Socialism will never work because it’s founded on emancipation, and you can’t force people to emancipate themselves. That would be the opposite of emancipation.
I’m not sure if this is a quote, I can’t remember where I heard it.
“Emancipation” in this case meaning emancipation from wage slavery.
That doesn’t make any sense as a statement. It sounds like you can’t force freedom on people, but yeah you can make them free without consent but I don’t get how that makes sense in this context.
Multiple countries show socialism works perfectly fine for essential and shared services and other things a society needs. It doesn’t work for everything, which is why so many countries are a blend of socialist public stuff like universal healthcare, free education, and those kinds of things whle still having capitalism in the firm of private for profit companies for non-essential stuff like restaurants and clothing stores.
Note that if the country has socialist in the name it probably isn’t actually socialist in practice.
This is a really important take that not enough people understand.
Very few people are asking for universal socialism. Capitalism works fine for some industries, Socialism works great for some industries. The government needs to figure out which ones are which, and implement rules around that.
The big one right now that people are just starting to figure out is that capitalism sucks at real estate. The free market failures there are significant and causing a lot of problems.
IMO land should be strictly owned by the government, and only rented to citizens. This should be the primary source of tax revenue for a country, not income taxes. Use more land, pay more taxes. Use less land, pay less taxes. Land taxes also benefit from being the only thing you can never hide, because you can’t put it under a table or move it offshore.
No. Socialism is not when the government does stuff.
Socialism refers to workers owning the means of production. Free education and universal healthcare are not socialist in themselves.
Technically free education and universal healthcare are more communist than socialist (as in, they achieve communal control/ownership over them instead of just social ownership). But broadly, communism is a form of socialism so…
And before anyone says that either of those examples aren’t controlled/owned by the government, let me point out that having a monopoly on who pays for something is an awful lot of control over it. You even see this with (nongovernmental) health insurance; they exert a lot of control on what doctors do by saying what they will and won’t pay for. Ownership is just the end game of control.
Free education and universal healthcare are not socialist in themselves.
Sure they are: production is undertaken to fulfill a social need.
Not exactly.
Socialism is defined as:a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Essentially, the workers should own the means of production. This would involve workers having democratic control over their workplace, and have control over their produce.
Universal Healthcare and free education is not socialist, it’s just government funded.
There are countries that were made democratic not by the people but their dictator/monarch. Why couldn’t the same happen with socialism?
Also one should consider that (at least in the non Stalinist definition) socialism more or less just means worker coops. There are worker coops. There is the theoretical possibility that their numbers rise until private companies are basically non existent. Socialism doesn’t necessarily require a revolution.
Just because something is made a democracy in principle doesn’t mean it’s democracy in action.
Often these proto-democracies are more prone to corruptive influence because their populace is under-educated and eager for someone to give them easy answers to their problems.
That’s a major reason the US is in the state it is, despite there still being a great deal of political power in the hands of the populace.
Turkey still has issues because of the “dictated” democracy.
And a big part of why democracy didn’t stick in Germany after WW1 was because it was implemented too top-to-down too.
Good point. So why do we have wage slavery instead of everyone being involved in coops?
Because usually companies get founded. If you want to found a company you want investors. Investors don’t really invest in worker coops. That (and a few other reasons) mean most companies are formed as private companies. Worker coops mostly form when workers are sick of how they are treated and think they can do better on their own.
A willing government could subsidize worker coops and encourage their creation to make them more common
Thats a first i heared the reason why socialism cant work being argued with an inability to emancipate.
But to answer your question: i am a socialist. For me looking at the pure nature of humanity threw looking at history, socialism is possible. We humans are social creatures and work best when working together in groups. Hate is taught and thus racism, sexism and so on, can be eliminated. A society without money, where all help together and work for the betterment of society, the greater good and not selfishness can function.
Eliminating the fundamental needs and guranteeing them. We have the resources and will and want to help others. What stops many people is that they feel it would then come to their backdraw, via losing money that one could spend on themself or afraid one loses their own status in society or wealth. What stands in the way of building houses, feeding everyone, is only corporation greed and legislation stemming based in greed and keeping up the current system.
