The Two Forms of Socialism - Page 4 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#15112159
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, yeah, but I posted more videos *in total*.


= D
I hadn't known that there was a competition between us . :) I only post videos as I deem to be properly necessary , not in order to try to one up anyone else . :|
#15112174
Deutschmania wrote:
I hadn't known that there was a competition between us . :) I only post videos as I deem to be properly necessary , not in order to try to one up anyone else . :|



Yup, that's what makes it funny.

You're welcome.


= )
#15112194
Donna wrote::lol:

It was two large German companies, Krupp and I.G. Farben, that bailed out the Nazi Party when it went broke in 1932.

Krupp, you mean the man that, while it was still unclear whether the Nazis would gain power, instructed his driver to look for his signal whether to give him the traditional Prussian greeting (clicked heels and a tap of the hat) or a Nazi salute when he approached? The man that joined with other businessmen in an attempt to keep Hitler from being appointed Chancellor? That Krupp? He didn't speak out in favor of the Nazis until 1933 after Hitler was elected Chancellor and didn't become a member of the Nazi Party until 1940. That's not to say that some businessmen didn't support the Nazis early on, such as Fritz Thyssen, who came to deeply regret his decision, saying in 1940 (after he had fled to Switzerland) that "soon Germany will not be any different from Bolshevik Russia; the heads of enterprises who do not fulfill the conditions which the ‘Plan' prescribes will be accused of treason against the German people, and shot."

Pants-of-dog wrote:@Doug64

If you look at actual history and see what fascists actually did, you would see that they did support the business class and ruthlessly targeted the working class.

You are just refusing to thunk farther than “state control”.

Also, socialistic is not a word that is actually used to describe anything.

You have a strange definition of "support the business class." At least domestically, the Nazis took their Socialism seriously.

Deutschmania wrote:In which of these dictonomous categories would you place liberal socialism?

Depends on how serious they are about their socialism, and how they choose to implement it. They could be Interventionists rather than outright Socialists if they just poke around the edges, or either Fascists or Communists depending on whether they let business owners pretend they're in charge or take explicit control of their businesses.

And , it seems to me that the basic definition that free market classical liberal conservatives have of socialism is simply a combination of dirigisme with planisme . As you should be able to see , these are French rooted words ; so such concepts did not originate in Germany . Also there was a huge gap between Hitler , and the Strassers , as to what the National Socialist economy should entail . https://www.britannica.com/story/were-the-nazis-socialists , https://www.thoughtco.com/guns-or-butter-the-nazi-economy-1221065 , https://www.thoughtco.com/was-adolf-hitler-a-socialist-1221367 , https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Nazi_Germany#Privatization_and_business_ties , https://arplan.org/category/people/gregor-strasser/ , https://arplan.org/category/people/otto-strasser/

First problem, your link to the Britannica article is flawed because the writer assumes that Fascism isn't socialistic when it clearly was. Your Guns or Butter: The Nazi Economy actually makes my case, because it makes it clear that the final say in any economic decisions was the State, not the businesses. The major flaws with Was Adolf Hitler a Socialist? are first, it pretends that because the Nazis destroyed all other socialist organizations in Germany it therefore wasn't socialist; second, it argues that Hitler was a Conservative weapon when he clearly neither wanted to preserve the status quo nor wanted to revert to a previous status quo; and ... seems to argue that because the "Nationalist" part of the "National Socialism" title was false (the Nazis were all about identity politics, not nationalism), therefore the "Socialism" part of the title had to be false as well? That one's a little weird.

Senter wrote:Well, in the first place I completely reject Ludwig von Mises and anything he says. I'm no genius but I can refute everything I've seen him say with a few facts.

Both his alternatives for "socialism" are references to state capitalism. Neither one is actually socialism, which is a socioeconomic system in which the working class owns and actively runs and controls the MoP. But in all the examples you listed in your post the state owns and dictates to workers. That is not liberation of workers!

At this point most of the opposition would turn to dictionary definitions of socialism. If that's what you want to do, please do.

