I’ve been debating with myself whether or not to post this, but what the heck, I’m really curious to hear what you have to say.
Whenever somebody here in the US is called a socialist, or a program is called socialistic, a lot of dopers will post that he/she/it isn’t. In fact, in one post where I asked if 1980’s Britain was socialistic, most people posted back that it wasn’t.
Since a lot of you don’t consider government ownership of organizations and tax funding for social programs socialism, what do you consider socialism?
Going with the UK for a second, up until Margaret Thatcher was elected there were a lot of state owned industries. To me, state owned industry is socialistic. And yes, I see my government’s stock ownership in the auto industry as slightly socialistic.
OK, I’ll try to give my definition of socialism with as few words as possible, but it will still be kind of long.
To me there are two criteria for defining if an economy is capitalistic, communistic, or socialistic.
Is industry privately owned, or state owned?
In America it’s privately owned (capitolism). In the former Soviet Union, it was all state owned(communism). For a while in the UK, some were privately owned, and some were state owned (socialism).
Social programs.
In Laissez-faire capitalism the only help you get is through charity, and as far as I know all countries have social programs to some degree, so by that definition I guess I would have to say most countries are socialistic to some extent, this includes the US as well. The UK has a greater number of, and more comprehensive programs, and so I see the UK as more socialistic than the US.
Also, I’m not equating capitalism=good, socialism=bad. I see the good and bad in both. I just want to know how you define socialism.
I don’t think you go far enough here. It isn’t really about ownership, it is about control. State owned businesses run by management in a market economy with the profit motive central aren’t really socialist in my view - thats’ more of a state capitalist type concept. Now when you start adding things like workers’ counsels, we are stepping down the path to socialism, or at least social democracy.
Well, I think state ownership in and of itself is socialistic, but for control, well, I’ve been struggling whether or not to include France and its 35 hour work week, how incredibly difficult it is to fire somebody, and the guaranteed minimum of five hours a week for full time workers as all being socialistic.
I mean, in my opinion this is all way too much government control, but I don’t automatically associate government control with socialism.
How would you explain state ownership in countries that are decidedly not socialist? For example, Saudi Aramco is the state-owned oil company in Saudi Arabia, and I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to label the country socialist.
There’s also the matter of the reasons and aims behind state ownership. In one of the universal healthcare threads currently going on, it has been pointed out that a comprehensive government healthcare program was instituted in Germany by Otto von Bismarck, who had earlier helped pass a series of anti-socialist acts limiting their rights to free speech. The UHC program was instituted precisely to defuse public sentiment in favor of socialism, which is diametrically opposite the aim of socialists to win public sentiment in favor of socialism.
In short, I’m saying that it’s incorrect to label anything socialistic unless it can be shown conclusively that such measures are taken in a socialist society in order to build a socialist society. Which, to get back to your original question, I define as a society in which the working class has taken social, political, and economic power. (Countries like France and Sweden are more or less social-democratic, which means they invest more of their GDP into improving the general standard of living while still making room for capitalism as the main engine of the country.) Outside of that such measures can be assessed as either progressive - in the case of social-democratic countries - or conservative (for lack of a better term), where the company and revenue are still controlled by the state but the revenues are not invested in improving the general welfare, e.g. Saudi Aramco.
By that definition, there are probably only two very short-lived historical examples of socialist societies to date: The Paris Commune and the Spanish Revolution. And the ideology of the latter was more anarcho-syndicalist than socialist.
I’ve been toying with the idea that the US used to be a capitalist/socialist blend, in that traditionally men were supposed to work outside of the home for money and women were supposed to work inside the home for love. Men were supposed to be hard-headed and compete with each other to acquire resources. Women were supposed to be soft-hearted and give selflessly to help others.
Yes, I know that’s a generalization and was an ideal, rather than a description of actual individuals. But sometimes when I hear older conservatives talk about socialism, I hear an undercurrent of “don’t try to turn ME into a woman” in their voices.
Condensed version: The workers’ councils (aka the soviets) are a major force behind the abdication of the tsar and the declaration of a republic. Bolsheviks agitate around ending the war (which the ruling parties refuse to do) and around the workers’ councils taking complete power; win leadership in the soviets and, with the backing and support of the soviets, overthrow the Provisional Government and stage a socialist revolution.
Quite true, but, although the Bolsheviks came to power on the slogan “All power to the soviets!” it soon became clear that the soviets were to have no real power, but instead were to be but instruments of Bolshevik/Communist Party rule.
I think that this is an incorrect way to view the use of the word - it’s an adjective, with the approximate meaning “in the manner of or similar to a socialist regime”. So, any group or country, regardless of its official political affiliation, could make a “socialistic” act, in that they could do something that, at least on the surface, looks to the speaker like something a socialist country could do.
Of course, there are a couple of niggling details here - people have their own weird ideas of what socialism is, and people have their own perspectives from which to judge whether an act seems more or less socialistic. Nowadays a lot of people have decided that “socialist” means “leftist”, and so anything that seems lefter than Limbaugh is “socialist” to them. Of course, people who think things should be even more left than the proposal see it as “moderate” instead, since to them it’s not to the left at all. And then there’s that little group of politicially-aware people who know what the word specifically means are left to gnash their teeth in any case. (Such people must be constantly stressed by all the bad word use; I pity them.)
The subjection of the soviets to party rule was not the aim of the Bolsheviks, nor was it the logical outcome of Bolshevik politics. The subjection of the soviets to party rule occurred precisely because the old Bolsheviks who came to power saying ‘all power to the soviets’ and meaning it were politically or physically eliminated during the rise of Stalinism.
I don’t think the soviets really had much power or autonomy even when Lenin and Trotsky were running things; I could be wrong, but I have read about the Kronstadt Rebellion and how the government crushed it.
The soldiers in Kronstadt at the time of the rebellion were not the same soldiers who had made the revolution in 1917. They were recruits and replacements from out in the country, and did not have the same revolutionary outlook and traditions. They were not sympathetic to the Russian Revolution.
Kronstadt is an island of incredible strategic importance in the Gulf of Finland. A successful counterrevolutionary uprising (which is what it was) would have opened Kronstadt to the White forces and the European armies sent to Russia to crush the revolution, which in turn would have meant the revolution would have more likely been crushed.
Reason 1 alone would not have been enough justification for suppressing the Kronstadt Rebellion. Reason 2, especially in wartime, made it a military necessity.
Whether an act is socialist or not does not depend on the country implementing it. Look at China, a communist country which has infused a lot of capitalism into its system.
I’m a little confused about what you are saying, and I’m also confused about socialism and the right to free speech. To me socialism is largely economic and free speech isn’t.
Again, to me, whether something is socialistic or not is not dependent on whether or not the country implementing it is socialistic or not.
You make an interesting point about the reasons for state ownership. It gives me something to think about.