In a socialist society everyone can persue their passions without needing to fear to loose essentials to live. No longer being forced to do work they dont want to but have to do be able to get food, water, shelter. People would gladly work for their community! Keep farms running, work in the forest, teach, help the elderly and so on. And as being part of the society you have an interest in keeping it up.
To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities.
I for example would have loved to become a teacher! But due to my neurodivergense hindering me to fill out standardised tests i could not advance academical to get the teaching license and study then teach. Gladly help out on farms for the harvest and people in need.
“But what against robbers?” What makes people robbers and criminals? Poverty. But we have eliminated that by ensuring the basic needs of everyone to be secured. Everyone owns everything there is no gain from taking stuff.
“What against people that work against this system?” Just as we did in tribal times. They become social outcasts. Capitalism rewards being the worst human possible, lying, bribing, corrupting, manipulating, abusing.
“What about violent people with weapons?” Same as we do right now. Have a dedicated body of people for that. And if they abuse their power they will be punished. This isnt working right now because there is no indipendent body to control the executive branch. Though in a good Seperation of powers this should exist.
And no PRChina, soviets, north korea, vietnam and others werent socialist. Socialism is inherently democratic and not opressive like they are/were.
It sounds utopian to many. In my opinion though thats a lack of faith in good of humans, lack of creativity/imagination and lack thinking outside the box. No offense.
[Apologies in advance for the essay]
I think your description is utopian because it distills civilization (and by extension the universe) into a stable system in an ideal balance. Any society has to exist within its material constraints and those limits invariably devolve and shift through entropy.
Socialism (and basically all early-modern political theory) was born in a time of incredible scientific advancement. It has an implicit axiom that all factors can be solved and accounted for, and by doing so we can asymptomatically approach a perfect society.
But we know a lot more now and can prove that’s just not possible. Our physical reality imposes instability on society whether we like it or not. An unstoppable, aggressive blight could destroy the agricultural output of an entire continent. Suddenly it’s just not possible to give to each according to their need and only the most insular and asocial pockets of civilization survive.
There’s no amount of creativity or human goodwill that can weather the unfathomable forces beyond our control. I mean, what happens to our carefully crafted socialist society when the earth’s magnetic poles flip. Or when the moon finally drifts away from the earth and permanently ends our seasonal stability. Or when the sun explodes or we deplete Earth’s finite resources or etc…
I don’t say all of this to be unreasonably pessimistic or nihilistic, but to point out that these ideological theories are fundamentally unsound. Our current world does desperately need these socialist policies, but dogmatic adherence to them as indelible rules is counter productive.
In my opinion we should focus on instilling basic guiding principles and solve our problems in any way that satisfies as many as possible. Some off the top of my head, in a rough ordering:
- Maximize political engagement and representation
- Minimize our ecological footprint and don’t develop an over reliance on any resource
- Preserve and extend our scientific knowledge
- Delegate labor and distribute resources as equitably as possible
- Limit restrictions on personal freedom
You’ll almost never be able to satisfy every principle, but establishing something like that as a baseline allows for good faith discussion and decision-making without the need to villify your opposition.
Why do you have to force people to emancipate themselves to get socialism?
ITT: People who don’t know the definition of Socialism.
Socialism is simply when the workers of a business all equally share ownership of the business (“means of production”) and thus have input on how the business is run.
Socialist businesses would still trade their goods in a marketplace, which could even be a “free market.”
Aren’t you describing a coop?
One of the aspects of socialism is that production is undertaken to fulfill a social need, not to generate profit. But yes, I think you can have markets under a socialist system of production… but I’m no expert.
*could still trade their goods in a market.
There’s many other forms of socialism, most dont have markets since those are exploitative.Imagine not knowing the difference between non-market and market socialism and then smugly writing this.
That just sounds like it’s saying that any form of emancipation is impossible.
Yeah, it’s not like you can just proclaim emancipation.
