And those democracies which are socialist seem to be doing a lot better than more capitalist democracies. And for thoroughness, you ought also to compare to capitalist authoritarian countries, like China.
Which Socialist Democracies are these? You wouldn’t happen to be talking about Nordic countries, which are Social Democratic, which is not at all the same thing as Socialism? As Denmark’s own PM had to embarrassingly explain to Bernie Sanders?
Social Democrats want a wide safety net in a market economy. Indeed, their ideology does not conflict with democracy.
Socialists want public ownership of the means of production. Socialism is not really compatible with democracy, because what if people don’t want the means of production to be publically owned? Do we just give up on Socialism? Of course not - any country that has historically seized public ownership of the means of production has also devolved into authoritarianism.
By that exact same argument, capitalism is not compatible with democracy, because capitalists want private ownership of the means of production, and what if people don’t want private ownership?
In fact, you could argue that socialism is not possible without democracy, because the only way to have public ownership of anything is for the government to be publicly controlled.
This is just such an absurd comment. Substitute literally any social movement, political party, or policy position for “socialism” and you’ve got exactly the same non-argument.
“Social democrats want a wide safety net in a market economy. Social democracy is not really compatible with democracy, because what if people don’t want a wide safety net in a market economy?”
“Gay rights activists want gay people to be able to marry. Gay rights are not really compatible with democracy, because what if people don’t want gay people to be able to marry?”
“Suffragettes want women to be able to vote. Suffragism is not really compatible with democracy, because what if people don’t want women to be able to vote?”
“The Democratic party wants to run America on centrist, pro-corporate economic policy The Democratic Party is not really compatible with democracy, because what if people don’t want a centrist, pro-corporate economic policy?”
Naaah. Under a Capitalist system, people can collectively own whatever they like. You can have a Socialist commune (or a worker owned cooperative) under Capitalism.
You can’t have Capitalism under Socialism because Socialism is threatened by private property. You can have Socialism under Capitalism because why would anyone care if you choose to collectively share some of your private property?
And yet, every single Socialist state that took public ownership of the means of production became authoritarian. Curious!
…not really.
Most of the examples that you have are people figuring out where to draw the rules. None of them are as fundamental as whether or not private property exists.
A Capitalist system can expand or contract the safety nets or grant different people the right to marry while fundamentally remaining the same system. The abolition of private property is nothing like that.
Precisely the opposite - not enfranchising women (or any other large swathe of the population) is incompatible with Democracy. “But what if you wanted to take Democracy away from a subset of people based on immutable characteristics” is not a thing you can do under Democracy, and of course I would say that all historical Democracies which did not enfranchise women (or who only enfranchised landowners or people of a given race or whatever) we’re not true Democracies. They might have been better than the absolute monarchies of their time, but they were not good Democracies yet.
“But what if a majority of the country agrees that women and minorities shouldn’t vote?”. Then you’ve democratically abolished your nation’s Democracy and will not be Democratic going forward. What is inconceivable about that? Dictators sometimes dismantle their dictatorship and hold free elections. That doesn’t make dictators incompatible with authoritarianism. Why couldn’t it happen the other way around?
Then the Democratic Party loses and doesn’t get what they want until the next election; that’s Democracy.
You can shrink and expand the safety net, or pass policies that are pro or anti “corporate economic policy”, whatever the fuck that means, each term. You cannot go back and forth socializing and privatizing the economy after each election.
Which absolutely does not matter when answering the question, “Can socialism be democratically enacted?” Yes, it would be a big change. Big changes can still be brought about democratically.
Yeah, I don’t actually need you to explain why the examples I provided were stupid. They were stupid on purpose, to highlight how fucking dumb what you wrote was.
Which is still not relevant to the question, “Is socialism incompatible with democracy?” A democracy can vote in large, difficult-to-reverse changes to society without sacrificing the concept of democracy itself.
I don’t dispute that. I dispute whether a society will remain free and democratic after abolishing private property. My argument is that there is a causal connection between abolishing private property and abolishing Democracy, opposition parties, and so on. There are a number of reasons for this - even if Socialists were well intentioned, the centralization of economic power leads to the centralization of political power - but a major factor is the fact that people have never given up private property willingly, every government that has abolished it has done so by force and outlawed opposition parties.
It is possible to arrive at Socialism through Democracy; that is precisely what Democratic Socialists (not Social Democrats) advocate for. But once you have arrived, you are no longer Democratic.
Likewise, it is possible to arrive at Fascism through Democracy. I would be very much opposed to any Democratic Fascists, if any of them felt comfortable enough to call themselves that. I just don’t see how Democratic Socialists are any better.
Just for clarity, how are you defining private property?
Not as personal property, if that’s what you are asking. We are talking about ownership of the means of production.
Every society owns some of the means of production, or regulates some goods or services to the point that they may as well be publically owned. Socialism is about abolishing private ownership of the means of production entirely.
A lot of people do not understand the distinction between personal property and private property.
Not that I thought you were one of them!
So, as with many other specific terms (like theory), it’s important to check.
I agree. Likewise, a lot of people don’t understand the distinction between Social Democracy, which does not call for the abolition of private property, and Socialism, which does. It’s always useful to differentiate these sorts of terms
Because capitalism is threatened by communal property, of course. Why do you think there’s only one communally-owned team in the NFL, despite the Packers being so popular? Because the capitalists who control the NFL made a rule against it. Or look at the history of labor relations: Capitalists responded to increases in the level of worker control by hiring private armies.
Your argument was, “Socialism is incompatible with democracy, because what if people don’t vote for socialism?”
Yes, “there is a casual relationship between enacting socialism and then doing away with democracy” is not what you argued, and is a whole lot less asinine than what you originally said.
I identify as a socialist and know many others who do, and our primary concern is with social equality; our most fundamental belief is that, to the extent reasonably possible, everyone ought to have equal wealth. I certainly don’t believe that government ownership of all means of production is either necessary or sufficient to achieve that.
Maybe we need an omnibus “People Arguing With Babale About Definitions of Words” thread 
It’s the same thought expressed as a slightly dismissive shorthand.
What about communal ownership of all means of production?
Public ownership of the means of production is not exactly the same as government ownership of the means of production.
You say your end goal is:
Do you think that this goal can be achieved under an economic system that allows people to privately own capital and to direct the use of that capital for production freely as they see fit? My guess would be that the answer must be ‘no’, but I am curious about how you would answer that.
That said, I don’t view that the end goal of everyone having as close to equal wealth as possible as desireable to begin with, so I suspect we would disagree on economic policy even if I wouldn’t call you a Socialist.
An omnibus “hash out definitions” thread anyone can use would not be a bad idea tbh.
Clearly strong protections of capitalists’ private property rights are incompatible with social equality, but it is theoretically possible that, for example, strict government regulation of property rights, rather than total abolition of them, might prove a superior method of achieving the desired goal.
Sure, it’s also theoretically possible for a benevolent absolute monarch to protect minority rights better than a democracy (and in fact this has happened in practice at times), but I don’t think Monarchy is the best way to accomplish this goal, so I am not a Monarchist.
Likewise, I assume that you probably don’t think that a relatively free market with some regulation is indeed the best way to achieve the end goal of near perfect wealth equality?
If you did believe that, internet searches suggest that you might be a Market Egalitarian rather than a Socialist.
But my point is that someone who believes that regulated private property is the best way to achieve perfect wealth equality is not a Socialist according to any of these definitions.
Wikipedia:
Brittanica:
Merriam-Webster: