The time to put socialism on the agenda is now

[TBF]

With capitalism imploding and our "leaders" in Washington unable (or unwilling) to stop it, now is the time to take a serious look at socialism:

Socialism’s Agenda Time

From 1928, when the Soviet Union laid the foundations of its socialist economy, until the late 1980s, when Gorbachev began to dismantle them, the Soviet economy grew without pause, except during the period of the Nazi war machine’s scorched-earth invasion. Unemployment and later economic insecurity became ills of the past.

< snip >

In fact, Soviet socialism—while it existed–worked better than capitalism in producing economic growth.

From 1928 to 1989, GDP per capita grew in the USSR by a factor of 5.2, compared to 4.0 in Western Europe and 3.3 in the major industrial offshoots of Western Europe—the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

And importantly, Soviet growth happened without the recurrent recessions—and their attendant pain in unemployment, hunger, and despair–that were routine features of the capitalist economies over the same period.

< snip >

But that’s not what we’re told today. The received wisdom—rooted not in reality but Cold War propaganda—is that the Soviet economy collapsed under the weight of it inefficiencies, and that the demise of the USSR proves that an economic system based on public ownership, central planning and production for use, is unworkable. Even many Marxists believe this, touting the merits of “market socialism” as the only workable alternative.

And yet the Soviet economy’s record of peacetime expansion and full employment remained unblemished until Gorbachev began to experiment with the very same market socialism that many Marxists now embrace...

http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/marxist-theory/socialism-s-agenda-time-1196-2.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ml2day-recent+%28Welcome+to+MLToday.com+|+Recently+Added+Content+|+Please+Subscribe+to+Our+Feed%29

[Meeker Morgan]

1. The gulag n/t

[banned from Kos]

2. Nonsense. Americans love private property.

The day a shingle goes up that says "Joe's BBQ" or Charles T. Bumpkin, ESQ is a proud day for most of us.

People want to prosper in the market.

[TBF]

3. Of course people want to prosper -

And a few even do -



The US population is represented along the length of the football field, arranged in order of income.

Median US family income (the family at the 50 yard line) is ~$40,000 (a stack of $100 bills 1.6 inches high.)

--The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 4 inches high.

--At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about a foot high.

--The curve reaches $1 million (a 40 inch high stack of $100 bills) one foot from the goal line.

--From there it keeps going up...it goes up 50 km (~30 miles) on this scale!

http://www.lcurve.org/

[banned from Kos]

5. I agree. Income disparity is a huge problem.

Socialism in not the answer though.

Private property is entrenched here. The solution is in taxation equity.

[TBF]

7. Home ownership rates have decreased the past six years. nt

[BzaDem]

23. Which of course is an irrelevant non-sequiter.

[TBF]

45. Read his post - he was talking about home ownership and I responded. nt

[xoom]

62. Maybe that has something to do with the housing bubble popping?

Too many people were owning homes that shouldn't have been.

[TBF]

77. Interesting point. Who should own homes? Who is worthy?

If I were in charge everyone would have shelter, education, health care, and employment. Is that too much to ask?

[Fool Count]

34. Slavery was also entrenched here once.

The only possible answer to that - abolition.

[mike_c]

55. the notion that socialism precludes private property is a myth...

...or a lie, depending upon the motives of the persons who spread it. There is absolutely no reason people cannot own property under socialism.

[white_wolf]

70. That depends upon what you mean by private property.

If you mean property as in houses, cars, tvs, etc. then those would fall under personal property and no socialist I've talked to or read about has a problem with it. If you mean private property as in private ownership of the means of production then pretty much every socialist wants rid of it, as it is the defining characteristic of capitalism.

[mike_c]

103. yup....

I'd even go so far as to allow private ownership of the means of production, as long as it was regulated to function primarily for the broader good, e.g. of the workers, than for private profit at the expense of the workers. There's nothing wrong with private industry as long as it's not exploitative. Unfortunately, we've been doing the opposite for so long that most folks have a crisis of imagination when they even attempt to envision private industry that isn't exploitative.

[leftstreet]

13. BS. Americans want to own iPads, not factories n/t

[sabo_tabby]

18. They want to "prosper" but give no thought to where that money comes from...

If you've ever seen dogs fighting over table scraps you know that the only way Fido gets a bone is if he takes it from Rover.

Clear-headed, commonsense, scientific socialism is the way to go. Freepers and Pukes aren't capable of comprehending clear-headedness, commonsense or science.

[TBF]

46. Neither are many dems from the looks of it. Thank you for your comments. nt

[coalition_unwilling]

29. You betray a fundamental misunderstanding of socialism, as

evidenced by your conflation of 'private' with 'personal' property.

Most iterations of socialism propose the public ownership of the means of production, i.e., factories and large-scale industrial enterprises.

Very few iterations of socialism propose ending 'personal' property nor of prohibiting small business creation of the type you espouse.

[TBF]

49. Excellent post, thanks. nt

[Mr Deltoid]

64. 'The market' keeps collapsing under the weight of greed

'The Market' cares not a bit about the welfare of the country. 'The Market' only cares about greed and selfishness. Socialism is a social contract, it does not confiscate private property, sorry.

[Dreamer Tatum]

4. Hahahaha. Good for a laugh, for sure. nt

[Shagbark Hickory]

6. Yes it's time. Make it commence please.

[Zax2me]

8. Even US progressives are fierce individualists

Won't fly here.

[Dreamer Tatum]

9. Not to mention we would resent standing in line for asswipe.

People who pine for Soviet-style governance are fucking lunatics.

[TBF]

15. It is "lunacy" to want a more productive, efficient economy?

That attitude is why Congress has a 13% approval rate right now - we normal folks know those inside the beltway (and their supporters) are assholes.

[BzaDem]

24. Oh yeah, Congress is at 13% because people hate their private property.

:rofl:

[TBF]

66. I was talking about efficiency - where did you pull private property out of?

Oh, that's right ...

At any rate, look up the definition of socialism - it has nothing to do with private property and everything to do with who owns the means of production.

[StreetKnowledge]

27. Central Command didn't work then and won't work now.

Simply because the people on top do not have the time or ability, even if they did have the skill, to operate an economy the size of the United States. The USSR self-destructed for that very reason. Socialism to a level can, and would, work nicely. But trying for a command economy is idiotic.

[tama]

113. "All power to Councils"

which was the revolutionary slogan, was very much against Central Command and rule of the Party bureaucracy. "All power to councils" meant local grassroots democracy and self-governance to the revolutionary workers and peasants of Russia - who then got betrayed by Lenin and Trotsky. See battle of Kronstadt, Makhno, for example.

[joshcryer]

32. Heh, if your argument is for a "productive, efficient economy" then why not corporate fascism?

ie, Chinese capitalism?

[TBF]

52. I guess my main argument is that we should look at other systems -

particularly those that have been proven to be more efficient, productive, and economically equal. Personally I am more on the libertarian side than authoritarian as far as control goes. I just think we can study these models, perhaps learn and build on them. Maybe we would need more control in the beginning than I would personally prefer. But we've got to do something - the capitalism is killing not only us but the planet.

So, that is my perspective. Thanks for your comments.

[Dreamer Tatum]

73. Let me guess - you would get to be on the Central Planning Committee, right?

All of us who would be Joe Blows, without access to dachas and such, respectfully say NYET.

[TBF]

80. We are all Joe Blows now - it would be a nice change of pace to own the means

of production and have some economic equality

[Dreamer Tatum]

81. Your concept of economic equality means we all wait in the same line

for toilet paper and shoes. No thank you. North Korea or Cuba would welcome you.

[TBF]

85. Man you really bought into those 6th grade films didn't you?

In any case I'd rather have a more equitable society - which may mean less luxury for those who are now in the top 1%. If that's you I'm sorry. It seems crazy to me that some don't have shoes while others live in "homes" like this:



YMMV.

[Dreamer Tatum]

87. False dichotomy. That plus your Soviet nostalgia makes you impossible to take seriously.

YMMV.

[TBF]

90. I have no "Soviet Nostalgia" - I didn't live in the country. I simply put up an article to prompt

a discussion on economic systems. If you're insistent on hurling childish insults rather than substance then we really have nothing further to discuss.

[Dreamer Tatum]

91. No, we have a lot to discuss. Where would we put political dissidents, ie,

people (like me) who disagree with people like you?

What color would the central committee allow our shoes to be?

Would we still get wireless communications devices, and would the Central Committee have
access to our communications?

