Which explains Oscar Wilde’s remark: “The trouble with socialism is that it takes too many evenings.”
One of the main goals of socialism of any form, I belive, is supposed to be a classless society. But it seems to me that the point of a classless society should not be to make everybody proletarian, but to make everybody bourgeois. Do socialists in this thread agree?
If I can make a suggestion:
We’ve heard the arguments of conservatives who abhor socialism as tantamount to satanism–a particularly virulent strain of ideological corruption a little bit of which, if tolerated, would place us on a slippery slope to full blow tyranny and loss of freedom.
So what are some arguments refuting that view?
Is it, “Socialism isn’t so bad, so relax.”?
Or, “Full-blown socialism isn’t going to happen, so relax.”?
Or something else?
Or, as John Maynard Keynes put it, " How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, whatever their faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?"
Nope - to me, it should make everyone classless - where “what do you do to make a living” is a meaningless question.
My first argument would be, who are you going to trust? Conservatives, or, you know, honest people.
But really, my argument is more like "Socialism isn’t so bad - look at all the SD countries, for instance. "
A bureaucracy either serves the ruling class in a class society or itself if, as in the Soviet Union, the class it was originally based on disappears; it is marked by unaccountability to the majority of the population and the exclusive control of force - that is, the police and the army. Bureaucracies do not arise naturally in any given sociopolitical system. They arise under certain conditions if conscious measures are not taken or circumstances prevent those conscious measures from being fully implemented.
Ultimate control under socialism will not rest with government representatives but the workers engaged in production. Generally, decisions will be made and enforced at the local level and coordinated at higher levels by directly elected political representatives. Political representation will be based in the workplace, since that is the seat of workers’ economic and political power; representatives will be elected from the shop floor, subject to immediate recall, and their wages as representatives restricted to the average workers’ wage. Additionally, the arming of the general population so as to make all workers the police force removes the opportunity for aspiring bureaucrats to call out the cops against workers in order to get their way. These conscious measures are the basis for preventing careerism and unaccountability - and thus the rise of a bureaucracy - in a workers’ government.
Finally, the goal of a worker’s government, unlike that of a bureaucracy, is not self-preservation but to consciously coordinate global production in such a way that tasks become automatic and require less conscious coordination as time goes on. The need for a government at all is thereby obviated as the running of society becomes a simple accounting of how much produced and how much used - tasks anyone can do and everyone does. Building a society in which government is meant to wither away is building a society where bureaucracies are an impossibility.
I’m not sure we’re operating under the same definition of bureaucracies, even though I quoted one. Bureaucracies have to serve the ruling class? Says who? Bureaucracies emerge all the time. They are a natural outgrowth of organizing society along laws. Someone must enact the laws, and the bureaucracy does that. What are these conscious measures that prevent them from being fully implemented? Cause I see bureaucracies everywhere, in every country with a government, no matter how socialist or fascist, liberal or statist.
What you outline is an impossibility and counter to the trends in the modern world. More political power is collecting at higher and higher levels of governance every year - just look at the expansion of federal power in the US or the growth of the EU. The trend is clearly going in the opposite direction: less local control and an expansion of bureaucratic control. The arming of the general population as a police force? I can’t imagine that happening anytime soon.
We have a good system to allocate capital, labor, and the production of goods. It’s called the free market. Coordination of an entire nation’s economy has not often lead to success.
The only role of government in this socialist idea you touch upon is producing and consuming goods. But what of disputes? What of crimes? How are these handled by a workers’ government?
I appreciate you sharing, and it’s clear you know much about this. It’s a great theory, but what you outline is only that, a theory. Has any socialist society eliminated bureaucracy? Has any armed the workers to act as the only police force in the society?
Look, there are only two kinds of economic/government systems. Laissez faire Ayn Randian robber baron dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest Capitalism or Marxist Orwellian Ministry of Economic Repression Communism.
A business is run by its employees and managers for its owners. The challange with any business, regardless of what economy system you operate in, is to try and align the interest of the employees, management and owners (which don’t necessarily have to be different people) with each other.
