It's May Day: Let Us Praise Socialism

[emacknight]

@gamerunknown

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!

@gamerunknown

Why the income tax bracket then?

I have a better question, why the random links instead of just saying what you mean or is it median?

So was your point that the US has had social democracy moments? And that the US currently takes from the rich and gives to the poor? Use your words.

[gamerunknown]

I’m saying that trying to characterise socialism as having been a response to the World War rather than a continual trend of opposition to the principle of property among the proletarian is patently false. The eight hour working day was one of the first proposals adopted by the International Workingmen’s Association and was implemented in the United States before the first world war.

Saying that the US did not incur similar costs to other countries nor implement plans in response to such costs is absurd as well. While there was little damage to US infrastructure, massive tax increases were necessary to pay off the largest debt to GDP ratio in the history of the US.

[BrainGlutton]

@emacknight

What ever terms you like to use, the US has plenty of it.

The U.S. does not have plenty of social democracy, we have only this stingy niggardly half-assed welfare state that don’t even include such a moderate, ordinary thing as Canadian-style single-payer health care. By what measure is the U.S. more socialist or social-democratic than Europe?!

[BrainGlutton]

@emacknight

Do you know of a socialist (or social democracy) country without a government?

Do you know of a country without a government?

Yes, you do. Somalia, for one. Iraq during most of the Occupation. Any “failed state” or “disordered state.”

Not very inspiring examples, are they? There are no inspiring examples.

[BrainGlutton]

From The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, by George Orwell (1941):

What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism – that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit – does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler’s conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns the penny, and there is no way of faking the result.

When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions, who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism.

Socialism is usually defined as ‘common ownership of the means of production’. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.

In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.

However, it has become clear in the last few years that ‘common ownership of the means of production’ is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class-system. Centralized ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. ‘The State’ may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money.

<snip>

. . . British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State.

All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal to the strain of preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern scale you have got to divert the greater part of your national income to armaments, which means cutting down on consumption goods. A bombing plane, for instance, is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or eight thousand pairs of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread. Clearly you can’t have many bombing planes without lowering the national standard of life. It is guns or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But in Chamberlain’s England the transition could not be made. The rich would not face the necessary taxation, and while the rich are still visibly rich it is not possible to tax the poor very heavily either. Moreover, so long as profit was the main object the manufacturer had no incentive to change over from consumption goods to armaments. A businessman’s first duty is to his shareholders. Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it pays better to manufacture motor cars. To prevent war material from reaching the enemy is common sense, but to sell in the highest market is a business duty. Right at the end of August 1939 the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac – and this in the clear, certain knowledge that war was going to break out in a week or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your throat with. But it was ‘good business’.

And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was rearming. After 1936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was coming. After Munich it was merely a question of how soon the war would begin. In September 1939 war broke out. Eight months later it was discovered that, so far as equipment went, the British army was barely beyond the standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way desperately to the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles against tanks, with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even enough revolvers to supply all the officers. After a year of war the regular army was still short of 300,000 tin hats. There had even, previously, been a shortage of uniforms – this in one of the greatest woollen-goods producing countries in the world!

[emacknight]

@gamerunknown

I’m saying that trying to characterise socialism as having been a response to the World War rather than a continual trend of opposition to the principle of property among the proletarian is patently false. The eight hour working day was one of the first proposals adopted by the International Workingmen’s Association and was implemented in the United States before the first world war.

Saying that the US did not incur similar costs to other countries nor implement plans in response to such costs is absurd as well. While there was little damage to US infrastructure, massive tax increases were necessary to pay off the largest debt to GDP ratio in the history of the US.

There you go, was that so hard?

To your first point, historically what we see are three key phases in the development of what we consider socialism: during the industrial revolution as you pointed out, with limits to work ours, improved conditions, labour unions.

There was another huge push in the 20s and 30s following the Great Depression. It was during this time that the US implemented the bulk of their social policies, in response to a crippled economy that capitalism couldn’t fix on its own.

Then following WWII Europe/Japan went through a very different economic and social crisis that the US didn’t. Europeans saw both the need and benefit of social policies, which continue to shape their culture today.

