# Is socialism bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 1, 2009, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927 "2009-03-01T22:37:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2009, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/141 "2009-03-07T19:54:20Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Wages are whatever the employer can get away with paying. And yet why do most people make above minimum wage? Even before I graduated college, many of my McJobs paid above minimum wage. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2009, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/142 "2009-03-07T20:17:56Z")
Something I’ve been noticing lately, and this just my observation, so I don’t have any cites to back it up, is that, in general mind you, the better off a person is financially, the more likely they are to have a Laissez-faire attitude when it comes to money. ---
**Author:** ![IdahoMauleMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/71c47a/32.png) [@IdahoMauleMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IdahoMauleMan)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/143 "2009-03-07T21:01:06Z")
> [@Nobody](#): > > Something I’ve been noticing lately, and this just my observation, so I don’t have any cites to back it up, is that, in general mind you, the better off a person is financially, the more likely they are to have a Laissez-faire attitude when it comes to money. Which are you asserting is cause, and which are you asserting is effect, in your statement above? Or are you just stating that they are correlated? ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/144 "2009-03-07T21:21:13Z")
I think it’s human nature. If you have a lot, whether through hard work, or inheritance, it’s natural to want to have full control over your finances, and are more likely to think, “I didn’t get where I’m at from government assistance, and neither should anybody else.” If you’re poor, it’s natural to be in favor of social programs, because chances are, you’re using them, because you need them. And if you’re middle class, well, then I guess it’s a toss up 🙂 . And yes, I’m aware that there are rich people like Warren Buffett who argue that the rich aren’t paying their fair share, and poor people who one day dream of making it big, and don’t want the government to take too big a slice when it happens. Also, I guess I’m being a bit Americentric. When I think about those who are against higher taxes to fund social programs, I’m predominantly thinking of Americans. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2009, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/145 "2009-03-07T22:06:22Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > And yet why do most people make above minimum wage? Even before I graduated college, many of my McJobs paid above minimum wage. Seriously, dude, if you didn’t keep reinforcing my impression that you weren’t reading carefully, you’d probably get a lot more answers from me. ---
**Author:** ![sweeteviljesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sweeteviljesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweeteviljesus)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/146 "2009-03-08T00:27:45Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Again, socialism isn’t based on “do a good job because a good job is its own reward” altruism. It’s based on increasing productivity so that it takes less time and less effort to add to the general supply of products to be used, thus increasing the amount of goods an individual worker gets in return for his work. How does socialism do this? Your brand of socialism, that is. Just from this thread, I think it’s safe to say that not everyone agrees on a definition. > [@Olentzero](#): > > Using **Ruminator’s** idea of a preference profile in the abstract, meaning “the sum total of goods and services required to satisfy an individual’s needs as expressed via his preferences”, let’s start with the unprofitable (for the capitalist) assumption that the number of hours needed to satisfy an individual’s preference profile is 40 - a whole work week. So, an employee works 40 hours and gets 40 hours’ worth of product in return. > > Say, then, that improvements in technology and organizing production occur in a _deus ex machina_ maneuver and the amount of time now needed to satisfy the preference profile is 15. Under capitalism that wouldn’t mean a reduction in the work week whatsoever; the boss now gets 25 hours worth of labor that doesn’t go to the worker but remains in the boss’ hands to sell. Improvements in technology and organizing production don’t come from the gods. The owner is investing in that technology to improve his output. It didn’t come from the workers. > [@Olentzero](#): > > ‘Capital’ is a social relation. Means of production like a factory are capital only if they are held in private hands by an individual or corporation. A factory held in common by the whole of society is no longer capital. Says you. A state-owned factory is still a means of production and still capital. > [@Olentzero](#): > > Furthermore, the capitalist doesn’t provide capital by his own efforts alone - he needed the labor of others to plan, prepare, and build the factory in the first place. True, he didn’t probably didn’t build the factory himself, but he had to come up with the money or the idea or something of value. He definitely contributed something. > [@Olentzero](#): > > I made no assumptions that every burger the grill cook produced would be sold. (I, too, slung the grease at a McD’s for a while after high