Oddly enough, yes, I'm going to turn to a dictionary definition of socialism: "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government." That "usually" is important, because you have to have that centralized government for any form of socialism above the village level and whoever calls the shots are the true owners. And no, I'm not going to buy an argument that because every form of socialism above the village level has involved state control by the central government it isn't really socialism. And note that "state control" is true even at the village level when you define "state" as "the adults as a body."

Rancid wrote:The second form of "communism" sounds like China. That is, it's not really communism, more like state managed capitalism.

Back to the dictionary again, this time for Capitalism: "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth." The more it's "state managed" the less it's Capitalism, though I would add "controlled" to "owned," if I didn't replace it entirely. Note that "managed" isn't the same as "regulated," such as those laws required for Capitalism to function such as enforcement of contracts.

Saeko wrote:Saying that the Nazi and Soviet form of economic organization are the same because they both involve the use of the state to enforce economic dictates is as retarded as saying that Capitalism and Feudalism are the same because both systems use the state to enforce private property rights.

Of course they weren't the same, any more than you could say that Maoism and Leninism are the same--but they're both forms of Communism, just like Facism and Communism are both forms of socialism.

Julian658 wrote:Same old:

Socialism can only be imposed by coercion and by a repressive authoritarian government.

Not at all, it can be created by democratically elected governments with the support of their citizens. Good examples are the wartime fascism/socialism of WWI & WWII US and WWII Great Britain (I don't know enough about economics in Great Britain during WWI to have an opinion). The problem is maintaining that fascism/socialism after the crisis is over--there you need a repressive authoritarian government, and in all three cases thanks to our embedded Democratic institutions and traditions those that would have liked to maintain that socialism weren't in position to do so when most citizens decided it was time to shut it down.
#15112196
Doug64 wrote:Not at all, it can be created (socialism)by democratically elected governments with the support of their citizens. Good examples are the wartime fascism/socialism of WWI & WWII US and WWII Great Britain (I don't know enough about economics in Great Britain during WWI to have an opinion). The problem is maintaining that fascism/socialism after the crisis is over--there you need a repressive authoritarian government, and in all three cases thanks to our embedded Democratic institutions and traditions those that would have liked to maintain that socialism weren't in position to do so when most citizens decided it was time to shut it down.


OK, let's play out your hypothesis. Assume we have a referendum: Socialism versus capitalism and socialism wins by 65%.

What them? How about the other 35% that prefer capitalism? Will the government allow them to keep their private property and allow them to continue to be capitalists? Or will they have to agree to nationalization of their private enterprises? I would think that if you really want socialism you would need coercion and oppression of business owners.
#15112199
Doug64 wrote:
Of course they weren't the same, any more than you could say that Maoism and Leninism are the same--but they're both forms of Communism, just like Facism and Communism are both forms of socialism.



No, this is a common *misconception* -- fascism is *pro*-capitalism, while socialism / communism is *anti*-capitalism.


Doug64 wrote:
Not at all, it can be created by democratically elected governments with the support of their citizens. Good examples are the wartime fascism/socialism of WWI & WWII US and WWII Great Britain (I don't know enough about economics in Great Britain during WWI to have an opinion). The problem is maintaining that fascism/socialism after the crisis is over--there you need a repressive authoritarian government, and in all three cases thanks to our embedded Democratic institutions and traditions those that would have liked to maintain that socialism weren't in position to do so when most citizens decided it was time to shut it down.



Actually, I happen to think that the *reverse* is true -- that *during* the revolution ('crisis') left-wing authoritarianism is objectively needed, as in a workers-state formulation, to repress the bourgeoisie class, and to take over the means of mass industrial production.

Once the class divide is transcended this vanguardist vehicle (the workers state) would be *defunct* because the workers of the world would then have no impediments to collectively self-organizing the world's social production in humanity's best interests as a whole.


Julian658 wrote:
OK, let's play out your hypothesis. Assume we have a referendum: Socialism versus capitalism and socialism wins by 65%.