If people as a whole felt capable enough and were brave enough to follow and speak about what’s right and good for the world, we wouldn’t need ideological leaders. The reality of things is that people are mostly fearful sheep, going through life thanks to inertia without any major self analysis or existential considerations, fleeing pain and seeking pleasure, and as such they need good shepherds.
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No, both should work both ways.
Socialism is everywhere, currently. The American government is socialist, but they do t allow any of those policies to trickle down to you as citizens. They bar it at every opportunity to continue to enrich themselves on your backs. Canada is a socialist society, as is most of the developed world.
UBI would be ideal, it is actually cheaper to pay for people before they become destitute, homeless criminals. But then you don’t have the scaremongering keeping people working shitty jobs for shit pay to stay on the “good” side of society.
You wouldn’t even need to with UBI, shit employers would not be able to find workers, and people inherently want to do things and make a difference/impact on the lives of others.
Disabled people could still house and feed themselves. Mentally ill people could seek the treatment they need to get better. It is cheaper and more effective to deal with problems before they become problems. Cleaning up the mess is far more costly on so many different metrics it’s almost funny we don’t do this already.
That’s right, “socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” as MLK Jr. said.
Socialism refers to worker ownership of the means of production, not “when the government does stuff”.
While politicians call anything the government does socialism, that doesn’t make it so.No, that’s communism. Socialism is a different ism. Keep trying.
No. Communism is the next step of socialism.
Also “is a different ism” 1950s/1960s america called and wants its red scare back
Isms are things. Capitalism, socialism, communism, fundementalism, etc… It’s not hard man, it’s the basics of world governments. Know your isms. The right in America wants you to believe socialism IS communism, but it’s not. They also think Trump is a good leader. Not exactly top of the class over there. They lie to you, a lot!
Alright. I miss judged your goals here. My appologice
Communism is a stateless classless, moneyless society. Most communists see socialism as a prerequisite for communism
They share some similar ideology. That’s why the west adopted a lot of the good things communism was doing while trying to avoid the worse things. Hence, socialism.
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I think you may be confusing socialism with communism.
Delete my comment because I guess my understanding isn’t as concrete as I’d like it to be.
Isn’t socialism just the way to get to communism?
Could it lead to communism? Sure. Does it have to? No.
As some of the others have commented a lot of countries have had success with a hybrid of capitalism/socialism.
As opposed to the current system where we don’t have enough doctors or teachers, and let’s face it, the prices that plumbers charge suggest there aren’t enough of those either. If free market economics were accurate, prices would tumble if there were more of them, right?
Also, when you have fixed pricing on products, there’s suddenly no reliable feedback on what people really need. Now you can gauge it from how much they are ready to pay for a product, but with fixed pricing that is lost. And then the factories are constantly producing too much of something or too little of it.
And especially when it constantly happens that there is too little of this and that, a black market is practically sure to appear to get people what they need. And that grows corruption that then destroys the rest. Hooray.
Of course you can just ask people if they would want to have __________. But often they answer “yes” to things they won’t bother to get anyway or “no” to things they will actually end up liking once their friends notice how nice they are. So, in reality that doesn’t really help. You can also build some very advanced computer system that follows everyone in realtime and always guesses with a high precision what the people need at each time. But then we have a very horrible system where we are being spied on every moment. Not what I want, either.
If this problem doesn’t get tackled, socialism cannot work.
Not sure this is the primary issue tbh, most human desires are fabricated anyways by the system, that needs our continuous consumption to function.
The issue in existing socialist countries, primarily the USSR, was that the leadership simply did not care about the population. There is no true socialism under dictatorship.
There is no true socialism under dictatorship.
I agree.
Lenin was probably the worst thing that has happened to socialism. I wonder if he managed to taint it for good?
On the other hand, he wasn’t special in that regard. People with unchecked power are almost always monsters, because people in general are awful.
I don’t really agree that people in general are awful, but we do all have our awful sides.
And indeed, people who really know how to get to the top and stay there tend to almost always have skills and a mindset that steer them towards dictatorship.
Yes, wasn’t it studied that psychopathy is the #1 trait to get to the top in a capitalist setting?
