Since I apparently don’t get it and some of our members on here claim that socalism is the way I figure I would start this thread so that they can clearly describe how their system would work.
Well, basically, the state takes control of EVERYTHING. They tell you where to live, what to wear, where to work, what position to have sex in, and taxes are 100%, and it all goes to buying fancy cigars for party members!
It worked for Greece.
Haha, the Socialist party that got elected AFTER the economy cratered?
If you are speaking to me, Greece was exactly how you described, even though you were joking in some of your above post. Over 1/3 of the population worked for the government, and had a debt that was over 4 times what the EU even allows. Want to guess on what tanked them? Government pensions and salaries. When you have such little private enterprise in a country, you cannot support the government workers who are paid with taxes from those private enterprises. Germany bailed them out, and has now cracked the whip on them. They are rioting in the streets in Greece, because the people are not getting their entitlements anymore. They can’t just sit at a caffé drinking espresso all day, knowing the government will take care of all their needs.
Government does not create wealth.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Haha, the Socialist party that got elected AFTER the economy cratered?[/quote]
Didn’t things go from bad to worse once the socialist took over?
I am interested to learn more about the economic prinicples of socialism. Clearly if I am just a dumb Capitalist that doesn’t understand economics someone should be able to tell me how exactly things would work.
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
If you are speaking to me, Greece was exactly how you described, even though you were joking in some of your above post. Over 1/3 of the population worked for the government, and had a debt that was over 4 times what the EU even allows. Want to guess on what tanked them? Government pensions and salaries. When you have such little private enterprise in a country, you cannot support the government workers who are paid with taxes from those private enterprises. Germany bailed them out, and has now cracked the whip on them. They are rioting in the streets in Greece, because the people are not getting their entitlements anymore. They can’t just sit at a caffÃ?© drinking espresso all day, knowing the government will take care of all their needs.
Government does not create wealth.[/quote]
But Greece was not socialist. They had a right-wing government until last year’s elections. Don’t try to unload their problems on socialism when the socialists weren’t in control.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, basically, the state takes control of EVERYTHING. They tell you where to live, what to wear, where to work, what position to have sex in, and taxes are 100%, and it all goes to buying fancy cigars for party members![/quote]
Here’s your chance spanky. Enlighten us with the exalted plan and some examples of it’s success.
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Haha, the Socialist party that got elected AFTER the economy cratered?[/quote]
Didn’t things go from bad to worse once the socialist took over?[/quote]
In the sense that the momentum from the recession kept going.
In any case, even if they did, it says nothing about socialism, because, if you keep up, you’ll notice that the now “socialist” government is attempting to implement austerity measures and wind down the debt. They’re doing the opposite of what Maximus was complaining about (not saying Maximus was wrong, just that this is not what the socialist government is currently doing).
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Well, basically, the state takes control of EVERYTHING. They tell you where to live, what to wear, where to work, what position to have sex in, and taxes are 100%, and it all goes to buying fancy cigars for party members![/quote]
Here’s your chance spanky. Enlighten us with the exalted plan and some examples of it’s success.[/quote]
Enlighten yourself. I didn’t start the thread, and I’m not obligated to provide the material for it. If you or John are truly interested, why don’t you pick up a copy of Anti-Duhring or Critique of the Gotha Programme, or actually, an even better source might be one of David Harvey’s works, such as The Limits to Capital.
Of course then again, this gets into the main reason I decline to say anything: my suggestions were based on the assumption that you were interested in Marxian socialsim, which is of course not the only variety. There’s simply far too much too it to speak broadly about “socialism” without any qualifiers.
The basic idea, though, originated with the principle that workers ought to control the means of production, and receive the total value (or as near to it as practical) of their work, with none of it being siphoned off by idle capitalists. Thus, the original, core idea has virtually nothing to do with government control, taxation, or planning of any kind. It is here that things branch off.
I would argue that a modern definition of socialism would entail not only worker control, but also an economy based on (semi) planned production for use.
