Albert Einstein: Why Socialism? (1949)
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First, socialism is defined as worker or public control of the means of production and distribution. This has been interpreted in both libertarian and authoritarian ways.
Second, if socialism is worker control, then it is fully compatible with free markets. Mondragon and Semco are both worker democracies, and operate successfully in the global market.
If socialism is public control, this does not equal totalitarianism. Social democracy is a form of democratic public control of resources.
I understand people's reasoning for preferring capitalism (ownership defined by contract) or socialism (ownership defined by use), and I respect that, but I would love to be able to have political discussions about these issues which take into account the complexity and diversity of these two very broad terms.
I think it's these terms and the basic assumptions behind them are what need to be addressed prior to attempting to construct a social system.
I'll bite.
> socialism is defined
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Socialism is the way. Communism is the unreachable goal.
> If socialism is public control, this does not equal totalitarianism. Social democracy is a form of democratic public control of resources.
You can discuss things ad nauseum and it will mean nothing. The human mind is too primitive to account for all the facets of reality. There is an almost infinite number of factors that play into the reality of the state.
In the end, the only way to know if something works is to try it.
Socialism was tried. Repeatedly. It always led to a totalitarian state.
Democracy is tyranny by the majority. When protections of the individual are removed for the sake of "social justice" or socialism or for any other reason, the majority is free to abuse the minority for its gain. And they do. Very quickly. This escalates over and over, until a totalitarian state is born.
Marxist-Leninism is what you're referring to, and yes, that has led to totalitarianism. However, socialism predated Marx, and there are non-Marxist (and anti-Marxist) socialist philosophies.
"From each according..." is not a tenet shared by all socialists.
Also ... its not like there was some blueprint that the Soviet Union applied as if they were building a machine tool on a large scale. The Soviet State has, in its large scale state organized brutality and corruption, is completely in line with Russian history (no offense to my Russian friends.... Russia is also soulful and brilliant).
Yes, of course. Something that is shared by all socialists is redistribution. If you're not redistributing something, then you're doing nothing. To redistribute something, you must infringe upon the liberties of the individual for the sake of another or a group of others. The more you do this, the faster you accelerate the march toward totalitarianism.
For example, a minimal state that only provides a police force to enforce the laws and taxes individuals accordingly may take hundreds or even a thousand years to collapse into a totalitarian state. On the other hand, when you throw individual protections out the window, it may only take a few years. For example, contrary to popular belief, the period between the Russian revolution and Stalin's takeover was really interesting. It would take too long to go into it, but they tried some really exciting stuff and some of it worked. Unfortunately, when you discard individual liberty, it creates an opportunity for totalitarianism to step through the door.
Has it's origins in the Christian Bible - Acts 4:34-35.
In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt says, "I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
Edit: Why the downvotes? The parent post quoted the Bible, so why is it invalid for me to quote the second most popular book next to it?
Rand's philosophy is not about economics - it's a complete system, with distinct metaphysical, epistemological and moral positions, all of which give rise to applications in politics, art, science and other fields of human endeavor. (Not unlike Aristotle.)
Here's the citation for Atlas Shrugged being only 2nd to the Bible in popularity: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:U54zOrN...
How do you know that comparing her to Aristotle is laughable if you don't actually know what she said?
I recommend "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology" if you'd like to compare her epistemology with Aristotle's.
Edit: again, why the downvote? Yes, I know some people don't like Ayn Rand (and others adore her). But there's nothing in this message that warrants a downvote.
Like most successful industrial countries, they have a strong government that works closely with private industry and "the people", as opposed to the naive laissez faire beloved by neoliberals. Think Japan/ Germany -- STILL the industrial leaders of the world.
A friend of mine also said the LDS shifted to republicanism in the seventies because of sexual politics, not economic policy. The genius of Reagan and friends was to use conflicts inspired by seismic cultural shifts of the seventies to push through economic policies that benefit a fairly small minority of the US.
I thought it was the (American) neoconservatives who love laissez-faire? Or at least claim to.
If you're suggesting that we should accept something because it is in the Christian Bible, you're suggesting that we should accept anything in said bible. (Why? Because your argument for that thing applies to everything in said bible.) Moreover, surely you accept everything in said bible.
FWIW, religious folk do give more to charities than non-religious folk.
As I see it, the fundamental flaw in socialism always boils down the facts that a) a great many people like power and won't willingly give it up, b) these are the people who historically wind up in control of political structures (including unions), and c) as Dame Thatcher observed, sooner or later you run out of other people's money.
Living is essentially a contradiction - each human being is an individual and as a creature of nature, possesses instincts which guards against others who seek to deprive him/her of his individuality and his chance to live. Yet he/she benefits from cooperating with others to achieve a greater goal larger than the sum of his/her parts.
This is a never ending struggle and it has dominated political discussion for twentieth century. It disappoints me that most people would take an extreme position - i.e. capitalism is good/evil or socialism is good/evil - leaves us no room to negotiate solutions which will work out for the individual and society.
There are two other issues that I have with the piece:
Economic: what the owner sells is the not the product of labor, but rather the product of all inputs (investment) that went into the production of the good or service.
Historical: nuclear war (or WWIII) was not prevented by a supra-national organization, but rather the collapse of a (inneficiently) planned economy. But how could he see that coming?
Einstein lived long enough to see how Stalinism worked out; he outlived Stalin. On the other hand, by some definitions Norway is socialist and things seem to have worked out pretty good there.
This kind of discussion is pointless: everyone uses "socialism" to mean whatever they think it should mean and then argues. It's like a bunch of people getting together to play a game, except one is playing chess, one checkers, and someone else poker. Then they all get indignant and yell at each other, which I suppose is the real game.
By how much would the world supply of argumentation deflate if people paid attention to whether they were even talking about the same thing?
Anything works with a small population of Scandanavians.
The general idea of socialism is the forced redistribution of wealth or property, which pretty much doesn't change in all of the different versions of socialism.
I consider massive taxes to pay for government programs a form of socialism (taxes that go above and beyond the basic funding of a nation/country. IE: fire, police, roads, schools). As these taxes get bigger and bigger, the wealth distribution becomes equal and it starts to really become more of a communist system.
It seems to me that the people that don't want it called 'socialism' want to hide the fact that it's exactly that.
This should be posted at the top of every political discussion, in my humble opinion.
One of the promises of increased automation was supposed to be more leisure time for the individual. If Einstein is correct, and he may well be, then future economic restructurings may be far worse than than the one we are experiencing now.
Unions have pretty much put a stop to the automation of most industries.