They look at social democracy which is just markets with redistribution and safety nets, and they say “socialism”.
Any welfare programs that help the poor - they say “socialism”.
They look at cities and countries engaging in State Capitalism and call it socialism.
Socialism is collective ownership of the Means of Production.
Examples of textbook socialism include:
Communes and Kibbutzes
Co-operative housing
Credit Unions
Employee owned corporations
Open source projects
And you can have democratic governance of larger structures, which MAY be called socialism:
The public stock market (capitalism and socialism can coexist).
facism has aspects based on syndicalism, a subset of the socialism true, but its far from the defining characteristics of a true social equalization. syndicalism (and then facism) is based on categories within a society.
the best definition, used in a trotsky speach, is that facism is "socialism for the upper and middle classes". if you apreaciate the sweet irony you can clearly see why facism can never truly be seen as socialism. if you miss the irony, you should just call yourself alt-rigth.
Actual socialism has never, and will never, be implemented. People are not idealistic enough (most people just want to avoid work) and it is always the wrong people who grab power.
The creator of Fascism was Mr Mussolini, himself a member of the communist party in Italy.
It was only that Mussolini wanted to create a socialist movement independent of the International Socialist , the Komintern, which was controlled(and financed) by Soviet Russia, following the interests of that country.
So he created a socialist movement with the interest of Italians first, nationalistic. Hitler then copied the movement in Germany.
To say that nazis were not socialistic(and socialized the means of production) is like saying that Trosky was not communist because he was assassinated by Stalin.
Of course they were the worst enemies between each other, but there were not big differences in the way they planned the economy.
In the civil war in Spain, in the left side there were independent anarchist and socialistic leaders and they were killed by Stalin, not Franco.
Far too much effort is wasted arguing along the way.
- Individualism is squashed in both systems. The citizen solely exists for the state and is to be exploited as a worker or cannon fodder.
- Both systems had worker holiday cities for propaganda and constant reeducation.
- Both systems had many youth organizations for indoctrination.
- Both systems had nationalized radio.
- Both systems sent their opponents into Gulags/camps.
- In both systems, if you pretended to be a follower, you'd be taken care of (that arguably is the socialist aspect of national socialism).
National socialism did not actually nationalize companies, but they were certainly under control of the state.
The point is that while the ideologies were different, the outcome was not completely dissimilar (even antisemitism with purges was there under Stalin). National socialism had an overtly murderous ideology, while the marxist one pretended to do one thing and did quite another.
At most you can look at efficient surface similarities and say this ideology does not prohibit these actions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_Through_Joy
Obviously NS is not 100% equal to abstract pure socialism, I think we can assume that everyone here knows that.
The idea is that people are expected to work for their benefits, save up money to form capital and then invest that capital to create a safety net for themselves. Most people on the conservative side are not opposed to helping people who can't help themselves or giving people who did their best but fell on hard times, a break, through bankruptcy.
If a country has a large amount of natural resources like Norway, it can be somewhat successful in dispensing with individual excellence. For example, Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world. However, this may not be sustainable since natural resource eventually run out. For example : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nauru#Modern-day_Na...
Norway used its oil profits to create a sovereign wealth fund and invested it in stocks. What is the system called when dispensable income is used to form capital which is then invested in other ventures to create additional revenue streams ? I would call it capitalism.
If all countries where Norwegian money is invested decided to become socialist and seized their property, Norway will not be upheld as a socialist success, would it ?
I'm not sure what is meant by this? I would assume that the more resources the government or the community has, the more they can support people's talents. You can invest more in education and arts.
> Norway used its oil profits to create a sovereign wealth fund and invested it in stocks. What is the system called when dispensable income is used to form capital which is then invested in other ventures to create additional revenue streams ? I would call it capitalism.
True, that's a good point, it's state level capitalism.
If instead the oil money went into tax cuts, what would one call that policy then? Antisocialism?
Just investing in arts and education is not enough to bring about people's talents : https://www.heritage.org/education/report/does-spending-more...
> True, that's a good point, it's state level capitalism.
> If instead the oil money went into tax cuts, what would one call that policy then? Antisocialism?
You have missed the point here : even by Marxist standards, Norway's success is due to capitalism. It is better to think about economies in terms of the amount of economic freedom each permits. Capitalism-Socialism dichotomy is largely just fiction.
> One promising way to improve resource allocation is to give parents the ability to use their children's share of public Education funding to choose the right school for their children. Children benefiting from school choice programs have higher test scores than their peers who do not benefit from school choice.
Or could it be that parents who would use vouchers are the same parents who are actively involved in their children’s education so those are the same kids who would do better anyway?
“It Turns Out Spending More Probably Does Improve Education”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/nyregion/it-turns-out-spe...
That said, my understand is that “it’s the teachers, stupid”. Systems that have better teachers, through a combination of means (better pay, better prestige, better training and continuity) have the best outcomes:
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insigh...
So yes, pouring money into the system isn’t a magic fix, especially if none of it goes to teacher salaries.
Erm, the wealth comes from finding a valuable resource. The oil isn't there due to following a particular ideology.
A capitalist system would give that resource to private wealthy individuals as reward for being wealthy (eg owning the land where the well-heads are). The sovereign wealth fund is more like common ownership, socialist-communist.
The socialist-capitalist dichotomy is based on ownership and the profit (financial or otherwise) of that ownership. Capitalism means narrow private ownership, the profit going to those owners; socialism democratises the ownership and benefit -- they are contradictory.
Perfect!
> The means of production, be it machinery or brains, are privately owned.
They are not. The government literally owns the bulk of the wealth. Not only in the oil sector but in a wide variety of industries, both directly and through the fund.
There are aspects of Norway that is socialist, but the country by historical standards and by the very definition is far far from being socialist.
It is difficult to categorize countries as socialist or free markets, since all countries has a bit of a mix. However, it is easy to see what it is decidedly not. Compared to socialist countries like USSR, East Germany, North Korea, Venezuela, we can all agree that Norway is not like those, it is indeed far closer to free markets than compared to socialism.