And so on.

Command and control economies, like the one you pine for, imply far more command and control than most can fathom.

[TBF]

92. You haven't read most of the threads here have you -

I stated very clearly in several places that I personally would prefer a less authoritarian system, but that I think we can definitely learn from and build on past systems.

I think it would be terrific to have housing, employment, education, health care for all.

And as far as communications, do you really have any doubt that communications are monitored now? Check out the Patriot Act, under the guise of "war of terror" they have been monitoring whatever they please (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy for more on this)

[Enthusiast]

37. Not lunatics exactly.

I don't think they realize what the Soviet Union was really like. Of course there were 'some' positives in the soviet Union compared to the hereditary monarchy that it replaced.

[TBF]

47. And I'm certainly not saying it was a utopia -

but few things are. With the continued unemployment and drastic inequality in this country you'd think we'd at least study other models.

[BOG PERSON]

84. that is a very good point

waiting one's turn, forming a line, etc. these are things that are anathema to the American mindset.

[tama]

112. Are they, really?

By "individualism" do you mean perhaps the collective spirit of "me, mine and more for me", watching telly, consuming what consumers consume and voting for the other party in hope of a brave new leader to make all things OK again?

Or how do you define individualism?

[scheming daemons]

10. if you want the GOP to win in a landslide...

[leftstreet]

11. The GOP said Obama was a Socialist. He won anyway

:shrug:

[BzaDem]

25. Have you considered that this was because they didn't believe it?

[TBF]

44. And they've certainly been proven right on that. nt

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Enthusiast]

38. If greed continues unchecked that could change.

People will only stand for this shit for so long.

[leftstreet]

12. K&R

[Starry Messenger]

14. k&r

[robertpaulsen]

16. What this article rationalizes isn't part of the solution, it's part of the problem.

Or rather, it's the whole problem. This mindset that we need to http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2010/02/primal-forces-of-nature-vs-real-primal.html">grow the economy is for the dinosaurs.

[TBF]

17. I probably could find some points of agreement with you there -

but that wasn't the main point of the article. It was simply explaining that socialism was more efficient and productive than capitalism (which people often deny). But you'd get no argument from me that we need to look at where we are right now on this planet, and the measures we need to put in place to save our environment and ourselves. I think we have a better shot at doing that with socialism.

[robertpaulsen]

78. I think I agree with your final point.

As civilization breaks down, I think we're going to see re-localization on a massive scale, because the centralized institutions formerly committed to funneling 50% of the wealth to 1% of the population will cease to function. Large portions of this country (particularly the Bible Belt) will fall victim to Chicago School disaster capitalism, but I have hope that in the larger metropolitan areas we will see developments like the Paris Commune of 1871 (hopefully functioning longer than 2 months!) where resources will be distributed in a more equitable and humane system than what we currently exist on.

What's fascinating is that we have two case studies in adapting to an oil depletion crisis that demonstrate a way to succeed and a way to fail:

Peak oil futures: same crisis, different responses

My first two case studies are North Korea and Cuba, where something comparable to peak oil happened in the 1990s. In both cases there was a massive loss of subsidized Soviet oil deliveries. In either country, the availability of oil went down by more than 50% within a couple of years after the end of the Cold War. From the viewpoint of US foreign policy, North Korea and Cuba have often been presented as comparable countries. But they reacted in remarkably different ways to a very similar crisis.

North Korea reacted by a totalitarian retrenchment to maintain elite privileges, irrespective of the cost to the people. The military and state apparatus were kept intact, while industry and agriculture were crumbling in the absence of fuel and fertilizers. This culminated in a terrible famine between 1995 and 1998 that led to the starvation of 600,000 to 1 Million people, or 3 to 5% of the North Korean population. The international community was eventually forced to step in with food aid, thereby unintentionally stabilizing the regime. From the cynical viewpoint of the North Korean regime it all worked out handsomely. While life for North Koreans is more solitary, brutish and nasty than ever, Kim Jong-il and his cronies have managed to stay in power thanks to brutal repression and nuclear blackmail.<3>

Cuba is seen by many observers as a similar Stalinist regime, but there is an important difference. While Pyongyang relies on the atomization of society for political control, Havana on the contrary relies on grassroots organizations at the neighbourhood level. Ever since 1959, the Cuban regime has heavily invested in social cohesion. This was done for the sake of social control rather than empowerment, and ordinary Cubans were not consulted. Nevertheless, the accumulated social capital could be mobilized to weather the “special period” after the loss of Soviet subsidies. People helped each other at the neighbourhood level, and the wastelands of Havana and other cities were utilized for urban gardening. As a result, Cuba did not experience mass starvation despite considerable hardship in the 1990s. <4>

more...

