[Unthinking Majority]

Thank you for posting proof of my assertion....no. Just no.


Read what you posted then look at the definition you posted.

"While no single definition encapsulates many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element."

[Wellsy]

Privatize ownership of roads, infrastructure, schools, military is capitalism. Public ownership is socialism. Equal ownership by all for the use and/or benefit of everyone in society.

This still seems to impoverished a concept just as private property itself is insufficient to conceptualize a capitalist economy as you noted earlier that private property predates capitalism.
Similarly, socialism can’t be abstractly defined simply by state ownership but must capture the essential qualities of s concept rather than a spurious appearance. Otherwise socialism ends up as ridiculous as my video as government = socialism and more government ownership equals more socialism and enough at some arbitrary point is communism.

Spoiler: show

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch03.htm

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.
...
But of late, since Bismarck went in for State-ownership of industrial establishments, a kind of spurious Socialism has arisen, degenerating, now and again, into something of flunkyism, that without more ado declares all State-ownership, even of the Bismarkian sort, to be socialistic. Certainly, if the taking over by the State of the tobacco industry is socialistic, then Napoleon and Metternich must be numbered among the founders of Socialism.

If the Belgian State, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, itself constructed its chief railway lines; if Bismarck, not under any economic compulsion, took over for the State the chief Prussian lines, simply to be the better able to have them in hand in case of war, to bring up the railway employees as voting cattle for the Government, and especially to create for himself a new source of income independent of parliamentary votes — this was, in no sense, a socialistic measure, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal porcelain manufacture, and even the regimental tailor of the army would also be socialistic institutions, or even, as was seriously proposed by a sly dog in Frederick William III's reign, the taking over by the State of the brothels.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1901/evangel/stmonsoc.htm

Therefore, we repeat, state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism – if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would all be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials – but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism.

Schemes of state and municipal ownership, if unaccompanied by this co-operative principle, are but schemes for the perfectioning of the mechanism of capitalist government-schemes to make the capitalist regime respectable and efficient for the purposes of the capitalist

https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm

There is no greater misunderstanding or misrepresentation of Marx than that which is to be found, implicitly or explicitly, in the thought of the Soviet Communists, the reformist socialists, and the capitalist opponents of socialism alike, all of whom assume that Marx wanted only the economic improvement of the working class, and that he wanted to abolish private property so that the worker would own what the capitalist now has. The truth is that for Marx the situation of a worker in a Russian "socialist" factory, a British state-owned factory, or an American factory such as General Motors, would appear essentially the same. This, Marx expresses very clearly in the following:
"An enforced increase in wages (disregarding the other difficulties, and especially that such an anomaly could only be maintained by force) would be nothing more than a better remuneration of slaves, and would not restore, either to the worker or to the work, their human significance and worth.
"Even the equality of incomes which Proudhon demands would only change the relation of the presentday worker to his work into a relation of all men to work. Society would then be conceived as an abstract capitalist." [58]
The central theme of Marx is the transformation of alienated, meaningless labor into productive, free labor, not the better payment of alienated labor by a private or "abstract" state capitalism.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch06.htm

It is not a society in which the individual is subordinated to the state, to the machine, to the bureaucracy. Even if the state as an "abstract capitalist" were the employer, even if "the entire social capital were united in the hands either of a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation," [89] this would not be socialism.
...
Marx expresses here all essential elements of socialism. First, man produces in an associated, not competitive way; he produces rationally and in an unalienated way, which means that he brings production under his control, instead of being ruled by it as by some blind power. This clearly excludes a concept of socialism in which man is manipulated by a bureaucracy, even if this bureaucracy rules the whole state economy, rather than only a big corporation. It means that the individual participates actively in the planning and in the execution of the plans; it means, in short, the realization of political and industrial democracy.

If a further qualification or distinction is made then one does end up with a crude sense of more government equals more socialism as it has the same capitalist relations of production.
Ideally the state is more accountable than private institutions but both are only made accountable to the extent workers have organized political power to force them.

[XogGyux]

Taxes need a governing power. You don't need government to have private property. In the state of nature, a person walking in a forest and picking up a shiny rock can himself proclaim "this is mine" and defend that rock to the death. What government does is protect private property rights through law so people don't have to fight each other to the death, police do it for them.

