asserting a huge fallacy or straw man of some sort. I can’t believe anyone could read this stuff and actually buy it, unless you want to believe it so fervently that you simply turn off any critical thinking and just skim the material looking for sound bites and snippets you can use to justify what you want to believe in the first place. None of this would come even remotely close to passing a peer review of anyone other than fellow travelers. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/138 "2009-06-03T19:11:54Z")
The point is that under socialism, you have the right to go on strike. providing you don’t mind getting killed for trying it. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/139 "2009-06-03T19:55:41Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This is turning into a futile exercise, as I knew it would. > > **Psychonaut** : I am fully aware that you have your socialist bible of articles written by fellow socialists (all your cites are non-peer reviewed articles written for a socialist journal). Yes, most of the cites I have provided are short articles published on the web or in socialist journals. That’s because they’re polemic in nature and addressed to a general audience, not to academics. (Many of the claims they make, though, are based on and/or are supported by academic research; my references to Kohn’s studies are one example.) If you want to discuss fine-grained economic details with degree-holding socialist economists, that could probably be arranged. You could also read _Capital_, I suppose, which has probably had thousands upon thousands of articles published about its economic claims and findings in peer-reviewed journals. > [@](#): > > And I’m familiar with how this game works - if I go to the trouble of refuting every point line-by-line, you’ll simply dump a few more articles in my lap without comment, and if I don’t respond to them you’ll say “Hah! You don’t have an answer!”. And we’ll repeat ad nauseum. I’m sorry you have this prejudice (and it can only be prejudice, because as far as I know, you have never debated with me before on these boards, nor with any of my colleagues). I have done my best to provide arguments to all the points which have been raised here, and have occasionally posted links to further reading, being sure to label them as such. (I’ve never simply written, “The following set of articles _is_ my argument. Go read them and come back.”) Of course, the more detailed this discussion gets, the more we will have to rely on citing outside sources, simply to avoid repeating observations, calculations, and expositions that others before us have done. Otherwise we’d end up reconstructing the entire body of knowledge about economics from first principles, which would take a lifetime. That said, it’s getting fairly late here, so I’m not going to address the rest of the points in your post now. Given that you think it’s a futile exercise though, do you even want me to? I’m happy to gracefully let you have the last word. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d26b3c/32.png) [@Lantern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252/140 "2009-06-03T20:18:41Z")
> [@](#): > > You could also read Capital, I suppose, which has probably had thousands upon thousands of articles published about its economic claims and findings in peer-reviewed journals. ``` Except that Capital doesn't describe in detail how exactly a socialist economy would work. And of course Marx's economics was thoroughly refuted more than a 100 years ago and the theory of value on which he based his work largely abandoned as well. We aren't talking about state of the art economics here. And anyway most socialists believe in central planning not an economy without government and money. If you have a cite that explains in detail how such an economy would work I would love to read it. Because frankly your posts on the matter are completely naive. ``` [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-socialist-candidate-for-the-european-parliament-election/498252.md?page=8)