What them? How about the other 35% that prefer capitalism? Will the government allow them to keep their private property and allow them to continue to be capitalists? Or will they have to agree to nationalization of their private enterprises? I would think that if you really want socialism you would need coercion and oppression of business owners.



Just make it clear that the current business owners need to get the fuck out of the way -- done.

Why not let's get to that two-thirds point and then take it from there, depending on prevailing sentiment? It would be more reflective of mass interests, regardless, than what we have now.
#15112201
@Doug64

Please quite the relevant text from that link. After reading the first few sections, I have my doubts as to the historical acumen of the author.

Thanks.
#15112210
ckaihatsu wrote:
Just make it clear that the current business owners need to get the fuck out of the way -- done.



I am glad someone finally admitted that socialism can only be implemented with coercion. :eek: :eek: :eek:
#15112212
Julian658 wrote:
I am glad someone finally admitted that socialism can only be implemented with coercion. :eek: :eek: :eek:



What did you *think* a proletarian revolution would be like -- a *ballet* recital?

Did someone try to sugarcoat it for you?

Consider that, currently, it's a *one-sided* class war going on, with the bourgeoisie repressing the proletariat -- that has to *change*, with the far-numerically-greater proletariat to repress the *bourgeoisie*. The *means* for doing that are secondary to the task / goal itself.

Would you rather have the current crisis-ridden capitalist world the way it is, or would you rather empower the world's working class to *overthrow* it?

I think you're confusing 'means', with 'ends'.
#15112214
Doug64 wrote:....
Oddly enough, yes, I'm going to turn to a dictionary definition of socialism: "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government." That "usually" is important, because you have to have that centralized government for any form of socialism above the village level and whoever calls the shots are the true owners. And no, I'm not going to buy an argument that because every form of socialism above the village level has involved state control by the central government it isn't really socialism. And note that "state control" is true even at the village level when you define "state" as "the adults as a body."

Yup, that's the capitalist definition of socialism. Lenin called it "state capitalism" and warned that if Russia went that way, there would have to be another revolution to "liberate" it and establish socialism. But you go ahead and quote a capitalist source on what it wants most to confuse, if you like.

Your definitions need some work .....--and thought. Socialism has always, everywhere, in every case, been advocated as workers' liberation from exploitation. It has been presented as an economic system in which the capitalist is suppressed while the workers run the MoP. So "it" is only socialism if the workers are liberated, otherwise it is deceptive words like "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" is deceptive. So while there have been efforts to create a socialist economy, no attempt has ever "arrived" yet. Most were eventually lost and diverted in the effort to execute strategies that failed. Cuba today remains uncertain. It has not yet attained socialism and the Cuban government will tell you that. They are working toward it and making progress. Only now are they starting to transition selected state-run "businesses" to workers' co-ops and are having success. But in the USSR and China socialism was never attained. The functional relationship between the worker and top management remains no different than it is in capitalism.

You need to stop relying on capitalist definitions of anti-capitalist matters.
#15112219
Once again it depends upon the underlying definition of what socialism is . And in Germany , the term could encompass the so called right-wing socialism of the Conservative Revolutionary movement . But Hitler , of all people , was not a socialist in the conventional sense of the word . https://www.vox.com/2019/3/27/18283879/nazism-socialism-hitler-gop-brooks-gohmert This was the truth of the matter of the NSDAP .
Before 1934 some in the party did promote anti-capitalist and socialist ideas, such as profit-sharing, nationalization and old-age benefits, but these were merely tolerated by Hitler as he gathered support, dropped once he secured power and often later executed, such as Gregor Strasser. There was no socialist redistribution of wealth or land under Hitler—although some property changed hands thanks to looting and invasion—and while both industrialists and workers were courted, it was the former who benefitted and the latter who found themselves the target of empty rhetoric. Indeed, Hitler became convinced that socialism was intimately connected to his even more long-standing hatred—the Jews—and thus hated it even more. Socialists were the first to be locked up in concentration camps.
https://www.thoughtco.com/was-adolf-hitler-a-socialist-1221367 Much of the arguments made in the American Thinker article linked to by @Doug64 are association , and authority fallacies . And also , the claim made by the above referenced article that Islamists , whose economics in my opinion is best comparable to distributism , are also left-wing is ludicrous . Just because a movement is anti-capitalist , doesn't automatically make them revolutionary left , from a global standpoint . I think that what everyone from Hitler to the Islamists have had in common was their support for productive capitalism , as opposed to spectuative investment , and the financial markets . http://www.planck.org/publications/Financial-Capitalism-vs-Productive-Capitalism/ But if this makes them " socialist " , then so was the economy of South Korea , especially in regards to Saemaul Undong . Finishing out my response , and in friendly competition with @ckaihatsu :) , here are a series of videos .
#15112220
Senter wrote:
But in the USSR and China socialism was never attained. The functional relationship between the worker and top management remains no different than it is in capitalism.