I guess my question is do you plan to run them like Chavez runs the supermarkets in Venezuela?
We shouldn’t have to “trust” anyone. Public policy agendas should be above board.
SD countries? Elaborate, please.
Anyway, one vote for "socialism desirable, meaning that conservatives are possibly right in that it could happen.
My next question is, if we were to predict that the Obama administration was fully able to carry out its legislative agenda, would the end result amount to “socialism” or would it fall short?
Like the New Deal, it would fall so far short of socialism that the question is completely irrelevant. In fact, it would fall very, very far short of the New Deal.
And, as with the New Deal, that would not in any way deter the contards from screaming “Socialism!” (Fuck, they’re doing that now.)
In socialism, there are no owners separate from the workers. Nor are there managers separate from workers, either. Which solves your challenge quite nicely, IMO.
Gods, no. What part of “run by the workers” do you get out of a system with authoritarian central price controls?
It was a joke.
Social democrat - Western European-style states.
Err, that’s not what I said.
Do you have any idea *how *Right Wing I consider the Obama administration? It doesn’t even approach any kind of socialism at an oblique tangent.
Two main points I want to address here, and in somewhat reverse order.
‘Theory’ doesn’t mean ‘wild-ass guess’ and denigrating the term merely indicates a lack of understanding of the actual meaning of the concept.
A theory is a hypothesis (which comes closer to meaning ‘wild-ass guess’) with solid evidence behind it, and which can explain both the evidence that supports it and the evidence that seems to contradict it. It is an important function of scientific analysis and reasoning and is the only way we get from hypotheses to laws - that is, from guessing to knowing for damn sure. Good theory has a firm grounding in the observation and analysis of reality and Marx’ writings alone bear sufficient testimony to Marxism being good theory. Dismissing something as ‘just a theory’ is an intellectually lazy excuse for justifying one’s ignorance both of the meaning and importance of theory and of the particular background and characteristics of the theory under discussion. This leads me to your more specific questions:
Two, in fact: revolutionary Russia after 1917, and the Paris Commune of 1871, which was the experience from which Marx drew the lessons about a workers’ government and the arming of the working class as a whole in the first place. (Theory drawing on observation and analysis of reality.) Both those societies failed, not because of any weaknesses in socialist theory but because of objective social circumstances that prevented the revolutions from spreading - in general, being cut off and surrounded by a hostile system, and specifically crushed either completely (the Commune) or so nearly so that what survived and developed later was something entirely, horrifically different (the Soviet Union).
In their barest essentials, here are how the two systems work:
Socialism provides goods and services to those who:
[ul]
[li]need it.[/li][/ul]
The capitalist free-market system provides goods and services to those who:[ul]
[li]need it, and[/li][li]can pay the price deemed enough by the company providing it to generate an acceptable level of profit.[/li][/ul]
Those who cannot pay that price go without - something that should be patently obvious to even the most astigmatic observer in the form of places of dire poverty around the globe. Instead of providing efficient distribution of goods and services, the addition of a pricing condition creates a bottleneck. The logic of capitalism is to produce as much as possible in order to sell as much as possible at a profit; since there are people who are unable to pay the price demanded, goods go unsold. Food is thrown out behind a Safeway because it didn’t get sold by its “use by” date while a homeless person begs on the corner just a block away. Sneer all you want about the choices that person may or may not have made in his life, but the fact remains that a system which prioritizes profiting off a loaf of bread over getting it to hungry mouths is not an efficient system.
You see, you are thinking of state socialism or socialist corporatism not democratic socialism. I am suggesting taking power away from the bureaucrats, not creating more. People flourish with freedom - it is when it is taken away that they stultify.
Industrial democracy isn’t about voting every couple of years for a government to put a bureaucrat over you, it is about involving the workers in the decisions on how the industry is operated.
The trouble with Wilde’s comment is that it assumes that people would rather be passive. I believe, as freedom spreads, people will welcome the involvement in the decisions that affect their lives. It’s a major paradigm shift away from being consumption based to taking control of one’s life.