The US following WWII went through a very different growth. Having factories and workers at a time when the world needed stuff meant the US worker was flush with cash and didn’t see the need or benefit of same social policies that Europe did. Witness here the rise of the US auto industry, making huge amounts of money, and being able to compensate their workers. The proverbial blue collar job that allowed for a house, two cars, and a chicken, along with health insurance and a pension. With economic growth there is no need to push for social programs.

The result is that now the US has a very different cultural viewpoint when it comes to social programs. Capitalism has traditionally been able to provide what was needed, and so people continue to fall back on that belief.

[emacknight]

@BrainGlutton

The U.S. does not have plenty of social democracy, we have only this stingy niggardly half-assed welfare state that don’t even include such a moderate, ordinary thing as Canadian-style single-payer health care. By what measure is the U.S. more socialist or social-democratic than Europe?!

Again, you are wrong, the US has plenty of both social democracy and socialism along with lots of welfare and government involvement in the marketplace. It isn’t as unique as you’d like to think it is.

Europe is a collection of 50 countries, some are very socialist some are not. Some have aspects that are more socialist that the US, some have less. If all you are basing it on is health care the US still isn’t that far off since the US has lots of government provided health care.

Your question is like asking, “In what way is a Camery more of a car than an Accord?” They’re both cars. So what if one has power seats while the other has more cup holders?

[emacknight]

@BrainGlutton

From The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, by George Orwell (1941):

Are we all supposed to post long links to 70 year old essays? Or were you trying to make a point?

[BrainGlutton]

@emacknight

Are we all supposed to post long links to 70 year old essays? Or were you trying to make a point?

It is a quote that belongs in the “Let Us Praise Socialism” thread. Many RW admirers of Orwell (for Animal Farm and 1984) do not seem to understand that he remained self-ID’d socialist to the end of his life. And this particular essay shows what he meant by “socialism” and why he regarded it as better than capitalism, and how his judgment was by no means unreasonable at the time . . . and is not unreasonable in hindsight, either.

Granted, there are some things about economics which Orwell apparently did not understand. That “wasted surplus” remark sounds to me like a classic Cold-War critique of the Soviet economy. Nevertheless, even the Stalinist model of totalitarian socialism does work – for limited purposes, i.e., heavy capital formation. In 1924 Stalin took control of a backward, agrarian country, marginally industrialized by the onset of WWI and that little industry devastated by that war and the Russian Civil War, and – by methods which were bloody, brutal, repressive, wasteful, but effective – by 1939 had turned it into an industrial power capable of going head-to-head with Hitler’s Germany; and Germany had always been at the leading edge of the Industrial Revolution. No way could that have happened, if Russia had had a free-market system during that period.

OTOH, central economic planning, lacking the constant corrective feedback of competitive market performance, is spectacularly inept at any kind of fine-tuning. Moreover, it does not encourage innovation very well. No state planner would ever have thought of something like the Sony Walkman, or the Pet Rock, or fabric softener. (Whether that is an argument for or against Stalinism is open to debate.)

From Economics Explained, by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow:

The reason it [the Soviet system] did last [as long as it did] is that in the beginning the system very much resembled a military operation. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin confronted an almost totally disorganized society, and tried at first to build a “socialism” that was partly capitalist – private farming and private small enterprise – and partly socialist, in the form of state-owned banks and large centers of production. Russia staggered along under this mixed system for a few years, without either great success or great failure, but after Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin took command and rapidly instituted the highly centralized system we have sketched in.

Stalin’s methods were ferocious and bloody, but they were successful in bringing about an immense accumulation of wealth, much as did the ruthless ways of the ancient pharoahs of Egypt and emperors of Rome or China. The difference was that whereas the latter built palaces and cities, Stalin built factories, steel mills, hydroelectric plants, and railway systems – the ingredients of an industrial economy. The fact that Stalin’s Russia was strong enough to resist Hitler’s armies – and efficient enough, after its reconstruction following World War II, to impress the world with its industrial and military capabilities – shows that Soviet central planning was by no means a failure in its initial years. That is why “military socialism” may yet be a model for development efforts in the future. China is today a semi-military socialism which appears to be successfully negotiating the early stages of industrialization, much aided by a carefully supervised free market sector attached to the planned core. Hence the collapse of the Soviet system should not lead us to the snap judgment that centralized socialism is no longer on the agenda of the coming century. That is indeed likely to be the case with the North, but it is not a foregone conclusion in the troubled countries of the South.

