Socialists: Revolution, or reform?

"You continue to confuse socialism with communism. Can you name a major country that has implemented socialism?"

No major country to my knowledge has done so, though certain communities have practiced socialism.

I'm absolutely not confused about the difference between communism vs. socialism. I understand the difference. Communism was a means to a socialist end (theoretically at least). The idea was that a massive, heavy-handed, overbearing (to put it mildy), centrally planned state needed to be put in place first, in order to collectivize and create the ultimate conditions for socialism (and I know there are differences between even express communist and socialist goals, but not significant ones). But surprise! they never got there, because once you give such ultimate power to a ruling class, they ain't gonna give that power up. It's not human nature, which you yourself have recognized throughout this thread.

I don't think for a moment you're advocating for a Communist state. What I'm stating that you seem to want to skip ahead in the conversation to the happy outcomes of socialism, and disregard what it would take to get there. Any way you slice it, to achieve and enforce democratic socialism requires handing very considerable amounts of undemocratic political power to a ruling elite. Avoiding this obvious fact makes me wonder if you have the courage of your convictions.

If we're just talking independent groups of people choosing within our system to collectivize and cooperate, that's a different discussion altogether. If you're just promoting generalized reforms of our current system, I'm with you. Then let's use the rhetoric great Western reformers rather than Engels and Marx.

Falcon: "How can the establishment of rules regarding "distributing goods and services" exist outside of politics?"

"You weren't paying attention:"....

I have no idea how the rest of this indicates that I was not paying attention. I don't disagree with the rest of it, and I find this to be a non-sequitor.
 
Another major difference between the two is that one operates legally within the system. Once in power it has the option to turn violent and oppressive, but it begins with restraint.

Communism comes about via bloody revolution, mass murder and total theft of all property. It throws out all existing law and completely substitutes its own via force.

Kind of a big difference. And American socialists make promises that we would mostly retain our basic republican rights. American communists can make no such promises.
 
The Dude said:
Lots of poor people climbed the wealth ladder as well!
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What's the percentage dude? You know as well as I that while there are a few exceptions....the vast majority of the people will remain in the socioeconomic level they were born in.

If 10 poor people make it out of poverty to wealth....does that justify the thousands who don't? We need reasonable wages for people who aren't all that upwardly mobile. By reasonable, I mean enough that they don't need assistance to live a basic lifestyle.
 
Threedee said:
That's a complete lie about socialism. There aren't any socialists who advocate that. I imagine it was a bunch of teenage communists who thought it up because it seemed totally legit, man!

I would take socialism over communism every day and twice in Thursday. Heck, I would probably even support a single payer Medicare system.
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Look it up yourself dickhead.....wait...I will for you...from wiki....under "socialism vs Marxism".

Socialism would make use of incentive-based systems, and inequality would still exist but to a diminishing extent as all members of society would be worker-owners. This eliminates the severity of previous tendencies towards inequality and conflicts arising ownership of the means of production and property income accruing to a small class of owners.[6] The method of compensation and reward in a socialist society would be based on an authentic meritocracy, along the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution".[7]

The advanced stage of socialism, referred to as "upper-stage communism" in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, is based on the socialist mode of production but is differentiated from lower-stage socialism in a few fundamental ways. While socialism implies public ownership (by a state apparatus) or cooperative ownership (by a worker cooperative enterprise), communism would be based on common ownership of the means of production. Class distinctions based on ownership of capital cease to exist, along with the need for a state. A superabundance of goods and services are made possible by automated production that allow for goods to be distributed based on need rather than merit.[8]
 
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Steelplate said:
What's the percentage dude? You know as well as I that while there are a few exceptions....the vast majority of the people will remain in the socioeconomic level they were born in.

If 10 poor people make it out of poverty to wealth....does that justify the thousands who don't? We need reasonable wages for people who aren't all that upwardly mobile. By reasonable, I mean enough that they don't need assistance to live a basic lifestyle.
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I think free college and healthcare would improve upward mobility
 
Falcon said:
"You continue to confuse socialism with communism. Can you name a major country that has implemented socialism?"

No major country to my knowledge has done so, though certain communities have practiced socialism.

I'm absolutely not confused about the difference between communism vs. socialism. I understand the difference. Communism was a means to a socialist end (theoretically at least). The idea was that a massive, heavy-handed, overbearing (to put it mildy), centrally planned state needed to be put in place first, in order to collectivize and create the ultimate conditions for socialism (and I know there are differences between even express communist and socialist goals, but not significant ones). But surprise! they never got there, because once you give such ultimate power to a ruling class, they ain't gonna give that power up. It's not human nature, which you yourself have recognized throughout this thread.

I don't think for a moment you're advocating for a Communist state. What I'm stating that you seem to want to skip ahead in the conversation to the happy outcomes of socialism, and disregard what it would take to get there. Any way you slice it, to achieve and enforce democratic socialism requires handing very considerable amounts of undemocratic political power to a ruling elite. Avoiding this obvious fact makes me wonder if you have the courage of your convictions.