I believe, in the long run, a democratic socialist society will be materially better off (for the majority of its people) than a capitalist one. But even if it isn’t, it isn’t a loss automatically. Things other than consumption have value. A society where people work 12 hour days, commute 90 minutes each way, and pay someone to mow their lawn is “better off” in an economic sense than one where people work 8 hours and tend their own yard. But in a real sense, it may not be a gain to society or the individual. Sacrificing some GDP for freedom and personal control can be a major advance.
And a redistribution of wealth, even if it makes some “worse” off, can have positive effects in reducing the abject poverty of those capitalism leaves behind.
That’s nice in theory, but how does anything actually get done?
As you didn’t address it, and I want to make sure we are in agreement: you agree that socialist societies will still create a bureaucracy, right? I am assuming you also see the the trend of that governments across the globe are moving towards more central and less local control.
I will address your points in opposite order as well. 
Actually, a free market system provides good and services to those that can pay, regardless of need. Because that’s the sticking point - who needs what? Who is to determine what individuals need? In a free market, if one needs or wants something, one trades something of value they have (in most cases, money) for something they desire.
In a socialist society, since we are not trading what I have for what I need, how do we judge what someone needs? There are two remaining options:
[ul]
[li]I decide what I need, and take it. (I need a boat, and a mansion, and a Ferrari).[/li][li]We decide collectively who needs what.[/ul][/li]Either I take whatever I see lying around, or someone else - my fellow workers? - decides what I need for me. Neither of those options work.
Of course.
The logic of capitalism is to accurately assess demand and produce enough to meet that demand.
You mean the system that provides food for millions, and wealth far beyond that? A free market system is far and away the most efficient system yet designed to allocate goods and services and meet demand.
So I was wrong. It’s not just theory. It’s also failed practice. Or it just wasn’t “done right”.
Don’t get me wrong here, though on the scale of free market anarchy <====> socialist utopia I fall towards the free market side, I do recognize the need - and good - of some socialist programs. But the complete failure of any system more towards the socialist side of the scale, as well as the stunning success of free market systems (yes, with significant socialist programs and influences) leads me to believe in the free market side of the equation. 100 years of history - and theory! - are on my side.
:dubious: No. No, it isn’t. Not even you can possibly believe that. I am very favorable to socialism, but it is not a science and should not pretend to be. A political ideology is rooted in values.
Please fight my ignorance. How do we do this? How is this possible? I see bureaucrats as a natural outgrowth of laws, as someone must administer them. I am assuming we have laws in Socialist Land, so how are they administered? Who makes sure they are followed? How are these local decisions at workplaces aggregated into a national policy?
Sounds good to me. Sounds like a union, or like the small business I work at, where the boss listens to worker feedback, no union required.
No. We are not in agreement. But there are a few points that need addressing.
False dichotomy. Collective decisions do not automatically exclude you, the subject. You are still involved in the decision.
Explain, then, why there are such things as blowout sales, when store owners try to move inventory that hasn’t sold for a long period of time at reduced prices. If the system were actually able to accurately gauge demand, should there be no unsold excess?
No, it’s not ‘failed practice’. As I believe I (and others) have said in this very thread, socialism cannot be built in one city or one country or one region. Your argument ignores the external circumstances over which the Communards and the Bolsheviks had very little, if any, control. It’s like telling you you’re a bad chef and can’t bake a cake right when faulty wiring in your oven set your kitchen on fire.
How do you explain the recurrence of economic crises, and capitalism’s seeming inability to prevent them? We had the Great Depression, which only World War II managed to relieve; we had the stagflation of the 70s, and now we’ve got this mess in which the banks get $70 billion in bailouts while unemployment skyrockets. If the free market is so great and so efficient, why can’t it fix these problems?
Sorry to burst your bubble of personal incredulity, but yes in fact I do believe it’s a science and I’ll set Capital against Keynes’ elitist sniffling about mud and fishes any day of the week to back that assertion up.