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52722

This article gives more detail about Cuba's transition:

Can the West cultivate ideas from Cuba's 'Special Period'?

All over Havana small-scale organic gardens were started on roof-tops, backyards and in empty parking lots, spreading rapidly to other cities and urban centers.

Farmer's markets known as "Kiosks" sprang up providing city-dwellers with access to locally-grown fruit and vegetables, cutting the use of oil in transporting food in from the countryside.

In the countryside, oxen and horses replaced tractors. Manual labor replaced machines. A huge program of land re-distribution was instigated. Many of the vast collective farms beloved by communist planners started to look inefficient, and so were broken up into units more manageable without fleets of tractors.

The process is still ongoing. In February 2009 the Cuban authorities announced that 1,827 square miles of state land would be given to Cubans with agricultural experience or other citizens.

more...

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-03-29/world/eco.cubaagriculture_1_soviet-union-cuba-conventional-farming-special-period-cuba?_s=PM:WORLD

Bottom line, whether we change along the lines of a Paris Commune or a Special Period, we have to change the way money works so that our economic paradigm is rooted in sustainability, not growth. It's kind of a juggling act where we must act locally to meet the needs of our community, while at the same time remaining conscious of how our actions can either add to or subtract from the amount of greenhouse gasses being produced. Honestly, I wonder whether humanity has the strength, courage and intelligence to achieve this before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.

[TBF]

82. Great cites thank you -

and yes, personally, I'm much more in favor the Paris Commune approach. I think we can look at what happened in the USSR, in Cuba, in France and learn from each of those tries. And I heartily agree with your last line - whether we get there in time is the question. I've experienced a fairly brutal summer here in Texas and the weather patterns are becoming more extreme in many areas. Global warming, disasters like the nuclear accident in Japan (which I believe is also affecting our weather this summer), the continued raping of resources may destroy the planet before we get there in terms of people being willing to change their behavior.

[robertpaulsen]

93. You're welcome. BTW, I love your sig line.

If this nation had 100 Emma Goldmans, then there would be change we can believe in.

[FreeJoe]

19. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

And the Berlin wall was to keep those poor westerners out of the communist paradise?

[TBF]

20. Howdy Free Joe, well I would call full employment a paradise for sure -

but YMMV.

[FreeJoe]

31. I think I stand with the vast majority

Berlin was one city before it was split into communist and non-communist sections. Which one needed to wall in it's people and shoot them when they tried to escape? When the wall came down, which side was relatively rich and which side was relatively poor? Which side's government was democratically chosen and which wasn't? Which side was almost universally preferred by the people when they unified and could choose either course?

I don't know where you got your economic numbers, but I think they are phony. Yes, there was virtually no unemployment in the Soviet Union, but there was almost universal poverty. Most people in Russia don't want to go back. Non-market based economies just don't work. We need to strive towards a market driven economy with a strong safety net like the successful Northern European countries.

Look at China as an example. They were incredibly poor for decades under strict communist rule. They finally recognized that they had no choice and started opening up sectors of their economy. Those sectors have been booming. They are still an authoritarian dictatorship, but financially they are much better off.

[Enthusiast]

39. I'm with you.

"We need to strive towards a market driven economy with a strong safety net like the successful Northern European countries."

[TBF]

43. The economic numbers are in the article and I gave you the source -

which is more than you've done with all your blustering in the above post.

[FreeJoe]

100. Dude...

Your reference was to some Marxist site, hardly credible on the subject. Arguing with communists is rather like arguing with creationists, global warming deniers, or flat earthers. They always have some crackpot evidence and lots of passion. They are also painfully, obviously wrong.

I have sympathy for your position. I was an avowed communist all through high school and well into college. I wish that a system like that really would work. It doesn't. I eventually had to admit that as much as I wanted it to work, it didn't even come close to working anywhere.