If we're just talking independent groups of people choosing within our system to collectivize and cooperate, that's a different discussion altogether. If you're just promoting generalized reforms of our current system, I'm with you. Then let's use the rhetoric great Western reformers rather than Engels and Marx.

Falcon: "How can the establishment of rules regarding "distributing goods and services" exist outside of politics?"

"You weren't paying attention:"....

I have no idea how the rest of this indicates that I was not paying attention. I don't disagree with the rest of it, and I find this to be a non-sequitor.
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Falcon: "The idea was that a massive, heavy-handed, overbearing (to put it mildy), centrally planned state needed to be put in place first, in order to collectivize and create the ultimate conditions for socialism..."

You are basing your model on the Soviet Union, which was not socialism. It was communism (Fewer and fewer people (preferably just the Party Secretary) have any say in how the economy works)
 
The Dude said:
I think free college and healthcare would improve upward mobility
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I agree...I also think that our private sector has gotten lazy in their approach....they used to have no problem training people to do a specific job straight out of high school...then as their ability was proficient, and trust gained...they'd train them for a more complex job. Now, they want a degree before they'll even look at your application.

I know all those people working at Foxconn in China aren't specialists in consumer electronics when they walk into the place.

But...then again....being $50k in student loan debt and needing employer based health insurance makes for a docile and subservient workforce. Not having that to worry about would go a long way in reducing iron grip of control.
 
Steelplate said:
I agree...I also think that our private sector has gotten lazy in their approach....they used to have no problem training people to do a specific job straight out of high school...then as their ability was proficient, and trust gained...they'd train them for a more complex job. Now, they want a degree before they'll even look at your application.

I know all those people working at Foxconn in China aren't specialists in consumer electronics when they walk into the place.

But...then again....being $50k in student loan debt and needing employer based health insurance makes for a docile and subservient workforce. Not having that to worry about would go a long way in reducing iron grip of control.
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I call total bs, a college degreed worker can easily cost double to start with. If I need an accountant I don't train a hs graduate.
 
Steel, that is not a correct argument on Wiki. The argument is basically describing a situation within a non-socialist society wherein a liberal government offers incentives that trend toward socialism, thus rewarding those who contribute toward society. You will never find a socialist who advocates that version of what is essentially capitalist cronyism. They would rather the government have total control, and not need to reward and incentivize in order to get what it wants done.
 
Threedee said:
Steel, that is not a correct argument on Wiki. The argument is basically describing a situation within a non-socialist society wherein a liberal government offers incentives that trend toward socialism, thus rewarding those who contribute toward society. You will never find a socialist who advocates that version of what is essentially capitalist cronyism. They would rather the government have total control, and not need to reward and incentivize in order to get what it wants done.
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Well...then I guess I'm not a Socialist....and remember.... it said contribution.....that contribution would be applied to society as a whole...not a specific business, like in the purely Capitalist sense.
 
Threedee said:
Steel, that is not a correct argument on Wiki. The argument is basically describing a situation within a non-socialist society wherein a liberal government offers incentives that trend toward socialism, thus rewarding those who contribute toward society. You will never find a socialist who advocates that version of what is essentially capitalist cronyism. They would rather the government have total control, and not need to reward and incentivize in order to get what it wants done.
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There is a lot of confusion about socialism in regards to a welfare state and social programs.

Winston Churchill ranks as one of the founders of the welfare state. With Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George, he was the principal driving force behind the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of 1908–1911. At the Board of Trade, he pioneered measures to reduce poverty and unemployment through state intervention in the labour market. In 1909, he toured Britain campaigning for the ‘People's Budget’ and its radical proposals for the taxation of wealth.

In 1908, when Asquith became prime minister, there were almost no models of state welfare anywhere on earth. The exception was Bismarck’s Prussia, which to the dismay of German Social Democrats had instituted compulsory health insurance in 1883. That created a sudden panic on the left. Karl Marx had died weeks before, so the socialist leader August Bebel consulted his friend Friedrich Engels, who insisted that socialists should vote against it, as they did. The first welfare state on earth was created against socialist opposition.

By the new century Prussia was setting an example. Lloyd George and Churchill, as members of Asquith’s cabinet, went there to watch state welfare in action; Churchill, the more studious of the two, read published reports. In 1909 he collected his speeches in Liberalism and the Social Problem, where he made a case for seeing state welfare as an essential prop to a free economy. The Left had good reason to fear it, as he knew. Welfare promotes initiative, initiative promotes growth, and “where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift.”

Welfare, what is more, had an imperial dimension. The Boer War had been won with a volunteer army, and the nation had been shocked to hear of the high incidence of ill health among recruits. An empire needs troops. There was nothing socialist about state welfare, and socialists were right to fear the specter of a national health service. They continued to fear it, and when years later the Beveridge report appeared, in December 1942, it proved a bestseller but was roundly condemned in a letter by Beatrice Webb, an old Fabian, as a disastrous idea—though fortunately, as she added, very unlikely to be acted on. In the event, Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service, and William Beveridge, whom I knew as a neighbor in his last years, was endlessly bitter about the derision that Labour leaders had once heaped on his ideas.