Actually, you do need a government to have private property. You don't have something "private property" in the vacuum, for private property to be both private and "property" there must be a system by which other people acknowledge that it is indeed private property. In modern times, that system is the goverment. What you are describing is not some sort of novel theory... it is what we already have except that over the millenia has evolved and become far more complex, possibly unrecognizable. When you defend the shiny rock that you found... you are engaging in the same kind of primitive behavior that many animals (and early humans) followed. Take for instance a lion. It might select a few acres as "his property" and it will be his property right until a bigger, more agile, healthier, more aggressive lion comes along, at which point the property will exchange owners and so forth. This existed on early human settlements but it has morphed through history. Take for instance native americans... they were the lion that selected america to be "their property" until colonial invaders arrived and they became the bigger lion. In modern time... the same shit still exists. Except you are a puny lion and the goverment (an aggregate of many puny lions ) is the biggest lion of them all. You can go into a walmart with a shotgun and declare it you property (I am not advising you to do so, just for the record. I do not encourage criminality nor reckless/dangeorus behavior) and you can declare it your property. And it will become your property for about 20mins, until the special forces arrive and a sniper forces a few ounces of lead inside your skull.
None of the people that endorse the kind of system that you are hinting... is willing to abandon the perks of living in our society. You can indeed live as you are suggesting. You could simply go to the fucking middle of middle of the tongas forest or travel to the middle of the amazonas and declare a few acres of land your property... and I promise nobody will come to bother you for decades... nobody will come to collect taxes from you, nobody is going to ask you to pay for medicare/medicaid/sale tax... etc. For all intends and purposes, you will be living in the way that you seem to like. Except that you want to enjoy the perks of society don't you? You want to have roads, internet, water coming into your apartment, firefighters putting fires out, etc. Nobody is stopping you from living in the middle of the forest alone (or with whoever other crazy people you manage to recruit into your quixotist endeavor.)

Not true. Government did not create the concept of private property or theft, as I explained above. Property is created when somebody proclaims "this is mine, and not yours" and is willing to defend that property to the death.

See walmart example.

Everything the government owns is socialism. Socialism is common collective ownership. Roads, hydro lines, the military, schools, all public infrastructure...it's all socialism.

Strictly speaking that is not true.
That is only true in the subset of goverments in which there is absolute democracy. No country on earth has absolute democracy. Socialism is when the collective has ownership as you describe, however if the goverment is controlled, not by a collective democratically but rather by a tyrant/dictator/monarch/etc... then there is no control of such "means of production/distribution/etc" by the "collective" but rather by an individual, set of individuals (oligarchy), etc. That is one of the reasons why it would be ridiculous to call countries like Cuba socialist.

[ingliz]

It would be nearly impossible for anyone with an IQ over 70 to lose 100,000 in the current market. I think you are a POC

Is that your way of saying you think all 'people of color' have an IQ less than 70?

[Julian658]

Is that your way of saying you think all 'people of color' have an IQ less than 70?

I am ribbing Godstud because he calls me a racist in 99% of his posts.

[Godstud]

@Julian658, making a racist post isn't going to change that, and only demonstrates how correct I am.

[Julian658]

@Julian658, making a racist post isn't going to change that, and only demonstrates how correct I am.

Right on Q he appears yelling racism for no reason.

[Unthinking Majority]

This still seems to impoverished a concept just as private property itself is insufficient to conceptualize a capitalist economy as you noted earlier that private property predates capitalism.
Similarly, socialism can’t be abstractly defined simply by state ownership but must capture the essential qualities of s concept rather than a spurious appearance.

It's not simply ownership by the state, socialism is ownership by everyone. If something is owned by the government, it is publicly owned equally by all citizens of that state. A government is an organization that, theoretically and ideally, acts in the interests of all citizens, and is a vessel through which public property can be managed.

Otherwise socialism ends up as ridiculous as my video as government = socialism and more government ownership equals more socialism and enough at some arbitrary point is communism.

I wouldn't think that point is arbitrary. Communism occurs when all private property is eliminated and all property is publicly owned.