Think about it. When your governing style can't survive elections, it has a problem. When your governing style can't survive a free press, it has a problem. When your governing style requires that you shoot people trying to leave your country, it has a problem.

If you can establish a function communist or socialist state somewhere that holds real elections, allows a free press, and allows people unhappy with the system to leave it, I'll be thrilled. Given how well it has worked where it has been tried, don't look for me to support it here.

[joshcryer]

33. Holy... I... am without words. Defect to North Korea?

There are some who have done it, amusingly.

[white_wolf]

72. Really? Surely no one is stupid.

It's North Korea, hell I don't even think the Stalinists like them.

[joshcryer]

94. Heh, there were defectors years ago. A troll here got banned for defending NK voraciously.

Total left wing socialist type who defended the dictatorship of the proletariat and posted authoritarian WSWS posts daily. There are NK apologists.

Here's the old defectors to NK during the Korean War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_and_British_defectors_in_the_Korean_War

There are still true believers. They're deluded and misinformed, though. It's sad.

[leftstreet]

21. Ostalgie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie

Ostalgie is a German term referring to nostalgia for aspects of life in East Germany. It is derived from the German words Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia).

The term Ostalgie (along with the phrase Soviet chic) is also occasionally used to refer to nostalgia for life under the socialist system in other former communist countries of Eastern Europe, most notably Poland and the Soviet Union.

After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the German reunification that followed a year later, many of the symbols of the German Democratic Republic were swept away. Almost all GDR brands of products disappeared from the stores and were replaced by Western products. However, with the passing of time some East Germans began to feel nostalgia for certain aspects of their lives in East Germany. Ostalgie particularly refers to the nostalgia for aspects of regular daily life and culture in the former GDR, which disappeared after reunification.

Many businesses in Germany cater to those who feel Ostalgie and have begun providing them with artifacts that remind them of life under the GDR; artifacts that imitate the old ones. Now available are formerly defunct brands of East German foodstuffs, old state television programmes on video and DVD, and the previously widespread Wartburg and Trabant cars. In addition, life in the GDR has been the subject of several recent films, including Leander Haußmann's Sonnenallee (1999), Wolfgang Becker's internationally successful Good Bye Lenin! (2003), and Carsten Fiebeler's Kleinruppin forever (2004).

[tritsofme]

57. You find plenty of South African polls that find whites and blacks saying life was better under

Apartheid.

Should we bring it back?

[leftstreet]

61. Link? n/t

[tritsofme]

63. Articles are a little older than I recalled

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-12-15/news/0212150496_1_apartheid-south-africans-thousands-of-black-workers

But I always thought of it as the same concept as Soviet or East German nostalgia.

[leftstreet]

68. Nice try - one blatantly racist opinion piece

try again

[tritsofme]

69. You must not have bothered to click the link at all.

It is clearly a news article in the Chicago Tribune reporting on a poll that was conducted, not an opinion piece.

But I won't stop you from feeling free to ignore and label racist things you dislike.

It simply reports a phenomenon no different than the Soviet or Eastern Bloc nostalgia that you are apparently so fond of.

[leftstreet]

71. Go away, McCarthyite

Don't insinuate members are 'fond of' something just because they post a wiki link.

[tritsofme]

74. Perhaps you are right, my apologies for making assumptions.

However your knee jerk mischaracterization of the Tribune article was still wrong, and the analogy is still correct.

[joshcryer]

95. That does not suggest Berlin was viewed as a paradise.

Merely that some nationalistic East Germans (who felt that their move to Communism absolved them from German's Nazism) pined for the old days.

[socialist_n_TN]

22. Kick

Worth a read.

[TBF]

51. Yes, that's how I saw it -

You know that I tend to favor less authoritarian systems. Thought it was very interesting, though, that there were actual numbers to back up the claim that the Soviets managed to create a system that was more productive, efficient, and economically equal. Definitely food for thought - and maybe something we could build on and/or learn from.

[inna]

28. kr

[JoeyT]

30. While I agree socialism needs to be part of the national debate,

I don't think it will be accepted here. The USSR version of it certainly won't, and for good reason.

What it will do is act to drive the debate back to the left. A real push for Socialism would make many corporations gladly accept whatever regulations were necessary to keep them from becoming predatory. The growing pull of communism/socialism is one of the things that helped create of the middle class in the first place. It scared the shit out of the people that were hoarding all the cash. Something we could use about now.