school, back in the Bush 41 and Clinton years, and I saw how much waste went out the back door on a regular basis.) Nevertheless the basic argument still stands - even after accounting for waste, _the value of the food sold far exceeds the value paid to the grill cook for her labor power_.They’re risking their own money via an investment, but that’s all they’re risking. Of course they’re going to want to make that initial investment back and then more money on top of that. But that’s a _social_ construct, not a natural one. McDonald’s is a successful company, but most companies go out of business in the first five years. Risking one’s own money should not be dismissed out of hand. After all, he could have used the money for something else. What are the workers risking? Life and limb? In most jobs they are only risking that their employer won’t go out of business. > [@Olentzero](#): > > In a society geared towards meeting needs (like feeding people) instead of profit, where money isn’t needed to build, staff, and run a restaurant, that kind of risk is eliminated and the focus turns to other efforts involved. So everyone agrees (and while some might, most would have to be forced) to do what they are doing and get their rations at the end of the day? Do they get to go through a warehouse full of everything that society produces and take what they earned? How do you decide what they have earned? Does everyone earn the same amount? Who decides what to produce? > [@Olentzero](#): > > That doesn’t mean it has no use value whatsoever. That’s the vital difference between use and exchange value - use value stays with the product whether it’s used or not, but exchange value is lost if the product doesn’t get sold. Herein lies a fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism - under capitalism the product doesn’t get used if the exchange value isn’t realized, whereas under socialism exchange value is done away with and the product gets used whenever and wherever it’s needed. There is no such thing as use value. Not even under socialism. Bread rots if no one wants to eat it. A poor quality product has value under the Labor Theory of Value can have the same or greater value as something well-made depending on the labor that went into producing it. I think we can agree that poor-quality products are worth less. > [@Olentzero](#): > > It’s arbitrary in that the amount paid is entirely at the whim of the employer, with no laws, statutes, or contracts in effect to enforce a minimum. Wages are whatever the employer can get away with paying. It is not arbitrary except in the sense that the employer can refuse to pay once the work is done. No one will pay them $10,000 for a day’s work (well, I guess that depends on what you are hiring them for). Similarly, they wouldn’t accept wages that they could have gotten in Mexico or wherever had they stayed. It is true that they pay what they can get away with, i.e. what the market will bear. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/147 "2009-03-08T03:31:45Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Seriously, dude, if you didn’t keep reinforcing my impression that you weren’t reading carefully, you’d probably get a lot more answers from me. I wasn’t and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Get over yourself “dude”. ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/148 "2009-03-08T06:33:45Z")
People can talk theory all they want to. And what I say, I’ve said before. When I travelled in Scandanavia, I saw beautiful and clean countries. Most of my time was spent in Denmark. I saw no poverty at all. No one was sleeping or begging on the street. I saw no shacks or rundown housing and no one dressed in rags or dirty clothes. Never. Not once in the entire country. They didn’t worry about paying for health insurance or paying off hospital bills even when they had babies. The people that I met seemed to be very health conscious. They took a lot of pride in their work. (It wasn’t always money that motivated them although some families did have more money than others.) Each person got a mandatory five weeks of vacation from work. And they too are very proud of their monarchy (which I believe is the oldest in Europe.) The public education system seemed to me very sound. The standard of living remains high and the life expectancy is, I believe, longer than ours in the US. I may be mistaken, but I believe the form of government is called a “Constitutional Monarchy.” Two different polls recently show Denmark to have the happiest citizens in the world. Sweden and Norway also scored in the top ten. > [@](#): > > \*\* DSYoung\*\*: Downside: level of medical care can suffer, with long wait times, and no incentive on the part of the medical staff to excel at what they do. I suspect that most of the “downside” that you have listed doesn’t have any basis in fact. Why should the medical staff be any less caring and concerned? We also have long wait times in this country for some medical services. The shortest wait time I ever had was five minutes – in a country with socialized medicine. The ambulance, emergency room, medicine, and doctor’s fees came to a total of the equivalent of $35. This was in one of the world’s most expensive cities – Paris. Even doctors now are coming out in support of universal health care. It was interesting to watch them in conference with the President. So don’t talk theory to me. Talk experience and reality. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2009, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/149 "2009-03-08T09:17:57Z")