To be fair, I've heard some claims that even under Stalin the workers on the ground were allowed workplace-scale collectivization, within the USSR, but all *project-level* decision-making and edicts came down from the Stalinist bureaucratic elites.

You're basically correct, though.


Deutschmania wrote:
Finishing out my response , and in friendly competition with @ckaihatsu :) , here are a series of videos . UMrYyPJI1BA F_6ZDXkbaxE hUFvG4RpwJI YHAN-RPJTiE



So what's the tally now? Can't keep up -- gotta get an *accountant* for this shit.... (grin)
#15112482
Doug64 wrote:Back to the dictionary again, this time for Capitalism: "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth." The more it's "state managed" the less it's Capitalism, though I would add "controlled" to "owned," if I didn't replace it entirely. Note that "managed" isn't the same as "regulated," such as those laws required for Capitalism to function such as enforcement of contracts.


Things like capitalism and communism are a continuum, a spectrum. Sooo yea, china is more like a state managed capitalist country (private citizens do in fact own the means of production, so long as they don't piss off the CCP). The Chinese play the global capitalism game better than anyone else at that.
#15112612
Rancid wrote:Things like capitalism and communism are a continuum, a spectrum. Sooo yea, china is more like a state managed capitalist country (private citizens do in fact own the means of production, so long as they don't piss off the CCP). The Chinese play the global capitalism game better than anyone else at that.

I worry that the characterization of things being merely on a continuum means there is no qualitative difference but only a quantitative difference ie more of the same thing although it's not exactly clear what the thing is here.
Like at what point does ownership turn capitalism into socialism or communism?
To be honest this doesn't seem a simple topic to me and I don't have an answer but questions and points that guide my skepticism of any simple answer.

My thought is that the very basis of a concept needs to be explored to situate definitions, which are at best, only the beginning of understanding.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essayint.htm
...because a full description cannot by any means be given by a ‘definition’ but only by ‘developing the essence of the matter’

I can tell the definition of a thing to a child, but because it's so abstract and distant from any real-world experience he has had, it's difficult for him to grasp what it is and can only answer very stereotypically if I ask them for the definition ie repeat rote memorization. So a clash of definitions points to some other avenue as needed to resolve the issue.

And in the OP, what one sees is the Austrian tendency to consider socialism in terms of state ownership or intervention as the basis of their criticism of the USSR in order to assert the superiority of the free market rather than to properly develop the concept itself. It seems untenable to me and based on a strange sense of pure free markets and hence the odd american libertarian type the proposes free markets as the solution to any and all social problems. There is hardly a more bare faced ideological faith in free markets as the primary good and everything else as secondary.

But such a tendency seems to miss the essence of the matter, as touched upon here in the context of nazi Germany mentioned earlier in the thread:
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/heijen/works/capitalist.htm
The Formulas of the Improvisers Among the improvisers who seek to deny the capitalist nature of German economy, a few have hastily read Marx in order to cull from his works some definition of capitalism which is no longer applicable to the Third Reich. In the main their procedure comes down to defining capitalist economy as a “market economy.” Then they conclude: Since prices in Germany are determined not by the automatic laws of the market but by state decrees, therefore the economy is no longer capitalist. To be sure, the intervention of the state into the sphere of circulation affords certain supplementary channels for the manipulation of prices. But there is essentially nothing new in this. For almost half a century monopolies and cartels have precisely set themselves the task of converting free trade into its opposite. Are monopolies then “non-capitalist” enterprises? The formula of the improvisers is false because they attempt to define capitalism by seeking its essential characteristics in the sphere of circulation.