[joshcryer]

35. All the country needs is regulation!

We'd be a darn fangled social democracy overnight! We already have the health care (crappy implementation but reformable) and the social security net. It's a joke. People really are naive to how utterly close the United States is to achieving it. Just one supermajority in Congress and the Senate. One.

[TBF]

41. Sure, that will work ...

:crazy:

The gap between rich and poor is wider than it's ever been in our history as a nation, and we've seen Barack Obama's ineffective presidency. Nobody's regulating anything.

[joshcryer]

96. No other human society has enjoyed the standard of living that we have.

The gap between rich and poor is extreme in the western world, but globally the gap is closing. Again the critics of capitalism fail to actually grasp why capitalism is wrong.

[TBF]

102. Do you have any cites to back up the claim that the gap is closing globally?

Here is a report I found that seems to suggest the opposite:

According to the UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) 2005 only 9 countries (4% of the world’s population) have reduced the wealth gap between rich and poor, whilst 80% of the world’s population have recorded an increase in wealth inequality. The report states that 'the richest 50 individuals in the world have a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million. The 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day – 40% of the world’s population – receive only 5% of global income, while 54% of global income goes to the richest 10% of the world’s population.'

http://www.stwr.org/poverty-inequality/global-inequality.html

[joshcryer]

109. Watch this Gapminder video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

It's long but informative.

The key is that the western states fuck up the statistics because we have a thousand or so uber-godly-country-level-wealthy people.

What's important is that trade barriers fuck up everything, and Hans Rosling is a staunch advocate of ending those barriers. Barriers the developed countries put into place to protect themselves and to exploit poorer undeveloped countries.

[TBF]

40. I agree JoeyT -

personally I might favor something a bit different than what we saw in Russia, China, Korea, etc... But I did want to throw up the article because I don't think the numbers are "phony" - the system was more efficient. And I agree with you that the times that we on the left have made progress in this country are when we have strong socialist (communist) parties pushing back at TPTB (which is why they purge us from time to time, and also break our unions). Food for thought, and I appreciate your thoughtful comments on the subject.

[tama]

114. Will debate do?

From what I hear, there is awfull lot of real practical grass roots socialism and anarcho-communism going on also in USA.

Cooperatives, intentional communities and heck - any normal family is usually a socialist-communist-anarchistic economic unit... ;)

[cali]

36. And who's going to put it on the agenda? No one who has any influence whatsoever

this is a pointless op. self-indulgent and meaningless.

[TBF]

42. The only folks who can put this on the agenda are the American people -

and to do it will involve serious protests and general strikes.

I thought the article was interesting because it had actual facts to back up that the Soviet government was more efficient. Would I personally want to see that model in this country? I dunno, I would hope that we've learned from history and could improve on it. But do I think we need socialism in some form? Yes.

FWIW, I don't think that's particularly "indulgent", but rather a difference of opinion from other progressives on this site who are still pining for their American Nightmare - uh- I mean Dream.

[originalpckelly]

48. No, no it isn't. We will not replace one tyranny with another.

We need to distribute economic power further, not centralize it further.

The fools who fail to notice that centralized power leads to abuse will be our end.

[TBF]

50. What do you mean by that?

"Distribute power further" - as in more small businesses, etc? More regulation? I'm familiar with your posts, and often agree, so interested in what your take would be on how we could improve things.

I do have empathy with the "centralized power leads to abuse" - we have that now, no? Personally I like models such as the Paris Commune (which of course only lasted two months so there is definitely improvement to be made there) ... I tend to be libertarian as opposed to authoritarian in terms of control. My opinion would differ from the article in that respect - but I still think it's important that we realize other economic models might work a whole lot better than our own in terms of efficiency, productivity, and economic equality. Food for thought.

[deaniac21]

53. I think we are ready to have an Anarco-Syndicalist society.

We could take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,
but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting
by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,but by a two-thirds majority
the case of more major decisions.

[TBF]

54. You and I are on the same page -

I'd be very interested in that model.