Greece might actually be an example, much like the current state of our own economy, of the failures of a deregulated capitalism. the extent to which repo105’s, and similar financial practices, exacerbated the international financial meltdown is still unclear. without repo105’s, Lehman Bros’ would have been identified as illiquid and deeply indebted well in advance of its failure. Goldman helped Greece appear more liquid through some similarly fishy currency exchange practices.
describe how their system would work? you live in a MIXED ECONOMY! no system is purely capitalist. We would ALL be like that dude in the above picture without TARP and the Recovery Act(stimulus).
[quote]thefederalist wrote:
Greece might actually be an example, much like the current state of our own economy, of the failures of a deregulated capitalism. the extent to which repo105’s, and similar financial practices, exacerbated the international financial meltdown is still unclear. without repo105’s, Lehman Bros’ would have been identified as illiquid and deeply indebted well in advance of its failure. Goldman helped Greece appear more liquid through some similarly fishy currency exchange practices.
describe how their system would work? you live in a MIXED ECONOMY! no system is purely capitalist. We would ALL be like that dude in the above picture without TARP and the Recovery Act(stimulus).[/quote]
So you admit that we are Fascist, at least we are able to agree on one thing.
And without tarp we would have went through a depression like 1920, you know the one that lasted a year and at the end of 21 had 1.8% unemployment. So as we can see, the more government the worse things get.
Edit* will keep my free market nonsense out of this so that the true geniuses the socialist can come here and explain how government will do everything better.
From wikipedia. I know, not the best source, but I tend to ramble on in my own explanations so I’ll just cut and paste this shit in here instead. I think people confuse the general concept of socialism with a much more radical version of it that came about in Russia and morphed into communism.
Socialism refers to the various theories of economic organization which advocate either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources.[1][2][3] A more comprehensive definition of socialism is an economic system that has transcended commodity production and wage labor, where economic activity is carried out to maximize use-value as opposed to exchange-value, including in its definition a corresponding change in social and economic relations; such as the organization of economic institutions and resource allocation;[4] often implying advocacy for a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.[5]
Socialists generally share the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through a system of exploitation. This in turn creates an unequal society, that fails to provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potential,[6] and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.[7]
Prove it.
Again, you’re going to have to ask a more specific question to get any sort of answer.
well I will try to give a short definition of socialisme.
socialisme is a broad tradition of political philosophy. Its hard to say what is the core idea of socialisme because it depends on wich socialist group you belong to. If you are a leftmarxist or a anarchosyndicalist, mcarthurs definition is good. A socialdemocrat might say that socialisme is a society where the state owns the means of production and controls the economy direct. This form of socialisme is not ideal from my perspectiv. I am leftmarxist and think there is no reason of replacing the rule of the capitalistclass with the rule of the partyelite. So you can say it is two types of socialisme: libertarian-socialisme( anarchisme and leftmarxisme ), and authoritarian-socialisme ( socialdemocracy and stalinisme ).
here is a rough outline of how a socialist society looks like:
the means of production is owned by in common by the people. society is organized as a federation of communes and workingplaces ( sovjets ). Since we talk about socialsme here, its still some form of state. that meens its still a military, a police force, a constituion and additional laws. Laws and decisions are made by the people trough elections in the communes and workplaces. Thats a simple and rough picture of socialisme. But if we are talking about autoritarian socialsme it might look something like this: the means of production is owned in common by the people. society is organized in communes and state owned corporations. Laws and decisions are made by the parlament, the corporate leaders, by goverment officials. pretty much how the state is run today.
but since we discuss ideology here, it would be interresting if some of the libertarian-capitalist gave a outline of how there ideal form of capitalisme would look like.
[quote]John S. wrote:
Since I apparently don’t get it and some of our members on here claim that socalism is the way I figure I would start this thread so that they can clearly describe how their system would work.[/quote]
Socialism is moral cannibalism, wherein the victims pay bribes in order to produce.
Eventually, either the socialist society runs out of victims or the victims flee (Atlas Shrugged). In either case, collapse is inevitable. A society of too many parasites (like today) always collapses.
If people on here are genuine interrested in learning about socialisme and communisme I will recommend them to read the communist manifest. also guerins anarchisme is a good book.
Socialism would be a collection of social programs that form a frame work.