[Godstud]

Right on Q he appears yelling racism for no reason.

If you have reading comprehension problems, then I suggest you go back to school. You made a racist post. I never called you a racist, nor "yelled" at you.

2020 was a shitty year. You can believe what you want about it, since it's subjective.

[Potemkin]

It's not simply ownership by the state, socialism is ownership by everyone. If something is owned by the government, it is publicly owned equally by all citizens of that state. A government is an organization that, theoretically and ideally, acts in the interests of all citizens, and is a vessel through which public property can be managed.


I wouldn't think that point is arbitrary. Communism occurs when all private property is eliminated and all property is publicly owned.

The working class taking political control of the state apparatus is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve communism. In fact, the state apparatus exists, not to manage public property, but to manage class conflict. If communism has been achieved, then by definition there is no class conflict and hence no need for a state apparatus. As Lenin put it in State and Revolution, the state apparatus must be "smashed to smithereens" before communism can be achieved.

[Wellsy]

It's not simply ownership by the state, socialism is ownership by everyone. If something is owned by the government, it is publicly owned equally by all citizens of that state. A government is an organization that, theoretically and ideally, acts in the interests of all citizens, and is a vessel through which public property can be managed.

Indeed the emphasis on ownership by the workers, the mass of people but this seems to be left pretty abstract based on the sense that the government is representative of the people and thus everyone owns the property because the government does. But I think this could be a theoretical mistake leading to a practical mistake that thinks simply because something is nationalized that it is accountable to the public.
And the state doesn’t and cannot represent a universal will.

Marx agreed with Hegel (1967) when the latter insisted that because modern (bourgeois) civil society is atomistic and composed of competing particular, private, individual interests, there is a necessary separation between civil society and the universal or common social interest implied in the form of the state. Hegel argued that modern society allowed individual freedom unthinkable in previous social formations, but also recognised that the constant competition between private individuals in civil society – Hobbes’s (1997) ‘bellum omnium contra omnes’ or ‘war of all against all’ – produced unceasing social instability. He argued this necessitated some kind of organism to hold society together: the modern state.

While Marx saw Hegel as the most advanced theorist of the modern state, he took Hegel to task for claiming that the state could truly express the universal social interest.
...
Marx identified that the antagonism between civil society and the state was unable to be resolved, precisely because in a society composed of competing particular interests, the state itself would be just another particular interest – even if in a formal or abstract way it claimed to stand for the general or collective interest of the society that it governed over.

The issue is how and whether the state really does reflect the workers class interest as a dominant force or not. How do the people keep the government accountable to their interests?
Currently, many states are simply tools of powerful capitalists although there are struggles over state power but fundamentally if a government nationalize an industry how would one necessarily distinguish it if its still expressive of the same functions and interests of particular capitalists?
If state power is firmly in control of capitalists, one would be a fool to think the state taking over something necessarily equates with the interests of workers in itself although state power is often seen as a step closer to the purposes of workers achieving socialism.
Perhaps petty of me but I think its important to not make a mistake of confusing state actions as equivalent to the publics objective interests.

I wouldn't think that point is arbitrary. Communism occurs when all private property is eliminated and all property is publicly owned.

Except ot sounds like Communism = total state ownership which misses the crux of what underpins it and seems , at least theoretically, nonsensical as the state as we understand it wouldn’t exist.

[Unthinking Majority]

The working class taking political control of the state apparatus is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve communism. In fact, the state apparatus exists, not to manage public property, but to manage class conflict. If communism has been achieved, then by definition there is no class conflict and hence no need for a state apparatus. As Lenin put it in State and Revolution, the state apparatus must be "smashed to smithereens" before communism can be achieved.

You still need laws (rules of behaviour) under communism. If rape is to be outlawed, those who rape need to be punished by some kind of authority, which is government. Communism will not eliminate all crime.

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." - Alexander Hamilton

[Unthinking Majority]

Except ot sounds like Communism = total state ownership which misses the crux of what underpins it and seems , at least theoretically, nonsensical as the state as we understand it wouldn’t exist.

Communism means all workers more or less equally own all property and means of production. This can be done through the state, or possibly some less centralized means.