THE COLLAPSE

But we are ahead of ourselves. After so successful a beginning, why did Soviet socialism finally break down? The answer is that it is a great deal easier to design and build the skeleton of a mighty economy than to run it. Building a steel plant requires good industrial draftsmanship, but running a steel plant requires good industrial management. Management, in turn, depends on the ability to adapt flows of production to ever-changing conditions – the unforeseen contingencies, mistakes, mismatches, shortages, and overruns that are inescapable in any complex undertaking.

In a market system, these mistakes are repaired and remedied as soon as possible because they cost the factory or store money. Hence suppliers are told to hurry up, or to hold back on shipments, unprofitable items are canceled and profitable ones run overtime, the Yellow Pages are searched for last-minute necessities. None of this can happen in a society planned from top to bottom. When mistakes are made, they bring about a kind of gridlock in the flow of production, so that the pace of Soviet economic production was a never-ending sequence of feast or famine, too much or too little, with no way of remedying the errors other than recasting next year’s plan or seeking the semi-illegal channels of “tolkachi” – fixers.

[BrainGlutton]

@emacknight

Again, you are wrong, the US has plenty of both social democracy and socialism along with lots of welfare and government involvement in the marketplace.

What do you mean by “along with”? You are apparently using a definition of “socialism” that does not include “welfare and government involvement in the marketplace” – so what do you mean by it?

@emacknight

Your question is like asking, “In what way is a Camery more of a car than an Accord?” They’re both cars.

But, your definition of “socialism,” insofar as it can be discerned, would seem to apply to any modern government or political system, all of which are equally governments or political systems.

Why don’t you give us some examples of non-socialist countries? If you can’t come up with any, you need to reconsider your definition of “socialism,” because the one you have now is useless and meaningless.

[XT]

While he is doing that, why don’t you come up with a list of countries that ARE considered ‘socialist’, BG…just to compare and contrast. Because I think that emacknight is basically correct here…we are splitting hairs and looking for various shades of gray. Nearly ALL modern and successful states have elements of socialism in them…as well as elements of capitalism. And the US is no exception. It’s merely where you set the bar, not a matter of there being no bar at all.

-XT

[BrainGlutton]

@XT

While he is doing that, why don’t you come up with a list of countries that ARE considered ‘socialist’, BG…just to compare and contrast.

I would limit it to those that call themselves that; and noting that democratic socialism is not a contradiction in terms but is something that has never yet been been tried.

[XT]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
I would limit it to those that call themselves that; and noting that democratic socialism is not a contradiction in terms but is something that has never yet been been tried.
[/QUOTE]

Then your definition of who is or isn’t ‘socialist’ is meaningless in the same way that countries that NAME themselves ‘democracies’ or ‘democratic’ don’t necessarily abide by that name.

-XT

[emacknight]

@BrainGlutton

But, your definition of “socialism,” insofar as it can be discerned…

So you’ve chosen to wait until post 151 of a thread with “socialism” in its very title to bitch about my definition of socialism?

@Algher

There are so many definitions of socialism floating about, that it is hard to know what you are supporting.

@BrainGlutton

European-style social democracy; that’s clear enough.

I don’t particularly care what definition you prefer to use, except so far as I can tell the difference you seem to make between US socialism and European socialism is that one happens in Europe and the other doesn’t. And the one thing you can find that the US lacks is universal health care, while at the same time ignoring the millions of Americans that receive government provided health care.

[BrainGlutton]

@emacknight

I don’t particularly care what definition you prefer to use, except so far as I can tell the difference you seem to make between US socialism and European socialism is that one happens in Europe and the other doesn’t.

No. I don’t see any socalism in post-Cold-War Europe, either. Not even under the government of parties with “Socialist” in the name.

[BrainGlutton]

@XT

Then your definition of who is or isn’t ‘socialist’ is meaningless in the same way that countries that NAME themselves ‘democracies’ or ‘democratic’ don’t necessarily abide by that name.

