Too bad that few socialists allow
the same leeway for capitalism.
Tis all dog eating dog.
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I Hate Socialism
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
the same leeway for capitalism.
Tis all dog eating dog.
It's bad enuf that your post is so rabidly red.
But such grammar (using "you" instead of "your") is triggering.
It gives me the vapors.
ImmortalFlame
Woke gremlin
Except dictionary definitions are also personal definitions, and are almost entirely descriptive and not prescriptive.
If you think concepts like socialism, capitalism and communism can be summed up in totality by one or two sentences, then you will never be able to meaningfully understand or engage with any of them as concepts.
What is capitalism?
To use capitals to invest.
Even the socialist State invests its own money into something.
The Socialist State (God bless it) owns banks, infrastructures, bourses. It owns capitals.
Maybe you mean economic liberalism. What we in Europe call neo-liberism.
Socialism is ...
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Liberalism is a long long way from socialism.
Personal?
That seems the wrong criticism because it criticizes
dictionaries for what they fundamentally are, ie,
descriptive.
https://dictionary.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/226229927-How-does-a-word-get-into-the-dictionary-
If someone wants to advocate that socialism or
capitalism be used to achieve goals beyond what
defines them, that's fine. I have goals for capitalism
that go far beyond the definition.
But the word doesn't mean such prescriptive &
proscriptive agendas. Nor does it mean the
inexorable emergent properties of systems the
word describes, eg, socialism's always resulting
in authoritarianism.
Definitions don't sum up toalities.
By analogy, the definition of "physics" doesn't
describe statistical mechanics of gases. It says
only what physics is.
Socialists don't get to re-define "socialism" as
a personal utopian vision equality, peace, &
prosperity of a populace all singing Kumbaya
in unison. That's a dream...not a definition.
It's not even anything in reality.
For what it's worth, I've been able to observe a bit about the Soviet system, how it worked in practice, and what didn't work. In order to truly understand what happened and how their system developed, it's also important to understand not just socialism as an abstract ideology, but also about the history of Russia in the centuries leading up to the Revolutions of 1917.
I'm a bit more fuzzy on Chinese history, although I know enough of it to know that they went through quite a bit of hell before their Revolution in which the Communists took power in 1949. The Russian Revolution was a direct result of WW1, and the Chinese Communist Revolution occurred in the aftermath of WW2.
The one thing that struck me when I visited the USSR in the 1980s is that, even 40 years after WW2, it was still very much a part of their active consciousness, as if it had just happened yesterday.
Definition of capitalism | Dictionary.com
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.
Not all are socialist either. There are very few socialist countries China, Cuba, and a small handful of others
I'd rather live even in France than a socialist country.
Some fine scrap iron there.
A Revolutionary Museum: Alexandre Lenoirs Museum of French Monuments The Museum of French monuments
Oh, if ever they'd lend a Lenoir engine to our museum here....bliss!
We currently have the oldest 4-stroke engine extant on loan from the Ford Museum.
(We're not allowed to run it. And we honor that condition.)
I like the definition.
The problem is: what is the purpose of capitalism?
To play monopoly with real money. And to win.
Selfishness, greed, egotism, ...to own it all...the dominion over matter.
To win at cost of the neighbor's demise. As in monopoly.
Resources exist so everyone can benefit from them.
I think men have evolved from the animal stage...so the jungle law aka law of the fittest should be surpassed.
"Purpose" isn't inherent in the definition.
Purpose would vary with the entity.
To a business owner, it would likely be profit.
To an employee, it would likely be a job.
To government, it would be tax revenue.
These are emergent properties of capitalism.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Literally all countries today have a "mixed economy", which is varying degrees of capitalism mixed in with socialism.
Only if you use a non-dictionary definition of "socialism"?
It's absurd that you put N Korea & Canuckistan in the same basket.
Even a socialist system can have some elements of capitalism. It's not like it can only be one or the other. Some areas of the economy might be publicly-controlled and some might be privately-controlled.
As for dictionary definitions, they're useful for what they're designed to do, but if there's any widespread public misunderstanding, I would put that mainly on the right-wing for their constant misinformation, red-baiting, and overall paranoia about "socialism" and "communism" which has done a considerable amount of damage to the political culture in this country.
I love metaphors. Allegories. My mothertongue is a metaphorical language.
The Socialist State is like a very respectable enforcer that controls that every person respects the rules; that people fulfill their dreams and that there is social justice.
Meaning there is equity and there is no prevarication. There are still businesses and privates who run them.
Let's say that a secretary is hired by a big businessman who is incredibly rich. This secretary is very loyal to her employer. One bad day the secretary has a car accident and arrives at the workplace two hours later.
The businessman decides to fire her, even if she has provided evidence of the accident.
The secretary goes to cry to the Socialist State who goes wild. Because the secretary has been unjustly dismissed, and with no compensation.
So the Socialist State goes to the big businessman who is incredibly rich and beats him until he has understood the lesson.
That's what the Socialist State is for.
Metaphorically speaking of course...there are the juridical means that replace beating.
Because we live in a society of arrogant prevaricators who don't empathize with the neighbor.
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Yes, I understand most folks are fine with capitalism.
Some still promote socialism as an economic system. I'm curious what they think the benefits would be.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Exactly, and here's where one can see various dorms of "socialism" that often differ significantly from one another: Socialism - Wikipedia