> [@sweeteviljesus](#): > > How does socialism [decrease the workweek while increasing the permanent surplus]? Your brand of socialism, that is. Just from this thread, I think it’s safe to say that not everyone agrees on a definition. Simply by people doing their jobs, and planning and discussing with their co-workers on a regular basis. People see problems or solutions in the course of their work and they come up with solutions. > [@](#): > > _A state-owned factory is still a means of production and still capital._ I’ve already said that state ownership of anything doesn’t equal socialism. Additionally, means of production have been around since the dawn of civilization, but they haven’t always been capital (which, strictly speaking, is money invested in commodities in order to generate more money, i.e. profit). The quality of being capital is a social relation and is not inherent in the means of production. > [@](#): > > _So everyone agrees (and while some might, most would have to be forced) to do what they are doing and get their rations at the end of the day? Do they get to go through a warehouse full of everything that society produces and take what they earned? How do you decide what they have earned? Does everyone earn the same amount? Who decides what to produce?_ I refer you to my reply to **IdahoMauleMan** above. Although I will add that no, everyone doesn’t earn the same amount, since individual people have different needs - being handicapped, for instance, or having a larger family of young children. But the equality in socialism lies just there - the equality everyone having their needs met, not the equality of the ration. > [@](#): > > _There is no such thing as use value. Not even under socialism. Bread rots if no one wants to eat it._ Use value is there whether it’s realized or not. In other words, just because people don’t want to eat a loaf of bread doesn’t mean it isn’t food or isn’t nutritious. The existence of use value is independent of individual desires and needs. > [@](#): > > _It is not arbitrary except in the sense that the employer can refuse to pay once the work is done… It is true that they pay what they can get away with, i.e. what the market will bear._ An arbitrary choice in selecting a source for the definition of [arbitrary](http://www.thefreedictionary.com/arbitrary). I call your attention specifically to definitions 1, 2, and 4a:[ul][_]Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle[_]Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference[\*]Not limited by law[/ul]If there is no law governing what undocumented workers are to be paid, the decision on the pay rate becomes the individual judgment of the employer. Wage rates for undocumented workers are therefore arbitrary, not just whether or not they’re paid. ---
**Author:** ![sweeteviljesus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/898d66/32.png) [@sweeteviljesus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweeteviljesus)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/150 "2009-03-09T14:04:56Z")
Forgive me for not quoting your post, but I can’t seem to make multi-quote work. How is state-owned different from owned in common by all the people? What means of production were around since the dawn of civilization? The idea that something has value whether or not it is used is nonsense. It only has value if someone wants it. It is worthless if no one will ever want it. Its value doesn’t come from the fact that someone spent time, money and toil to produce it. Just because snake tripe is nutritious doesn’t mean it is as valuable as something that is equally nutritious but more palatable. When I go to warehouse to get the things to meet my needs, should I be just as happy to get a can of snake tripe? On the point of arbitrariness, I do have to concede that it is also arbitrary in the sense that how much an employer wants to pay them depends on how much he wants the work done. However, both parties arrive at a price through reason. The employer wants to pay as little as possible and the employee wants to get as much as possible and they meet somewhere in the middle. The decision on the pay rate is also an individual judgement of the employee. He can always say “Go dig your own goddamn hole, gringo”, especially if there is a line of trucks looking for laborers. Also, why do you think there have been no Olentzero-style Marxist societies? ---
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/151 "2009-03-09T14:57:12Z")
> [@IdahoMauleMan](#): > > OK. > > What do you disagree with? > > I’d like to eat, to be clothed, to have a roof over my head for myself and my family, and maybe watch a little football on Sunday afternoons from time to time. Wealth is required to satisfy those desires. > > Other people’s desires may be slightly different once they get beyond the basic hierarchy-of-needs building blocks, but their needs will require wealth as well. > > Are you defining the terms differently than I am? That has you covered. The thing is, not everyone has such desires. To say a blanket “no wealth means no desires” is what I disagree with. I’d be interested in seeing your definition as I think that may be the crux of the problem. We may well be looking at this from a different point of view. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2009, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/152 "2009-03-09T19:26:23Z")