[deaniac21]

59. Holy Grail Scene 3

ARTHUR: Old woman!
DENNIS: Man!
ARTHUR: Man. Sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there?
DENNIS: I'm thirty-seven.
ARTHUR: I-- what?
DENNIS: I'm thirty-seven. I'm not old.
ARTHUR: Well, I can't just call you 'Man'.
DENNIS: Well, you could say 'Dennis'.
ARTHUR: Well, I didn't know you were called 'Dennis'.
DENNIS: Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you?
ARTHUR: I did say 'sorry' about the 'old woman', but from the behind you looked--
DENNIS: What I object to is that you automatically treat me like an inferior!
ARTHUR: Well, I am King!
DENNIS: Oh, King, eh, very nice. And how d'you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers! By 'anging on to outdated imperialist dogma which
perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. If there's ever going to be any progress with the--
WOMAN: Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here. Oh! How d'you do?
ARTHUR: How do you do, good lady? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. We are all Britons, and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about. If only people would hear of--
ARTHUR: Please! Please, good people. I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN: No one lives there.

ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,...
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,...
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: ...but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh? Who does he think he is? Heh.
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, how did you become King, then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,...

...her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to
carry Excalibur.

That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a
mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up, will you? Shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it,
didn't you?

[tritsofme]

56. It always amuses me that Soviet apologists still exist after all these years.

And they still believe their own propaganda, amazing!

[Imajika]

60. It goes to show you, ideology often trumps facts and evidence...

A well regulated market based economy works best. Period. Even those will have ups and downs and periods of crisis, but command and control socialist economies are ALWAYS worse and eventually implode due to horrendous inefficiency.

No thanks on the socialism thing. Lets work towards a progressive leaning market based system with strong, sensible regulations, a tax code that requires the richest among us who benefit from our system to pay their fair share and a humane safety net for the neediest among us.

[blindpig]

106. You have no idea what the facts and evidence are.

Instead you accept the given wisdom of the status quo, hardly disinterested capitalist propaganda, borrowed Nazi lies, the testimony of traitors and poisoned sectarian prattle.

[Imajika]

107. Please point out your socialist success stories?

What nations have been successful using a command and control economic system?

Even the social democratic nations in Europe are driven by regulated free markets. All of them.

There are zero successful socialist/communist nations. None.

[tama]

115. Let's talk ideology

"market based system with strong, sensible regulations, a tax code" sounds to me like pure ideology. Ideology in the sense that it is not material and concrete, like food, clothes and shelter are.

What would be healthy is materialism in the sense of food, clothes and shelter and where they come from and how they are produced, instead of any and all ideologies based on purely ideological and symbolic notion of money and especially fiat currency based on debt and interest, and hierarchical political system of "regulators regulating".

What would be healthy is materialistic economy, in the sense of taking care of our common home and living sustainably, instead of the purely ideological and fully alianated dyseconomy that discusses only money and market.

[rdking647]

58. except for the gulag

the kgb,the mass shortages of consumer goods etc etc etc.

[TBF]

65. The US has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world -

and also the CIA. We do not have a mass shortage of consumer goods, but we sure have a shortage of folks who can afford goods (and a shortage of jobs - funny how that works).

[Name removed]

67. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TBF]

75. Thanks for the insightful commentary.

:eyes:

[Ikonoklast]

76. You would need to replace the two-party system here.

'Real' capital 'S' Socialism wouldn't work in our present political system; at best, I think we can hope for small 's' socialism where the safety net of the vast majority is in place, and working.


Regulate capitalism and keep markets on a rational footing, and make bankers operate under new regulations we put in place so they can't crash the economy again.

[TBF]

89. Correct,

they won't work together and it ain't because of the socialism. I do believe the capitalism has to go.

Even if we "regulate" it is always in the interest of capitalists to go around those regs in whatever creative way they can figure out. I'd like to see a system in which living beings and the environment are the priority rather than profits.

[NeedleCast]

79. That's Good Stuff

Seriously, we're holding life in the Soviet Union up as a goal we should be trying to reach?

[MFrohike]

83. Two things

1. Is the GDP per capita growth of 5.2 over 71 years equal to 520%? I'm a bit confused.

2. The USSR may well have maintained economic growth rates that surpassed the US for much of the 20th century. High rates of growth are not uncommon when a country is starting from nothing. Given that the US was a far more advanced economy in 1928 than the USSR, the proper comparison of growth rates would be from when the USSR attained 1928 US levels (or some other arbitrary year that provides a roughly equal comparison).

