Topic awaiting preservation: What is Socialism? (Page 1 of 1)

I have learned many conflicting ideas and I wanna know What most people think.

I always thought it meant going to lot's of parties...
(or would that be eliminating a few extra parties...

My understanding is that basically businesses are owned by the people that work for them. i.e. a co-op

Communism on the otherhand the government controls business.

Ones more of an economic/business philosophy, the other a governmental philosophy. So Capitalism and Socialism are two ecomonmic theories, democracy and communism are governmental regimes. of course govenment has a huge influence on the sort of economy a country has.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

Impossible question to answer in even 5 of my longest posts. It's like asking "What is capitalism?"
Adam Smith, Pres. GW Bush, J.S. Mills, Karl Marx, Alan Greenspan and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King are all going to give you different answers...and each would be correct AND incorrect (to a point).

Dictionary.com gives us this:
1) Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.
2) The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.

...but I could point to any number of respectable and knowledgeable people who would argue with one facet or another of either of those definitions, and still others who would say that, while those two definitions describe some small piece of 'socialism', they are, by no means, indicative of the entire realm of socialist thought.

What is Probaly the best form of socialism?

Hum..this reminds me of this guy I heard talking on the radio yesterday who was saying that America is actually a socialist country. He was using the comparision on how we force democracy on coutries whether they want to become democratic or not.


Quotes

[This message has been edited by Gilbert Nolander (edited 05-07-2003).]

umm was he joking? about u.s. being socialist?
if not - I guess, the explanation of it would be that since people stopped buying "democratic country" crap, they decided to feed us new terms, in hope that the less knowledgeable would buy it and go back into their usual relaxed-vegitative state.

The perfect form of socialism is where everybody is treated equally, but it is recognized that I am a little more equal than everyone else.

DL-44:

be carefull at those kind of parties, you're don't want to pick up a socialist disease....

oh, I know all about that "conformity" disease....had a friend or two pick that up...

And the best form of socialism would be Ingsoc, of course



[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 05-08-2003).]

To quote an old teacher of mine:

"Communism and Socialism are basicly the same ideology. Only the means to reach the goal differs."
This was said about 15 years ago, so I guess that it's not really as accurate today. (at least not here)

So if that guy was serious and if it is true then the US is not a democracy but yet a form of communisim?!? I actually think we don't have a democracy here in the US. But yet again only my opinion!

BiGCaC

No, you're right. We have a democratic republic here in the US

. . : slicePuzzle

Depends on how one defines Socialism. To some degree the US does have socialistic practices. We have (in most plaes) common roads and highways, to be used by all, paid for by taxes. Some places have toll roads, for sure, but those are the minority rather than the majority. We have education paid for by taxes and run by the state and local governments. For that matter, our police forces are socialistic.
We subsidize lots of corporations with tax money. A huge majority of environmental clean-up money is from the federal and state taxes. Companies "can't" clean up their own messes because it would be "bad for business", so everybody pitches in to clean up. That sounds a lot like "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."
There are places that are more socialistic and less socialistic than the US. Socialism (like most -isms) isn't a binary thing. There is a large range of practices and the US certainly has adopted some of those practices.

Yea, thats what he was talking about Mobrul

There is this one guy at my school who thinks socialism would be a good thing for the US.
We were in debate class and I said something about the government trying to make us a socialist country. And we started debating about if it is right for us or not and he came up with some good points. He said wouldn't everything be fairly distrubuted if we were socialist? And wouldn't the American people have jobs? He had more interesting points but I dont remember them all. He got me to thinking that, that would be true though. I mean think about it, China is doing it the only major thing wrong with them besides SARS is they are over-populated. I think it just could work out.

BiGCaC

Socialsim always starts with such claims. "Equality" and promises of employment.

But it just doesn't seem to work out that way...

The groups of the wealthy and the powerful simply merge into one singular ruling class that is rather difficult to get rid of, and the propaganda becomes an overwhelming force and the state becomes the decision maker on every level. This means that decisions are made based on what makes the *state* stronger - and guess what? Equality and 100% employment are bad for the state. So is truth. So propaganda becomes truth, and now truth can be controlled. And so can the people.

Before long, anything that may be seen as counter to the state (oh, let's say, an ethnic group of the government's choice...) is irradicated, and the public goes along for the ride because they believe the propaganda that tells them that this group is evil and will destroy their "prosperity" (and with the right spin, poverty can be seen as prosperity) and thus must be destroyed first.

Sound unrealistic? It shouldn't....

Personally, I think I'll pass.



[This message has been edited by DL-44 (edited 05-23-2003).]

True DL-44 but I was just making the statement that was basically saying that everyone would think that. I mean at first I was like hey yeah it could work, but the more I thought about it I realized that it really wouldn't work. And I think that your absolutley right. And if all the high class were to like conform the other classes could not over power them, and the high class would be the main decision makers. So in that sense all the lower class people would basically be pushed out of the state.

BiGCaC