> [@sweeteviljesus](#): > > How is state-owned different from owned in common by all the people? I’ve already talked about the nature of the state in this thread, but to summarize: The state is a tool for the domination of one class over another, a ruling class living off the labor of those it rules. In a socialist society that has eliminated the socioeconomic basis for other classes besides the working class, and which lives off its own labor, there is no further need for a state. > [@](#): > > _What means of production were around since the dawn of civilization?_ Tools. Equipment. Whatever has helped the human race improve itself and its surroundings so that we’re no longer just gathering what we can from the landscape as we find it. > [@](#): > > _The idea that something has value whether or not it is used is nonsense. It only has value if someone wants it. It is worthless if no one will ever want it._ Again, you’re restricting the meaning of ‘value’ to the one-sided view of exchange value. The dichotomy between use value and exchange value is not a new one; the idea dates back at least to Aristotle in his _Politics of Money_, in which he called production for use _economics_ and production for exchange (or generation of financial wealth) _chrematistics_. Let’s look at the hypothetical loaf of bread again. Sitting on the shelf there at the supermarket, it’s still bread and it’s still nutritious. It doesn’t magically gain the qualities of being bread and being nutritious at the moment a potential customer pays for it. If that were true, stolen bread wouldn’t be nutritious at all. > [@](#): > > _The decision on the pay rate is also an individual judgement of the employee. He can always say “Go dig your own goddamn hole, gringo”, especially if there is a line of trucks looking for laborers._ And the employer can say “Take it or leave it, wetback” if there’s a line of laborers and only one truck. Which is the more common scenario, do you think? > [@](#): > > _Also, why do you think there have been no Olentzero-style Marxist societies?_ Up until around four hundred years ago, there was no working class. And up until around a hundred and sixty years ago, it wasn’t politically conscious enough to realize it had the power to remake society in its own interests. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/153 "2009-03-12T14:49:49Z")
Tell me, Olentzero, what do you think of [progressivism?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=496350&highlight=progressive) Not its early-20th-Century meaning; for purposes of this discussion I am defining it as social democracy, that is, as something well to the right of “socialist” and well to the left of “liberal.” ---
**Author:** ![IdahoMauleMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/71c47a/32.png) [@IdahoMauleMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IdahoMauleMan)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2009, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/154 "2009-03-12T15:08:26Z")
> [@amanset](#): > > That has you covered. The thing is, not everyone has such desires. To say a blanket “no wealth means no desires” is what I disagree with. > > I’d be interested in seeing your definition as I think that may be the crux of the problem. We may well be looking at this from a different point of view. My definition of wealth is anything that satisfies personal utility above and beyond what you are capable of, after coming out of the womb. Which covers just about any advancement in human society that requires self-sacrifice, investment of yours or anyone else’s capital, in order to improve your standard of living. So I suppose if one was naked, and foraged around in the trees for bugs and leaves to eat, they would require no wealth. But tools require wealth to be created. Housing is wealth. Clothing is wealth. The testing of medicinal herbs and the incremental value they provide to ones’ life is wealth. If you create those things on your own, it is because you traded-off something else (or ‘invested’) something such as your time, or proper nutrition for a day or two, or perhaps you were out working in the rain and cold when you could have been next to a fire. If you got them from someone else you must have traded something of value to obtain them. Either something you created, your labor, or perhaps even money. So once you get above hunter-gatherer societies, it is impossible for human beings to exist and satisfy their desires without wealth being created. Things that satisfy our desires - even the most basic ones, in a modern society - require wealth to be created. That’s my 60-second crack at a definition. What’s yours? ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/155 "2009-03-14T08:34:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Tell me, Olentzero, what do you think of [progressivism?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=496350&highlight=progressive) Not its early-20th-Century meaning; for purposes of this discussion I am defining it as social democracy, that is, as something well to the right of “socialist” and well to the left of “liberal.” You could look at my contributions in the very thread you linked to, for starters. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927/156 "2009-03-15T13:32:11Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > You could look at my contributions in the very thread you linked to, for starters. I did. None of them make clear your view of progressivism **as distinct from** socialism. (Flashing on Sinclair Lewis’ _It Can’t Happen Here,_ wherein the two mechanics at the local auto garage, one a Communist and the other a Social Democrat, keep arguing doctrine relentlessly up until the fascist Corpos arrest both. And even after, IIRC. 😉 ) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-socialism-bad/487927.md?page=7)