The forgotten truth about health provision is that socialism and state welfare are old enemies, and welfare overspending is a characteristic of advanced capitalist economies. Nobody doubts that California is capitalistic, and its public debt is notorious; the People’s Republic of China, by contrast, is a major creditor in international finance. When the two Germanies united after 1990, the social provision of the capitalist West was more than twice that of the socialist East, and the cost of unification to West Germany proved vast. Talk of socialized medicine was always misleading if socialized implies socialist, and the very word probably guarantees that confusion. The British National Health Service of 1948, like the Canadian version that followed it 20 years later, always allowed for a flourishing private sector—a sector that has tended to grow with the years. It neither banned private medical care nor discouraged it. Only a competitive economy, what is more, is likely to generate a tax base big enough to maintain public hospitals, pensions, and schools. In short, a free economy needs state welfare, and state welfare needs a free economy.

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-forgotten-churchill/#.UZRWP0q1-h4
 
That's fine, Steel, nether am I. This is just me being anal about definitions, because this is the most I have ever defended socialism. I just hate communism that much.
 
Bfgrn said:
There is a lot of confusion about socialism in regards to a welfare state and social programs.

Winston Churchill ranks as one of the founders of the welfare state. With Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George, he was the principal driving force behind the Liberal Party's welfare reforms of 1908–1911. At the Board of Trade, he pioneered measures to reduce poverty and unemployment through state intervention in the labour market. In 1909, he toured Britain campaigning for the ‘People's Budget’ and its radical proposals for the taxation of wealth.

In 1908, when Asquith became prime minister, there were almost no models of state welfare anywhere on earth. The exception was Bismarck’s Prussia, which to the dismay of German Social Democrats had instituted compulsory health insurance in 1883. That created a sudden panic on the left. Karl Marx had died weeks before, so the socialist leader August Bebel consulted his friend Friedrich Engels, who insisted that socialists should vote against it, as they did. The first welfare state on earth was created against socialist opposition.

By the new century Prussia was setting an example. Lloyd George and Churchill, as members of Asquith’s cabinet, went there to watch state welfare in action; Churchill, the more studious of the two, read published reports. In 1909 he collected his speeches in Liberalism and the Social Problem, where he made a case for seeing state welfare as an essential prop to a free economy. The Left had good reason to fear it, as he knew. Welfare promotes initiative, initiative promotes growth, and “where there is no hope, be sure there will be no thrift.”

Welfare, what is more, had an imperial dimension. The Boer War had been won with a volunteer army, and the nation had been shocked to hear of the high incidence of ill health among recruits. An empire needs troops. There was nothing socialist about state welfare, and socialists were right to fear the specter of a national health service. They continued to fear it, and when years later the Beveridge report appeared, in December 1942, it proved a bestseller but was roundly condemned in a letter by Beatrice Webb, an old Fabian, as a disastrous idea—though fortunately, as she added, very unlikely to be acted on. In the event, Labour was the last of the three British parties to accept a National Health Service, and William Beveridge, whom I knew as a neighbor in his last years, was endlessly bitter about the derision that Labour leaders had once heaped on his ideas.

The forgotten truth about health provision is that socialism and state welfare are old enemies, and welfare overspending is a characteristic of advanced capitalist economies. Nobody doubts that California is capitalistic, and its public debt is notorious; the People’s Republic of China, by contrast, is a major creditor in international finance. When the two Germanies united after 1990, the social provision of the capitalist West was more than twice that of the socialist East, and the cost of unification to West Germany proved vast. Talk of socialized medicine was always misleading if socialized implies socialist, and the very word probably guarantees that confusion. The British National Health Service of 1948, like the Canadian version that followed it 20 years later, always allowed for a flourishing private sector—a sector that has tended to grow with the years. It neither banned private medical care nor discouraged it. Only a competitive economy, what is more, is likely to generate a tax base big enough to maintain public hospitals, pensions, and schools. In short, a free economy needs state welfare, and state welfare needs a free economy.

http://theamericanscholar.org/the-forgotten-churchill/#.UZRWP0q1-h4
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Wow, socialists can be real asswholes. I agree that it is possible to occasionally support a socialist ideal such as healthcare takeover, and still be, on the whole, a wellfare state liberal, a neocon, a progressive, or a conservative (such as Churchill).
 
The Dude said:
Engineers are needed their!
Would you let a hs grad design and install a huge windmill in your backyard.
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Who said anything about designing? And yes, properly trained...they could help with the install. New employees would do lesser jobs, more experienced ones would do more complex ones.
 
Steelplate said:
Who said anything about designing? And yes, properly trained...they could help with the install. New employees would do lesser jobs, more experienced ones would do more complex ones.
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Do college grads get hired for menial jobs? Yes
But in general it's a stupid decision for many reasons
 
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