All that being said, I'm not inclined to take advice from a Marxist-Leninist journal. There may well be forms of socialism that are not inherently coercive and intrusive, but M-L has never proved to be one of those.

[TBF]

88. Here are the cites they give -

For discussions of Soviet economic performance see: Robert C. Allen. 2003. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution. Princeton University Press, 2003; David M. Kotz. “The Demise of the Soviet Union and the International Socialist Movement Today”. Paper written for the International Symposium on the 20th Anniversary of the Former Soviet Union and its Impact, Beijing, April 23, 2011; and Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny. “A Rejoinder to Erwin Marquit’s Critique of Socialism Betrayed”. Nature, Society, and Thought, vol. 17, no. 3. 2004.

I'm not an economist and would not want to guess at the numbers you are asking about. As for "coercive and intrusive" I find the Patriot Act pretty damned coercive and intrusive (including the molesters at the airports), but that's just me.

I also wanted to welcome you to DU. I noticed this was your first post on the board, and I'm pleased you took the time to comment even if we don't agree on this OP.

[muriel_volestrangler]

98. However, the scale of the gulags and executions in the Soviet Union dwarfs the Patriot Act

The article's claim that Soviet growth happened without the "hunger and despair" that capitalist economies had is clearly false. There were famines in the Soviet Union, caused by government policy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

97. Good points; and welcome to DU

I would think "GDP per capita grew in the USSR by a factor of 5.2" means that in 1987, it was 5.2 times the 1928 value (which would be growth of 420%). It is a credible figure - over 59 years, it's an average annual growth rate of 2.83%. But, as you say, higher growth from a lower starting point is to be expected. The better per capita growth of Western Europe compared to the "USA, Australia etc." group may also reflect this.

[hifiguy]

86. I am all for social democracy

but in all fairness, the Soviet Union was a complete failure at producing even the bare minimum of consumer goods, even simple stuff like a decent pair of jeans. Though the populace was all housed and had at least some access to medical care.

[Waiting For Everyman]

99. I don't like "isms", I'd rather have a maximum income.

There's a minimum wage, and there should be a maximum too. I'd set it extremely high, like at $10 million for example. Above that, should be taxed at 90+%. Nobody is worth $10 mil a year. Not anybody.

And the minimum should be at least $15/hr. Fix the trade deals to equalize that with 3rd world countries and have tax penalties for offshoring.

[TBF]

101. Is that maximum income in a capitalistic society?

Because that would still be an "ism". I don't disagree with any of your ideas, probably worth a try, but I still don't think we can tame the beast. Take the past 100 years for example. Lots of work by the socialists in the early 1900's put enough pressure on FDR to save capitalism with the New Deal. Now all those protections are being torn down (and not just by republicans - blue dog democrats are complicit), and they are being torn down quickly.

[tama]

117. But you like moneyism ;)

FIY, anybody can create a new currency and money system out of thin air, just like central banks and some computer games do. So nobody is stopping you from issuing your own currency and getting maximum income in terms of your currency.

The only problem is that you can't eat your money, because it's pure ideology and has material value only and only if somebody is willing to exchange your currency for food, clothes and shelter.

How about replacing ideology of Money with materialistic economy of energy sharing?

[kctim]

104. You do realize

the reason socialism is soundly rejected by Americans is because of the individual rights factor, NOT the economic factor?

[blindpig]

105. kick

[BiggJawn]

108. So let's just keep cheerleading good ol' MURKAN Capitalism...

...Until we're all waiting in line for a roll of asswipe or a pair of shoes.
Given to us as CHARITY because there are no jobs to be had anywhere.

Yes siree, there's NO system like the AMERICAN system! Highest standard of living in the WORLD! EXCEPTIONAL!

Might have been true when I was in 4th grade, but not now.

[maryf]

110. Kick!!!

sorry I missed this, but keeping it alive! :hi:

[BNJMN]

111. Unfortunately, Socialism isn't fairing too well internationally speaking. Otherwise I'd be going

...balls out.

[former9thward]

116. All the Russians waiting in lines to buy things at empty stores

probably were not impressed by your 'statistics'. In the 1930s the Nazis had great growth rates (near 10%) too.