-XT

No. E.g., I consider Cuba a socialist country. I do not consider it a democratic socialist country. The latter is something Venezuela is not, either, but might well be on its way to becoming; it is a democracy, at any rate.

[BrainGlutton]

Also from Orwell’s “The Lion and the Unicorn”:

I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing we need. The first three points deal with England’s internal policy, the other three with the Empire and the world:
1.Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.
2.Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.
3.Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.
4.Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the war is over.
5.Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples are to be represented.
6.Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other victims of the Fascist powers.

The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a Socialist democracy. I have deliberately included in it nothing that the simplest person could not understand and see the reason for. In the form in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of the Daily Mirror. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of amplification is needed.

1. Nationalization. One can ‘nationalize’ industry by the stroke of a pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed is that the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in the State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes possible to eliminate the class of mere owners who live not by virtue of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live without working. How sudden a change in the conduct of industry it implies is less certain. In a country like England we cannot rip down the whole structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time of war. Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with much the same personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing directors carrying on with their jobs as State employees. There is reason to think that many of the smaller capitalists would actually welcome some such arrangement. The resistance will come from the big capitalists, the bankers, the landlords and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with over £2,000 a year – and even if one counts in all their dependants there are not more than half a million of these people in England. Nationalization of agricultural land implies cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily interfering with the farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganization of English agriculture that would not retain most of the existing farms as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when he is competent, will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with the added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being permanently in debt to the bank. With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the small-scale ownership of land, the State will probably not interfere at all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimizing the smallholder class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they are ‘their own masters’. But the State will certainly impose an upward limit to the ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most), and will never permit any ownership of land in town areas.

From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is themselves. They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices that are ahead of us, war or no war. And even if the face of England hardly seems to change, on the day that our main industries are formally nationalized the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From then onwards the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management, from privilege to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership will in itself bring about less social change than will be forced upon us by the common hardships of war. But it is the necessary first step without any real reconstruction is impossible.

2. Incomes. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum wage, which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount of consumption goods available. And this again implies a stricter rationing scheme than is now in operation. It is no use at this stage of the world’s history to suggest that all human beings should have exactly equal incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind of money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other hand the money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible that earnings should be limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There will always be anomalies and evasions. But there is no reason why ten to one should not be the maximum normal variation. And within those limits some sense of equality is possible. A man with £3 a week and a man with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the Duke of Westminster and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot.

I say! If that’s “socialism,” we could use some of that in America!

[emacknight]

@BrainGlutton

It is a quote that belongs in the “Let Us Praise Socialism” thread.

No it doesn’t.

@BrainGlutton

Granted, there are some things about economics which Orwell apparently did not understand.

[QUOTE=Orwell]
It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism,** it can solve the problems of production and consumption**. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.
[/quote]

This is so easily demonstrated as false. The central planning he’s referring to is great if the central planner can accurately guess what kind of tank is needed and how many to make. A better WWII historian than me can point out all kinds of failures by various governments in producing huge numbers of obsolete tanks. Like ones that couldn’t drive over rough ground.

I’m glad you’re impressed that Stalin’s central planning made Mother Russia strong like bull, and I’m also glad you included his need to brutally slaughter those that didn’t go along with his plan.
Droughts and famines in Russia and the Soviet Union

Is that was this thread is supposed to do? Praise socialism while ignoring where capitalism did it better? US factories were cranking out huge numbers of planes because before the war capitalism encouraged efficiency in production. That efficiency meant at times over production and waste. If instead the US government had just enough factories to produce just enough cars WWII would have looked a lot different.

In the end, Russia beat Germany because of the freakin Soviet winter. Want to praise socialism for that too?

ETA I also like that Orwell uses socialism for good things and fascism for bad things.

[emacknight]

@BrainGlutton

No. I don’t see any socalism in post-Cold-War Europe, either. Not even under the government of parties with “Socialist” in the name.

So you take umbrage with my use of the word socialism, but were fine with the OPs use of the word?

[emacknight]

@BrainGlutton

European-style social democracy; that’s clear enough.

Apparently it’s not clear enough for you since you really seem to be struggling with it. Like I said before, it seems the main difference between US-style social democracy and European-style social democracy is that one happens in Europe and the other doesn’t.

I really do like that wait three pages before worrying about the definitions used by the OP.