I suppose not all total state ownership would = communism, if goods and control of means of production were not evenly distributed and some groups still were given more power/control and goods while others much less, creating classes again.

But under the typical western implementation of socialism, if socialism went so far in ie: Norway where the state owned/nationalized everything for public use/benefit, that would be communism.

[Potemkin]

Communism means all workers more or less equally own all property and means of production. This can be done through the state, or possibly some less centralized means.

I suppose not all total state ownership would = communism, if goods and control of means of production were not evenly distributed and some groups still were given more power/control and goods while others much less, creating classes again.

But under the typical western implementation of socialism, if socialism went so far in ie: Norway where the state owned/nationalized everything for public use/benefit, that would be communism.

No, that would be state capitalism. Which is exactly what Lenin claimed to be building in the early 1920s. He believed that Russia was too backward for it to be possible to build socialism without first going through the stage of state capitalism by nationalising everything.

[Sivad]

2020 was the best year of the century so far. 2020 has been one giant super red pill extravaganza. More people than ever before in history are acutely aware of elitist skulduggery and mass retardation. And when 50,000 retards stroke out on these vaccines I think 2021 might even be better.

[Sivad]

No, that would be state capitalism. Which is exactly what Lenin claimed to be building in the early 1920s. He believed that Russia was too backward for it to be possible to build socialism without first going through the stage of state capitalism by nationalising everything.

When did the socialism kick in exactly? Has there even been one "socialist" society that managed to sucessfully transition from gulag capitalism to socialism?

[Agent Steel]

@Julian658, making a racist post isn't going to change that, and only demonstrates how correct I am.

You really need to stop this whole "racist" accusation bullshit. It's getting old.

There is no such thing as "racism". There is only good and evil.

There's been a very warped movement within academia to push this "critical race theory" crap which tells how pretty much all white people are racist and that we need to acknowledge it. This is unethical, and we must fight it. I feel empowered to use my strength to squash such twisted ideas. I am also confident that we will squash it. Evil and immorality often gets defeated.

It is perfectly ok to be white, and there absolutely NOT such a thing as systemic racism. The people who say otherwise are delusional and need to do some serious soul searching!!

[Drlee]

OK Agent Steel.

Your whole post is racist. And not one word of it is true.

You really need to stop this whole "racist" accusation bullshit. It's getting old.

No. Godstud is correct. We should call out racism every time we see it.

There is no such thing as "racism". There is only good and evil.

What? Of course there is such thing as racism. You seem to think that saying nonsense like this makes you look wise. It does not. To go one step further. There is NOT only good and evil. Good luck with getting any significant number of people to agree on what that even is. Now if you are a deeply religious person you might believe that God knows the difference. Are you a religious man? If not, have fun telling us what is good and what is evil.

There's been a very warped movement within academia to push this "critical race theory" crap which tells how pretty much all white people are racist and that we need to acknowledge it.

I don't know about that but 70 million people just voted for a racist for president. I know that a considerable number of Americans are racist and demonstrate it every day. I know that racism is re-searchable, quantifiable, and widespread.

This is unethical, and we must fight it. I feel empowered to use my strength to squash such twisted ideas. I am also confident that we will squash it. Evil and immorality often gets defeated.

And if you manage to wipe out the recognition of racism you will have accomplished the greatest example of racism in human history.

It is perfectly ok to be white, and there absolutely NOT such a thing as systemic racism.

Well. Interesting sentence. It is true there is nothing wrong with being white. Why in the US it is downright convenient. But then, of course, there IS such a thing as systemic racism and history abounds with it. I am not going to justify such an idiotic statement with examples. Everyone over about 10 knows many, except, it would appear, you.

The people who say otherwise are delusional and need to do some serious soul searching!!

Delusional. Good word. You ought to look it up. Right about know the rest of us are thinking that we can see a delusional person......

[Agent Steel]

Ok. Tell me in what way there is systemic racism in the USA. I want to hear just how you can believe that.

[MistyTiger]

Wow about the no racism in the US. It does exist.

Anyone who denies racism exists is willfully ignorant and blind.

The OP comes off as self-absorbed in this thread. He refuses to see or consider what others have written...all the posts that do not align with his opinions.