Marxism teaches us that a correct definition of capitalism can be established only by seeking out the essential relations in the sphere of production, which, in turn, determines those in the sphere of circulation.


And one should even question the USSR propaganda in its assertion of being socialism.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/indirectly-social-labor/amp/
The distinction between this humanist reading and the circulationist reading still may seem trivial. After all, SNLT only exists because we produce for exchange. Exchange plays a vital role in the process of regulating labor in a capitalist economy where private labors happen in relative isolation from each other. However the distinction becomes more crucial once we consider the nature of labor in the state-planned economies of the USSR. Soviet economists claimed to operate under the law of value, to produce commodities, similarly to capitalism. However they also claimed that they were doing so consciously, using the law of value to their advantage, as a conscious tool of state planning. This meant, according to Soviet economists, that while other categories of capitalist production may have been at play, labor was directly social. It was directly social because it was planned by people, not blind economic forces. This was meant to prove the socialist nature of their state-planning.10

But if we understand indirectly social labor to be the result of socially necessary labor time then it does not matter whether this labor’s social nature is realized by a market or by a plan. What gives it its indirectly social nature is the fact that one hour of my work is not worth as much as another’s. Labors are not treated equally. Instead a process of social averaging takes place which rewards some labors and punishes others. The mechanism which realizes or reinforces this does not alter matters. This argument has been used to argue that the USSR was actually a state-capitalist society, not a communist society. Such a claim requires an empirical analysis of the organization of the USSR, something outside the topic of this book. [cite mh and ticktin]


Though we should also be skeptical of those who also simply assert the state capitalist nature of the USSR and today China (which by far has the most publicly owned and minor private sector in the world ie not an independent or clear and dominant capitalist class as known in the west).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/geoff2.htm
This method of starting from principles (instead of abstracting them in the course of theoretical work) was essentially the same as starting from abstract definitions, into which the facts are then ‘fitted’. (An example of such a method would be that commonly used to ‘prove’ that the USSR is ‘capitalist’. A fixed definition of capitalism is erected – one involving wage labour and commodity production for instance. Certain ‘facts’ are then taken from the USSR – where undoubtedly wage labour and commodity production exist, and on this basis the USSR is ‘shown’ to be capitalist.)


I guess to properly situate a concept of socialism first requires to see what Marx did, which was to clarify the concept of capital and thus capitalism as a historically specific mode of production and not merely a technical expansion of the economy as is the tendency in economics in naturalizing and universalizing capitalist production and thus not noting its qualitative difference from earlier periods where money and markets had not yet fully developed nor dominated social life.
#15112629
ckaihatsu wrote:To be fair, I've heard some claims that even under Stalin the workers on the ground were allowed workplace-scale collectivization, within the USSR, but all *project-level* decision-making and edicts came down from the Stalinist bureaucratic elites.

You're basically correct, though.

Here is a video I just found , from a non-Communist source , critiquing the perceived problems which existed within the economy of Stalin's Soviet Union .
Here is what a workers council is , and how it functions .
And in particular , in contrast to the Soviet Union , from Stalin onwards , how it existed in Yugoslavia .
So how was the living conditions in Yugoslavia ? Irrespective of ideological bias , here is a tourism video I have found from the 80's , so you can see for yourselves .
( Trigger warning for any prudes , contains beach scenes with partial nudity ) So which of the two forms of socialism does Titoism fall under ? I personally feel that it seems comparable to an extent with Strasserism , as described in " Germany Tomorrow " , by Otto Strasser . https://arplan.org/2019/07/24/national- ... -strasser/ And while this commentator favorably considers it to be characteristic of fascism , I feel that it also shares even more so parallels with Communism , particularly the Yugoslavian model .
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